The Shaman's Daughter

by Nicki Royall Peet

Overview

When a new highway forces a North Carolina church to relocate its cemetery, a century-old mystery of major significance to its Cherokee neighbors is also unearthed.

Now both communities must work together as the high price of progress tears through sacred land. The church enlists their Cherokee neighbors to assist with the relocation efforts, and the crew makes a startling discovery. The resulting investigation uncovers important information about the residents' past and creates an unexpected link across history in the stories of Cistoo and Lokie, two young Cherokee women.

Cistoo, born in 1790, had a dream. Not even the loss of her parents when she was a child and tribal shunning could stop her from becoming the first female shaman of her nation. Lokie, a contemporary Native American teen, likens the so-called progress to the dislocation of her people by the American colonists. These two young women from different centuries each come of age in the pursuit of shamanism and social justice.

Can the answers to the modern graveyard mystery include redemption for both women?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781491722107
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	02/03/2014
Pages:	204
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.63(d)

Read an Excerpt

The Shaman's DAUGHTER

A Novel

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By Nicki Royall Peet

iUniverse LLC

Copyright © 2014 Nicki Royall Peet
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4917-2208-4

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CHAPTER 1

The Shaman

The sound could be heard over three mountains, which is a far distance: three days to walk on foot. Yet the sound of the bird's music floated fast and easy on the air. It was the morning song of a whip-poor-will. Letodah's job was to search for a certain green plant in the woods. He stopped every few hours to blow his small pipe to alert the tribe that he had kept to his mission. He also used this occasion to touch and kiss the amulet around his neck, which gave him strength and direction. The necklace identified him as the tribe's shaman.

Finding this special fern would be hard. Four or five other plants resembled it, but none of the others would cure the child's ailment. In fact, the others could make the child sicker. Letodah took great care to detect the special green plant. It grew low to the ground near the base of cedar trees and had a red tinge around the edges. When soaked in hot water, the leaves became a medicinal drink. The liquid would ward off the nightmares and delirium haunting the sick girl.

Only six years on the earth, she had lived much of it ill. She had pulled through earlier bouts of fever, chills, and delirium, but Letodah doubted she would live this time.

He was aware of the shadows of the day growing longer, yet he knew he must continue searching. The village was counting on him. He was their medicine man. He danced for the sick. He knew the right recipes and proportions to use when cooking the healing potions. In a self-induced trance, he had traveled to the underworld for his people. He located their demons, returned their angels to them, and sometimes even retrieved their souls.

Letodah remembered the story passed down from his ancestors about the great sickness that had wiped out nine out of ten Cherokees a hundred years earlier. The Indians suspected that the illness had come with the arrival of the European colonists. Many early settlers had died from the same diseases that later killed the Indians. The diseases had eventually spread inland. Letodah wondered if the harsh illness Cistoo suffered could be a remnant of the white man's curse.

So the uninvited settle on land that is not theirs and spread sickness. The thought of it gave him energy to run faster and search harder.

Letodah recognized the sound of the whip-poor-will wafting from his village. He wished he were back there. But he could not go back. He would not go back until he had found this herb. He looked in all the places where he expected to find it—places where he had plucked it in the past—but it was nowhere to be found.

He walked deeper into the woods at the base of grandfather Mountain.

A crowd of cedars lies ahead that may have plantings, he thought.

After falling to his knees on the ground before the big trunks, he searched carefully at their bases for even the smallest sprout. He paused for only a moment to drink water from his pouch and to rip a piece of dry deer meat from his belt. He would run out of food soon. He could hunt for more, but that too would take time.

He began the search again, crawling from tree to tree, investigating the green sprouts between the above-ground roots. At last he came to a thin tree that he was tempted to pass by. But a large clump of the herb emerged from its base with apparent abandon.

He pulled all of it up out of the earth and said, "Thank you, medicine, for your life and for the life you will save." After cramming the leaves and roots into his bag, he ran swiftly through the woods toward the sound of the whip-poor-will.

