that the trader carried absinthe and peyote. The Green Lady became very expensive that summer because the heady spirit had been banned as a poison by the Department of Agriculture.
Augustus bartered for cigars, absinthe, and mercury.
The bank manager bought snowy egret feathers. The wispy crown feathers and other exotic bird plumage were very expensive, more than the price of gold. The trader presented oriole, common tern, snow bunting, northern flicker, cedar waxwing, and, of course, snowy egret feathers. Rumors spread that the banker, a distant relative, used reservation deposits to buy feathers for a white woman. He fancied one of the government teachers, but she had never been seen in an aigrette or any other fashion feathers. The banker actually bought the feathers for his fancy grandmother.
My mother said women were the enemy of sacred birds, and likewise men had been the enemy of the beaver centuries earlier. The decorative plume trade decimated the showy birds, and our ancestors in the fur trade brought the beaver close to extinction. Natives and most of our relatives once hunted beaver for no other reason than the fashion of expensive felt hats in Europe.
Odysseus insisted that he only sold dead egret feathers that were gathered by the Seminoles in the Florida Everglades. Augustus doubted that the egret feathers were dead, or shed in a natural way, and then rescued by natives, and he was not convinced that natives would have better protected the snowy egrets or any other totemic birds. He reminded us that our ancestors and fur traders slaughtered sacred totems for the money.
Augustus reported in the Tomahawk that the New York State legislature passed the Audubon Plumage Bill. The trade in bird plumage was banned in the state. The plumage laws were ignored on the reservation, and the secret trade continued.
Augustus never revealed his use of quicksilver.
Aloysius painted several blue raven scenes, and the ravens were encircled by traces of white plumes. The snowy egrets were portrayed as faint outlines with enormous blue crown feathers, and the eyes of the egrets were touched with a trace of red.
Catherine Heady, the prudish literature teacher, was there to buy calico and cotton lace. She gestured with a tight smile, but never said a word to students outside of school. The trader measured a length of lace for the teacher, touched his gray hairy cheek with the cloth, and then invited her to do the same. The teacher blushed and turned away.
Foamy bought a square yard of red velvet for a chair cushion, and the testy negotiations lasted for more than an hour. The trader met with other customers, and then returned several times to bargain over the price of velvet. Finally, the price was settled quickly when the doctor arrived to secretly barter for a sack of peyote. The agent was not aware that the trader carried the magical cactus.
Odysseus complained to the doctor that his ankle had not healed, and he was not able to walk without some pain. He was treated at the hospital two years earlier, and we were there to hear his marvelous stories. The trader handed the doctor a small canvas sack of peyote. Luckily we heard the doctor direct the trader to meet that very night at a site near Bad Boy Lake.
John Leecy loaned us a horse that afternoon, but we were too late to follow the trader to the secret location near the lake. Most peyote ceremonies started at sundown, so we waited and listened near the lake. We were too young to use peyote, and we had no obvious need to be healed at the time, but we were curious about visionary stories. There were several cabins in the woods, so we slowly ambled around the lake and listened for any sound of the ceremony. Finally, several hours later we heard an eagle whistle and the fast sound of drums.
The peyote ceremony was held in a wigwam in the woods a short distance from the lake. The mongrel healers circled the horse when we dismounted in the dark, so we walked to the nearby cabin and tied the horse to a post. Misaabe, the old healer, invited us into his tiny cabin, and at the same time the mongrels pushed through the rickety door. We had been there only once last summer. The cabin was dark, lighted by a tiny kerosene lantern, and the oil was scented with cedar.
Misaabe sat naked on a plank bench near the cook stove. He seldom wore clothes in the summer, and only covered his body in winter, and when he was on duty with the mongrel healers at the hospital. Doctor Mendor paid the old healer for the services of the mongrels at the hospital, and always brought food, sometimes even dog food, and chocolate when he gathered nearby for a peyote ceremony.
No other public health doctor had promoted the mongrel healers on the reservation. The mongrels detected by the scent of urine, bare skin, bad breath, sweat, and by muscle tension various diseases. The mongrels were not shy about pushing their noses into the crotch of a human, and they had learned how to quickly pitch the hem of a dress and sniff the genitals of a woman. The doctor was amused by the disease detection practices of the mongrels, but the nurses tightened their dresses and sidestepped the mongrel healers.
Liver, kidney, pancreas, thyroid, and stomach diseases were detected and treated by the doctor, but most tumors were not treatable by ordinary medicine. Surgery was dangerous and the last resort. The mongrel healers detected and now and then healed the most serious diseases.
Misaabe trained the mongrels to sing, smile, nudge, nuzzle, and heal the patients in the hospital. Some patients resisted the healing energy of the mongrels because they could not accept the natural spirit of animals, and because they could not imagine the presence of a disease.
Misaabe once told a federal surveyor, a man who had marked and divided reservation land into government allotments, that the ice woman caused his tumors. He encouraged the surveyor to locate by imagination the tumor in his body as a chunk of ice and then slowly day by day concentrate on the location and melt the ice away. The man could not imagine a chunk of ice in his body. He could not create or envision a scene or story to survive.
Misaabe and his mongrels healed serious diseases of more natives than the hospital doctors. Most of the government agents could not create stories, and could not imagine a disease. The ice woman stories were sources of fear and caution. That very sense of fear in stories of the ice woman could be imagined as the power to heal a disease.
Misaabe and the mongrels were natural healers. Sometimes he told natives to concentrate and imagine scenes of the ice woman and then melt the disease away with a song or story. Naturally, natives and others worried when the mongrels sniffed too closely. Any lingering scent could be the detection of disease. Harmony, a spaniel mongrel, had a nose much colder than the stories of the ice woman. The four other mongrels were distinct healers. Shimmer nuzzled and her body glowed when she sang. Nosy was skinny, tender, curious, and could heal anyone with her dark, watery eyes. Ghost Moth was so named because of his faint and misty coat. Mona Lisa was an artful healer by secretive smiles, a poser, and her gentle furry paws were crossed at rest. Misaabe named the young mongrel healer last summer when the Tomahawk reported that the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci had been stolen from the Musée du Louvre in Paris.
Aloysius sat near the kerosene lamp and painted great blue ravens in magical flight, and with abstract blue mongrels on the wing. The color blue had the power to heal in native art and stories. Misaabe used the blue ravens my brother painted to encourage natives to imagine a disease healed by blue ravens, blue totems, and by blue mongrels.
The moths bounced on the lantern, roused by the light, and left traces of wings on the globe. Gnats and other insects died on the wick. The mongrels moaned in the dark corners of the cabin. The lofty sound of an eagle whistle and the fast beat of peyote drums wavered in the distance. The peyote songs surged in the night, and we waited by the lantern for the old healer to move with the spirit of the music.
Misaabe murmured on the bench, and then chanted and gestured with his hands. His shadow became a wave of music, a natural motion with the moths, and yet he had never used peyote. The mongrels were observant, heads raised,
