During those days amongst the Hunkpapa, I came to be regarded as a living good luck piece. Braves who wanted success on the warpath came to me so I could bless their shields and arrows. War chiefs who needed help in keeping control of their warriors came to me for support. Women heavy of child came to me, so I could breathe into their nostrils and impart the blessing of Coyote on their unborn son or daughter.
In time, I came to know all the great chiefs and warriors of the Sioux, not to mention the Cheyenne. They all came to my tipi, bringing gifts of ponies, food, buffalo robes and fine beadwork. Their names read like a Who’s Who of the American Indian: Rain-in-the-Face, Gall, Black Kettle, Dull Knife, Spotted Tail, Crazy Horse. All of them brave men; all of them now long dead.
Soon I became quite wealthy, as the plains tribes judged such things, and I could take whatever woman I pleased to wife. So I picked Digging Woman. She might not have been a great beauty, but she was strong-minded, loyal and fearless.
And what about my fear of shapeshifting during intimate moments, you ask? Was ours a marriage in name only? Certainly not. During my recovery, Digging Woman spent many nights underneath the buffalo robes with me, chasing the illness from my bones by pressing her body against mine. When my fever finally broke, my body celebrated its escape from death and I soon found myself inside Digging Woman, but she was not frightened by my bestial appearance. For the first time in my life, I found myself actually making love to a woman.
As Sitting Bull’s nephew-in-law, my status in the tribe became even greater. The only thing that would bring even stronger good luck to the Hunkpapa would be if a child were born of the union between skinwalker and Sioux. And in 1865, I was presented with a son. No man could have been prouder or happier than I was on the day my firstborn was presented to me, wrapped in the skin of a rabbit, squalling lustily and waving his tiny hands as if he would pull the clouds from the sky. His skin was covered with a light down, like that of a pup, and he yipped just like one when he was hungry. We named him Small Wolf.
As I held my son, I no longer wondered who or what I was. It did not matter if I was White or vargr, Sioux or Comanche. As of that moment, I knew that from that day forward I would always be Walking Wolf, no matter what I might call myself in the years to come.
The seasons passed and became years. The Whites eventually resolved their fight against themselves down south and began refocusing their time and energies on winning the Indian territories. The government insisted on building a road to Bozeman along the Powder River, but Red Cloud would have none of it. He constantly harassed the soldiers sent there to build the three guardian forts needed to secure Bozeman Trail until the Whites agreed to close it to emigrate traffic. But Red Cloud and the other chiefs had no way of knowing that the Whites had only agreed to do so because the Union Pacific Railroad was opening better routes to Montana farther west. Nor did Red Cloud and the other chiefs who had put their names on the Medicine Lodge Treaty know that a new Great White Father had been elected—one who publicly announced that the settlers headed westward were to be protected even if it meant the extermination of every Indian tribe.
Equally devastating was the effect the Union Pacific Railroad was having on the great buffalo herd that was the source of all life and social structure amongst the tribes that roamed the Great Plains. The train tracks had, effectively, divided the buffalo into two herds, the Northern and Southern. At first they refused to acknowledge the iron horses that cut through their ancestral grazing ground, often blocking the trains. It wasn’t long, though, before the railroad hired hunters, equipped with long rifles that could shoot as far as a mile away, to make sure the tracks stayed clear. The buffalo hunters slaughtered the herds in numbers undreamed of by even the mightiest Indian hunter. And, in what seemed to be an act of genuine perversity, the carcasses were left to rot where they fell, with only a tongue or a hump taken to collect their bounty.
There was a madness on the land, and its name was Extinction.
In the spring of 1870, Red Cloud did what none had ever thought he would do. He rode to Fort Fetterman, Wyoming, named after a bluecoat he had killed four years before, and told the commandant that he wanted to go to Washington and talk to the Great White Father about the possibility of a treaty. It is hard to say whether Red Cloud’s desire for peace came from a need to protect his people from certain extermination, or if he had simply grown weary of the warpath. I, myself, do not know for sure, and I was there.
Three years later an agency was created in northwestern Nebraska, just outside the boundary of the Great Sioux Reservation. There the White government built the Red Cloud Agency for the Oglalas, and the Spotted Tail Agency for the Brûlés, their ancestral enemies. Although the Whites viewed it as a victory, thing soon went sour. Violence and contracting frauds plagued the agencies from the very start, and the Sioux did not respond well to the Indian Bureau’s high-handed attempts to “civilize” them by educating their children by stripping them of their language and culture.
Many of them resented—or simply did not comprehend—the Whites’ desire to keep them away from the settlements and travel routes, while the Whites didn’t understand that Indians off the reservation did not automatically mean hostility. Most of the time they were simply out hunting, visiting friends and family in neighboring tribes, or just wandering around the country, seeing the sights. Their refusal to stay in one spot was perceived as threatening. Although Red Cloud remained on the reservation, hundreds of Oglala braves flocked to Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, who refused to be corralled in such a manner.
Although Sitting Bull still held immense respect for Red Cloud, he considered him deluded. Reservation life was confining; the clothing and rations were often scanty and invariably of poor quality. The whiskey peddlers and other opportunists that were drawn to the agency were decidedly bad influences on the more impressionable young braves. As Sitting Bull once said at one of the tribal talks, “You are fools to make yourselves slaves to a piece of fat bacon, some hardtack, and a little sugar and coffee.”
As it was, many of the Sioux traveled back and forth between the agencies and the non-treaty camps, enjoying the old hunting life during the spring and returning for the hardtack and coffee during the winter. The Indian Bureau saw these “unfriendlies” as dangerous, as they were ungovernable and sometimes raided along the Platte.
