Choctaw · the piney woods and creek of the Choctaw (Chahta) homeland
The heroes of this story.
Picks her throwing sticks: this one for far, this one for fast, this one for FUN. Learns to look before she steps and to tap before she talks. Mischief with a curriculum.
Taps her hello on the pine; her taps are her talking. Taps faster — TAP-tap-TAP! — to warn LOOK OUT; taps slow and careful to teach. Never words, never hands.
Quiet the way thunder is quiet before it speaks. "Eske ilay" — mother dead — teaches the careful foot; teaches the herb game.
Bohpoli the little trickster throws her far stick and tumbles into the grasshopper meadow — nearly onto a mother grasshopper. Grandmother's voice stops her: eske ilay. The careful foot saves the grasshopper, and the wild stick's mess turns out to be the fever-herb Grandmother needed. So Bohpoli learns the herb game: throw gently to mark the plant, name it, learn it, thank it. At dusk she taps Biskinik's slow rhythm back on the hollow log — she has learned to listen before she talks.
Free coloring pages from this book · how-to-draw the friends · watch the episode on YouTube.
