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Updated: May 27, 2025
I think, too, they did not like the idea of leaving off the long season of hunting and roving, for corn is a town-maker. For the tending and harvesting there must be one place, and for the guarding of the winter stores there must be a safe place. So said Waits-by-the-Fire to the women digging roots or boiling old bones in the long winter. She was a wise woman.
Waits-by-the-Fire made up her mind to ask for it on the first day of the Feast of the Corn Harvest, which lasts four days, and is a time of present-giving and good-willing. She would have got it, too, if it had been left to the Corn Women to decide.
And if ever anything was ever said or done to us which was not pleasant, Waits-by-the-Fire would say to the one who had offended, 'We are only the servants of the Corn, but it would be a pity if the same thing happened to you that happened to the grandfather of your next-door neighbor! "And what happened to him?"
We had our share of both fighting and starving, but our tribe fared better than most because of the Medicine of Waits-by-the-Fire, the Medicine of the Sun. She was a wise woman. She was made Shaman. When she spoke, even the chiefs listened. But what could the chiefs do except hunt farther and fight harder? So Waits-by-the-Fire talked to the women.
Talk went on between her and Waits-by-the-Fire, purring, spitting talk like water stumbling among stones. Not one word did our women understand, but they saw wonder grow among the Corn Women, respect and amazement. "Finally, we were taken into the god-house, where in the half dark, we could make out the Goddess of the Corn, cut in stone, with green stones on her forehead.
There were long councils between Waits-by-the-Fire and the Corn Woman and the priests that came running from the Temple of the Sun. Outside the rumor and the wonder swelled around the god-house like a sudden flood. Faces bobbed up like rubbish in the flood into the bright blocks of light that fell through the doorway, and were shifted and shunted by other faces peering in.
This one was swift of foot and was called Last Arrow, for Shungakela had said, 'Once I had a quiver full. Waits-by-the-Fire brought him back on her shoulders from the place where the fight was. She walked with him into the Council. "'The quiver is empty, she said; 'the food bags, also; will you wait for us to fill one again before you fill the other?
"The priests, huddled on the stairs, began to question among themselves, and Waits-by-the-Fire turned to the people. 'Nothing, O Offspring of the Sun? "Then she put off the Shaman's thought which had been a shield to her. 'Nothing, Toto? she called to a man in the crowd by a name none knew him by except those that had grown up with him.
"Mad Wolf, who was chief at the time, threw up his hand as a man does when he is down and craves a mercy he is too proud to ask for. 'We have fought the Tenasas, he said; 'shall we fight our women also? "Waits-by-the-Fire did not wait after that for long speeches in the Council.
We thought it very childish of him, but afterward we were glad we had not made any objection. "It was mid-morning when the Seven walked between the fields, with little food in their bags and none whatever in their stomachs, all in rags except Waits-by-the-Fire, who had put on her Shaman's dress, and around her neck, tied in a bag with feathers, the Medicine of the Sun.
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