BIG TROUBLE
Rudely constructed, shed-like, or nondescript, the long communal houses
lay like dark beads in a landscape of green, in a warm, temperate clime.
In front stretched a fen, and beyond the fen flowed a river. To right
and left and in the background waked and slumbered the forest, chief
possessor yet of the earth. Before the houses that were large enough and
long enough to lodge, when they chose to stay indoors, several hundred
women, men, and children, ran a strip of naked, sun-baked earth. Here
the children played, and here went on industrial processes, and here
were held, beneath one huge tree, the general councils, pow-wows,
folk-meets.
The people of the long houses ate fish which they caught by means of
weirs and with harpoons and hooks fashioned from bone. They ate in their
season fruits and nuts, and they were acquainted with certain mealy
roots and seeds of grasses. They ate those animal denizens of forest or
plain that they could kill with club and spear or take in pit and snare.
In times of scarcity they ate flesh food of a low order. In times of
huge scarcity, when it was that or the wasting away of the group and its
passage into the land of death, they might slay and eat the aged of
their own kind.
In the matter of weapons the people of the long houses yet depended upon
the spear, but were upon the threshold of the bow and arrow. In the heat
of summer they wore brief garments of woven grass; in the colder
weather they garbed themselves in skins sewed with a bone needle and a
fibre thread. Year by year, life by life, they were moulding a flexible,
strong, not unmusical language. They could count beyond ten. Simple
calculations were coming into the scope of most. Here and there finer
brains undertook calculations not quite so simple. They used a
ceremonial burial of the dead, and they placed beside the body weapons
and other objects which might be useful in some vague other world. They
observed the moon and the larger stars, and to every single thing under
heaven they attributed a will to save or to damn. They had a body of
customs, not yet stiffened into law. Women, the makers and possessors of
children, the original devisers of houses and clothes and such things,
the earliest lawgivers and gatherers of people into societies, were yet,
through the greater range of matters, the authoritative sex. They were
the mothers, the instinctively turned to even after childhood, the dimly
deified. But men were powerful encroachers, and they encroached.
To the two alike had once fallen the fierce, the incessant warfare
against their old kindred the beasts. Now, the women abetting, the men
had almost taken over that department of living. Men were the
manufacturers of spear and spearhead, the experimenters with stone axe
and stone knife. They were the steady feelers toward bow and arrow, the
chief hunters now of dangerous beasts, strengthening in muscle, gaining
in height, careless of inflicted pain, watchers of flowing blood,
quarrellers with chance--met other hunting bands from other long houses,
adventurous, bold, standing by wide rivers, meditating a raft, a boat,
or from hill-tops watching the climbing stars, roaming afar from the
houses and returning. Wilder than his mate was the male and more
violent, as became one who had nothing to do with children. Nor he, nor
she, believed that he had anything to do with children--nor with the
making of them, nor with the owning them after they were made.
A cluster of women came down to the bank of one of the ribbon-like
water-courses winding through the fen. Here was a bed of clay. The women
carried a number of uncertainly shaped vessels of plaited rush and
osier. These they laid upon the earth, and sitting down by the stream,
fell to dashing water over the clay, and, when the latter was
sufficiently softened, to gathering it up and kneading it with the
hands. When the mass was very smooth and plastic, each woman took one of
the osier shapes, set it between her knees, and began to daub it within
and without with clay. They wet their hands and worked with palm and
fingers and thumb, and also with a spatula-like piece of wood, bringing
the clay into one surface, smoothing and finishing it off. When bowl and
jar were dried in the sun, then water might be carried without grave
loss and meat might be cooked without the osiers burning in the fire. An
idea came to one of the women. She took a mound of wet clay and with her
hands and the spatula she worked until she had a bowl of the clay itself
without any osier inner walls. “Ha!” she cried. “Look!” Setting the bowl
aside in the sun, she took more clay and made a jar-like shape. The
other women suspended work to watch her. They leaned forward, interest
in their eyes. An old woman, sitting by, watching not working,--old
Aneka the Wise Woman,--made a sound of approval. “Good!” said Aneka. “It
is good to think and to put one thing and another thing together! Now
you can make pots without braiding reeds.”
Back on the sun-hardened strip before the houses a fire was burning. At
a fair distance from this rose a young tree and to the tree was tied a
creature with his wolf descent written plain. A woman came from the
nearest house, in her hands a piece of raw meat. When the wild dog saw
the meat he made a bound and strained fiercely at the thongs which held
him. The woman laid the meat upon the ground, not far from the fire.
