Tales Our Enemies Tell by Dan Biggs

Author:Dan Biggs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: shaman, native american, aboriginal, wars, aboriginal medicine, aboriginal history, genocide fiction, aboriginal ancestry, native north american historical fiction
Publisher: BWL Publishing Inc.

Chapter 8

On Sodden Ground

As Hadintel approached Pupula’s lodge, he noticed that no smoke drifted from the roof slates. He stuck his head through the door and called out, no answer. Disgruntled, but determined to talk to his shaman, he sat on a log outside the lodge door, waiting. The rain that had been threatening abated and portals of light blue appeared in the white over cast. About him, men went about their business of fixing nets, women cut fish, and a group of children played. He emptied the pouch into his hand. As he flitted the trinkets with his finger, he recalled when he first returned with them, nursing the cut on his face that had scabbed over, his sister had been shocked.

“You almost lost an eye,” she had said.

He could not find the shaman then either. That time the shaman, somehow, had made his way out into the middle of the river and was squatting on a large rock. Hadintel watched him from the riverbank, waving his arms over his head. Eventually a canoe approached, coaxed him in and paddled upriver to the village.

“What happened to you?” Pupula had asked when he met Hadintel back at the lodge.

“I got into a fight with a Chief of the Silquotin.”

Pupula shook his head. “Foolishness. You have much to learn.”

“What were you doing out on that rock?” Hadintel asked, trying to change the subject.

Pupula grabbed a handful of his hair. “My hair is going white, like fat from a bear’s belly. I wanted the waters to make me young again.”

“Does that work?”

“Some have found that it does. Perhaps time will tell.” Pupula looked his young Chief up and down. To Hadintel he looked annoyed, impatient, even condescending. Pupula blurted, “What brings you to me?”

“The Silquotin Chief traded these.” Hadintel felt the words croaking in his throat as he dumped the contents of the pouch into his hand and showed them to Pupula.

“And these are why you fought?”

“A’ah.”

“Foolishness. Do you know where the Silquotin got these?”

“They said from a trader who came from beyond the eastern mountains.”

“Build me a fire, will you?” Pupula asked as he reached for a black bear pelt.

After a while, flames grew high and warmed them and Pupula seemed more accepting of his company.

“Let me see those things again.”

Hadintel handed the trinkets to the shaman. Pupula held the round object to the fire and let light shine through the square hole.

“These must be from the other side,” he said.

“The other side of what? The Spirit World?”

“Not the Spirit World—well, not directly. These things came from the other side of the Big Water.”

Hadintel sat back and lightly touched the cut on his face. “But the Big Water is to the west.”

“It is to the east as well.”

“There is another side to it?”

“A’ah, of course, but it was not always that way.”

Pupula leaned forward and warmed his hands. “Long ago, when the world was very young, there were few people, and they all lived in one village. This village was on the shores of a great lake, the only lake, and the world had no Big Water.

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