“We used to go to the creek and hunt two kinds of rabbits. The little one, the cottontail, and out on the prairie the big one, the jackrabbit. We’d kill it, cook it, and have a big feast. I hunted, go someplace to find something to eat, anything to fill the pouch. We have forgotten how buffalo meat tasted. I once saw some buffalo that got away from the Black Hills herd, from Custer State Park. They advertised in the papers that anybody who saw a buffalo someplace should report to the agency. There was a reward out. Somebody got a hundred-dollar reward. Not me. I wouldn’t snitch on the buffalo. They are relations.
“My father and grandfather had learned the old way. They could still use the bow. They could make a fire with flint and tinder. They still had all the survival skills. If the dogs start to bark, or even if they are too silent, what does it mean? You had to be trained. You had to exercise, to be able to run a long distance. Go a long time without food or water. But not too long, for then you get weak. If you don’t learn those things, you gamble with your life. If you don’t learn the signs on the ground, or the sounds in the air, or some tiny movement someplace, you could have an arrow or a bullet in your gut. And you had to learn the herbs, the hunting medicine, so you wouldn’t be easy to target at.
“Well that’s the kind of education my father and grandfather got, but not me. When I was a kid most everybody had horses. We learned to ride almost before we could walk. Now there aren’t enough horses left to go around. I’m over eighty, but I still ride, I still drag wood behind my horse. You’ve got to breathe into a horse’s nostril, let him smell under your armpit to make him know you. You got to know how to gentle a horse, how to break him nicely without spooking him, without force. In the old days you depended on your pony.
“Everybody was afraid of school. In my grandparents’ days they took the kids all the way to Carlisle, Pennsylvania. They took them by horse and buggy to the railroad station, some fifty miles away, and there put them on the train. Their parents and relatives went along by wagon, or on horseback, to the station. Then they watched the train disappear with their children. The little boys and girls in the carriages wept, and their families, left behind along the tracks, wept too. You can imagine the shock it must have been for those kids, who had come from tipis and tiny log cabins out on the prairie, to find themselves on that rattling, smoking, whistling train, being carried away at a terrifying speed. And the shock at the many stops along the way, in the ant-heap cities, with a thousand faces of curious wasichus looking at them, gaping at those ‘cute little savages.’ My uncle Jake Left Hand Bull had to stay at Carlisle for seven years without being allowed to go home or see his folks, not even on Christmas. They cut his hair real short, just like stubble. He had to wear a dark, heavy uniform with a stiff collar, like being a soldier in the army, and heavy shoes going up over his ankles. They hurt so that he could hardly walk. The kids were beaten for every little thing. They weren’t told to become doctors, or lawyers, or teachers, but to be carpenters, or shoe repair men.
“I had trouble in school. I didn’t speak a word of English, and the teacher didn’t speak a word of Sioux, so how could we learn? We were not allowed to speak Indian, or pray Indian, or sing Indian. They treat us bad, hit us if we speak our language. I didn’t care for their kind of food, either. Also they went only to the fourth grade, so I was in fourth grade for a few years. There were white kids and mixbloods and they harass me all the time. So I fight back. Then they say, ‘That Indian boy’s always fighting.’ It was never the white boy’s fault. Then the school superintendent said, ‘Crow Dog’s always fighting. So we better send him away as far as we can.’ So they sent me to Pierre, a hundred miles from home.
“My father taught me everything I need to know. He didn’t talk much. He just did it and made a motion—you saw me doing this, now you try it. He taught me how to use white man’s tools, saws, drills, crowbars. I worked for a while for the railroad, laying track. From 1934 to 1950 I worked in Nebraska harvesting grain, digging spuds, and picking beets. I made two or three dollars a day. They call it migrant labor now. I was camping near Saint Francis doing WPA work, but the priests heard me having an Indian ceremony, heard the drumming and singing, and chased me away. On our allotment there was nothing. First we lived in a tent. I built my own house with my own hands. Without money. Nobody helped. I built it from wooden crates, logs, packing paper, old car windows, pieces of corrugated sheet iron. I found a big iron stove that a white man had thrown away, found an old door from a wrecked place, but it was a cozy home. I took care of my own.