Then she took a billet of wood and, passing before the tied creature,
showed it to him not once but many times. This done, she placed the
piece of wood upon the ground as far from him in the one direction as
was the piece of meat in the other. Next in order, she took a long,
stout stick, seasoned and sharpened, and striking one end into the
embers, watched it until it was aflame. All this time the half-dog,
half-wolf, was making a noise. Woman, dog, meat, stick, and fire had for
observers a number of naked children. Now she turned upon these and
ordered them within the house, and when they protested and went
reluctantly, she threatened them with voice and stick. The ground clear,
the woman, the burning stick in her hand, went and untied the creature
to be tamed. He sprang at her, but she lunged as fiercely with the
brand, and he gave back and cowered. She spoke in a voice of command,
pointed out the billet of wood, and spoke again. The creature gathered
himself together and made a leap--toward the piece of meat. She was
there before him, squarely between him and it, the burning wood sending
forth sparks. Again he gave back and hung uncertain, growling deeply.
She gestured for the twentieth time toward the bit of wood. “Bring me
that! Then you shall eat.” He would have liked to tear her into pieces,
but after many minutes of this work,--rushes toward the meat,
beatings-back with stick and voice and eye,--he brought her the billet
of wood. “Good! Now, go eat!”
East of the long houses spread a space of earth firmer than the
neighbouring fen, more open than the neighbouring forest. Three women
were here. They had wooden staves, and at the end of each was bound at
right angles a large, rudely sharpened flint. With these the women were
loosening the fat, black earth. Beside them lay a heap of roots and
plants taken from the forest.
Beneath a tree sat a lean man watching. In weather such as this, and
with no ceremonial toward, the men of the long houses went all but nude.
But the lean man dressed every day, and that with punctiliousness and
ornamentation. He had this morning, beside other apparel, a string of
small, dried gourds passing over one shoulder and under the other. They
rattled when he moved.
“Ha!” chanted the hoeing women--
“We are going to see
That which we shall see!
We are going to put
Yuba in the earth!
If she rots there, bad!
If she grows there, good!
Yuba! grow big!
Yuba! make children!
Then shall we eat
Without going to seek.
Then shall we have
Yuba to our hand!
Yuba and her children,
Sweet to the tooth!
Then none will hunger,
Though the fish go away!
Then none will hunger,
Though the men kill no meat!
Then those who laugh,
Saying, ‘What do you do,
Scratching there in the earth?’
They will come to us begging.
They will cry, ‘Give us Yuba!’”
The man with the gourds chose the attitude of contempt before an infant
industry. He spoke in a guttural voice. “You are like fish and have no
sense! I go into the forest and when I am hungry, I look around me, and
I sing, ‘Yuba! Yuba!’ ‘Here I am!’ says Yuba plant. ‘Dig me up!’--But
you say, ‘Let us tie Yuba to the houses!’” He shook the gourds. “You are
more foolish than the fish. They do not go about to make the river
angry. But you go about to make Yuba angry!”
The women leaned upon their hoes and regarded with apprehension the heap
of Yuba roots. The sun lay golden all around. “She does not look angry!
We think she likes to come near the houses.”
But the man with the gourds remained indignant. “Ha! No, she does not!
All kinds of things are coming to be angry with you women!” He shook the
rattling string. “What will you give me if I go to the forest and sing
and dance for you before Yuba?”
“We are going to dance before her here,” said the farmers. “We are going
to make a great Yuba dance!--Why don’t you go hunting? All the men are
hunting.”
The sitter under the tree shook from a gourd a number of long and sharp
thorns. “Yes, they are hunting! They are hunting Big Trouble. But I,
too, hunt Big Trouble, and I hunt better than they.” He spoke with
growing unction. “Yesterday I went into the forest. I did not go with
others--I went by myself. I found Big Trouble’s footprints. I found
where he had broken the canes and laid down. I stuck long thorns in his
footprints.” He talked with gestures no less than with words. “I put
thorns in the earth where he rolled. So to-day Big Trouble is going like
this--” He got up and limped painfully about, then sat down and with his
long nail drew a mark across the ground before him. “I did so before his
footprints. Now, wherever he goes, the pit is before him! Now they will
hunt Big Trouble easily. Now he will go straight to the pit they have
made and fall in it.” He fell himself, doubled-up, upon the ground to
show the manner of it, then retook his first posture and shook the
gourds. “They think they are hunting Big Trouble. But Haki and One Other
hunted him first! Now I sit still and wait for the men to come home.
They will give me so much meat.” He measured with his arms. “I will burn
a part of it for One Other.”
The awe he meant to evoke was faintly apparent. The farmers laughed
uneasily, with a catch of the breath. “Don’t put thorns in our
footprints!” said one; and another, “Rub out the pit you’ve made before
us there!” He smeared it over with the palm of his hand, then shook the
gourds and looked sidelong and slily at the working women. “Will you
give me Yuba if she stays here and grows for you?”
“Oh, we’ll give you plenty!” answered the farmers. They laughed as they
said it, but they laughed uneasily. However, they went on singing, using
the first hoes.
“Then none will hunger,
Though the fish go away!
Then none will hunger,
Though the men kill no meat!
Then those who laugh,
Saying, ‘What do you do,
Scratching there in the earth?’
They will creep to us softly,
They will cry, ‘Give us Yuba!’”
