Panther in the Sky Read Online Free Page A

family in a clean and quiet place under the stars; he kept the power of his thoughts directed to his wife, Methotasa.
    Her name meant A-Turtle-Laying-Her-Eggs-in-the-Sand. That had been the
unsoma
seen at the time of her own birth, the sign seen in a sandy creekbed far to the south, in the Muskogee land. Turtle Mother was a Creek woman, warm and fertile like her homeland beside the Tallapoosa. And as the turtle lays her many eggs, so would Turtle Mother bear many children, as the world and seasons rolled round and round and the stars turned slowly above.
    The world was good, so very good. And to be born a Shawnee was the best fortune in this good world. The Shawandasse, called the South Wind People because of their origins in those warm lands, were the happiest, bravest, and most honorable of all people, and the Kispoko, his sept, were the bravest of all the Shawandasse. Of course other tribes and septs believed that about themselves, but Hard Striker knew it was true in the case of his people. In his mind there was nothing wrong in the entire circle of the world—except the one great trouble.
    The coming of the white men.
    For as long as Hard Striker could remember, the whites had been like some distant, rumbling thunder from the east. They were a strange, greedy people, takers of everything, bringers of noise, drunkenness, and disease. Since before the time of Hard Striker’s grandfather the Shawnee people had migrated, trying to keep a distance between themselves and the whitefaces. Sometimes it had not been possible to keep a distance. The Shawnees had been caught between the French white men and the English white men in one of their wars a few years ago, and that was when Hard Striker had been hit by an English musket ball. Again in a few more years there had been more trouble with the whites, and Hard Striker had gone with Pontiac, the Ottawa, to fight the Englishmen.
    That had been five years ago. Now the white people were still coming, until by now they had disturbed even the oneness of the Shawnee nation.
    For now some of the chiefs—including Cornstalk, the principal chief—had come to believe that the whites could never be held back and that the Shawnees should make peace with them and stop trying to hold them back. The white men, because of their superior numbers and weapons and tools, presumed themselves to be a superior race, and some chiefs were beginning to believe this themselves and were ready to let them have their inevitable way. But Hard Striker had seen enough of the whites to believe that his own race was superior to them, both in body and spirit, and he meant to plead in the council at Chillicothe that a superior race, particularly one that stood right in the eyes of the Master of Life, should never have to bow down and lick the feet of an inferior race, no matter how rich and numerous they were. The saddest sight Hard Striker could remember was that of the great Pontiac giving up his struggle two years ago and signing a peace treaty with the white men. Hard Striker was never going to put his mark on a treaty. He was going to remind all the chiefs in the council that Weshemoneto, the Great Good Spirit, had put this beautiful land here for the red men and would not like for them to yield it to intruders who had not stayed on their own land beyond the Eastern Water. Hard Striker did not mean for his son Chiksika or his daughter Sky Watcher, or this child now being born, or any child yet to be born, in his family or in his tribe, to grow up like scavenger dogs in a world ruled and ruined by greedy, smelly, diseased whitefaces. And he would use the greatest force of his mind and tongue to keep the nation from being wedged apart by them.
    In the shadows within the shelter, Turtle Mother clutched the post and strained once again and felt the great slow mass stretching her. But it was coming now. At last it was coming down, and her body was giving it away to the world. Sky Watcher was saying nice things to