Philipp Meyer - The Son

No white person, even an Irishman, would have spent an hour digging a handful of runty potatoes, but I knew I had gotten off easy. I had not taken the big jump. I still got the feeling of a full stomach, a hot fire against a cold night, the sound of other people sleeping close. I knew what it would look like with the grass waving over me; the road to heaven would be slick with my own blood.

IT WOULD BE nice to expound upon the kinship I discovered between myself and the black Africans my countrymen kept in bondage, but, unfortunately, I made no such discovery. I thought only of my own troubles. I was an empty bucket that needing filling with whatever food or favors the Indians would allow, crippling my way through each day, hoping for extra food or praise or a few easy minutes to myself.

As for escaping, there were eight hundred miles of dry wilderness between the ranchería and civilization. The first time I was caught by the other children. The second time I was caught by Toshaway, who turned me over to his wives. They and their mothers beat me hollow, cut up the soles of my feet, and had a long discussion about blinding me in one eye, and I knew the next time I bucked would be the end of me.

TO PREPARE A hide, you stretched out the skin in the grass, hair side down, staking the corners. Then you knelt on the bloody surface, pushing and scraping off the fat and sinew with a piece of blunt bone or metal. If the tool was too sharp or you weren’t careful you would push through to the other side, ruining the hide, for which you would be beaten.

Between scrapings I spread a layer of wood ash so the lye would soften the fat; while that was happening I was sent for more water or wood, or I would skin, bone, and flay out a deer one of the men or boys had dragged in. The only thing I didn’t do was repair or make clothing, though the women would have taught me if they could have — they were always months behind what the men needed: a new pair of moccasins or leggings (one hide), a bearskin robe (two hides), a wolf robe (four hides). The hides had to be cut so the shape of the animal matched the shape of the wearer, and, as it took all day to finish even a single deer or wolf hide, mistakes could not be made.

In addition to making all the tools the band needed — axes, awls, needles, digging sticks, scrapers, knives and utensils — the women also made all the thread, rope, and twine. The band went through miles of it — for tipis and clothing, for saddles and bridles and hobbles, for every tool or weapon they made — everything in their lives was held together by string, which had to be twisted inch by inch. The leaves of a yucca or agave would be soaked or pounded, or the fibers separated from grasses or cedar bark. Once the fibers were loose they were braided. Animal sinews were also saved — tendons from a deer’s ankles were chewed until they split. The sinews along the spine were longer and very easy to work with, but these were in short supply and saved to make weapons, and the women were not allowed to use them.

If you were in a tight spot, cordage could be made from rawhide, but there were better uses for it and it stretched when wet. A hide would be laid flat and a spiral cut into it an inch or two wide, starting from the outside and cutting inward until the entire hide was one long strand. A single lariat required six different strands, though mostly the men made their own lariats, unless a woman was seen sitting with nothing to do.

The Comanches had no patience for the ignorance of their white captives when they themselves had been raised knowing that whether it took a minute or an hour to build a fire or make a weapon or track a man or animal might, at some point, be the difference between living and dying. When there was nothing to do, no one could match them in laziness; otherwise they were careful as goldsmiths. When they looked at a forest they saw each individual plant and knew its name and the seasons they could eat or use it as medicine; they saw the tracks of every living thing that had passed through. Any of them might have been dropped naked upon the earth and within a few days would be living comfortably.

By comparison we were dumb as steers. They could not understand why they had not defeated us. Toshaway always said that white women laid crops of eggs like ducks, which hatched every night, so it didn’t matter how many you killed.

AS FOR ME, I dreamed about scraping hides and woke up with the feel of the scraper in my hands. Once a hide was scraped and dried, we took a rawhide bowl and mashed in whatever brains were around, tallow, soap water from yucca (which I had dug up, cut up, carried back to the camp, then pounded and boiled), and maybe some old liver. Bear tallow was used most of the time, and this was the main reason bears were killed. My father and the other frontiersmen considered bear meat and honey the king’s supper, but the Indians would only eat bear if there was no hoofed creature to be found.

As for the hides, if the hair was left on, you tanned one side; if the hair was off, you tanned both sides. Then it was the worst part of the process — two days of kneading and twisting to get the hide broken. The final step with buckskin was to smoke it to make it waterproof, though not if it was for trade.

ONE DAY IN August, N uukaru caught up to me as I was fetching water. I was happy to see him as he’d been gone most of the summer, and even though we shared a tipi, we hardly got the chance to augur, because the women kept me working from can’t see to can’t see.

He’d come back from his last raid with a scalp, so even though he still looked like a boy, with bony arms and legs, the women now wanted his approval and the men invited him to their gambling. The Comanches had no ceremony for ending boyhood — no vision quests or hooks through the nipples — when you felt like it you started going on raids, watching the horses until gradually you were allowed into the fight.

“It’s women’s work,” he said, by way of greeting me.

I was carrying water up the hill. After I delivered it, I would go dig for potatoes in the mud. “They make me do it,” I said.

“So tell them you won’t.”

“Toshaway will beat me.”

“Definitely not.”

“Then his wives and mother and the neighbor woman will.”

“So what?”

We kept walking.

“What do I say to them?”

“Just stop doing it,” he said. “The rest is just details.”

We continued to climb the hill. The afternoon was cool and the women had not been asking so much of me. I saw no reason to stir the kettle. N uukaru must have sensed this, because he turned and punched me suddenly in the groin. I went to my knees.

“For your own good you will give me your full attention now.”

I nodded. It occurred to me that in the old days I would have wanted to kill him; now I just hoped he wouldn’t hit me again.

“Everyone in the world wants to be N um un uu and here it is being given to you, but you are not taking it. When the Indians starve on their reservations, for instance the Chickasaw, Cherokee, Wichita, Shawnee, Seminole, Quapaw, Delaware”—he paused—“even the Apaches and Osages and plenty of Mexicans, they all want to join our band. They leave their reservations, they risk ooibehkar u, half of them die just trying to find us. And why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because we are free. They speak Comanche before they get here, Tiehteti. They speak their own language and they also speak Comanche. Do you know why?”

I looked after my water jug.

“Because Comanches don’t act like women.”

“I have to get the water,” I said.

“Whatever you want. But soon it’ll be too late and no one will think of you as anything but a na?raiboo .”