Shell Shaker

Durant, Oklahoma

Tuesday, September 24, 1991

Delores kneads dough for the meeting that night, thinking about her relationship with Isaac. She regrets the time they’ve spent apart, and wishes she would “have gone to him when he returned home from World War II” (loc 2778). She knew when he called to tell her about the murder, speaking in Choctaw, what he really wanted, saying to her, “Ohoyo aiyala,” or “Woman, come at last” (loc 2787). Nonetheless, he still hung up first, which Delores believes means he is “still unable to forgive her for sending him away nearly fifty years ago” (loc 2787).

Delores says to Tema and Adair that all Choctaw are Code Talkers because “everything that is important to Choctaws, or all Indians for that matter, is not written down. We have to live the life to know the ways, and so much goes unspoken” (loc 2799). Delores and Dovie bicker, and Delores remembers the beginnings of her career “as a modern foni miko, bone picker” and what she considers “the only useful thing she’s ever done” (loc 2811). Delores began with her family, but has since prepared many others. She is nervous about Redford’s ceremony, however. As she continues kneading the dough, she welcomes a spirit who “has given her the essential knowledge of how to properly bury the dead” (loc 2821).

She first met the Billy family when looking for someone to help with her mother’s burial, someone who “could sing the ancient songs for a proper Choctaw burial” (loc 2821). There a voice greets her as the “one I’ve been waiting for” and introduces herself as “the great-great-granddaughter of Chunkashbili, Heart Wounder, and […] the granddaughter of Shakbatina whose name doesn’t’ mean ‘Wildcat’ like people say. Her name means Survivor!” (loc 2832). This is Susan’s mother, a survivor of the American Indian removals, who sings for her the funeral songs.

Although Delores spent many years running away from her mother, once she returns she gives up her career in Hollywood and devotes her time of “service work to the Choctaws” (loc 2888). Indeed, Delores’ funeral for her mother inspires others and “started a revival of Choctaw music and traditions” (loc 2899). Delores and Dovie opened a funeral parlor, and Dovie read tea leaves and taught tai chi. However, a local preacher accused them of witchcraft, and then a young man was killed during a prank. Delores and Dovie then went “underground with […] funeral ceremonies” (loc 2909).

As Dovie and Tema reminisce, Delores thinks of the horrors of the boarding school, and she and Dovie’s escape from it. From there, they joined a Wild West Show. Isaac came to live with them after he ran away from school as well, and that is when he fell in love with Delores. Delores thought he was too young, however, and Isaac lied about his age and enlisted in the military. His pride prevented him from returning to Delores after the war, and Delores deeply regrets their time apart.

The distant sound of voices, “split into two, three, four languages, and more” distracts Delores (loc 3049). They tell her they often interred “bad people who were given everything” in burial mounds as well as “good people [who] followed the bad ones into the spirit world to care for them” (loc 3049). The voices tell her that when grave-diggers opened the mounds, the bad spirits escaped, and tell her to put Redford in such a mound.

Suddenly, Delores is back in her childhood home, which soon transforms into a burial mound. Delores understands how the mound was formed: The ancestors helped to “open Mother Earth’s beautiful body” and “[s]lowly and lovingly” Mother Earth turned “herself inside out” causing “a gigantic platform mound [to] emerge[s] out of the ground” (loc 3070), which rises to meet the Sun. Delores returns to the present, covered with mud from the Mississippi. She tells Dovie, Tema, and Adair that they must bury Redford’s body near the “Mother Mound” in Mississippi to protect him so that “he’ll never return” (loc 3104). Although the other women are unsure, the mud that begins flowing out of the bowl that was originally dough convinces them.

Adair, Tema, Delores, and Dovie discuss Delores’ vision just as Hoppy arrives. He tells them that Isaac has been arrested and that Auda is in a coma. Auda is brought home, but she is very ill and no one knows if she will be whole even if she comes out of the coma. Delores vows to make things right, and Susan reveals the “mud of the Nanih Waiya” covers her hands as well (loc 3177). The local news reports all the tragedies that have befallen the Choctaws since Redford’s death. Isaac and Delores decide to take Redford’s body to Mississippi, while Adair and Gore go to New York to retrieve the documents necessary to prove that Redford was involved with the mafia. Susan will stay in Oklahoma and care for Auda.

Isaac and Delores discuss what they must do, and Delores reveals that burying Redford in Mississippi will “reunite the two Choctaw communities: the ones in Oklahoma with the ones in Mississippi” (loc 3223). Isaac apologizes for their many years apart because of his pride and Delores asks him to marry her. She knows their time together will be short, but wants to make the most of the time they do have left.

