Shell Shaker
LEANNE HOWE
Shell Shaker
aunt lute books |San Francisco
Copyright © 2001 by LeAnne Howe
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.
First Edition
Aunt Lute Books
P.O. Box 410687
San Francisco, CA 94141
Front cover art: Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, War Shirt, 1992, Oil and mixed media collage on canvas diptych, 60 x 84 in. Museum purchase; funds provided by Tamar and Emil Weiss and prior gifts of Roland B. Swart, 1993.27 A-B The Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, New Jersey.
Back cover art: Mickey Howley (photographer and co-creator), Brad Cushman (owner and co-creator), “The Big Peanutmobile.”
Cover and text design and typography: Kajun Design
Senior Editor: Joan Pinkvoss
Managing Editor: Shay Brawn
Production: Gina Gemello, Shahara Godfrey, Marielle Gomez, Tasha Marks, Tamara Martínez, Laura Reizman, Golda Sargento
This book was funded in part by grants from the LEF Foundation, the California Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishment, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Howe, LeAnne.
Shell shaker / by LeAnne Howe.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-939904-01-0 eBook
ISBN 1-879960-61-3(Print)
1. United States—History—Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775—Fiction. 2. Choctaw Indians—Fiction. 3. Organized crime—Fiction. 4. Casinos—fiction. I. Title.
PS3608.O95 S48 2001
813í.6—dc21
2001046250
Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6
For Joseph, Randall, Chelsey, Alyssa, and April, And especially for Jim Wilson, with love
Portions of this book appeared in slightly altered form in the following publications:
“Blood Sacrifice,” Through The Eye Of The Deer, Aunt Lute Books, 1999.
“Shell Shakers” Story, F & W Publications, Volume 44.3.
“Danse de l’amour, Danse de mort,” Earth Song, Sky Spirit: An Anthology of Native American Writers, Doubleday & Co., 1992.
“Dance of the Dead,” Looking Glass, San Diego University Press, 1991.
“The Bone Picker,” Fiction International #20, 1991.
Songs lyrics that appear in the chapter “Funerals By Delores” are from Arrah Wanna, An Irish Indian Matrimonial Venture. Music by Theodore Morse, words by Jack Drislane, published by F. B. Haviland Publishing Company, 1906.
Acknowledgments
For the generous support while researching and writing this book, I want to thank the National Endowment for the Humanities; Smithsonian Institution’s Native American Community Scholar Program at the National Museum of American History, Washington D.C.; MacDowell Colony; Ragdale Foundation; Atlantic Center for the Arts; and D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian History, Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois.
Sincere thanks go to my editor, Joan Pinkvoss, and Gina Gemello and all the staff at Aunt Lute Books for their patience with me and for their meticulous efforts in bringing Shell Shaker to life.
For their encouragement while I was an MFA candidate at Vermont College of Norwich University, I am indebted to: Christopher Noel, Mary Grimm, Ellen Lesser, Pamela Painter, Doug Glover, and Lois Rosenthal, editor of Story, who published an early chapter of the novel.
I am thankful for the friends who’ve supported me over the years and never lost faith in my ability to finish the book: Lisa Kepple, Mary BlackBonnet, Jeanne Claire van Ryzin, Dean Rader, Spencer Smith, Wendy Botham, Alan Velie, Robert Clinton, Linda Farve, Gwen and Brantley Willis, Carol Miller, Jean M. O’Brien, Carla McDonald, Brenda Child, Patricia K. Galloway, Helen Tanner, Harvey Markowitz, Rayna Green, Theda Perdue, Mike Green (and all the members of the NEH Summer Seminar in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1991), Professor Ray McCullars, and the late Professor Clinton Keeler, who said, “you can write.” A very special thanks to professor, author, and friend Geary Hobson, and to my dear friends the late Roxy Gordon and Judy Gordon of Wowapi Press, who published my first collection of short stories in 1985.
