The Heart of the
Brave
By
William Jones
The
Harvard Monthly, 30 May 1900
AMENO Kisheswa, the moon that summons together
the white-tail deer in droves, had been born but a night and a day; and as she
hung at twilight in the western sky, she reddened like an up-turned buffalo
horn on fire. The flowers, our
grandparents, had hushed their glee; and drooping
their foreheads, they waited without so much as a whisper of complaint the
coming of Takwaki,
the cruel frost. But the leaves and the
grasses were happy, gay in the varied colours of
their garments. Nutenwi, the big hollow-mouthed
wind, was abroad; and above him, far up, flew quacking geese that strung
themselves in lines, bow-like, one after the other, across the heavens, as they journeyed merrily toward the Shawaneki, the regions of warmth
and sunlight.
It was on a morning of one of these
days that Wakamo and a hundred Osakies set out for the Comanche country, the
land of plains and home of the buffalo and prairie wolf. Old and young thronged the banks of the
The name, Wakamo, only the moon
before, had been that of a young man who thought more on the hang of the
blanket from his shoulder than on the dangle of a Comanche scalp-lock at his
belt. Ever since the day that Sanowa lay
down to sleep--that was early in the spring soon after the bluebirds came--our
fathers, the bent old gray-heads, kept debating before the Council fire in
words like these:
"Yes, look at the son, that
thin-nosed, woman-eyed youth with always a smile or a happy look for those he
meets. No, the shoulders are not those
of a strong man. They never will grow so broad as the father's.
And he is not a runner,--no, not even a wrestler. Besides, he stands no taller in his moccasins
than a woman. The hands, and even the fingers,
are but those of a woman. And yet,
shall the youth become a chief of the Osakies?"
"True," others of them
gave answer. "True, he is not big,
not tall, and not so strong as was the father. True, he is not this, and he is not that; but
hush, mark what the people think and say. One day we see that his mother and sister
have beaded an oak-leaf upon his moccasins.
In the next few days we behold the oak-leaf on the moccasins of other
young men. They even plait their hair of
a braid same as his. They watch his
gesture, they catch the sound of his words; and all that he does, they do, and
wherever he goes, they go. Look also at
the women, the younger women. Why do
they lift their eyes from the sewing when they see him pass? And why do they slacken step in the path from
the spring with their vessels of water, and glance from the corner of their
eyes at him stepping by?"
Thus back and forth over the Council
fire, our fathers talked of the son of Sanowa.
But there came an end of it all at last.
One day in the Nepeni Kisheswa, the moon that ripens the corn, most of the men and
women and even children were in the fields, down in the valley, gathering
corn. Suddenly at midday, when the
sunshine came down whitest, runners burst through the lodges yelling,
"Comanches over the river coming this way! Comanches
over the river coming this way!"
Now the story would be long to tell
of the alarm spreading among the harvesters; how the braves and the warriors
flew to arms, and how as they met the Comanche in the valley, on the banks, and
in the water of the river itself, our fathers back yonder among the lodges
gathered about the sacred drum, and beat upon it a measure to which the women
kept time as they sang the war songs of the nation; how in the evening by the
firelight, our fathers put up the scalp-pole, at the top of which they had hung
the Comanche scalp-locks newly won that day in the battle; and how as they
seated themselves by it, they watched warrior after warrior step slowly out of
the dark and stand before them to receive an eagle feather from his gens; and
how finally, by the aid of their canes, they pulled themselves to their feet on
hearing Sanowa's old warrior, Kewanat, say, as he stuck an eagle feather into
the hair of a youth who came up last of all the warriors, "Wakamo, you
gens gives you this because you were first at the river and the last to leave
off fighting the Comanches."
While the embers of the scalp-dance
fire were flickering low, while the people were silently filing off to their
lodges, and the warriors on guard were signalling to one another the calls of
animals and birds of the night, Wakamo busied himself with persuading the
elders to let him go at the head of his father's warriors into the country of
the Comanches. There, in the stillness
of night, they gave him his father's war bundle, telling him solemnly, as they
gave it, to keep it as became an Osakie and a son of
Sanowa.
Our men had been in the Comanche
country ever since the morning, and as the scouts went spying ahead, they
scattered themselves far enough apart to catch a signal one waved to the
other. The sun was half way down the western
sky when a scout near the top of a prairie hill far in advance gestured with
arm and hand that buffaloes were feeding beyond in the plain below. From scout to scout behind him flew the
message to Wakamo, who was coming up with the main body of our men. Bank in the same manner flew the gestures of
Wakamo, signaling for the scouts to hide on the hill where the farthest scout
was, till he and the rest had caught up.
Then up the hill went our men, silently and stealthily picking their
way. But hardly had half of them reached
the place where the scouts lay, when suddenly a rumble, like the grumbling of
the Thunderers, rolled over the plain where the buffaloes were browsing. Instantly all who had come crawled to the
ridge and peered over. Behold! the buffaloes were making away from the hill on a wild
stampede; and as the men straightened their backs and rose from their knees,
they caught sight of wolves emerging from hollows and out of patches of
reeds. Wakamo yelped. Instantly they sprang to their hind feet, and
lo! Comanches stood before them. For as fast as they stood erect, they flung back from their heads
and shoulders the wolf skins with which they had covered themselves to decoy
the buffaloes.
At the sight of them slapping their
breasts, waving their bows and their arrows in the air, and defiantly whooping
a challenge to battle, Kewanat touched Wakamo upon the shoulder, and both
stepped out in front of and apart from the rest. Each then took from a buckskin knot at the
wrist a pinch of natawinona, the
powdered dust of a sacred herb that grew in the shades and unfrequented
retreats of the forests and valleys on the
On reaching the foot of the hill,
they found that they were three or four to one of the Comanches. But so fast and thick and
sure whizzed the Comanche arrows that our men were brought to a standing fight
at arrow range. The Comanches
fought like buffalo bulls, and it looked as if they would drive the Osakies
back up the hill.