“I have white friends. They are good people. Man to man I can relate, but white Americans as a whole, that’s different. The white man made me a surplus Indian. I couldn’t digest the white man’s ways. They made me sick. I am a truant from school, a truant from life. I am a truant from the white man’s life into the spiritual life. They cut me in half—a white man’s half and an Indian half. Now, when I’m old, I try to put the halves together, because, though I’m a full-blood, I have to live in the white man’s world. Under that system I need a doctor, a lawyer, a policeman, a judge, a psychiatrist, a pill, and lots of money. We didn’t need such things when I was a kid. To tell the truth, now I need only my pipe. To hell with all the other stuff!
“The buffalo’s gone. He was something! Now we have the holsteins, the Angus. Us buffalo people can’t get used to the holstein. That’s a surplus buffalo. Babies used to go to sleep on milk from the two natural milk bottles of their mother. Now it’s pasteurized stuff from the holstein. But even the holstein milk is gone. Now it’s powder, and formula. Old-time fellows used to go to sleep on cougar milk, on white lightning, the hard stuff. Slept like babies. Now we have insomnia. It used to be hump meat, raw buffalo liver, kidney. Now it’s milk, cheese, powdered eggs, bread like cotton wool. It made me lose all my teeth. Maybe that was the plan: Make Mister Indian lose his teeth so that he can savor that soft white man’s chesli [shit].
“Why did the white man come here? Why did Custer steal the sacred Black Hills from us? White men are crazy about gold. They have gold-rimmed glasses, gold watches, gold teeth. They were always rooting around, tearing everything apart, digging, digging, digging. They tore up the whole Black Hills to find gold, silver, and precious stones. They still work the huge gold mine, the Homestake mine, up there. Now they’re after gas, coal, oil, and uranium. You can see the big trucks with the nuclear stuff coming through here from the Black Hills. We got to civilize the white man because he has gone crazy.
“They call us bloody savages, but when they have a war, suddenly we’re good Indians. ‘Here, take a gun, fight for your country!’ So, okay, our young boys went over there to Vietnam, went to war, and some of them died there. But for whose country? We were fighting the last war against aborigines. That was like Crow and Rhee scouting for Custer. The white man has eyes, but he does not see. He has ears, but he does not hear. The clock of the universe, the spirit clock, has already struck twelve. It is time to set this clock right, time to stop and think. Let my voice be heard. Stop making weapons! Make relatives! Make a worldwide alowanpi, the relation-making ceremony. If you don’t watch out, a time will come when the bullets won’t work, the bomb won’t work, the spaceships will fall into the ocean. The generals, the senators, the president himself won’t know what to do. They’ll end up eating snakes, nothing but snakes.
“The Great Spirit of the wasichu gave the white folks the Bible and the dictionary, because they always forget. The Ten Commandments—don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t covet—they always forget. They have to look up that don’t kill, don’t rob, don’t lie all the time. We don’t have to be reminded, so we don’t need a book to tell us.
“I have no education, but the spirits talk to me. I listen, and I learn about relationship, I learn about spirits. Over the hills there, one time, there were two antelopes, a buck and a female. Someone says, ‘Go over there and shoot them and bring the meat.’ But nobody could find them or shoot them. They were spirit antelopes. So t
hey call that place Antelope Creek. You hear the noise sometimes, something like a hoofbeat. It couldn’t be a bear, it couldn’t be a coyote. You hear them, but you can never see them. Hooves, hooves, something strange. People hear it and think there must be some antelopes there. No, nothing. Just something spiritual with a hoof. I myself encountered it. One morning I looked for some horses. I went up that hill about half a mile. I went down to the creek. The horses were there. They were snorting and stamping with their ears pointing ahead, looking at something, smelling something, but there was nothing. Just air. Then suddenly I saw them, something like a ghost, you could kind of see through them. That was the first time that antelope buck and his female came back. They just sort of dissolved into air. I saw it, many years ago. The wasichu can’t handle a thing like that.
