William Sanders - The Undiscovered

One evening, soon after the snows began to melt, I noticed that Spearshaker was not at his usual nightly work. He was just sitting there staring into the fire, not even looking at his skins and bark sheets, which were stacked beside him. The turkey feathers and black paint were nowhere in sight.

I said, “Is something wrong?” and then it came to me. “Finished?”

He let out a long sigh. “Yes,” he said. “Mo ful ai, ” he added, which was something he often said, though I never quite got what it meant.

It was easy to see he was feeling bad. So I said, “Tell me the story.”

He didn’t want to, but finally he told it to me. He got pretty worked up as he went along, sometimes jumping up to act out an exciting part, till I thought he was going to wreck my house. Now and then he picked up a skin or mulberry-bark sheet and spoke the words, so I could hear the sound. 1 had thought I was learning his language pretty well, but I couldn’t understand one word in ten.

But the story itself was clear enough. There were parts I didn’t follow, but on the whole it was the best he’d ever told me. At the end I said, “Good story.”

He tilted his head to one side, like a bird. “Truly?”

“Doyu, ” I said. I meant it, too.

He sighed again and picked up his pile of raiting. “I am a fool,” he said.

I saw that he was about to throw the whole thing into the fire, so I went over and took it from him. “This is a good thing,” I told him. “Be proud.”

“Why?” He shrugged his shoulders. “Who will ever see it? Only the bugs and the worms. And the mice,” he added, giving me his little smile.

I stood there, trying to think of something to make him feel better. Ninekiller’s oldest daughter had been making eyes at Spearshaker lately and I wondered if I should go get her. Then I looked down at what I was holding in my hands and it came to me.

“My friend,” I said, “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we put on your plei right here?”

And now is Lunacy compownded vpon Lunacy, Bedlam pyled on Bedlam : for I am embark’d on an Enterprize, the like of which this Globe hath neuer seene. Yet lie undertake this Foolery, and flynch not: mayhap it will please these People, who are become my onely Frends. They shall haue of Will his best will.

It sounded simple when I heard myself say it. Doing it was another matter. First, there were people to be spoken with.

We Aniyvwiya like to keep everything loose and easy. Our chiefs have far less authority than yours, and even the power of the clan mothers has its limits. Our laws are few, and everyone knows what they are, so things tend to go along without much trouble.

But there were no rules for what we wanted to do, because it had never been done before. Besides, we were going to need the help of many people. So it seemed better to go carefully—but I admit I had no idea that our little proposal would create such a stir. In the end there was a regular meeting at the council house to talk it over.

Naturally it was Otter who made the biggest fuss. “This is white men’s medicine,” he shouted. “Do you want the People to become as weak and useless as the whites?”

“If it will make all our warriors shoot as straight as Spearshaker,” Bigkiller told him, “then it might be worth it.”

Otter waved his skinny old arms. He was so angry by now that his face was whiter than Spearshaker’s. “Then answer this,” he said. “How is it that this dance—”

“It’s not a dance,” I said. Usually I would not interrupt an elder in council, but if you waited for Otter to finish you might be there all night.

“Whatever you call it,” he said, “it’s close enough to a dance to be Bird Clan business, right? And you, Mouse, are Wolf Clan—as is your white friend, by adoption. So you have no right to do this thing.”

Old Dotsuya spoke up. She was the Bird Clan Mother, and the oldest person present. Maybe the oldest in town, now I think of it.

“The Bird Clan has no objection,” she said. “Mouse and Spearshaker have our permission to put on their plei. Which I, for one, would like to see. Nothing ever happens around this town.”

Tsigeyu spoke next. “Howa, ” she said. “I agree. This sounds interesting.”

Of course Otter wasn’t willing to let it go so easily; he made quite a speech, going all the way back to the origins of the People and predicting every kind of calamity if this sacrilege was permitted. It didn’t do him much good, though. No one liked Otter, who had gotten both meaner and longer-winded with age, and who had never been a very good didahn-vwisgi anyway. Besides, half the people in the council house were asleep long before he was done.

After the council gave its approval there was no trouble getting people to help. Rather we had more help than we needed. For days there was a crowd hanging around my house, wanting to be part of the plei. Bigkiller said if he could get that many people to join a war party, he could take care of the Catawbas for good.

And everyone wanted to be an akta. We were going to have to turn some people away, and we would have to be careful how we did it, or there would be trouble. I asked Spearshaker how many aktas we needed. “How many men, that is,” I added, as he began counting on his fingers. “The women are a different problem.”

He stopped counting and stared at me as if I were wearing owl feathers. Then he told me something so shocking you will hardly believe it. In his country, the women in a plei are actually men wearing women’s clothes!

I told him quick enough that the People don’t go in for that sort of thing—whatever they may get up to in certain other tribes—and he’d better not even talk about it around here. Do you know, he got so upset that it took me the rest of the day to talk him out of calling the whole thing off…

Women! Mercifull Jesu! Women, on a Stage, acting in a Play!

I shall feele like an Whore-Master!

Men or women, it was hard to know which people to choose. None of them had ever done anything like this before, so there was no way to know whether they would be any good or not. Spearshaker asked me questions about each person, in white language so no one would be offended: Is he quick to learn? Does he dance or sing well? Can he work with other people, and do as he is told? And he had them stand on one side of the stickball field, while he stood on the other, and made them speak their names and clans, to learn how well their voices carried.

I had thought age would come into it, since the plei included both older and younger people. But it turned out that Spearshaker knew an art of painting a man’s face, and putting white in his hair, till he might be mistaken for his own grandfather.

No doubt he could have done the same with women, but that wasn’t necessary. There were only two women’s parts in this story, and we gave the younger woman’s part to Ninekiller’s daughter Cricket—who would have hung upside-down in a tree like a possum if it would please Spearshaker—and the older to a cousin of mine, about my age, who had lost her husband to the Shawanos and wanted something to do.