By and by a lull fell over the
fight. The Comanches were falling short
of arrows, and so began to run to one of their number who was calling aloud to
them; and as fast as they put into his quiver and hand what arrows they had,
they whirled into the buffalo trail and ran at the top of their speed.
The Osakies at once pushed forward
in pursuit; but no sooner had they started than they stopped, amazed at the
sight of the armed Comanche who, standing in their way, pulled his bow back as
far as the point of the arrow, and drew a sweeping aim at their whole front as
if to fight them along. And as they
stopped, he let fly the arrow, bringing down an Osakie. Instantly he turned and was off as fast as he
could go after the other Comanches.
Again our men pursued; and, once more, when they pressed the Comanche close, he faced about and pierced another Osakie, bringing,
as he shot, all of our men to a stop.
The next instant he was off, and another time our men pushed after
him. On and on over the plain our men
chased after the Comanche, stopping when he faced about and leaping after him
when he turned his back. And as they
ran, the stuck arrows in the ground at his heels, sent them shirring and
hissing past every part of his body, but never did they once graze his
skin. And all the while his friends were
getting farther away out of the reach of our men.
Why is was the Comanche shot so well
and our bowmen were unable to hit him, is not for us to say. Who knows but that a munetoa, a divinity, gave him courage to fight so many alone,
turned aside our arrows, and guided the course of his? It was a strange fight, wonderfully
strange. Feeling somehow that they could
not hit him, our men coaxed and cajoled and yelled to one another to fling
themselves with all their might into the pursuit with the hope of capturing the
Comanche. And, at that, they shoved on
all the harder, puffing as they went.
The Comanche’s knees got to wabbling
and his body to swaying from side to side as he ran. Then he got to drawing and aiming his bow
without letting go the arrow. He did
this once, twice, three times, and then Wakamo caught sight of the feathered
tip of only a single arrow sticking out of the Comanche’s quiver.
“Only one arrow he has, my men!”
Wakamo yelled aloud as the Comanche shot away the one in the bow. “Don’t stop when he shoots, but rush upon him
and take him captive alive!”
As the Osakies rushed and closed in
upon him, he faced them like a warrior.
He drew back the bow with all the strength that he had. But when he aimed, it was up at the sky. An lo! When he let
go the arrow, and it flew over the heads of our men, his legs gave way beneath
him; and at the very instant that Wakamo was about to lay hands upon him, the
Comanche sank to the grass dead.
Panting and all in
a sweat, our men crowded in a circle about the Comanche lying there young and
tall and sinewy, without even a speck of a wound upon his body. Their eyes rolled with wonder as they looked
him over from head to foot. For a while
at first the wail of the wind only might have been heard. Presently Wakamo whispered, “A fighter!”
“Yes, and like a hawk!” mumbled Kewanat.
Instantly, “A man!” “A warrior!” and a
multitude of other such words fell to buzzing from the lips of the men leaning
upon their bows. Suddenly a hush dropped
over them all, bringing again the silence.
Kewanat knelt at the side of the Comanche, and as he wiped the blade of
his knife on the palm of his hand, said:
“My young chief, and my kinsmen,
here is a man who was truly a warrior.
For you see what he has done. He
has kept us
from capturing him; he has kept us from slaying him with our own hands. More than that, he has enabled his own to
escape and flee out of our reach. I
shall not tell you that you are good warriors, nor
that you are not. But here lies a warrior. I shall take out his heart, and show you the
heart of a brave man. And after you have
seen it, eat of it. You will then be
brave, too.”
Kewanat then cut open the flesh over
the left of the breast along the hollow between the ribs. Spreading apart the ribs, he reached in his
hand, and when he withdrew it, the eyes of the men were filled all the more
with wonder; for between finger and thumb hung a heart no bigger perhaps than a
sandhill plum.
It was small, to small it seemed, for the heart
of a man. It was like gristle and as
tough as gristle.
“No,” muttered
Kewanat, shaking his head as he held the heart out at arm’s length. “No, we will not eat of it. It is too small to go all round. But that is not all. The Comanche fought us like a warrior when he
was alive. Let him then in death keep
his heart. It tells us, besides, that
the heart of a brave man is small, small like this.”
After Kewanat had replaced the heart
within the breast, he bent over, and fingered the Comanche’s scalp-lock.
“Oh, my young chief,” he said
looking up at Wakamo who stood thoughtfully beside him, “that hanging in your
lodge would be worthier by far than any your father ever took from Sioux,
Osage, or
Wakamo nodded and slowly replied,
“Yes. Let him keep it. There will be wailing enough in a lodge of
the Comanches, and it may gladden the hearts of those in that lodge to know how
bravely he fell.”
Our men then dropped in behind Wakamo
and Kewanat, glancing over their shoulders as they filed away for a last look
at the Comanche. The bodies of their
dead they took to the top of the hill from which they had first seen the
Comanches. There they buried them,
piling over them a mound of earth and stones.
While our men were resting and
spying for a stream where they might camp, the sun was nearing the banks of the
Our men came home before the first
fall of snow. They said little about
Comanche scalp-locks at the dance and the feast that welcomed them home. But by the fire of the lodge, the kin seated closely
about and listening with open ear and expectant look, each told of a heart that
makes a brave man, a little heart like that of the young Comanche. As our fathers one
after the other heard the story, they rose and told it to others. When they had all heard it, they went to the
Council lodge. And there they joyfully
smoked their long red-stone pipe; joyfully, because the young Wakamo had seen
with his own eyes what made a brave man, and because they felt that the son
would now surely grow to be the chief that his father was.