Chapter 7: Winter Games
It was wintertime in the valley of the village of Nuktala. Most of the trees had lost their leaves, and the days were gray and cool. The village was quiet and peaceful, without a lot of outside activity. The braves would go hunting on the days when the weather permitted, and the women would gather firewood. Other than that there was not a lot going on except in the menstrual house. Waving Willow had been in hers for a week, waiting on the time to come. The baby had dropped five days ago, and she was ready and tired of being cooped up. Wolf Eyes was somewhere out in the woods hunting with Red Talon. That was okay because they didn’t need the men anyway. What good were they at a time like this.
She was being assisted by White Flower, one of the village midwives. White Flower had helped deliver over a hundred babies in her time. Jiuha was White Flower’s trainee, and she was her granddaughter. It was hot in the hut, almost too hot, and Jiuha cracked the door for a little circulation.
White Flower told Jiuha, “Do not put so much wood on the fire next time.”
Three Baskets came in the doorway with an armload of wood. “This should last until tomorrow,” she said.
Waving Willow asked, “How are the little ones?”
“They are fine,” answered Three Baskets.
White Flower looked at Three Baskets. “You will have a little one before the year is out,” she said.
Three Baskets smiled and shook her head affirmatively.
Jiuha asked, “When will you tell Red Talon and Wolf Eyes?”
“She will find the right time,” answered Waving Willow.
Three Baskets said, “I will have a baby on my back by the time of next year’s Busk celebration, Jiuha.”
The winter was long that year, but sometimes there were warm days. The warm days got the young braves out to play their games on the ball field. One game that was a favorite was the game of toli. This game was played on a field that was five hundred feet long and one hundred fifty feet wide. There could be any number of players on each side. Each player had two rackets, one in each hand. There was a ball stuffed with animal hair, which was tight and fairly hard. It could be thrown a long way with the rackets.
There were not many rules to this game. There was a red team and a black team. Each team had separate ends of the field. On each end of the field was a goal made from two poles about twenty feet long with a cross piece on the top of them. Someone threw the ball into the middle of the field. The object of the game was to get the ball by whatever means possible, and throw it to your teammates on your opponent’s end of the field. Your teammates would try to throw the ball between the uprights and below the crosspiece. If you could do that, your team would score a point. Then someone would throw the ball back into the center of the field, and the whole thing would start all over again.
This game was terrific for training young braves to be warlike. It was a great deal of fun. The young braves could be heroic and feel a sense of pride at having scored a point for their team. The game was great for keeping the braves in tiptop condition, because the players were never still; they would run for hours. It also taught the braves how to endure pain, because it was a rough game. There were many players injured during the course of a game. The more players there were on a field, the more injuries that there would be. Sportsmanship was held in high regard; because there was nothing to stop an opponent from hitting you in the head with his racket, but he had to know that when the chance came, there would be retaliation. This is the only thing that kept the game in control.
This game really got serious when one village invited another village to play a game of toli. All the braves would show up in force, and the field could have over a hundred players on it. This game really resembled a war. Players would go after the ball in an all out fashion. It was the pride of the village at stake. The players would try to inflict injury on one another when they were not going after the ball. Then there were teammates that retaliated for a team member. So this was more like war, and the best village won.
If braves did not participate in this game there was not much chance of them holding an honorable position in the tribe. And a player that was injured was held in high regard because he had put himself in a vulnerable position to advance the team, much as it would be done in war.
In war, a brave, if it were necessary, would put himself in an imperiled position for the good of his people. If the brave lived through it, he was held in high regard for the rest of his life. He could have his body tattooed with certain emblems – and have a high seat in the council and at the Festival of the Busk. He could take an appropriate name that implied his status in the tribe. If he were held in high enough regard, he would be in line to be Chief.
The braves, by the time that they were mature young men, had received much training on how to be brave. One day the older braves in the village would get all the young braves together. These were braves that had not yet tasted the blood of a battle.
Wolf Eyes knew what was about to happen, but he did not let on, and neither did Red Talon.
Red Talon said, “Loot and Fire Cub, let’s go to the ball field.”