Far off, in the deep woods, the men of the long houses were hunting Big
Trouble, hunting him far and wide. Big Trouble had chosen to make such a
path to the river as brought him into close quarters with the houses.
Moreover, on more occasions than one, he had strayed aside from the
path; he had come brushing and trampling and ruining against the place
itself, all in the dead of night, waking and terrifying! So now Big
Trouble was to be killed. To that end, for many days, they had been
digging a pit in the wood, deepening and widening the mouth of a gully
near to old haunts of Big Trouble. When it was deep enough and sharply
shelving enough, they set at the bottom pointed stakes and then they
covered all with a net of vines, artfully made to look like the very
floor of the forest; strong enough, too, not to give beneath the weight
of any slight forest creature. But let Big Trouble try it--! For days,
also, they had been talking and training, exercising their muscles,
trying their spears and clubs, asking help of the Great Turtle who was
mysteriously their especial friend--the Great Turtle at the mouth of the
great river, who came from the water and laid her eggs upon the sand.
Now they were all in the deep wood, driving Big Trouble, disturbing him
with flung club and spear, getting him to go toward the pit. Big Trouble
was so big, and covered with such a fell of shaggy, red-brown hair that
a flung club or spear troubled him little, and on the whole he was
good-natured, and since he did not eat flesh, would not hurt them in
turn--not unless they mightily angered him. Then, indeed, he would hunt
with a vengeance, filling the air with trumpetings, tearing down the
forest, shaking the earth, seizing the unlucky with his trunk and
trampling them into an awful pulp! To hunt Big Trouble was to hunt in
peril and excitement and with a fearful joy--a hunting that needed
beforehand rites and ceremonies, and when it was accomplished, rites and
ceremonies.
Women as well as men hunted Big Trouble, though not anything like so
many women as men. But when a woman wished to hunt, she hunted; hunted
for food now as long since, hunted for joy in activity, danger, and
excitement. It was a dwindling custom, but they hunted yet. Half a dozen
now stalked Big Trouble with the men and threw their spears against him.
By the time the sun was high, Big Trouble had rolled his bulk very near
the hidden pit. He was growing angry. The hunters had now to act with
extreme wariness. Just before he reached the pit, he turned. He would go
no farther. He stood trumpeting and all the hunters got behind thick
trees and crouched trembling. Big Trouble glared with his small, red
eyes. Shaggy, with red-brown hair, with hugely long, curving tusks, vast
and dusky, the mammoth stood swaying from side to side, growing angrier
and angrier, searching with those now vicious, deep-sunk, red eyes. The
hunters shrank to be smaller and smaller behind the trees. Their hearts
grew small within them. Big Trouble did not mean to go on, had stopped
definitely short of the snare! He would stay there for hours, watching,
and if any one moved he would make his fearful, trampling rush.... Time
passed, much time. The sun that had been up in the plains of the sky
began to travel down the sky, down and down the sky. Big Trouble kept as
he was; only now and then he trumpeted.
A young man and woman left the screen of a wide-girthed tree. They
darted into the open. Big Trouble saw them out of the red corner of his
eye. He swung his bulk about and, trumpeting, charged. Immediately the
two were behind a greater tree than the first. Big Trouble passed,
trumpeting, and the wind of him shook the leaves. Baffled, he stopped
and stood swaying, angrier than before, angrier every moment. The two
left the second tree and fled before him. He followed, darkness and
weight arush through the forest. The man and woman gained the third
tree. Big Trouble passed, then he turned. The two left their tree and
raced before him, racing straight now to the pit. Big Trouble came after
them, and he shook the earth and air. The two took life in their hands,
made themselves light, bounded upon and across the roof of vine and
leaf. It gave a little beneath their feet, but only a little. As near
skimming as might be, they won to the farther side, and with a long cry
of triumph rushed to shelter. On, after them, thundered and trumpeted
Big Trouble. His forefeet came down upon the roof of the pit; he felt it
break beneath him, but could not stop himself. Over and down he plunged,
down with a frightful noise. The stakes caught him, the steep sides
wedged him in. Big Trouble was not going any more to trouble the long
houses.
The two who had toled Big Trouble into the pit marched in triumph back
to the houses, at the head of the hunters. The two were big and strong,
young, and according to the notions of their people, well-favoured. Back
they and all the hunters came, shouting and chanting, through the leafy
world with the red sun sinking behind them, and borne along, slung over
a pole, the seven-feet-long curved, ivory tusks of Big Trouble. Out to
meet them came the too old to hunt and the too young, came the man with
the thorns and the gourds, came the women, all who had not hunted.
Singing and shouting, the two tides met in the red sunset, beneath the
black trees.
“Big Trouble is dead!
He will plague us no more!”
The sun was going down--the hunters were tired, tired! They ate what was
given them, fell upon the earth and went to sleep. But the next day the
long houses made a feast of commemoration--Big Trouble being gone
forever.
