Shell Shaker

Yanàbi Town, Eastern District of the Choctaws

September 22, 1738

Autumnal Equinox

This first chapter is written in first-person, narrated by “Shakbatina, a Shell Shaker” and “an Inholahta woman, born into the tradition of [their] grandmother, the first Shell Shaker of our people,” the “peacemakers for the Choctaws” (loc 74). According to tradition, before the Spanish explorers arrived in the 16th century, there were no wars, hunger, or disease. Men played stickball, and women “tended their children and drank from gourds filled with sweet peach juice. Life was a series of games and dances” (loc 82). One night, they receive word that “a very different kind of Osano, bloodsucker” has “arrived on our shores with weapons of fire” (loc 82). This Osano is the conquistador Hispano de Soto. The village leader, Tuscalusa or Black Warrior, prepares to fight and his woman, Grandmother, dances a ritual dance, wearing “the empty shells of turtles around each ankle” (loc 94). Grandmother is also the name the Choctaw use for Earth itself.

Grandmother dances for four days without stopping, and her prayers are observed with fascination by Miko Luak, “fire’s spirit,” who carried her prayers to Itilauichi, “the Autumnal Equinox,” who, impressed by her sacrifice and dedication, gives her a prayer to sing whenever she needs his help: “Itilauichi, Autumnal Equinox, on your day when I sing this song you will make things even” (loc 94). After this, the rest of the community prepares for war. Tuscalusa gives Grandmother “a tiny black stone” that “represented his spirit” (loc 106), and Grandmother swallows it. She gives him “a feathered shawl with locks of her hair woven through it,” and, as long as he wears it, “they [will] never be parted” (loc 106).

Tuscalusa and his men allow themselves to be captured to trap de Soto, and when de Soto and his men meet with the Mabilians, Tuscalusa’s “clever cousins” join forces and attack. However, de Soto’s forces overwhelm them, and they are killed. The “Hispanos” then “fell into a barbaric blood lust and cut off the heads and hands of the stickball players,” which they would then display “wherever they went as souvenirs of their courage” (loc 116). Grandmother immediately knows that something has gone wrong, and with Itilauichi’s help, she and the other women transform into birds and escape de Soto, flying to a new homeland where they “built […] seven original Choctaw towns” including Shakbatina’s home, Yanàbi Town. There, Grandmother and the other women became peacemakers, Shell Shakers, skilled in “the art of negotiation” (loc 127) and known as Inholahta.

Shakbatina is also a Shell Shaker and is preparing to offer herself as a sacrifice to the Red Fox village to prevent war between the communities. Her daughter, Anoleta, was visiting the Red Fox village of the Chickasaws, where another woman assaulted her, accusing her “of stealing the affections of her husband” (loc 148). However, Anoleta and this other woman had long known they were married to the same man, as it is “not unusual for warriors to marry women from different towns as long as they can provide meat for both families” (loc 148). Their husband, Red Shoes, was a “renegade warrior” and “had grown into a giant Osano in the tradition of Hispano de Soto” (loc 272), often spying on the communities for the Inkilish okla. The day after the assault, the Red Fox woman is found murdered in her home, and the community blames Anoleta.

Shakbatina offers to be executed in her place, out of a desire to preserve peace and rescue her daughter. Shakbatina knows that the Red Fox people have been manipulated by the Inkilish okla, who are trying to provoke a war to claim the lands of both the Choctaws and the Chickasaws. Furthermore, Shakbatina is still dealing with the aftereffects of a recent illness, which Shakbatina thinks of as “the Inkilish okla disease” (loc 172). Shakbatina prepares for her death by dressing herself in white, the color of peace, but painting her face red, the color of battle. Indeed, war and fighting have attracted Shakbatina since she was a child. Her appearance tells her “people […] that we must fight to survive” (loc 339).

Right before she is executed, Shakbatina sings a song that calls on Itilauichi as her ancestors once did. As Shakbatina dies, executed by one of the relatives of the dead Red Fox victim, she has visions of her daughters grieving and “the Seven Grandmothers dancing in the distance” before “Big Mother porcupine” greets her, takes her by the hand, and leads her away (loc 362).