But the crisis came when I returned one night, tired out from my fifteenth successive fruitless day’s hunting, and found my Whispering-leaves crying bitterly. Although I begged her to tell me what the trouble was she refused, but at last she broke down. “My dear mate,” she sobbed, “there is nothing to eat in this house, and there is no hope for anything, unless I sell that robe your mother made for you. All my pretty things are gone long ago, and all yours except that.”
I caught her to me and held her tight in my arms for a moment, then dashed out into the night straight to Rumbling-wings’ wigwam. “I am ready,” I said....
When I came to myself I was lying beneath the lightning-riven tree.
It did not take me long to find my place again in the modern world; but always to this day, when the clouds pile up and the thunder begins to mutter in the west, I think sadly of my lost Whispering-leaves and of my friend Rumbling-wings and his Thunder power.
M. R. Harrington
Tokulki of Tulsa
Tokulki was born in the Muskogee town of Tulsa, in the central part of what is now Alabama. Like all other Indian babies of that region he first saw the light in a brush shelter some distance back from his mother’s home; for were he to be born in the latter it was thought misfortune might fall upon all its occupants. His name belonged to the Wind clan of Tulsa, and means two persons running. When the first bearer of the name was born, his father was absent on a war expedition during which he frightened two of his enemies who were on scout duty, so thoroughly that they ran off in haste, leaving their weapons in his hands. It was in commemoration of this event that the new-born babe received his name.
Tokulki’s mother was waited upon during her period of seclusion by her own mother and another old woman of the clan, reputed most skillful in midwifery. Although it was late in the autumn this old woman took the infant immediately to the bank of the river and plunged him into it, after which he was strapped securely into a cradle, made of canes, by means of bark cords about the shoulders and thighs. Here Tokulki spent the next few months of his life, sometimes carried on his mother’s back, sometimes propped up against the wall of the house while his mother was engaged in her household duties. But whenever he was so placed, the cradle was allowed to rest upon a panther skin, for his father and his uncles had all been famous warriors and it was expected that he would follow in their footsteps. Therefore he must have that about him which would communicate a warlike essence and make him fierce and bold.