Gata, who had hunted Big Trouble and raced over the roof of his pit,
left the feasting ring about the council tree. The sun hung low, the
river flowed, a crooked brightness. Most of the folk of the long houses
were hoarse with singing and shouting, and drowsy with food and drunk
with dancing and with a brew that they made out of forest fruits. Many
were asleep, others noisy with no reason, others grunting and dull-eyed.
Gata had danced, but she had not eaten and drunken to disorder and
heaviness. Now she rose and left the feast, for she was tired of it. She
expected one to follow. She had been watching Amru where he sat under
the tree. Neither had he eaten and drunken and danced to stupidity.
Here and there in the fen were higher places, islands as it were,
covered with a short grass. She took a path that led to such a spot. On
either hand the reeds stood up, and they waved and sighed in the evening
wind. The long houses disappeared from sight. Looking back she saw Amru
upon the path.
Here, where it lifted from the fen, the earth rested warm. The sun moved
red through a zone of mist. The tall reeds made a wall for the grassy
island. Gata and Amru sat facing each other on the round earth, round
like a shield, above the fen. A last ray from the sun brightened Gata’s
hair that was darkly red. With the flat fen about them, and behind the
low forest, they looked larger than life. They leaned toward each other,
they pressed their hands together, their bodies together. Lifted by the
lifting earth, they looked one piece.
The sun touched the rim of earth and coloured the river through the fen.
Gata and Amru lay embraced.
Almost as soon as the sun sank, the moon rose. It came up round and
golden--only the people of the long houses did not know gold. Still the
folk slept, tumbled like acorns beneath the council tree. A few old
people did not sleep, but sat nodding, nodding, and women who had young
children did not sleep. But all the strong men slept, some lying like
fallen trees, and others snoring and grunting. The man with the gourds,
who had watched the farmers, did not sleep. He had a mind and a
conscience that often kept him awake. Now, as the moon came up, he
wandered forth from the littered strip before the houses. “One Other”
often commanded his presence by night. Now he walked by the fen and
regarded the moon. The night was hot, but the lean man felt a wildness
and exaltation that kept him above the heat. He wore skirt and baldric
and headdress of grass and mussel shells and coloured feathers, and he
moved at tension through the hot, moist air.
Going so, he overtook another who had left those who gorged upon mammoth
meat--Aneka the Wise Woman. He shook his coloured headdress; jealousy
stung him. “Ha, Aneka! It is Haki who walks here by night and talks with
One Other!--Why do you not stay and watch children so that they do not
eat that-which-poisons?”
Aneka, wrinkled and brown, gazed at him and then over the fen to the
golden moon. “There is much spite in you, Haki! I am older than you and
I walked here first.”
They turned into the path through the fen. Haki waved his arms. “You and
all the people cry to the Great Turtle. I cry to One Other!”
“One Other?” asked Aneka. “Where is she?”
Haki looked at her aslant. His voice sank. “Hush! _He_ has gone into the
ground for the night. _He_ lives in the sun.”
The long houses used feminine pronouns when they spoke of the
supernatural. Aneka stared at Haki. “_He?_” she said. “How bold are you,
O Haki!”
But Haki, having plucked a feather from the future, came back to the
present and its so solid seeming realities. A thrill of fear and awe of
the Great Turtle ran through him, with thought of what vengeance she
might take. “I call to the Great Turtle too!” he said hastily. “One
Other and the Great Turtle are friends.”
“Can One Other make children?” asked Aneka.
It was the wall that towered before the male’s assertion of equality.
Nothing with the masculine pronoun could do that! The people of the long
houses knew all about mating. They had words in plenty for that. But
they had no word like “father.” Haki uttered a guttural sound, half
despair, half anger. He walked in silence while the moon climbed the
sky. Then revolt again raised its head. “One Other will find out how!”
Aneka knew plants that poisoned and plants that healed. Stooping, she
gathered a plant that used one way was poisonous and used another was
healthful. Aneka was old and knew much. Throughout life she had had a
watchful eye and comparing mind. But it was not her way to tell all that
she knew.... She gathered stalk and leaf and moved with Haki in silence.
They were now somewhat deep in the fen. Presently, the path curving like
a tusk of Big Trouble, they came to the shield-like, lifted place. The
moon bathed it white. Clothed in that silver Gata and Amru lay asleep.
The old Wise Woman and the early Medicine Man stood and gazed. The moon
looked very large, the fen very wide. The two interlaced figures seemed
large with the rest of the world. Aneka and Haki watched awhile, then
turned aside without waking the sleepers. Their path, bending, led them
again to the edge of the fen, to the quarter whence they had come. Haki
walked perhaps cogitating the pair, perhaps cogitating One Other who had
gone into the ground for the night, One Other and his possibly
developing powers. But Aneka looked over her shoulder at the full,
bright moon.
