The Purple Sky: The Life and Times of the Noble Warrior Teh-Ghut-Sa

Author’s Preface To The Purple Sky

The Purple Sky is a prequel to Tree Of Dreams. Tree Of Dreams was published by iUniverse in 2009.

I was born and raised in Hamden, Connecticut. As a young boy, I regularly frequented the Dixwell Theater, a movie house whose parking lot—in which we neighborhood kids played baseball—was across the street from my house. Cartoons, serials (usually Westerns such as Hopalong Cassidy), and two full-length features were always included in the weekend-matinee bill of fare. In those days, films having Indian content most often portrayed Native Americans as the bad guys. In fact, rarely were they shown to have compassion, insight, or any higher spiritual or moral qualities whatsoever.

At the time Europeans first reached New England shores, the land area now known as Connecticut was home to various tribes such as the Mahican, Mohegan, Niantic, Nipmuc, and Pequot. Many rivers, landmarks, and towns throughout New England have retained the names given to them by the Native American inhabitants of the region.

In Hamden, there lies a small group of adjoining east-west hills collectively known as The Sleeping Giant. The legend of The Sleeping Giant captivated my imagination. The following is a short rendition of the story, as I came to know it.

Native Americans knew the Giant as Hobbomock. One legend has it that Hobbomock, an evil spirit, became angry because native inhabitants treated him with disrespect. To punish these people, Hobbomock brought his foot down hard upon the earth causing the Connecticut River to change course, wreaking havoc on the region’s inhabitants. The beneficent spirit Keitan came along and cast a spell on Hobomock. The result: Hobbomock was put to sleep forever, so as to not inflict further harm and destruction.

Native American culture is rife with colorful stories. Some have made their way into this account.

When I was in my late teens or early twenties, I had a dream—or rather, a series of images presented itself. What I do remember are two, of perhaps many, frames. The central character in this dream-sequence was a Native American warrior.

In the first image, the warrior was positioned behind a large tree that stood at the edge of a trail deep within the forest. The warrior held a war club in his right hand and was prepared to strike a blow to an oncoming adversary; I, the omniscient observer, could see the adversary.

The subsequent frame was of the same image imprinted on the surface of a round coin. The date on the coin, clearly struck at the bottom and above the ribbed edge, was 861.

I’ve always wondered what possible reservoir those images, that connection came from. Until the idea of writing a novel dawned, thoughts of American Indians were consciously nowhere to be found within my day-to-day comings and goings, and I am still baffled by the persistence with which I sat at the computer—hours on end, day by day—developing, shaping, and plotting the tale’s course.

I began by researching the history of eastern-woodland tribes. It soon became apparent, however, that because of the Native American oral tradition, documentation regarding the earliest contact with these people was written by educated, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant newcomers, and was, of course, colored by those authors’ European-based worldview. One particular book, The League of the Haudenosaunee (1851), written by Lewis Henry Morgan, was the first in-depth study of an American Indian people. Ely Samuel Parker, a Seneca chief who later rose to the rank of brigadier-general in Grant’s Union army and who subsequently became the first Native American to hold the post of Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, contributed considerably to Morgan’s understanding of the Iroquois. The League of the Haudenosaunee serves as foundation for much of the background material woven throughout The Purple Sky.

After much deliberation, I finally decided to write a novel that was neither historically based nor culturally accurate; though much of what is contained herein draws upon what I’ve gleaned from my research. The reasons: shadings of the life and activities of Native Americans were authored by European American immigrants; some of what has been passed down through the Native American oral tradition is, by their own admission, suspect in relation to historical accuracy. A more fundamental reason: the time period about which I’ve written is so far removed from anyone’s recollection, it would be impossible to build a story around the facts. Some of what is contained herein does reflect conditions, lifestyles, and the substance of events that are irrefutably true, but for the most part I have allowed the creative spirits to move me. The result of this endeavor is a story about people—who also happen to be Native Americans.

