‘Do you think an Indian dropped it?’ Silky asks of the hawk’s feather she found on our evening walk. 
     She’s been reading about Indians lately and has come to fancy herself half Cherokee, partly because of her glossy black hair and partly because of her keen ability to follow a trail, be it of cricket or mouse. 
     ‘Maybe,’ I reply. 
     ‘Or maybe ...’ 
     And I tell her the story of Tianuanaha, the Great Spirit Hawk. Of how, years ago, he let fall a single feather on to a meadow path much like the one we were walking. A path that he knew a half-Cherokee girl with a wish walked every day. A wish of becoming a whole Cherokee girl and Princess of her Tribe. And of how Tianuanaha's feather would grant the girl's wish if only her father would sew it on to her dress and then give her a true Indian name. 
     Silky’s eyes were wide. 
     I picked up the feather and touched her left ear, then her right, then the tip of her nose. 
     ‘I name you, Nautakwa,’ I said. ‘Feather Princess.’ 
     Then I stitched the feather’s quill through the eyelets of a strap on Silky’s halter, where it hung bravely until we got home and affixed it in a manner befitting a legend ... and a full-blooded, Indian Princess.