That moon waned and other moons waxed and waned, and Gata and Amru
remained companions and most fond of each other. That was not so usual
among the people of the long houses. Only at great intervals arose among
them some example of enduring attachment between woman and man. So
novel was it that when it markedly happened the group paid attention. It
was a social phenomenon of the first importance, and though they gave it
no such sounding name, and indeed no name at all, they noted it.
For many days after the slaying of Big Trouble, Gata and Amru hunted in
company. The forest received them in the morning; they returned at eve,
bearing game or wearing trophies to show that certain four-footed
enemies of the long houses were enemies no more. The people praised
them. Children were told, “Grow up to be like Gata and Amru!”
Moons brightened, moons darkened. At last it was seen that Gata was
making a child. After that, as the custom had grown to be, she hunted no
more.... Amru was jealous of the child that Gata was making. He felt a
fierceness toward it as though it were a man fighting with him for
Gata’s favour. From that he passed to anger with Gata herself. Gata
could not like Amru as much as Amru liked Gata. She would be showing
superiorities! Savage pride was hurt. Amru and Gata had a loud quarrel,
after which they parted as companions.
Gata went to the forest and walked there alone. Amru and other men were
making a boat. Boats were a mystery belonging to men. Men had had that
notion, had experimented with it, and then had declined to share
knowledge and honours. Men went ostentatiously apart when they would
make a boat. They kept a thicket screen between them and the long
houses, and they stationed watchers. The women heard the thud of the
falling tree, and they smelled the smoke when began the hollowing
process--but for the rest it was a mystery. When the boat was made, it
was held to belong to men.
Amru was strong and skilful and many of the folk had a liking for him,
and he tended to become a leader. Now with other young men he was making
a boat.... Gata walked alone by the edge of the forest. She could see,
between her and the river, the curling smoke where the men worked. She
carried a spear, and felt no especial terror of the forest. The forest
and its creatures composed an old, familiar pattern in her brain. Within
her was aglow another ancient pattern....
She sat down between the outcropping roots of a tree. A play of emotions
filled her, kept her in a manner of iridescent dream. Around spread the
forest floor of perished leaves, multitudinous, layer after layer of
perished leaves. Overhead were the green leaves, quivering and
thrilling. The savage woman sat and felt, and as best she could
thought.... Imagination waked in her. Somewhere or other, she distinctly
saw herself, moving beneath the trees, holding against her shoulder the
child that would be born. She knew with certainty that she would be fond
of it.... After this, she thought of Amru. She sat quite still, her
spear beside her, her dark red hair shadowing her face. She felt at once
old and young--as though she had lived long, and as though sky and earth
were new....
Near the tree grew flowering bushes, and in the branchy mass of one was
set a bird’s nest, filled with callow young. Gata fell to watching the
nest and the bird that perched beside it. Hunter’s experience, savage
experience, gave at wish an immobility of body, a mimicry of rooted
life. Gata seemed as unmoving as the trunk of the tree. The nestlings
opened their mouths and stirred their unfeathered bodies. The bird
spread its wings and went farther into the flowery thicket. When it
returned it had food in its beak. It fed its young. In a moment came,
too, the male bird--it also bore food and fed the young. The mother bird
perched once more beside the nest. The he-bird perched upon a second
branch and sang. “Sweet! So sweet!” was its song, and the she-bird and
the young birds seemed, liking it, to listen. Gata listened likewise.
The human group by the forest and the fen, as human groups everywhere
upon the ancient earth, struggled with mysteries. Why was thus and thus
so? Given a fact, what went before the fact, and what was to come out of
it? The mind struggled, the mind pondered then as ever, and then as ever
small, chance observations might put fire to long and long accumulated
fuel.... “Sweet! Sweet!” sang the he-bird, and the she-bird listened,
and the young birds opened and shut their mouths and pushed with their
wings. Gata sat and watched. A compound happening, seen in her existence
a myriad times with the physical eye, now, quietly and easily, took
meanings unthought of before. Why did the he-bird bring food to the
young birds? Why did the he-bird, as well as the she-bird, watch the
nestlings and drive away harm? Why did the one, as well as the other,
teach the young birds to fly?... “Sweet! So sweet!” sang the he-bird,
and the she-bird listened, and the young birds opened and shut their
mouths and pushed with their wings, and all around were the flowering
bushes....
Suns rose from the fen and sank behind the forest, and Amru and his
fellows finished making their boat. It was a longer boat, a more
skilfully made boat than any the houses had yet seen. There was great
triumph when, all pushing and pulling and lifting together, the men got
it into the narrow stream by which they had worked, and then down this
into the wide, slow-flowing river. The next thing was to be an
Expedition--a seeing what was up the river, farther than any had yet
gone!
Twelve young men went upon the Expedition. They hewed and trimmed
saplings with which to pole the boat, for the oar was not yet. The long
houses, women and men, watched them depart. It was a high occasion, one
that called for vociferation, chanting, laughter, shouts to boat and
boatmen until all had dwindled to a dark splinter upon the river, until
a horn of the earth came between them and the houses. A number of the
men followed along the bank for a distance, but after a time the forest
grew chokingly thick and they desisted. Haki, shaking his string of
gourds, tossing his arms in the air, went and returned with the
followers.... Until the point of earth came between, Gata watched Amru,
standing in the boat, in his hands the shaft of a young tree. Gata and
Amru had not ended their quarrel.
