In the time before, the story is told that one day a young woman became pregnant and though there was no man and the young woman said there was no man, still she was pregnant.
In those days, the spiritual aspect of life was a part of all thinking and doing. The family supported the daughter and soon a baby was born. Immediately the parents and elders noticed something wrong about this baby. No matter how much the new mother breast fed the baby the baby would never be satisfied. It would begin to yowl with an aching piercing unnatural hunger whenever the mother stopped feeding it.
The new mother was becoming thin and was unable to sleep
unless the baby would sleep. This would be minutes at the most. The longest it
would sleep was in that half hour in the darkest part of the night. It was clear
that the insatiable demands of this baby were draining the very life from its mother.
The parents made ceremony and they were told that this was
not a baby and that it was a most dangerous spirit. The spirit that can never be
satisfied. If they did not get away from the baby it would grow stronger until
it would devour the people, the village and everything around it.
They had to leave. They had to leave immediately.
The parents and the elders knew that this message was true.
They all knew it in their hearts to be true even before they had asked the
spirits.
The village disassembles in the extraordinary speed and care
of those who can be of one mind and complete individuals.
They move out. Silently and completely like a rising mist.
A lone teepee sits in the dark. where in the daylight there
was a thriving village of hundreds. The sounds of the ravenous spirit feeding
are amplified out into the sky and echo off a stand of trees and into the full moon lit night sky.
The parents and two young men stand outside the entrance. There
is a travois and rawhide on the ground beside them. They are barely breathing.
All eyes are on the mother. She will know. The minutes drag on as the sound of the
spirit feeding and the struggled breathing of the young mother ache and pain
their minds and spirits.
In a flash the mother is through the door and the father
follows quickly. The young men are shocked at the speed of their movement and
they look at each other this time with fear.
The next moment the parents are out. The mother is carrying
her daughter like a baby when she steps outside. She juts out her chin in the
direction of the tribe and begins walk-running into the cobalt blue night. The father looks
at the young men with tears running down his face and the same look of fear
they carry.
He begins running after his family and the young men gather
up the travois and ties and begin running after them.
Before they get to the edge of their abandoned circle a
screeching excruciating wail rises from the abandoned teepee and the new mother
comes to life in a nearly equal howl.
She is rolled into a buckskin cocoon perfectly tucked as a
newborn baby by her mother who has wrapped babies hundreds, thousands of times into
unmoveable secure bundles.
As planned the cocooned mother is lashed quickly with
leather ties onto the travois and the four begin to run as fast as they can
with the screaming captive. In the distance they hear the drums and the singing
and with tears streaming down their faces the group start singing the same song.
Soon the singing in front of them is louder than the
screaming echoing in the darkness behind them.
The sun is rising when they catch up. They are met first
with aunties and uncles who take turns carrying the new mother and singing the
song softly as a lullaby. The new mother’s tiny, swaddled body is swinging in
the travois before sun breaks horizon she is sleeping soundly as a baby.
*
I do not know where I heard or read this story. I have known
it for a long time.
-30-