I say yakoke, yakoke, many thanks, to my beloved relatives, those who are related by blood, and those who are related the Indian way: Izola Hoeh and the late Richard Hoeh; Kevin Lynch; the late Christine Poyor; Billy Poynor; Gayle Goomda; Kathy Poynor; Justin Data and the late Scott Morrison; and for Iva Zenorda Cecil, who taught me to tell stories. For my extended Sioux family: Susan Power; Susan Power Sr.; Ken Bordeaux, family, friend, and mentor; and Craig Howe.
And finally, for Bruce Fry, who still believed in me after I lost a million dollars.
Contents
1: Blood Sacrifice
2: The Will To Power
3: Intek Aliha, The Sisterhood
4: Choctough
5: Prayers for the Mother
6: Koi Chitto, The Bone Picker
7: Penance
8: A Road of Stars
9: Borrowed Time
10: Funerals By Delores
11: Black Time
12: Suspended Animation
13: The Nanih Waiya
14: Road of Darkness
15: Heart of the Panther
16: Absolution
17: The Shell Shaker
Author Note
1 | Blood Sacrifice
YANÀBI TOWN, EASTERN DISTRICT OF THE
CHOCTAWS
SEPTEMBER 22, 1738
AUTUMNAL EQUINOX
Ano ma Chahta sia hoke oke. Call me Shakbatina, a Shell Shaker. I am an Inholahta woman, born into the tradition of our grandmother, the first Shell Shaker of our people. We are the peacemakers for the Choctaws.
The story of the Inholahta begins a long time ago when Grandmother was very young. The town where she lived was far away and near a river. Food was plentiful. Even Grandmother’s cabin was dripping with beans. Made of green canes and lashed together with vines that had crawled out of the earth, her cabin continually sprouted new growth.
In the middle of the town’s square grounds, where all the celebrations occurred, everything was wide open. Like a party. Every day the men sang with a drum in the square grounds while the women tended their children and drank from gourds filled with sweet peach juice. Life was a series of games and dances. The town champion of toli, the stick-ball game, was our grandfather. His name was Tuscalusa, Black Warrior, and he was a great leader, robust and dynamic. After the stickball games, which took many days and nights to play out, Tuscalusa would dance with only one woman, our grandmother. They were so beautiful together. Their skin was smooth, and their teeth were white and straight. They sounded alike, so potent their voices could call the lightning. We are watery versions of them.
There was once a road, an ancient trade route that began in the east. Like the wind gathering, receding, returning, it went through hundreds of towns until it reached the middle of the square grounds where Grandfather played stickball. Down this road came a terrible story. It said:
A dangerous enemy has arrived on our shores with weapons of fire. He is camped a few days away in the town of Talisi. He will devour your family. Soon he will be on the move again. He’s a very different kind of Osano, bloodsucker, he always hungers for more.
When Tuscalusa heard this, he and his warriors began to make plans to save the people from the invader. Because he was a well-known stick-ball player, he would be the one
to lead the enemy into a trap. He realized he would probably have to die in order to lure the Osano away.
It was then our grandmother did an extraordinary thing. She built a fire and she strapped the empty shells of turtles around each ankle. She didn’t sing aloud because she was afraid the children would hear sorrow in her voice, so she only moved her lips in silent prayers. For four days and nights she never stopped dancing around the fire, extolling the heroics of the man she loved. Amazingly, the fire did not go out. Miko Luak, fire’s spirit, was so spellbound by her story that he would not leave for fear of missing important details of Tuscalusa’s courage.
On the fourth night, Grandmother’s ankles were swollen and bloody where the shells and leather twine had cut into them. The ground around the fire was red with her blood, but still she danced, and it was then Miko Luak took pity on her. He carried her prayers up to Itilauichi, the Autumnal Equinox, who listened with compassion. Itilauichi learned that Grandmother had begun her ceremony on his special day of the year.
“What you have endured confirms that you are sincere,” he said. “Through your sacrifice of blood you have proven yourself worthy. The things you desire for the people will be given.” Then he gave her this song and told her to sing it when she needed his help.