Contents

Author’s Preface To The Purple Sky

Acknowledgements

Introduction

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

Acknowledgements

My most humble thanks and appreciation to Hobart Bell and Timothy Lyons, the bells, whistles, and lions of my editorial staff. Their passion, insights, and polemics in the pursuit of excellence resulted in fewer rewrites, fewer syntactic irregularities, and, in the end, fewer casualties of the pen.

My gratitude and appreciation to Lewis Henry Morgan and Ely Samuel Parker for their seminal book The League of the Haudenosaunee. Morgan, Lewis Henry. League of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1901. Lewis H. Morgan, League Of The Iroquois 9 (1962)

To my dear friend Jake Paul Fratkin for his spectacular photograph. I attended a slide show of Jake’s work in the summer of 2010 and knew when I first saw the photograph that I wanted the image for the front cover.

And, of course, the Pierides, without whom the mind of Man would lie inquisitively fallow.

I am the clouds. I am the dark of night and the light of day. I am the seasons. I am the dreams of warriors and maidens. I am the spirit of animals and birds, of crops in the field, of fish in the streams. I am the soil in which reside the roots of desire, the seeds of memory, and the remnants and nutrients of all life forms.

Introduction

Ever since Kellum and I married and began to raise our family, I’ve been encouraging myself – during those infrequent quiet moments after the chores of the day have been attended, and the children have said their prayers and gone off to sleep – to write about my otherworldly experiences. While it is true that I have told Mother, Father, Kellum, and our dear friend Homer of my first ‘journey’ into that world of otherliness, subsequent dream-journeys, and there have been many, traversing centuries of human endeavour, have come to rest in me alone. Upon returning from my first journey, I was directed by forces then unbeknownst to me, to keep secret these adventures lest their revelations bring forth the wrath of puritanical vengeance upon family and loved ones. The emotional strain resulting from my promise not to divulge these experiences has compelled me to write about them clandestinely. And yet, there will always be, standing alongside the exigency to reveal, a constant fear of compromising Humankind’s natural development.

Our children are now adults; Courtney is married, and Vernon is off to college. After more than twenty years, presently, the year of our Lord, 1806, I am finally putting these otherworldly experiences to paper. Perhaps the interval would have been even more lengthy had it not been for the birth of our grandson Jerimiah. I shall explain.

Two years ago, in June 1804, our daughter Courtney married Homer’s son Running Bear. Last year our families were blessed with the arrival of Courtney and Running Bear’s first child, Jerimiah. A few weeks prior to Jerimiah’s birth, I began to experience the most perplexing dreams; they were perplexing because I could conceive of no earthly connexion to them. The dreams’ setting was a village of Native Americans; the same group of ‘Indians’ to which Homer has alluded in his oft-told story of Teh-Ghut-Sa and the Clear-People.

I shall repeat word-for-word Homer’s tale; I know it by heart.

‘The stories tell of a time when a tribe of Clear-People lived upon this land. The land between the two rivers was not visible to non-believers, and appeared as part of the great body of water that separated one shore from the other. One day, a very arrogant young chief named Teh-Ghut-Sa came to the edge of the great water to drink of the day’s sweet rain. When he lowered his head, he saw a reflection of sparkling bright light, and upon looking up he was amazed to see land where there had been none. Out of curiosity, Teh-Ghut-Sa decided to cross the small stream, but as soon as he immersed his feet, the water turned into a roaring river and swept him far away to a place where another river joined the first. Pulling himself up onto the bank, Teh-Ghut-Sa went back to the spot where he could see the land between the rivers and tried several more times to cross to the other side, each time suffering a greater indignity than the last. Finally, body exhausted and badly bruised, he returned once again and, lying in reverence with out-stretched arms and face touching earth, praised the great water for its omnipotent spirit. At that moment a bridge of shiny white light appeared, and shadowy figures from the other side called to him. Teh-Ghut-Sa arose, crossed the bridge, and spent many new moons learning the ways and ideas of the Clear-People.

