While Star was travelling with the other Comanche ponies, he thought
many times of Songbird and wondered what she was doing without him to
share her days. If he had known the loneliness of his little playmate,
he would have raced back to her, even though his mother had told him
that his duty was now beside her so that Quannah might ride him.
Meantime, Songbird wandered sadly among the tepees where the other
children played happily while their fathers rode with Quannah to fight
the white men. The squaws tried to interest her in the work they were
doing, and took the best bits of venison and thrust green willow twigs
through the meat, so that she might hold it in the campfire and cook it.
Songbird smiled gravely when they did this and shook her head. She was
not hungry, but the other children crowded up noisily and ate the crisp
tender meat, laughing when one child held his stick too long, so that
it burnt and let the meat fall into the hot wood ashes from which he at
once fished it with his twig.
New clothes, fashioned from soft buckskin, new moccasins made from
buckskin with soles of tough buffalo hide, were laid in her father's
tepee for Songbird. Though she put them on, she did not run to show them
to the other children. Always she had hurried to her father first, that
he might praise her new things. As she remembered it, she slipped away
alone to the edge of the creek near camp. Sitting beneath the tree where
she had woven the wild flowers in Star's mane, she wondered when her
father would come back.
"If he had left Star with me," she said at last, as though the fishes in
the creek could hear her and understand, "I could follow him when it
grew dark, and if I found him he would not send me back."
But the fishes did not pause to listen, and at last she rose and went
back to the camp. The buffalo calf, tied by a plaited rope made of
strips of cured hides, rubbed its thickly haired head against her
shoulder, and pretended to fight her, but she did not laugh at it as she
had always done while her father stood beside her. She changed the calf
to another place, and fastened the rope carefully; then, having brought
fresh water to it in a bucket made of dry hide, she went into the big
tepee.
Her pet horn-toads were kept in one of the deep pottery bowls made from
dirt and clay, then set in the sun to dry and harden. She carried the
little creatures outside and let them run about on the ground and eat
small insects. The bright orange, black, and red colouring of their
backs made a beautiful design and looked as though an artist had painted
them. Each head had a circlet of small sharp horns, while two larger
ones stood up very fiercely, and all over their backs were other tiny
horns, reaching to the tapering tail. Songbird knew the horn-toads could
not hurt her with their many horns, nor could they bite, for they had no
teeth.
After eating, the toads became sleepy, so she placed them back in the
bowl and carried them to their accustomed place in the tepee.
"Caw! Caw!" a crow croaked outside, and Songbird hastened to the black,
shining bird that walked jerkily at the entrance of her home. Its beady
eyes blinked up at her, and its head twisted sidewise in a very knowing
manner; then it straightened up and gave its hoarse call, as though it
had a sore throat.
"Caw! Caw!"
She did not clap her hands to-day and imitate its cry, but moved quietly
into the tepee and soon came back, holding a deep earthen bowl which she
placed on the ground. The crow sidled up, cocking its head to see if
anything were coming upon it from the sky or from the back. Satisfied
that no robbers were near, it began eating.
Songbird watched it as she sat on the ground with her knees drawn up and
her hands propping her chin. Very gravely she decided that the crow was
getting fatter.
For several months she had cared for it. Some accident had happened to
its upper bill and half of it was gone, so the crow had not been able to
pick up food from the ground or eat anything solid as the others could
do when they pecked very hard. It had been almost dead from starvation
when Songbird noticed it lying in the camp. She had driven away the
other children who were teasing it with sticks.
Her father had shown her how to fix soft food in a deep bowl so that
the poor crow could thrust its entire beak down deeply to eat the moist
mixture. So day after day it came to the tepee, knowing it would find
food. The meal finished, it always bobbed and stalked around, repeating
its cry, "Caw! Caw!" until at last it flapped its glossy wings and
darted high above Songbird's head. But even when almost out of sight she
could hear it calling to thank her and say that it would come again the
next day.
When she picked up the bowl to return it to its proper place, as Quannah
had taught her to do, a beautiful fawn, with skin like brown velvet
dotted with small white spots, leaped from the side of the tepee as
though it were trying to frighten her. Its nose sniffed the empty bowl
as it stood poised on slender legs and stretched its graceful neck.
