When the tree flowered

by John G. Neihardt

“Many other women were out there getting turnips for their husbands, and they were all happy and joking together as they dug. One of these was a wise and good old woman, and the great head chief was her son. So she came over to the older sister and said, ‘Daughter, you are already big in the belly, and I see it will not be long until I shall have a grandchild. So I wish you would be very careful, and do not press the stick against your belly when you are digging, for that might hurt the baby.’ And the older sister said, ‘I will be careful, Mother.’ And she was.

“But it was much harder to dig the turnips if she did not lean against the stick, for then she had to do it all with her arms. She had to chop with the stick, and it was not easy to make the sharp end go deep enough. So she was chopping harder and harder, harder and harder, harder and—”

The tale stopped with a shock of surprise. Ah-h-h-h! Open-mouthed, wide-eyed, No Water and Moves Walking stared appalled upon an approaching catastrophe.

“Chop—chop—chop,” the teller resumed slowly, wielding an imaginary turnip stick. “Chop—chop—chop—chop! It was too hard that time, and all at once the blue ground broke wide open right under the older sister, and she fell head-first through the hole. The younger sister screamed and came running, and all the other women screamed and came running; but they could not do anything at all. So they all crowded around the hole in the sky prairie and looked and looked. They saw the older sister tumbling over and over, over and over, getting smaller and smaller, smaller and smaller as she fell. And then they saw nothing at all.

“It was a long way down to the earth, and I cannot say how many sleeps the older sister fell. But afterwhile she got here, and when she struck the ground she broke wide open, pop!—just like a seed-pod—and a baby boy rolled out on some thick, soft bunch grass that was growing there. I think some buffalo manure made the grass soft and thick in that place, so the baby boy did not get hurt at all.”

“That will be me!” exclaimed No Water, with an air of gloating triumph. “No, it will be me!” challenged Moves Walking, the off-eye glaring, although the rivals were grinning at each other. Clearly, the explosive interruption at this point in the story was a traditional obligation of the co-operative hearer.

Eagle Voice raised a conciliating forefinger and smiled benignly upon the two, like a kindly grandfather silencing over-eager children. “It was a good day,” he continued; “and so the baby was just lying there in the bunch of thick soft grass with his thumb in his mouth. And afterwhile there was a magpie who saw something and came to look. This was an old-woman magpie, and she walked around and around the baby, with her head on one side and then on the other, for I think she had never seen anything like this before.”

[With cocked heads, the three collaborators curiously examined the baby in the grass for a few moments of silence.] “But a magpie knows everything, and when this one had looked for a while, she said to herself, ‘This is a baby of the two-legged people without wings. It has four legs, but it is not a four-legged because it has no fur, and all four-leggeds have fur.’ Then she said to the baby, ‘You are a fine big baby, and you are a boy too, aren’t you?’ And the baby said, ‘Goo-oo,’ like that. And the magpie said, ‘But how are you going to live, for I see your mother lying dead over there?’ Then the baby took his thumb out of his mouth and began to cry.

“This made the old-woman magpie feel very sad, and she said, ‘Somebody must come and take care of this baby that has no mother. I cannot, because I have to fly around and talk so much that I could never take care of him. And if I did not fly around, telling people everything, how would they ever know anything?’

“So she flew away; and as she flew around all over the prairie, she kept crying out to the four-leggeds and the wings of the air and those that crawl on their bellies in the grass, and she said, ‘Come quick! Come quick! There is a two-legged baby without a mother! Come quick and help! Come quick and help! There is a baby without a mother!’