The Beloved Captive

Men go out in the desert to find their puha–their power. Why can a woman not do the same? The girl wondered. She looked at her hands. Maybe this is a dream, she hoped. A medicine woman once told Wa Shana that if one could see their own hands in a dream, they could control their dream to learn many secrets. Wa Shana’s hands were cracked and bleeding, from days of scraping buffalo hides and tending the cooking fires. Her whole life was one of toil, drudgery and scolding from the older women of the village. The dizziness, this sense of being apart from her body, had started in mid-afternoon. Only a swallow or two remained in her goatskin bag; she needed to save it. Except for some pemmican and a small knife, she had no other provisions. What little status Wa Shana had in the tribe was gone. A woman’s power, her ‘puha’, came from being the center of a family—the power of drawing in a man, becoming the wife of a warrior, giving birth and raising children. Wa Shana no longer had any of that. She only had the reputation of humming strange songs to herself when she worked, which only intensified the tribe’s belief that she was possessed by an evil spirit. Amelia D. Smith 6002 Cayce Lane Columbia, TN 38401 931-626-2856 [email protected]