As they walked across the field they could see that there was a large number of people congregating there. Wolf Eyes began to separate them in to groups. The young braves like Loot and Fire Cub, he sent to one end of the field. The braves that had been seasoned in war, he put in the middle of the field. The old elders of the village were stationed at the opposite end of the field.
Then there was brought to the field a sack of cut canes. Each cane was about three feet long. The seasoned braves made two parallel lines about five feet apart. There were about twenty braves in each line, facing each other. On the opposite end of the field from the young braves were the elders.
One of the elders, Gray Fox, came down to the end of the field where the young braves were standing. He was old and tired, but he had been in many battles and had taken many scalps. He started chastising the young braves with much criticism.
Gray Fox said in a loud voice, “You young, snotty noses couldn’t wipe your butts. You all eat snake dung. You cry in your grits. You run from rabbits. You take care of your mom’s babies, hell, you are your momma's babies.” And with that Gray Fox took off and ran through the cane line.
The seasoned warriors let Gray Fox have it, hitting him with the canes as he went through the line. They did not hold back, but hit hard enough to bring blood.
The young braves could not stand it. The old man was showing them up. Each young brave went on his own conviction, running through the cane line. When they came out the other end, they all had bloody backs. They were all met by the elders and were exalted and praised for doing so well, and each of the young braves walked tall and with straight shoulders. They were learning to be Chickasaw braves – strong, powerful, prideful, fearless and brave.
The cane line would also be used sometimes for punishment, but when children were very young, they would be scratched with dried snake fangs. It was more of a scare tactic than it was harmful. The children were under control, very good control. There were not many unruly children in Indian villages.
Another way that the Chickasaws insured that their young brave would be good warriors was through their stories about the past. There were many legends, of course, some about the creation of man, others about the creation of the world. These were the basis of their belief system. Then there were the true-life stories of the elder braves themselves. The stories were told usually soon after they happened, maybe around the fire. The good ones were remembered and were asked for by the younger people. In this way the young braves learned what they were supposed to believe about themselves, and what they should be striving to become.
It was such a case one night at a small fire beside a creek on a hunting trip. Sitting around the fire were Wolf Eyes, Red Talon, Wounded Eagle, Loot, Fire Cub and Little Otter. Loot asked Wolf Eyes for an isht-unowa (story).
Wolf Eyes thought for a m
inute and then began by saying:
“When I was but a youth, I went on a hunting trip with my uncle whose name was Night Walker. There were several of us on the hunt. We were far to the northern boundary of our hunting territory when we happened on the remains of a deer, half eaten. Night Walker said that it was a cougar, and from the size of his paw print, it was a big one. He said that the cougar was our competitor, because the cougar ate the deer – just as we eat the deer. He decided that we must go and hunt the cougar to stop him from encroaching on our deer.
“My Uncle Night Walker was a good tracker, and we followed the trail of the cougar all day long. The cougars hunt more at night than they do in the daylight. He was probably lying up somewhere this day, having eaten most of the night. But we could not catch up with him, and eventually he came back to the very spot where he had left the deer. We were still behind him. He had made a big circle. When he got back to the deer, he smelled us and knew we had been there. He picked up the deer in his big mouth and headed for the mountain.
“My Uncle Night Walker knew when he saw the trail where the cougar was going that time. We had not slept, but we were hot after the cougar, and there was no time to be tired. We headed toward the mountain.”
“Was the cougar afraid of you?” asked Loot.
“No, the cougar was not afraid of us because he had been hunted by men before, but he was going back to his lair, where he would have an advantage over us.
“We followed the trail for another day until we came to the base of the mountain. It was here that we decided to make camp for the night. In the night, the wind came up, and it blew cold. The wind blew down the side of the mountain where we were. We could hear the cougar growl all through the night. He knew we were there, and he wanted to make us fearful of him. The cougar played a mind game with us. The game is Komota (which means to make us afraid).
“The next morning we started up the mountain, and we climbed and we climbed, higher and higher. We climbed over the big rocks and boulders that made up the mountain. The spirit of the cougar was strong, and he kept ahead of us.
