Murder or Gossip?

Sorry I've been so long in re-joining the blogging world.  I was an obsessed blogger in college and then gave it up.  But I'm back...and hopefully wiser than before.

I've been spending the bulk of my time outside of my 'real job' researching for a book I'm thinking about writing.  Its semi-historical so I've been combing through fascinating old stories and archives for information and found one bit of information that made me pause and ask myself - is murder or gossip the worst offense?

Silly question, right?  I mean, no contest.  But the Shawnee Indian tribe would tell you differently.

In the history of the Shawnee people I found a story about a woman who was so overcome with jealousy for another woman that she started a false rumor about her.  When she began to see the horrible effects her slander had brought about, she apologized, and asked for forgiveness.

"I will forgive you only if you can do this," the other woman said.  "Go now everywhere in the village and lay a feather outside each door.  A year from now, go through the village again and gather up all the feathers.  If you can bring back every single feather, I can forgive you for the lie you told about me."

The moral of the story is obviously that gossip, like feathers in the wind, can never be fully taken back.  In the Shawnee tradition madeeweh - false gossip - is considered a more serious crime than murder.  They believe that while murder kills the body once, gossip keeps killing a person's spirt for as long as others remember the words spoken.  Speaking gossip that killed someone's good name - it was considered a capital offense worthy of execution.

I'm a) now glad that I do not live in a Shawnee tribe, and b) ashamed of the times my words have killed another person's spirt.  I can't lie.  I've been careless with my words before.  Sometimes downright mean with them.  But this little piece of history really drove a sword through me. 

Which is what I hope to do in making the move to historical fiction.  We humans have made so many wonderful mistakes in history that are worth fleshing out.  There are so many instances to laugh at, feel ashamed over, or set our blood boiling.  I'm a total nerd to admit it, but researching all these little non-history-book-worthy events is teaching me so much more than I ever learned in a history class because I feel somehow connected to these people and their stories, and we all are really.  We live the consequences of the decisions made in the past (for good and bad). 

In French it's called mortmain or the 'dead hand' effect - which is the influence of the past in regards to controlling the present.  The hands that created history are dead, but the treaties they signed, the wars they fought, the lives they lived - all still control the world we live in.