Songbird tipped the bowl. The fawn licked it perfectly clean. Then its
pink tongue touched the little brown hand that held the bowl, and
Songbird, looking into the beautiful dark eyes, stroked the soft nose.
The fawn waited at the entrance of the tepee until she came out. It kept
pace with her to the place where Moko, the Picture-maker, lived. She was
a very wonderful old squaw with pure white hair. It was her work to
paint pictures on the backs of dried buffalo robes.
One side of these robes was always covered with brown, thick hair, while
the under side, dried and stretched very smoothly, had to be painted
carefully with colours made from roots, berries and earths, mixed in a
way that the old Picture-maker alone understood. Moko did not like any
one to watch her at work, but Songbird was always welcomed. The child
would sit for hours wondering at the magic way in which Moko made
figures of Indians on ponies, sometimes chasing buffaloes, hunting
antelope, or possibly a camp with warriors walking about the many
tepees.
"Who showed you how to make pictures, Moko?" asked Songbird.
"The Great Spirit," replied the Picture-maker, and Songbird pondered
over the answer. The painting Moko was now doing was the most wonderful
of all that Songbird had ever seen. The robe was the largest buffalo
hide that any Comanche had ever owned. Quannah had killed the enormous
beast with just one arrow, and the meat had provided food for many days.
Now the hide, cured and dried, was being painted for him, and Songbird
knew that some day it would be given to her to keep.
The picture showed a lot of Indians fighting white men. The Indians
could be easily told by their war-bonnets. All around the edges, the
robe was bordered with the fighters, but in the very centre was an
Indian boy riding a swiftly running pony. In his arms was a little girl.
Songbird knew that the boy was Peta Nocona, and the girl in his arms was
Preloch, the white child who had afterward been the mother of Quannah
and of Prairie Flower.
"Why do the brothers of my father's mother war with us?" she asked at
last, for the question had been puzzling her a long time.
The old squaw kept on with her work, as she replied, "Because they want
our lands, our ponies, our grass for their own pony herds, and they want
to kill all the buffalo and antelope, so there will be none left for us.
Then we could not make new tepees, nor warm robes, nor clothes, nor
moccasins. Our ponies would all die if the white men had the prairie
lands, and the white hunters killed the game which they did not need for
food. Other Indians have told us how the white men cut the hides from
buffaloes that lie as thick as fallen leaves, and then leave the meat
to spoil or for coyotes to eat. Indians hunt that they may have enough
meat and robes to provide for their tribes. So it will be with the
grass. The white men's herds will eat it all, leaving our ponies to
starve."
"But the world is so big," Songbird spoke, "why cannot all men dwell in
peace and share the game and grass?"
"Because the white people want to rule us," the Picture-maker answered
quickly. "We lived here long before the white men came. We are the
children of the Great Spirit. He gave us the land, He gave us the wild
horses that we might tame and use them, He gave us the buffalo and deer,
the antelope on the flats, the fish in the streams, that we might live
happily. And because these things all belong to the Great Spirit, we did
not kill more than we needed.
"The tribes did not quarrel with each other, for each had its own land
and no one sought to drive them from it. Men were taught not to lie or
steal, and a man who pledged his word was dishonoured if he broke it.
But long years ago tales came to us through other tribes, of men with
white faces who lied, stole, and cheated Indians who had believed in
them. These white-faced men killed the game, killed the Indians, burned
their tepees, then came in still greater numbers and drove the Indians
from place to place, saying, 'This is our land. This game belongs to us.
You must not touch it!'"
Moko paused and Songbird kept silent, fearing the old woman might not
speak further, but at last she went on.
"When game grew scarce in the places where we had been driven, our
warriors went in search of foods and robes for the old people, the
squaws, and the children. White men, who saw them coming, did not ask
why our men had wandered from the camps, but began to fight. After that
day our warriors fought every white man they met. Each chief knew that
unless he fought, his own tribe would be driven until it had no place to
go, no game to eat, no robes for tepees or to sleep under when cold
nights brought wind and snow, and soon all the Indians would die."
"My father's mother did not want to go away from us," said Songbird.
"Many times he has told me she loved the Comanche people."