The horn of earth hid the long houses. The boat could no longer hear the
shouting and chanting. The fen dropped away and on both sides of the
river stood the forest. It was very thick, it stood knee-deep in black,
quaking earth. It dropped upon the flood leaves and petals and withered
twigs, dropped them into the boat. The boat with the young men poling
moved close to shore. The river was wide, but it looked to these
Argonauts wider than wide, wide and fearful! That was ever the way with
the impassable, with the heretofore unpassed. They hugged the shore.
That was daring enough, so strange as yet was the fact of a boat at all!
After some time they came to the mouth of an affluent of the great
river. They knew the nearer bank of this stream; nothing new to be
gained by following it in a boat instead of afoot, ashore, among cane
and trees! Amru gazed at the farther bank, turning the pole in his
hands. He harangued the eleven. The adventurers poled across the
affluent, drawing long breaths when it was done. Full of pride, they
laughed exultingly. Amru stepped nearer chieftainship.
The twelve kept on, close to the shore, up the wide river. This shore
was new. They peered through the rank waterside growth, but they saw
nothing that they might not see nearer the long houses. Before the sun
set they had gone a considerable distance. They found a bank of sand,
and here they beached their boat, and gathering dead wood rubbed sticks
together and made a fire. They had dried meat with them and made their
supper of this. Night fell. The fire burned on, for protection against
the serpent world and the four-footed world. One watched and eleven
slept. Morning coming, they roused and had breakfast. In great good
spirits they looked at the river and at their boat, the beautiful work
of hand and brain! The twelve felt enterprising, gay, and bold. They
pushed off the boat, climbed in, took their poles in hand. This day they
went a long distance. The river became narrower, the world up here was
new. In the afternoon they fastened the boat to a tree, took their
spears and hunted meat. Having killed, they made a fire near the
boat-tree, cooked and ate. Stars tipped the black trees of the opposing
shore, stars mirrored themselves in the stream. One man watched, eleven
slept. Dawn came; they sprang up and untied their boat.
Amru looked across the stream. Mist hung upon the opposite bank; then,
parting, allowed a vision of a plain-like space of grass backed by
hills sharp and soaring against a fleckless sky. Amru stared; then he
said, “Let us go across the river,” and turned the sapling in his hand
like an oar.
The twelve crossed the river in their hollowed and shaped trunk of a
tree. That was a great thing to do and they applauded themselves. Amru
felt affection for the boat that had done so well by them. He caressed
it with his hand. Suddenly he gave the boat a name. “Tree-with-Legs!” he
said. “Ko-te-lo!” and felt pride again in Amru’s prowess.
This shore was higher than that which they had left, higher and less
heavily wooded. They found a shelving place up which they lifted and
hauled Ko-te-lo. Then, as they rested, sitting around Ko-te-lo, they
praised their collective prowess, and one among them said that the Great
Turtle had helped them across. But Amru said that before they started he
had gone into the forest with Haki and that Haki had sung and danced to
One Other who lived in the sun. And then, because Amru felt very bold
this morning, he said that One Other was like a man and not like a
woman, and that he thought with Haki that it would be One Other who
helped with the boat. That was natural, said Amru, since men made and
used boats and not women. The Great Turtle was like a woman and helped
women. Men wanted some one like men. One Other had a long house in the
sun, and spears and clubs and boats--many boats.
The eleven listened, attracted but doubtful, somewhat awed and alarmed.
“But he cannot make children--One Other cannot make children!”
Amru felt anger. Having been bold he must become bolder yet--that
seemed a necessity in the case. Having entertained the idea of One
Other, he must turn the idea away or make of it an inmate, clothe it,
and give it powers. He wished to keep authority with the eleven, and it
seemed to him that that could not be done if there was retraction. He
must yet further aggrandize One Other. “He makes them with his hands,”
he said. “He cuts them out of trees and sings to them and they come
alive!”
The eleven pondered that. Possibly it might be done. Amru’s words made
them see a hugely tall, strong, much-decorated man, a great hunter and
spear-thrower, cutting shapes out of trees that presently came alive and
stood and walked. Had they not themselves fashioned Ko-te-lo out of a
tree? The eleven did not greatly care for Haki, but for Amru who seemed
to agree with Haki they did care. They had for Amru a sentiment of
admiration. He was treading firmly the unrolling path to chieftaincy.
And all the long house men desired claims with which to set off woman’s
claim. Their hearts began to lean away from the Great Turtle, toward the
big hunter in the sun--_he_ who could make persons.