Back in camp, the child's mother, Nannuht, could barely sit. Her body ached from lack of sleep. She used all of her energy to remain upright. For days, she had stayed awake, watching and caring for her daughter. The small girl had been sick for many days. Her head grew hot and then cold every night. Her body shook. Her mother barely managed to make her sip small amounts of water. Nannuht's face looked desperate, like a fox caught in a trap, a fox that had gnawed its leg to a stub only to realize that the other leg was trapped too, with no way to free it. Nannuht was trapped by what she saw as an inevitable grief.

The time is close, she thought, when Cistoo won't need me to take care of her anymore. Her daughter's death might bring temporary relief to her. The relief might last long enough for her to nod off for a few seconds. But whatever relief she might experience would not last long. She would awaken fully and fitfully to another resurfacing blow of grief. Grief would stick by her, whispering the news in her ear: She's lost. She's never coming back.

Cistoo had woken up screaming in the night. "The wolf, the wolf," she yelled. "Stop, chasing me, stop!" This was the same dream Cistoo had often told her mother. The wolf stalked her, appearing around every tree, even as she ran.

Cistoo moaned. It was morning. Her body drenched in sweat, Nannuht removed the deerskins and covered her daughter with dry oak leaves to absorb the moisture. The leaves would cool and soothe the child.

Letodah must come back soon. Nannuht thought. He must.

She placed four rocks on the ground each pointing to a separate spirit of the four directions. She lit sage and smudged her daughter's head with the ashes.

"See me, with your mind's eye, returning to camp with the medicine," Letodah had said when he told her to follow these practices while he was gone. In that way he could be present to guide her through the worst of the illness.

Letodah felt the wind to his back. His black hair flew behind him as he ran. His flat features flattened even more from the air's pressure. Spirit of the wind, push me along, he prayed. Push me fast. Make me arrive in time. His long legs had grown muscular from the distances he ran each morning to stay strong for his work.

To Letodah, death was not the opposite of life. Death was the view from another plane. Death and life were not separate. Both contained seeds of one another. Each revealed what the other could not.

He ran because it was his work and because he had a vision. It was his life.

He could see the village ahead: the circle of huts with smoke rising from their centers. The braves had constructed a vertical log fence around the perimeter to add an extra measure of safety to the inhabitants. Even though big trees appeared ahead of him, he ran around them easily, as if they had stepped aside to accommodate him. Barely slowing down, he ran through streams and remained upright.

He did not hear. The only sound he heard was the sound in his mind, the last sound he had heard before going on the healing journey. He heard the sound of the girl's screams and moans. He saw her mother's pleading eyes.

As he drew closer to the village, the night fires were dying out. It was shortly before dawn. From the mountainside, he could see the glowing embers of the inner circle fire and knew he was close to home.

I know I will find the girl alive, but just barely, his intuition told him.

Letodah collapsed, exhausted, next to the pallet where Cistoo lay. Her wet hair from the broken fever was matted to her head. Her mother sat next to her, and she was sleeping too, sitting up. Nannuht startled awake when Letodah arrived. The slight rush of wind and leaves as he kneeled had frightened her.

Immediately, he began to prepare the plant over the fire in a small bowl that Nannuht provided for him. The girl lay hot and flush, her body limp and unmoving; she breathed shallowly and very slowly.

The water mixed with the plant brewed for a while until some special time of Letodah's knowing. Then it was ready. "The potion must cool a little so Cistoo's lips will not be burned," Letodah said as his large hand carefully lifted the girl's head from the folded blanket. "I want her to swallow it without choking."

She could take only small sips at a time. This had been the problem for days. Her frame was no more than skin and bony protrusions.

Letodah could see Nannuht's frustration as she watched him force her daughter to down the drink. This must seem useless to Nannuht, Letodah thought. He saw Nannuht's eyes shut. Apparently, she had just enough strength left in her to observe Cistoo take the medicine. She hung on a while longer before sleep overtook her. Letodah knew that she had been nursing her child for days with little thought of herself. Let her sleep, Letodah thought. For now, there is nothing more she can do.

