Free Night of the Full Moon by Gloria Whelan Page A

has had a baby. It is a boy. He has a little red mark on the back of his neck just like my brother Namah had. Papa says Namah’s soul has returned to us from
wojitchok,
the spirit land.”
    “We are going to have a baby, too,” I told her. “Mama says it probably will be born in September. Papa says he’ll make me a little room all for myself in the loft of our cabin so the baby’s crying won’t keep me awake at night.”
    Just then Mama came out to welcome Fawn. “How pretty you are,” she said to her. “You look like a princess. I’m going to get my sketchbook and draw your picture.” I hoped Fawn would let me try on her clothes someday. Then maybe Mama would draw a picture of me looking like a princess, too.

2
    M OST DAYS Fawn worked in the cornfields or helped her mother sew and weave baskets. But whenever she could, she slipped away from the Indian camp to visit me. We went swimming in our pond, where the little minnows nibbled at our toes. We picked wild strawberries in June and wild raspberries in July. When Mama taught me my lessons, she taught Fawn too. Once Fawn brought a little deerskin pouch of colored beads and showed us how to embroider with them.
    Fawn often came to see me, but I wasn’tallowed to visit her. The Indian camp was five miles away. Papa said it was too far for me to go by myself. It wasn’t until the end of July, when two strangers knocked on our door, that I finally got to visit the camp.
    The strangers said they were agents from the government. Papa invited them into our cabin. Mama gave them a drink of rhubarb juice. In the woods you were always hospitable to visitors. When there aren’t many houses, you have to stretch friendship hard to make it go around.
    One agent had hay-colored hair and a hat that was too big for him. He was shy about taking the rhubarb juice. He kept looking around to see if we were watching him drink it, which made us watch. The other agent had black eyes and black whiskers and didn’t seem all that friendly. He drank his mug down all in one gulp. “Are there many Potawatomi Indians around here?” he wanted to know.
    “Why do you ask?” Papa said.
    “A lot of people think the Indians wouldbe better off away from the white men’s settlements. There’s wickedness goes on in towns that isn’t good for the Indians to see. Better to have them far from all that. There’s talk of sending them west across the Mississippi. They can have their own territory there. Someday there may even be an Indian state.”

    Papa said, “If you’re talking of sending them someplace where men are always good and never sinful, I’m afraid you will have to wait for Heaven. When they talk of sending the Indians away, I think it is not the Indians’ welfare that people have in mind. It is the taking of the Indians’ land.”
    “What if the Indians don’t wish to leave?” Mama asked. Her voice was angry.
    The agent shrugged. “Topnebi has agreed to having his people sent west. Proper treaties have been signed by him giving Potawatomi land over to the government. After all, the Indians get paid for their land.”
    Papa said nothing, but I could see he was holding his tongue with difficulty. Once a year the Indians came to Saginaw from all over Michigan, hundreds and hundreds of them. They came to get their yearly payment. The government paid them because the Indians had sold land to the government.Papa would shake his head and say, “It is hard to see a people who once could ride for days and still be on their land now having to line up to get a few dollars from the government.”
    The agent caught the look on Papa’s face. He said, “I must tell you the government means to enforce the treaties.” When Papa didn’t say anything, the agent stood up. “Well, we thank you for your hospitality. We were just passing through, but we may be back this way again.”
    I knew Papa was troubled, for as soon as the agents left he said, “I’m going to the Indian camp and