“When I was young, Indian ceremonies, even a sweat lodge, were forbidden. They called it an Indian offenses act. So you talked and listened to the yuwipi spirits at night, in the darkness. By day you put up a good front, toting your Bible around, crossing yourself—that was a shield behind which a medicine man could hide. And we also kept our medicine bundles hidden where the missionaries couldn’t see them.
“White people depict us in their books and movies as stony-faced folks with the corners of our mouths turned down, always looking grim. But we are not like that. Among ourselves we joke and laugh. With all that suffering and poverty our people can survive only by laughing at misfortune. That’s why we have the sacred clown, heyoka, the hot-cold, forward-backward, upside-down contrary. He makes us laugh through our tears. And we have Iktomi, the spider man. He’s a trickster, a no-good, but also an inventor, a creator.
“The man and woman thing, it’s sacred. It’s good. The missionaries always say, ‘Don’t do that with a woman or the devil will get you.’ I tell them, ‘You guys invented the devil, you keep him. It has nothing to do with us.’ A man and a woman have to experience everything. The man is a human compass, the needle leads him to the woman. Those pious wasichus, that’s like a short in a radio. A man has to connect to understand women. You have to go to bed early to make a baby. At Crow Dog’s Paradise they ought to breed, to make more full-bloods. There aren’t enough. Well, Leonard and I, we have done our part. The Crow Dogs always had the elk medicine, the love herb.”
Winyan kin akoka, You women from other tribes,
econpi yo! keep away from me.
Cicinpi sni yelo I don’t want you!
Sicangu winyan ecena wacin ye! I want a Rosebud woman!
Sicangu winyan, Rosebud woman,
washte cilake! I love you!
People would listen to my father for hours. He led a hard life, but he did not let it conquer his spirit. Under all the poverty and suffering, he was proud of who he was. He spoke of the “royal-ness of our bloodline.” He told me, “We are the born government of this turtle continent, physically and spiritually. They call us aborigines because we are the originals on this earth. The Crow Dogs are royal blood—that is, full-bloods. We are the people of the center.”
My father held on to our land, our allotment, which he named Crow Dog’s Paradise. He never sold the land, even when he was starving. He never dressed up. He always wore the same floppy pants and out-of-shape hat. But it was different when it came to his dance outfits. They were beautiful and he made them himself. He was the greatest eagle dancer our tribe ever had. Watching him you forgot that it was a man dancing, not a bird. He spoke about this: “I was great doing the eagle dance. I could make myself into Wanbli, the sacred bird. I could think and move like a bird, move slowly, cock my head, turn it this way and that way—just like an eagle. I had big eagle wings with feathers from my shoulders down to my fingertips and an eagle’s head and beak hiding my face. They all came to see Crow Dog dancing. A soaring song. The eagle has to soar, to fly high. I could crawl into the mind of an eagle. An eagle spirit took over my body.” My father’s dance was a prayer, a sacredness.
Old Henry didn’t have much of the white man’s learning, but whatever he learned he made good use of. He always said that he got his education from the spirit. He knew the old ways better than any man alive now. He could put it all together. He thought deeply about things. He wrestled with his thoughts. He was a teacher. He taught my sisters how to bead. His hands were always busy—making a feather bustle, a headdress, or painting a picture with a spiritual message in it. He was one of the first members of the Native American church in our tribe, the peyote church. He made a fire place for it at Crow Dog’s Paradise. He made our place into a spiritual center where our old ceremonies were being performed. He and I never talked much to each other. We didn’t have to. We understood each other without words, in our minds.
Henry Crow Dog was born on September 2, 1899. He died in the winter of 1985. He was still in very good shape for his age. It was night. The snow was deep. It was very cold. He went to visit my sister Diane who lives only about half a mile from us. We didn’t notice him going out. We had a crowd of relatives staying over that night. He didn’t know that Diane had gone out and that her door was locked. They found him lying at her doorstep. He might have had a heart attack, or simply frozen to death, or both. It was as he always had said: “I am the last real Sioux left.”
