Free Sacred Ground by Barbara Wood Page A

babies, another pair of twin girls.
    As the children grew and soon faced adulthood, Marimi started to worry about taboos and family ties. The rules weren’t hers but had been decreed by the gods at the beginning of time: that brother should not marry sister, nor first cousin on mother’s side marry first cousin on mother’s side. If these rules were broken, a tribe could sicken and die. But Marimi knew that first cousin on mother’s side could marry first cousin on father’s side, so what the family needed was new blood. She went into the cave for counsel and the raven told her to find a husband in a neighboring tribe and bring him back.
    Taking her spear and a basket of acorns, Marimi traveled eastward to a village she had passed through seasons ago. There she offered shell-beads, which were highly valued, and promised the new husband plentiful acorns and fishing. But he must accept Topaa ways, she said, and become one of them. His family agreed that this was a good thing, to have ties with a coastal tribe, who were rich in otter skins and whale meat. The chosen husband was Deer Clan, People Who Live On Trembling Ground, “dwellers in the marsh.” Now he joined “people who eat acorns.”
    When Marimi’s first daughters entered womanhood, they married Payat and Wanchem. One of the hunter’s daughters also married Payat, because Marimi had made him chief of their small tribe, and the chief could have more than one wife. The second hunter’s daughter found a husband in a traveler from the east, who had come in search of otter skins and had decided to stay. Marimi’s husband from the Deer Clan gave her three sons and four daughters, who in time married and increased the tribe.
    As the seasons came and went, Marimi taught her daughters and granddaughters how to weave baskets, how to chant and sing so that the basket was given life and therefore a spirit. She taught the young ones the rules and taboos of the Topaa: that when grasshoppers and crickets were scarce, they were not to be eaten; at the acorn harvest, the acorns were not to be harvested to depletion but some were to be left to ensure a bountiful harvest next time; a husband did not sleep with his wife during the five days of her moon; the hunter bringing back meat did not eat of it, but ate of another hunter’s meat. Because without rules and without knowing the taboos, she said, a person didn’t know how to conduct his or her life. The Topaa knew from nature that there were rules: cat never mated with dog, deer did not eat flesh, the owl hunted only at night. Just as animals lived by rules, so must the Topaa.
    One autumn a blight struck the oak trees and the acorns dropped to the ground like ash and small game vanished from the land, so that not even a squirrel could be roasted on the fire. The family began to starve and Marimi remembered how she had once prayed to the moon for help. She prayed again now, respectfully, promising gratitude in return. And a miracle occurred: the next night fish washed up on shore living and flopping, and Marimi had everyone run with baskets up and down the beach, collecting the living fish, which when dried provided enough food until the spring, when berries and seeds appeared in plenty. In gratitude, the next time the fish ran ashore, Marimi had her children throw a certain number back, telling them that what we take from the gods, we give back to the gods.
    Marimi taught her family the importance of telling stories, how the stories must be handed down so that the clan would know its history and the ancestors would be remembered. And so every night at the campfire, she told them how the world was created, how the Topaa were created, she told them stories of the gods, and the fables that taught lessons. She told them how they must pray respectfully to Father Sun and Mother Moon, that the Topaa were the children of the gods and that they needed no shaman to speak on their behalf. Like all parents, the sun and the moon liked