"I saw her grief"--the old Picture-maker spoke slowly, and now her
wrinkled hand lay idly in her lap--"I heard her beg the white men to
leave her with us, but they would not listen to her. So Preloch, the
white squaw of Peta Nocona, and her baby daughter, Prairie Flower, went
away and none of us ever saw them again. That is how the white men would
treat all of the Indians if we did not fight them."
"My father tells me that his mother was three winters older than I am
now, at the time his father carried her to our camp." Songbird leaned
forward. Her body rested on the ground, but her elbow propped her cheek,
so that she might still watch the work of the old Picture-maker. "Tell
me about her, please."
Moko nodded, but her hand moved less swiftly as she began talking, while
her eyes looked through the tepee opening across the rolling prairie, as
though she saw once more the young son of the chief coming into camp
with the white child in his arms.
"I can see her now as he rode past me. Her hair was like sunshine, and
when the Great Spirit made openings in the sky so that we could see the
stars at night, two little pieces must have been kept to make her blue
eyes. As she grew up among us she was different, for she was as gentle
as a young doe. Many times she made peace between hot-blooded young
warriors who wished to fight one another. The children followed her just
to see her smile at them."
A deep sigh interrupted Moko's story, and for a few seconds the old
woman forgot the little girl who waited patiently.
"I remember the day the white men took her away. Dark clouds gathered
overhead. Peta Nocona, our chief, was dead, but he had told us to flee
to our camp in the hills where the white men could not follow nor find
us. As we fled, the rain fell upon us, and Karolo, the Medicine Man,
called upon the Great Spirit to send the spirits of Peta Nocona and all
the other Comanche warriors from the Happy Hunting Grounds, that they
might follow Preloch and her daughter, Prairie Flower, into the land of
the white men and bring them back again to their own people.
"The Great Spirit will send them both back some day," Karolo said as the
rain beat on his face. "He is weeping now because his children are
captives among the white people."
"Then we who heard him drew our robes over our faces that none but the
Great Spirit might see our grief. And for many moons the Comanches of
the Quahadas kept their hair cut short because we were mourning the
death of our great War Chief, Peta Nocona, and the loss of his white
squaw, Preloch, with her baby daughter, Prairie Flower. Many winters
have passed, but they have never come back to us."
"The snows of many winters have fallen on my head," the old
Picture-maker spoke after a short silence. "I am weary and my heart is
sad for my people. But I have asked the Great Spirit to let me stay
until I have painted one more robe, so that you may hang it in your
tepee with this one. Your children's children shall read the pictures
and learn how your father, Quannah, Chief of the Quahadas, conquered the
white men who robbed him of his mother and sister. After I have finished
that robe, the Great Spirit will let me rest, for I am old and weary,
and my children wait me in the Happy Hunting Grounds."
"I wish I could go with my father, as Preloch went with Peta Nocona,"
said Songbird. "I can shoot arrows as well as the boys, and Star can go
as fast as Running Deer!"
"Some tribes take their squaws to help in the fight, but Quannah will
not allow it," asserted Moko. "Women and children must obey his orders
and stay in camp while the men go out to fight. Our chief says that the
work of women is to teach children to be fearless and truthful. That
work is as great as fighting. Sometimes I think it may be greater work.
Preloch said that it was better to make men love each other rather than
teach them to hate and kill one another. Maybe she was right, but the
white men hate us and we have to save our own lives and our homes."
Muttering to herself the old woman rose from the place where she had
been sitting, and as Songbird saw the thin lips tighten, she knew that
the Picture-maker would not talk any more, so she slipped away from the
tent and sat watching the sun drop over the edge of the world. Two white
clouds closed together, and Songbird knew that the Spirit of the Sun had
dropped the flap of its tent so that it could sleep. Soon the Spirit of
Night would ride his big black pony across the sky and the shadow would
hide everything from sight.
Somewhere in the world of darkness Songbird's father would be sleeping.
Her eyes filled with tears and her lips trembled. She was so little, so
afraid and so lonely.
In the big tepee of the Quahada Chief, Songbird crept to bed, and as she
lay staring into the darkness toward her father's couch of skins, she
heard the shrill yelps of coyotes gathering around the camp. Suddenly
she drew the buffalo robe over her head and sobbed herself to sleep.