We don’t have men like him anymore.
eight
A STRONG-HEARTED WOMAN
My mother was a good woman.
She took good care of us.
Her life was hard,
but she never complained.
She stood up under whatever came down.
Leonard Crow Dog
My mother, Mary Gertrude, was like her husband, full-blood and traditional. Her life was sad—of her twelve children only myself and my sisters Diane and Christine are still alive. She lost so many of her children, but she was strong enough to carry on, to take on the burden. She was born in 1900. She married my father in June 1921. Sixty years later you could still see them walking hand in hand. My mother took good care of us, in the old Indian way. She was a member of the Native American Church and one of the first to sing during meetings. Up to then only the men did the singing. She sang well.
On my mother’s side they don’t use peyote, only the pipe. They are the Left Hand Bulls. They are related to many medicine men, to Chips and Moves Camps. They come from White River, on the Rosebud reservation, some thirty miles north of Crow Dog’s Paradise. When my mother married Dad people told her, “You are going to carry a heavy load. You’re going to lead a hard life, because the Crow Dogs live by themselves in the old way out on the prairie. When you marry Henry, you’ll carry a heavy burden.” She didn’t mind. She had a broad back. She stood up for us and protected us always.
My mother had a broad, full-blood face, with black sparkling eyes and a determined mouth. She was always busy cooking, beading, or making moccasins. She spent hours bending over her old Singer sewing machine, the kind you work with your foot, because, until 1965, we had no electric light, just kerosene lamps with big reflectors. We had no running water and no indoor plumbing. So life for my mother was not easy. People liked her arts and crafts, and she earned money with it. She taught beading to her daughters and grandchildren. Doing so much work with tiny beads and thread so fine it was almost invisible made her shortsighted. Even though she wore glasses, she was bending so low over her work that her nose almost touched her hand holding the needle.
My father said, “Waktapo, my wife’s grandmother, was a fine tanner. She still did brain tanning. It stinks but it’s the best. She also used porcupine quills well. She made beautiful things. She was a Left Hand Bull, part Cheyenne. My wife took after her. She learned from her to make beautiful beadwork. But she didn’t do the quilling much. You wear down your teeth flattening the quills. My wife has the Indian understanding. She keeps track of a whole trunkload of papers, with seals and stamps on them. Piles and piles of documents, allotments, treaties, promises, guarantees, all broken. A mountain of paper flying in the wind. When our house burned down, most
of this was lost. We took to each other, never quarreled, never complained. She’s a fine woman and a fine mother. She knows the Lakota ways.”
When we taped my mother in 1983, she said, “Both our families, mine and Henry’s, are traditionals. My father, my uncle, and my father’s sister had ceremonies all the time at their places, and I was always there. So I know all those songs. And when I went to mission school, at Saint Francis, I was a choir singer, so I catch everything. All the songs, any songs. From then on, whenever there was a ceremony, they took me along. I sang the starting songs. The spirit comes for the songs.
“My father was a Left Hand Bull. And my mother’s name was Camilla; her Indian name was Shorty, or Neck. I was the oldest girl in the family. My father told me to get married and not come back over there. ‘Make your own life,’ he said. ‘Stay with your man. Don’t ask for trouble.’ He taught me that, and I did that. I was never parted from Henry. My mother told me, ‘If you are unhappy, come over for a while, for comfort.’ But I never had to go to her for that kind of comfort.
“My father was a traditional full-blood. He used to be a tribal policeman at Rosebud. He was a good man. He could speak good English. And my mother heard it and she learned by listening to him. I hardly went to school, but I could talk English. People asked me how come I can talk all that wasichu language? ‘I listen and I learn,’ I told them. ‘And what I learn I use.’
Crow Dog : Four Generations of Sioux Medicine Men (9780062200143) Page 6