After Letodah forced Cistoo to swallow the whole potion, he lay down next to her to go on a spirit journey. He would enter the underworld, where the spirits could carry away this sickness to a distant spot. He took the sickness unto himself as if it were a parcel on his sash. I will find a place for it in the Underworld far away from Cistoo, where it can harm no one.

As a shaman, he knew this was the place where he faced the biggest danger. Because he had taken the sickness unto himself, it could stick to him and overtake him. He must find a good container for it.

He was not afraid of death. Death showed him how to live. He was always aware of it. They were old friends.

Letodah roamed in the underworld with his sparrow guide before locating a spot to leave the sickness. The spot where he laid it generated great power and compassion. A wide gap in a rock cracked open to receive the disease and immediately shut back up. The strength of this place was so big that the sickness would be enfolded by it and could hurt no one.

He began the long journey back to the opening where he had tumbled in a dreamlike state. He rose again to the world above. Cistoo lay silent, breathing cool, regular breaths.

Now I can rest. The thought allowed the shaman to give in to the sudden onslaught of fatigue. He slept all night.

"I'm hungry, Mama." The little girl's voice was weak and thin.

The words woke Letodah. He felt pure joy as he rolled over to check on the child. He looked forward to watching her mother wake up to find her child so improved. He wanted to share this great bliss and gratitude with her. Yet, when Letodah looked over at Nannuht, he was surprised to see her sitting in the same slumped position she had assumed the previous night. He knew she was exhausted, as he was, from all the care that she had given her only child. He leaned forward and nudged her gently on the arm. It was a soft nudge, yet her position was unsteady. She fell over onto the ground.

When Letodah came closer to help her up, he grabbed her arm. "Wake up, Nannuht. Cistoo is asking for food." Then he saw a vision he had encountered many times with Indians who were gravely ill. His heart sank deep into his chest. While Nannuht's body stayed in the same spot, an identical, transparent version of her lifted up, moving slowly toward galun Lati, the sky vault.

Letodah still held onto her arm. Her mouth did not move, but she spoke words to him, thanking him, a message from her spirit to his. Wadan, Wadan, Wadan. She imparted the essence of great gratitude to him for saving her daughter. She also imparted a great sense of peace. If she died and her daughter lived, then so be it.

If the choice had been given to Nannuhtto make, Letodah thought, this is the end she would have chosen. Maybe the choice was offered to her. Maybe she took the worst of the illness into her own body in order to save her daughter.

When her spirit hand reached out to Letodah, he took it. Their two, translucent spirits lifted into the galun Lati. Looking briefly at the ground beneath where they had sat a moment earlier, Letodah could see their physical selves still seated in the same positions. Letodah saw himself, eyes shut, sitting cross-legged next to Cistoo. His limbs appeared long and awkward to him. Nannuht's limp, spent body slumped over onto the ground next to the fire.

You don't have to go the whole journey with me, Letodah. Just far enough so that you will know that I am all right, and you can share the news with Euchella and Cistoo. They must know that I would stay with them if I could. The words were transmitted telepathically and instantly without a need for language.

Letodah held her hand as they rose toward the sky. A cloud parted in two, separated by the brightest, whitest light Letodah had ever seen. As bright as the light was, he didn't need to look away. In a second, they entered the light. Immediately Letodah felt the overpowering presence of love and peace. Before, when escorting recently dead people, this was as far as he had come. He had never moved beyond the light.

It is as if, within this pure light, love and peace are concentrated into a single being.

Letodah knew that later, when he returned to the earth plane, he would call this being "the great Spirit." The great Spirit was all he had imagined it to be in his lifetime, but indescribably more. Yet he had the sense that this presence was neither male nor female, which surprised him. I always thought the Great Spirit would be a fierce male warrior, protecting and feeding all the Indian tribes forever. Now, in this ethereal space, Letodah had no sense of masculinity or femininity emanating from this presence, only goodness, love, and graciousness. Letodah felt his heart opening. Suddenly he realized that Nannuht was to review her life from birth to parting.