“Finally, the mountain got so steep that men could not climb it. We had come to a solid rock face on which there were no footholds. It could not be climbed by man. We looked up, and there was clear blue sky above the rock face. And way up on top, we could see the cougar looking down on us. And he growled to say to us, ‘Beware, you are in my territory now.’
“We were at the point where we could not go up anymore, so there was nothing to do but wait. The cougar would have to come down sooner or later. Who would give up first, Uncle Night Walker or the cougar. We made a camp at the foot of the rock face. We built a fire and made ready for the night. That night it was cold and windy. The cougar kept us awake, by growling. We could hear him panting as he walked back and forth on the top of that rock face. My Uncle Night Walker knew he had the cougar cornered. Uncle Night Walker got where he could see the cougar if he started down off of the rock face. We kept the fire going. Its flames shot up the side of that rock, and at the top we could see the cougar pacing, pacing.
“Our food was getting low, and we were low on water too, but the cougar had no food or water. It got to the point where it was the cougar or Uncle Night Walker; something had to give.
“So in the light of the flames, my uncle could see the cougar coming down the rock face. He would have to jump the last twenty feet over the flames of the fire. So my uncle readied his bow and waited. The cougar came down, and my uncle waited, with his bow drawn back. When the cougar jumped, my uncle released his arrow, and the cougar landed on top of him.
“They got in a terrible fight, my uncle and the cougar. They rolled down the mountainside, neither one wanting to let go of the other. We could hear my Uncle Night Walker’s war cry, and we could hear the roar of the cougar’s growl. We could hear the skin ripping from my uncle’s back and the thud of the tomahawk at the cougar’s head. Finally, they rolled to the foot of the mountain and into a big creek, and there my Uncle Night Walker drowned the cougar.
“We ran down the mountain to see what had happened, and when we got there, my uncle was standing in the middle of the creek. He was bloody from head to toe, but held in his arms the dead body of the cougar. The cougar was a mess with wounds from my uncle’s tomahawk. When the tomahawk, broke he used his hunting knife, and when that broke, my uncle used his fist and his teeth. You, my young braves, see that it was a fight to the death. And one of these days you will also find yourself in a fight to the death, and you must never give up, because to give up is to die.”
It was stories like this that were drilled into the minds of the braves from the time that they started to walk. The Indian braves, like the wild animals in the forest, had a mindset that was there to insure their survival and the survival of their species. With the animals this was instinctive, but with the Indians it was learned, as well as instinctive.
The cries of a newborn baby could be heard by people passing by the menstrual hut of Waving Willow. The child was a male, and he was laid on a cougar skin, because the cougar skin could impart the qualities of the cougar to make him a strong hunter.
Three Baskets was working on a cradleboard that would be given to Waving Willow, so that she could carry the baby, while she did her work. Cradleboards were wide boards that had a skin attached to them, forming a pouch. The babies were strapped into these and carried on the mother’s back, or they could be laid down beside where the mother was working. She had gotten Red Talon to cut the board for her, and she was now attaching the deer hide, with the soft hair facing the inside.
The hunting party had just come into the village. The deer they had killed were taken by neighbor women who would clean it and butcher the meat. As the women took the deer, they informed Wolf Eyes and Red Talon of the new arrival.
Wolf Eyes and Red Talon looked at each other with smiles on their faces and hurried to the area of the menstrual hut. They waited some distance away for someone to come out. When Three Baskets appeared, they called to her and motioned for her to come over.
It was against their belief for men and women to mix company in times of childbirth. Since men and women were opposite, it would pollute their spirits for them to come in close contact with the new mother and child. This pollution would bring bad luck.
Wolf Eyes asked of Three Baskets, “How is Waving Willow?”
Three Baskets replied, “She is strong and doing fine.”
“And the child?”
“You have a fine son.”
Wolf Eyes congratulated Red Talon, who would teach the boy when he came of age. Red Talon congratulated Wolf Eyes on the new arrival of his son. The two men went off together to celebrate at the council fire, where they would be brought food and enjoy the talk. Maybe they would smoke the pipe.