Hash Koinchush

Heart of the Panther

June 21, 1747

Red Shoes meets with an emissary from a village, hoping they will trade with him. They ask him and his men to clear out, explaining that they are waiting for “their new trading partners, the people from Yanàbi Town, who will provide them with corn and beans in exchange for information” (loc 3304). Red Shoes is offended not only at their dismissal but that he must “hide [himself] among [his] warriors like a starving dog” (loc 3304). Red Shoes throws the severed heads of three Filanchi okla at the villagers, explaining what he has done to them. A woman begins to sing, warning him of his fate, that he is “the walking dead” (loc 3327). He sees the spirit of Shakbatina, telling him he must sacrifice himself as she did.

Red Shoes refuses; he still believes that he and Anoleta will “drive out the Inkilish okla and Filanchi okla” (loc 3338). Shakbatina notes that he has been “conquered” by greed, and Red Shoes has another vision, of his own death, and of the years after his death. Red Shoes predicts that on the “longest day of the year when the eye of the Sun finally closes” (loc 3360) someone will set his body on fire and remove his head. He will wait for Anoleta “in a place where the net of air and earth have been arranged for this purpose” and he vows to return to Earth to finish what he began.

On the Road to Alibamu Conchatys

June 21, 1747

Nitakechi socializes with his nephew, Hopaii Iskitini, meaning Little Prophet. Hopaii asks if he can be the one to kill Red Shoes, and Nitakechi is “horrified that a boy from the Inholahta is considering murder” even though “more than twenty” of the Choctaw “towns voted to kill Red Shoes” (loc 3393). Koi Chitto arrives, and tells him that Red shoes, in conjunction with Red Fox warriors, plan to attack the Alibamu Conchatys. Nitakechi agrees to join the battle, but asks to try to speak to Red Shoes one more time, that perhaps he will be able to “stop the bloodshed” (loc 3405).

As the warriors prepare for battle, one of the priests visiting the village continues his memoirs “writing feverishly” to “finish his account of the past nine years before he leaves it behind” (loc 3417). The priest, Father Renoir, describes Koi Chitto’s bone-picking ceremony for Shakbatina as well as other observations he has made about the Choctaw, whom he refers to as the Chahtas. Father Renoir blots out a section seeming to indicate that he is abandoning his vocation to marry one of Shakbatina’s daughters, Neshoba. He then adds his observations of the buildup to war, and gives the document to a young soldier, telling him that he and Neshoba are taking “the children and the infirm to safety” though he knows he “has no way of knowing if his countrymen will be able to pass on his documents, his lies to history and the French province of Louisiana” (loc 3472).

Indeed, Father Renoir believes it “best for France and the Church not to know that the greed of their faith is causing the demise of Indian tribes” that the Native Americans “degenerate over brandy” given to them by the French (loc 3483). Father Renoir leaves behind his past and joins Neshoba and the children. Among them are Bili, short for Chunkashbili, Anoleta’s child from her marriage to Choucououlacta. Renoir vows to teach her to read and write, and hopes one day she will call him father.

The next morning, Anoleta, along with 200 warriors, makes her way to the Alibamu Conchatys. Anoleta rests and has a vision of her mother, who tells her about their descendants, one of whom “will build a great house where many Bilis will love” (loc 3530). Her father awakens her, and he tells her that he believes Shakbatina “does not know yet how to help” them (loc 3530), because “she is still learning to be a spirit” (loc 3541). A messenger from the Alibamu Conchatys approach and tell them that the Inkilish okla and the Red Fox people began their attack at dawn. As they march onward, Nitakechi tells Anoleta and her sister, Haya, that they are going to attack, directing them to carry supplies, but to run “if things go badly” (loc 3563). A messenger arrives telling them that Choucououlacta’s people will be arriving to join forces with them; they seek revenge for Choucououlacta’s death at the hands of Red Shoes.

Nitakechi and a few others go ahead as scouts and find some of the elderly Alibamu Conchatys and some of their children; they tell them of the atrocities they suffered at the hands of Red Shoes and the Inkilish okla. Nitakechi’s wife, Mantema, had gone to her relatives in Pacana for safety; all the women there had been captured and murdered by Red Shoes and his men. Nitakechi wants to find Red Shoes and kill him, but Koi Chitto reminds him that his role as peacemaker means he must care for the elderly and the children first.

Koi Chitto continues to advance, and is the first to see the obscenities inflicted on the women of Pacana. He forgets stealth and screams out his rage, and is wounded by cannon fire. Nonetheless, Koi Chitto gets back up and runs toward the Red Fox warriors who allow him to “sing his death song” (loc 3617) before killing him. At Koi Chitto’s death, Nitakechi runs onto the battlefield, followed by the rest of the warriors, joined by their allies, Filanchi okla soldiers. Together, they defeat the Red Fox warriors and the Inkilish okla soldiers.

Red Shoes, however, has escaped. Anoleta and Haya track Red Shoes and “his Inkilish trader” (loc 3639). They find him sitting at a fire with the trader, and Anoleta and Haya dance with them before Haya reaches out and, “using both hands, […] pushes Red Shoes into the flames” (loc 3649).