The sun came up over the hills. They looked at the great ball with a
freshened interest. But the landscape grew brighter and gayer and they
turned toward more familiar explorations. If they climbed a hill they
might see afar. Amru proposed that course and lifted from the boat his
spear of tough wood with well-sharpened flint head. The others were
content to follow him. They saw that Ko-te-lo was well placed above the
water, then, armed with spear and club and flint knife, they took their
way up the waves of earth. They might meet serpents and four-footed
enemies. They did not look for foes who walked on two feet, and yet
these were the ones they met.
Out of a ravine between hills rose a hunting band as well armed as
themselves and outweighing them in number. There was some parley, but it
led nowhere. The stronger party flung a spear--in a moment began a
conflict that grew more and more fierce and red. When it ended four of
the twelve lay slain. The eight, whelmed by numbers, lost spear and club
and knife, had at last only naked bodies. The eight were captives. They
glared, and Amru more redly than any, baring his teeth.
The victor group was one, it seemed, somewhat advanced in the notion of
warfare everywhere, upon one’s own kind no less than other kinds. The
settlement to which the eight were borne had that aspect. The people
were fiercer, wilder than those who dwelled by the great river.
One of the eight died from a spear wound. Another had his brains beaten
out one day by an infuriated giant of the tribe. The six in captivity
saw three moons appear, wax and wane. Then they escaped--Amru the
planner and leader.
A storm came up and blew between them and the tribe among the hills.
They got down to the river--they found Ko-te-lo where they had hidden
her. The people behind them knew naught of boats or boat-making. The six
put off and poled for the other side of the river. A current caught
them, carried them down, dashed them against a rock, the storm howling
around. Ko-te-lo overturned--one of the six was drowned. The five got
their boat righted, entered her again and came at last to their natal
side of the flood. They put Ko-te-lo where she could not run away, then
they lay down in cane and mire and slept like the dead. The storm beat
the woods and roared and howled for a day and a night. They lay close
until it was over and the sun shone out and the earth sent up steam.
Then the five and Ko-te-lo turned homeward.
They had adventures, but not great adventures, poling down the stream,
poling down the stream as fast, as steadily, as the five could go.
Between the north bank and the south bank, between the sunset and the
morning red, Amru thought of Gata.--Ko-te-lo and the five came in sight
of the long houses.
Haki saw the boat upon the distant reaches. Waving his arms, bending and
leaping, shrilly chanting, he cried the news. Women, men, children, the
place rushed to the water’s edge. The five approaching broke into
chanting. With a wild and deep rise and fall and swing of voice, they
told the adventures of Ko-te-lo and the twelve. Before Ko-te-lo touched
the bank the long houses knew the gist of it--how the twelve had
travelled and for so huge distances--the crossing of the water and the
naming of Ko-te-lo--the hunters encountered and how they were not
stronger men, but more men--the slaying of the four--of the
two--captivity--escape--the behaviour of Ko-te-lo--the drowning of the
one--the final escape of the five--the journey home. Amru’s voice was
the fullest, the most powerful and the richest. “Amru led them!” he
chanted, and the four added their strength. “Amru led us!” “All brave
men!” chanted Amru, and the four sounded with him. “All brave men!”
chanted Amru, “we who are dead and we who are alive!” He stood in the
prow of the boat and shook the young tree-trunk in his hand.... The
voice of the long houses out-swelled toward Ko-te-lo and Amru and the
four. All had been thought dead. To have five--and the five bravest,
Amru and the four--was triumph! Ko-te-lo reached the bank amid a frenzy
of voices, of gestures of welcome. The long houses would not let the
feet of the explorers touch earth.
Triumph meant ceremonial feasting and dancing.... That evening such a
feast was toward as had not been since the death of Big Trouble! It was
a feast for the return of Amru and the four and likewise it was a birth
feast.
The middle house was the greatest, the most substantial, the finest of
the structures. Before it stood the carved-upon, the ochre-painted
stone, sign and symbol of the Great Turtle. The houses could not
remember how long it had been there, it had been there so very long. It
had stood there before these houses were built, when they had only very
little, rude houses of fresh boughs.
The middle house was high and wide and deep, a brown cavernous interior
with a central hearth of stones. Here a fire burned, smoke escaping
through a hole in the roof. The entrance to the house gaped wide as a
true cavern mouth. Now, seen from within, another fire burned upon the
baked earth terrace before the middle house and the other houses. Around
this fine in an ellipse went the leaping, the dancing figures of the
feasting, the commemorating people of the long houses. From within, from
where Gata lay by the fire upon the hearth, it seemed that they went in
an endless line, no end, no beginning. Only when the people in the
middle house itself came between hearth and entrance-way did she lose
the line, the endless line that yet brought Amru, time and time again,
before the door. She lay upon wolf-skins, and beside her the day-old
babe. Aneka sat by the fire, and women and men and children passed in
and out. In the corners of the shadowy house were kept spears and
shields and adornments fitted for such occasions. Men came to take
these, changing from one dress to another. Without, within, beat the
firelight. The house, the night without, were filled with forms, now
dark, now bright. The forms had drums and rattles. _Bom--Bommm!