Itilauichi, Autumnal Equinox, on your day when I sing this song you will make things even.
After learning that Itilauichi had given his word to Grandmother, our ancestors prepared for what was coming. The next twelve days were spent in ceremony. Tuscalusa and his stickball players drank black drink and prayed around the fire. Grandmother taught her sisters the Snake Dance and how to imitate the movements of a coiling and uncoiling snake, a sign of power. She also showed the women how to tie on the turtle shells without cutting their legs.
On the thirteenth day all ceremonies stopped. It was time for goodbyes. Tuscalusa put a tiny black stone in our grandmother’s mouth and told her to swallow it. He said it represented his spirit. She presented him with a kasmo, a feathered shawl with locks of her hair woven through it. She told him the kasmo represented her spirit and if he wore it they would never be parted. That was what Itilauichi had promised her.
The next morning, Tuscalusa wrapped the kasmo around his shoulders and left to meet the invader, Hispano de Soto. His plan was to pretend to be captured by the enemy. Tuscalusa allowed himself to be put in chains, and he bowed his head like a pitiful child. De Soto, the most greedy Osano, was unable to reason that Tuscalusa was leading him into a trap. He believed our grandfather was a coward who had surrendered without a fight. Unbeknownst to de Soto, the man standing before him was only a shell. All that Grandfather had been, his essence, was held inside of Grandmother for safekeeping. It was part of their sacred plan.
For seven more days in the month of Hash Bissa, October, Hispano de Soto marched Grandfather to the town of Mabila. All along the way, Grandfather’s iksa, group, surrendered to the Hispanos. But the Mabilians, our clever cousins, were in on the plan to drive de Soto out of the region and they entertained the invaders with a bountiful feast. Tuscalusa and his stickball players waited for the signal to begin fighting. At the appointed time Grandfather’s shell reunited with his body, and the battle began. The stickball players fought bravely against the foreigners. The Hispanos attacked the walls of the Mabilian fort, cutting them down and setting fire to the houses within. The whole town was burned. Unspeakable acts were then committed by Hispano Osano. They fell into a barbaric blood lust and cut off the heads and hands of the stickball players, and the Mabilians. Later, the Hispanos displayed them wherever they went as souvenirs of their courage.
Grandmother instantly knew something was wrong. The stone churned in her stomach and she vomited it into her hands. It had changed color from black to gray and had holes in it like a skull, and she knew Tuscalusa was dead. Instead of crying for her husband, which was her duty, she gathered her six younger sisters and made a powerful speech. She said Tuscalusa and his iksa brothers gave their lives so the women and children would not become the slaves of foreigners. She told her sisters they would mourn their husbands after they were safely away from the invaders.
All agreed. The women put away their sorrow until the time was right and they could properly mourn for the dead. Our grandmother sang the song Itilauichi taught her—and that’s when it happened. A moment opened. A flurry of color took flight. Lips opened in awe, then transformed into multicolored beaks and wings. Voices thinned out, and tangled in throats that turned into other voices. A song of birds. Grandmother and her sisters soared over the heads of the Hispanos and dropped excrement on them. Then they flew away. For many days and nights, people from other clans said that they saw a flock of strange birds crisscrossing the Ahepatanichi, the river that caused all life to rise up. When these variegated creatures reached our present homelands, their wings fell off. The sisters went back to living according to customs. They built our seven original Choctaw towns. Yanàbi Town is one of them.
After living through the horrors of warfare, Grandmother decided she would become a peacemaker. She taught her sisters the art of negotiation and how to find solutions to disputes. She became well-known as a leader who spoke for peace and the fair exchange of goods between towns.
When Grandmother’s life came to an end many years later, Itilauichi kept his promise to her. She was strapped on her burial scaffold and released by the bone-picking ceremony to join Tuscalusa. Together they reside high on Holy Spirits Bluff. Sometimes they appear as eagles, or the kettling hawks suspended in the sky. Other times they are the mated swans we see along the rivers and bayous. They have never left us. Because Grandmother shed blood for the people’s survival, our women continue to honor Itilauichi by shaking shells.
