5. Estelusti

Hechin said,

—No, you wouldn’t call her my sister. Niece to my brother’s wife. Except you wouldn’t call him my brother. You people have no sense of what family really is (Miller, 2003).

Hechin talked in the cross manner she had, not looking up from the leggings she was sewing. Moses untangled thread for her, not that she was grateful.

—She’s dark, like me.

—Her father was an Estelusti like you, but her father doesn’t matter. Her mother is a Wind clan woman. Chechoter has married beneath her with that Talasi vagabond.

—Because her mother was Wind clan, she is a Seminole and not Estelusti?

Hechin thrust the leggings aside and took a bite of corn cake.

—Your mother had good judgment. It was because of her good judgment that I knew Levi was a good man to marry. She was a good woman. I can’t say that I like Chechoter all that much. They have strange customs on that side. They worship some old Estelusti spirit. Abraham does, too. They pray with their faces on the ground.

—I’ve seen Abraham do that. We don’t, though.

—No, you have your forest spirit ways. They aren’t bad. But my sons won’t be like that, Mosee. They are Tiger clan men.

This wasn’t what Moses wanted to talk about.

—My father says that we must be one people—Free People—but too many of the miccos think they will get free of the hutkes if they go west. If the hutkes come for me, Hechin, they will come for Addo and Tunde also. They will come for Chechoter. It won’t matter to them who you are.

—Well, what can I do about that? I’m here, not in the west. Your father takes my advice, sometimes, but the miccos won’t. They have their own women talking to them.

—There must be a way to show them, though.

She looked sharply at him.