‘When he returned to his village, Teh-Ghut-Sa’s body took on a luminous quality, and those who could see this change in his appearance enquired as to what had happened during his travels beyond the great river. Teh-Ghut-Sa told of his trial at the river and began to teach his followers the lessons that he had learned. After many seasons of white rain, he led his tribe to the land between the rivers, leaving behind a handful of his most trusted disciples to act as guardians. It is said that Teh-Ghut-Sa and his people still walk the forests and are visible to any one who possesses the three eyes.’

With Jerimiah’s birth, I have been re-connected to another link in our species’ ancestral chain – a link that some may regard as irrelevant; though, it is my belief that when examining the development of Humankind, no link can be considered irrelevant. If one speaks of ancestral connexions strictly in terms of blood relation, that is, as they pertain to physical regeneration alone, then Running Bear’s (Homer’s) ancestry is unrelated to mine – at least in the immediate past. However, I have come to believe that another kind of link, one not connected to the physical organism at all, is omnipresent in one’s stream of consciousness: thus, two concomitantly occurring, unrelated-to-each-other mechanisms, one physical and one mental. Just as the body stores information as regards the physical history of our people, the mind stores information as regards the mental history of our people. For most, these mental links are inaccessible; for the vast majority, one’s relationship to them takes the form of shades: vague conjectures, or ethereal figures that dance along the extreme periphery of awareness.

On the days leading up to Jerimiah’s birth, I often ‘dream-visited’ the Native American village. I think of these spiritual sojourns as further openings to the pathways of ancestral travel. The ‘reclaiming’ of this particular pathway is a direct result of both Jerimiah’s birth, and the joining, by way of the Sacred Ceremony, of two bloodlines: ours, Kellum and mine, and that of our dear friend Homer.

In the year and one-half since our grandson’s birth, I have frequently ‘travelled’ to the village, and, in fact, have lived the lifetime of one of its clanswomen.

My appearance, my existence in that other world, is somewhat complicated, and I find it a challenge in as far as rendering a coherent explanation. I can make no guarantees that I shall succeed in either convincing you, the reader – if one such being should ever happen across this field of thoughts; otherwise I shall permit this journal to be my confessor – I can make no guarantees that I shall succeed in either convincing you of these statements’ validity or that my explanation, as conscientiously as I might prepare the ground in order to bring forth a bountiful account, is an accurate one. Words are, at best, mere descriptions. As such, they represent subjective interpretations. My experiences have led me to believe that in Mankind’s pursuit of the Absolute, there is only one immutable Truth: Nothing appears as it seems, however one wishes to punctuate it.

Sitting here, quill in hand, I realize that when I am in the process of recalling mental images and re-living them, she – me, Emily, the person who is writing this account, the physical being with her opinions, theosophy, code of conduct, et cetera, et cetera – she is, at the same time, there and not there. The sensation is akin to experiencing through the eyes of another. I am, while on this preternatural voyage, absorbed into the character I inhabit. Emily’s mind and the mind of the Native American woman with whom she is bound are linked, are inseparable – yet somehow distinct.

I speak her thoughts, feel her emotions, and experience her bodily sensations; yet at the same time, I do maintain a subjective sense of my former presence – Emily’s presence.

One could, I suppose, argue the merit of such statements; I shall not deny their preposterous claim.

Perhaps I can best explain the relationship in this way:

It is as if I am here now, on the tenth of January, 1806, sitting at my desk, living a life as wife and mother – a life with a memory, history, and a fancied future – and yet I am vaguely aware of a ubiquitous presence hovering in an indefinable space; a presence that connects me to all that has been and to all that shall be. In so far as the Native American woman is concerned, Emily is her ubiquitous presence, and she is to a certain extent aware of it.

I am mindful of two other peculiar facets of my liaison with this Native American woman. When relating activities – conversations, actions, thoughts, circumstances, and situations – external to her own, this Native American woman often appears in the form of animate and inanimate objects such as various animal creatures, the air, trees, rocks, and water – the dispassionate surroundings, rather than the commentarial navigator – yet she does feel and, through me, she is able to clearly articulate those feelings. Also, I am acutely aware that she holds dear the need to convey aspects and traditions of her culture; somehow she can foresee the impending doom that centuries later will have befallen her race. In the sense that she tells the story of her people through me, we truly are ‘sisters’.