I am a Shell Shaker. I know when it is time to return to the earth. Today, I will tear myself from the arms of my family and stand in for my first daughter, Anoleta, who has been wrongly accused of the murder of a Chickasaw woman from the Red Fox village. I will sacrifice myself, knowing that peace will follow between our two tribes.
I study the expressions of the Inholahta gathered in my yard. They seem cold, and indifferent to the fact that the Red Fox people are waiting outside of our town to conduct my execution. Everyone knows what must happen now; my death will avert war between the Choctaws and the Chickasaws. I can see uncertainty spreading across Anoleta’s face like an affliction. She is my first daughter and bears all the responsibility of heading our clan after I am executed. Her thick hair is matted and hangs in clumps down her back. Already Anoleta mourns me, although my deathblow has not been struck. A few might want to blame her for what is going to happen so I must keep talking until all the Inholahta people agree to support my decision. They must also publicly say that Anoleta is innocent of killing the Chickasaw woman. This will guarantee that in the future she will be thought of as an honorable leader.
In a way, I am responsible for the disaster at the Red Fox village. I had sent Anoleta to them as an emissary of our town. I was still recovering from the Inkilish okla disease that had killed so many of our people. She was to exchange vegetable seeds and bowls filled with special healing plants for flints. Then something strange happened. A woman accused Anoleta of stealing the affections of her husband. Both women had known for a long time they were married to the same man, so I don’t understand her actions. It is not unusual for warriors to marry women from different towns as long as they can provide meat for both families. But when the woman from the Red Fox village was found dead the next morning, the people said Anoleta was the killer. I did not know at the time this incident would affect my family for generations to come.
I wait for a public reply from the Inholahta. Why are they so hesitant? I have talked with everyone over the past month. I have explained repeatedly why my death will assuage the Red Fox clan and the Chickasaws. Don’t they want to avoid bloodshed? When I can stand their silence no longer, I begin to chant loudly:
Hatak okla hut okchaya bilia hoh-illi bila, the
people are ever living, ever dying, ever alive!
Hatak okla hut okchaya bilia hoh-illi bila, the people are ever living, ever dying, ever alive!
Finally, one old aunt, too old to stand, returns my chant from her seat at our council fire.
Hatak okla hut okchaya bilia hoh-illi bila.
Then another woman and her brother join in until all of my clan, some seventy people, begin chanting:
Hatak okla hut okchaya bilia hoh-illi bila.
Hatak okla hut okchaya bilia hoh-illi bila.
Hatak okla hut okchaya bilia hoh-illi bila.
Hatak okla hut okchaya bilia hoh-illi bila.
“Very well,” I say. “We are ever living, ever dying—you agree. If that is so, you must support me and honor the traditions of the first Shell Shaker, the oldest of seven sisters, our savior and creator, Grandmother of Birds.”
I fold my arms and again wait patiently for a relative to stand up and praise my strategies for saving Anoleta and averting war. They must declare my daughter’s innocence and vow to protect her. But they sit silent as owls. I sniff the gray stone I hold in my hand, the one that belonged to Grandmother of Birds. It smells of sediment and potato roots and other things I carry in my satchel. After the bone-picking ceremony all my possessions will be divided among my daughters. My essence will be mingled with theirs. As it should be.
A small boy bawls, and runs to me crying, “Alleh, alleh, alleh.” A child’s cry. Someone has taken his toy bow. When I pick him up in my arms to hug him, he pulls back and looks inquisitively at the hole in my eyebrow and the scar rivulets on my cheek. I gaze back at him. I want him to remember what the Inkilish okla disease has done to me.
Finally I speak again. “Are we not the Inholahta, the ones who walk the thinking path? Do you agree that sacrificing myself to make peace with the Red Fox clan and the Chickasaws is a good decision?”