A panoramic view of each important event in her life passed before Nannuht's eyes. Everything she had ever done, good and bad, passed before her. She conveyed this odd experience to Letodah through her mind. I feel the same way I felt when these events first happened. I can feel the way everyone else felt too, because of what I had done to them. If I hurt someone, I feel their hurt. If I was kind to someone, I can feel their warmth coming back to me.

The miracle was that Letodah saw no shame on her face. From her telepathy to him, he learned that she could not condemn herself. even when Nannuht experienced the great pain she had caused another, there was no reason for remorse. The great Spirit permeated her whole being, forgiving her. Letodah had never witnessed such joy. He knew that now Nannuht loved herself as much as the great Spirit loved her. She forgave herself of all wrongdoing.

Next the sky and its profound white light opened further. The time had come for Nannuht to move on. Letodah saw the arms of her welcoming ancestors beckon her forward toward the all-consuming light. He knew that he must return to the earth plane. No sooner had the words earth plane entered his thoughts than he found himself plummeting back into his physical body. He reentered his body with a thud.

Gone for a mere instant, he had just heard Cistoo say, "I'm hungry." She rubbed her eyes and tried to sit up.

The whole village would awaken soon. Before preparing the first meal of the day, the women would come out of their huts to stoke the fires. Ten men had gone into the woods for five days to hunt for deer and rabbits. They would return soon with the fresh meat. The women's work would be great until all of the fur stripping and meat preparation was complete. A portion of the meat would be hung, slowly smoked, and dried to last through the winter months, still a full season away.

Cistoo's father, euchella, rode home from the hunt with his band of brothers. Before his departure, his little daughter had been struck with the high fever and severe chills.

Surely an evil spirit has captured her, he had thought. Just how gravely ill she had become since his departure, he had yet to learn.

He and his brothers had reason to be pleased with the hunt. They had killed six deer with their arrows and a few dozen rabbits. This would feed the tribe for a few weeks. Euchella had trapped one of the deer on the side of a small cliff before shooting him with his arrow.

Proudly he spoke to the gods about this gift. "I thank the deer who gave its life so that my family can eat." If Euchella were ungrateful, the deer's unappreciated spirit could revisit his relatives with a bone ailment.

Euchella had honored Nannuht in bringing home this kill. She would be able to sew a beautiful buckskin dress for herself. It would be her honor, because her husband had brought home the kill. The brothers would bring the fresh meat into camp and strip the hides for tanning.

As they neared the village, Euchella looked forward to sharing this news with his wife. I hope that my little daughter is well so that Nannuht can listen to my hunting story without interruption.

Euchella thought of his family with pride. Together he and Nannuht made a striking couple. They both had exceptionally handsome features. Euchella had a confidence about him that was magnetic. Nannuht was a good friend to many women in the village. She was the person they went to when they needed advice.

As the band grew close to camp, Euchella spied the dark smoke rising from the early morning fires. The women, Anigeyv, were awake, preparing the morning meal. Probably catfish, he thought. My favorite. A small crowd gathered around the opening of Euchella's hut. I hope nothing has happened to Cistoo. She has the spirit of a warrior, even when her sick body tries to break her.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Shaman's DAUGHTER by Nicki Royall Peet. Copyright © 2014 Nicki Royall Peet. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments, ix,
The Cherokee Creation Story: Water and Fire, xi,
Part 1: Cistoo's Journey,
Chapter 1 The Shaman, 3,
Chapter 2 Cistoo Joins the Boys, 22,
Chapter 3 Celebrations, 34,
Chapter 4 The Education, 44,
Chapter 5 Retreat, 61,
Chapter 6 The New arrival, 83,
Part 2: Lokie's Story,
Chapter 7 The Musician, 101,
Chapter 8 Lokie's Day in Court, 118,
Chapter 9 Worth evener, 130,
Chapter 10 The Cherokee Body Movers, 143,
Chapter 11 The reporter, 154,
Chapter 12 The Storyteller, 173,
Chapter 13 Cistoo's Trip Back Down the river, 181,
Epilogue, 191,