As I think of the experience and ‘re-live’ the emotional responses awakened by its memory, as one does when recalling a dream in which the play and the players braid no earthly yarn within the fabric of one’s own life, yet something intangible persuades differently, I am fully convinced that I have lived amongst these people, breathing their breath, believing their beliefs, singing their songs, and dreaming their dreams.

The following is an account of my life there. More precisely, this is an account of the life and times of the noble warrior Teh-Ghut-Sa, Homer’s long-ago kin.

My initial recollection is of a song. It is sung by the yet-to-be born son who will become the spiritual leader of his people, and is the first of many songs that he shall sing throughout the course of his earth-life. Thoughts generated by him arise within the indefinable space that harbours those celestial beings seeking re-emergence into the human realm. He is eager to descend into the prison of forms and take on corporeal substance, though experience reminds him of the formidable challenges that inevitably follow. He sings this song as his earth-journey nears.

The Song of Teh-Ghut-Sa

We have talked to each other throughout eternity. I have been her mother, father, sister, brother, wife, husband, son, daughter, friend and foe; and she, mine. We have consorted while day receives night and night receives day, during passage through the sacred pause between light and dark, dark and light.

Though I am not yet a voice, my thoughts are clear. Though I am not yet a name, a name has been chosen. Though I cannot yet see the face of my mother, I know her as I know morning’s sweet serenity.

The endless procession of season comes and goes like a disinterested wind: without mark, without a rustling fragrance, without profundity.

The supplications of all sentient beings have aroused me from my apathetic slumber. Agitation murmurs caution to my yet-to-be embodied spirit. Still, without hesitation I heed the call. I must; my response is as choiceless as the first cry of a newborn babe.

Yes, I am coming. You are worthy; I am thy servant.

There are reasons for choosing this place, this clan, this time. The wheel turns; my family needs guidance, and I their strength. They set me on their path, my path. They place my feet one in front of the other; they hold me until I am able to walk without assistance. This is the way. I have much work to do. I am thankful for the opportunity, yet I long for the unearthly kingdom: the land of my fathers.

I

The Village – The Wife and the Husband – Readying For Birth – Talks-To-The-River’s Unquenched Spirit – A Youthful Hungry-Bear and the Malcontent – The Wilful and Enigmatic Spits-Like-Fire

Year Of The Golden-Haired Corn –

B. E. (Before Europeans)

My dream-journey has brought me to another time, yet not another place; the land in my dream-journey lies in the same approximate area in which I have spent my entire adult life.

I see clustered here and there in this ‘New World’, communities of intrepid warriors whose daily conduct is governed by season, the cultivation of lands both good and plenty, and bygone voices that resonate through ancestral lifelines. Along the coast of the attenuated landmass that extends nearly from pole to pole, the solar disk whose every-day warming rays stream across the vastness of unearthly plains has yet to give birth-light to the eastern horizon. The early morn is as black as the rich dark soil from which the recipients of this cosmic blessing have sprung and to which they return their daily blessings.

There is little in the way of contrast between the manner in which these inhabitants and their animal kin embrace each day’s ritual; what has to be done, is done. Questions are not asked, doubt never reigns, and from whichever palette their Great Spirit, Ha-Wen-Ne-Yu – the Omnipotent One, the Creator of all that is good and beneficial – designs the day-to-day affairs of humankind, each morning’s gift of light is met with an eagerness, one without criticism or commentary of any kind, to fulfil the Venerable One’s aspirations.

The Native American woman with whom I share this bond is known as Pale-Moon. Her soft, delicate beauty is like that of a resplendent meadow at the moment of spring’s first breath. Unbeknownst to all but one, Pale-Moon possesses abilities that allow her to protect her tribal brothers and sisters from the angry spirits that dwell within the three worlds.

Her people are known throughout the four directions as the ‘Hill People’. Long ago, during the dark-time, their ancestors were driven from the land of the Five Great