Bom--Bomm!_ went the drums.
The ellipse about the fire without broke. It became a serpentine line
and entered the middle house. If Amru was a favourite, Gata was no less
a favourite. Amru’s triumph for Amru magic--Gata’s triumph for Gata
magic! In a world of mother-right, births were births. The dancers
danced in the night without; they came with measured pace into the
middle house and circled the hearth, the fire, the woman and her babe.
Amru danced at the head of the young men.
Gata raised herself upon the wolf-skins. Her eyes dwelled upon Amru,
followed Amru as he moved. She, also, had forgotten their quarrel. He
seemed her delectable comrade, tall and ruddy, Amru the Great Hunter,
Amru the Boat-Maker! The feast was his. The feast was hers. She looked
at the babe upon the wolf-skin. The feast was the child’s. The feast was
Amru’s, Gata’s, and the child’s. Her eyes shone bright, her cheek was
ruddy as Amru’s own. The dancers went around her--they went around her
and the hearth and the fire and the child. She looked at Amru, tall and
ruddy, dancing there. He was dancing before her; his body swayed like
flame, his body rose like flame and touched the roof-pole. She heard a
singing of birds, she smelled the flowering bush. _Boom!_ beat the
drums. _Boom! Boom!_ The fire swung, the fire climbed.
Gata rose upon her knees. She began to chant. Her voice was rich and
full--strength seemed to have come in flood--it seemed that, to-morrow,
she might hunt Big Trouble--save that Big Trouble was dead and done
with! The drums stopped beating, the ring stood still. Persons yet
without the house now came inside. There grew a throng. The fire-shine
pushed from the hearth outward. Gata chanted.
“Folk of the Great Turtle--the Turtle who dwells
Both inside and out of her house!”
“She is possessed!” cried the folk. “She is going to tell Truth!”
“Wise is Haki and wise is Aneka, but Wisdom
Drops in the wood for who picks it up!
Where I found Wisdom I lifted it, and bore it by day and by night.
Carrying it safe in the darkness, watching and saying naught.
Now will it live in the light that stirred in the dark,--
Now will I tell you Truth about woman and man and a child.”
Bending, she took the child from the wolf-skin, held it high in her
hands. The light leaped and caressed it. The great ring of women and men
seemed to come into relation with it; they slanted toward it, it seemed
to draw their bodies, to act as a magnet. Gata chanted on.
“Shout and dance, folk of the Turtle! Cry, ‘Gata is Mother!’
True and happy that is--but of this child two are mothers!”
Aneka rose beside her. “She has been given _lash-lash_ to drink! She is
singing foolishness! Beat the drums and dance!--Woman, woman, you had
better go throw yourself into the river--”
But Gata’s voice sprang still. And the people of the long houses stood
like a listening wood. A murmur had arisen, but it passed like a sigh.
All hung intent.
“Now, rub the forehead and answer, you who sit by the council tree,
You who say, nodding your heads, ‘Boats are men’s work,
Children are women’s work!’
Now, answer, for I will question you, folk of the Turtle!
From the body of woman comes forth boy and girl--
In my hands lies him who will be a man--
How should a woman make both woman and man?
Woman only?
No wise one among you gives answer,
No woman and no man,
Haki nor Aneka!
Is it not a strange thing, folk of the Turtle?
Now, tell me again and give answer again,
Have you seen how often a child is like to a man,
One child to one man?
Has a man naught to do with a child that is like him--
A child that is like him--”
The people cried out, “Wisdom is on her!” The links of the ring shifted.
Amru stood before her. He spoke. “Yes, we have seen. Why is that, Gata?
And why are men fond of children?”
Gata, holding the child aloft, rose to her feet. The flame-light wrapped
her. It made of her hair a sunrise cloud, it made her flesh like
flowers.
“Folk of the Great Turtle--the Turtle that watches the river
Flow into the sea!
Now will I tell you a Truth--a truth that will bind us together.--
Mother is Gata--and mother is Amru!
Mother alike are Gata and Amru!
Amru and Gata came together.
To Gata’s strength Amru gave his strength.
To Amru’s strength Gata gave her strength.
Then the moons rose like dancers out of the fen--
Many round moons--I counted them--many a dancer!
Then came forth him who will dance strongly, who will build boats,
Who will grow like Amru, whom I will name Amru,
For he is Amru!...
What woman have you seen make a child in a world of no men?
I am mother, and Amru--Amru and Gata make children!”
Like a flame she sank from her height, she lay among the wolf-skins, the
babe against her knee.
The people of the long houses broke into loud, excited speech.
Generations had walked as unconscious observers; now things observed
took on order and meaning, came alive. Haki began to chant, and on the
wall of the middle house there leaped and danced his tall shadow. Amru
sat on the earth floor beside Gata--he put out a finger and touched the
babe’s hand.... But Aneka said, “Woman, woman, you had better go throw
yourself into the river--”