Then, a year after Red Cloud went to the reservation, George “Yellow Hair” Custer led his soldiers into the Black Hills, part of the Great Sioux Reservation itself, and home to the Lakota. It was there they found gold. Naturally, miners swarmed into the territory and the government did nothing to stop them, except to make a lame attempt at offering to buy the land from the Sioux for a paltry sum.
It was at this time I had a vision.
I was asleep, but in my dream my eyes were open and I could see someone standing at the entrance of my tipi, watching me. When I looked harder, I saw the person watching me was none other than Medicine Dog. I was very glad to see my old teacher, but at the same time there was a strange feeling inside me.
“It is good to see you, Medicine Dog,” I said, getting to my feet. “But are you not dead?”
Medicine Dog nodded and smiled. “Almost ten years, as the White Man reckons time. Much has happened since I last saw you,” he commented, pointing at Digging Woman and Small Wolf, still sound asleep on either side of me. As I drew closer to him, I realized that not only had he regained his vision, he now had both eyes.
“Why have you chosen this time to visit me, old friend?”
“I would give you a vision, Walking Wolf.” Medicine Dog motioned for me to follow him as he held open the flap of my tipi. “One you would do well to heed.” Without another word, the old medicine man slipped out of the tent. Uncertain of what to do, I followed him—and stepped out of Montana into the choking dust and heat of the Texas Panhandle.
I was more disoriented than frightened by the chaos around me. I had walked into the middle of a Comanche war camp
, the braves painted for battle and preparing to meet their enemy. As I looked around, I recognized several faces, including those of Quanah Parker and Coyote Shit. Everything seemed extremely real. I could smell the sweat of the braves, hear their war songs, even count the hairs on the tails of their pony—but no one seemed to be able to see either Medicine Dog or myself. Coyote Shit, who wore the buffalo headdress and sacred amulets of a medicine man, was busy evoking the blessings of the Great Spirit, but if he sensed our presence, he gave no sign.
As I looked about, I noticed that many of the assembled warriors were wearing strange-looking shirts decorated with eagle feathers and painted with symbols of power. As they listened to Coyote Shit’s prophesy of victory, they became more and more agitated.
Medicine Dog did not try to hide his disgust as he stared at the man who had replaced him as the tribe’s shaman. “The years have not served Coyote Shit well in wisdom. His vision is false; his medicine untrue. He has convinced these warriors that the only way for the Comanche to become a great nation again is to kill all the Whites. He has provided them with “medicine shirts” that he claims will turn aside the Whites’ bullets.” Medicine Dog spat, producing a sizable gob for a dead man. “They are doomed.”
Before I could say anything, Medicine Dog grabbed my hand. I felt myself shooting through the air like an arrow released from a bow. When he let go, I was standing on a distant hilltop overlooking the battlefield. I recognized the place as Adobe Walls, one of the oldest settlements in that part of the country. Below us, Quanah’s warriors attempted to attack twenty-eight buffalo hunters barricaded in the ancient fort. The buffalo hunters were armed with rifles that could bring down buffalo as easily as rabbits.
The first wave of Comanche rode in headlong, arms thrown wide, screeching their war cries, exposing themselves to enemy fire without fear. After all, they had their medicine shirts to protect them. Most of them were blown clear out of their saddles.
I shook my head and looked away from the slaughter below, only to find myself standing beside Coyote Shit. He was desperately singing prayers and working medicine, no doubt hoping to effect some change in his tribe’s favor. A brave rode up from the battlefield, bearing a message from Quanah. ‘Where was the magic promised them?’ Before Coyote Shit had a chance to respond, a stray bullet—fired by a rifle seven-eighths of a mile away—crashed into the hapless brave, splashing his blood all over the frightened medicine man.
Medicine Dog and I stood over Coyote Shit as he shivered and hugged himself, his eyes wide with fear. I expected Medicine Dog to gloat over his rival’s downfall, but he looked sad, almost pitying.
“What will become of him?” I asked.
“Quanah will not kill him, if that’s what you’re thinking. He will forgive Coyote Shit what he has done. But he will not forget, either. Coyote Shit’s power with the Comanche is at its end. He will go to the reservation with the others next year, and spend the rest of his days as an object of ridicule. He will live to be old. Much older than those who believed in his medicine shirts.”
“And Quanah?”
“He shall become old, as well. And fat. And corrupt. The reservation will make all of the great chiefs rot before their deaths.”
“Why are you showing me these things, Medicine Dog?”
“So that you will see the folly that came to the friends of your youth, so that you might warn your adopted family of the trouble that is to come.”
“But I don’t understand—”
“Understand later. It is enough for now that you remember.” With that, Medicine Dog touched my hand one more time, and I felt my body turn into lightning and shoot across the sky, back to the land of the Sioux.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back in my own tipi, my wife pressed against my side. As I puzzled out what my dream meant, I lifted a hand to wipe the sleep from my eyes, only to find it caked with the blood of a dead Comanche brave.
That winter, runners appeared at the winter camps of all the non-treaty chiefs. They bore a grim message from the Great Father in Washington: They were to come to the agencies at once or be considered hostiles. That meant the White army was prepared to make war. Of course, Sitting Bull and the others chose to ignore the summons. As Sitting Bull was fond of saying: “God made me an Indian, not an agency Indian.”
During the late winter months, Digging Woman took Small Wolf with her to visit her sister, who was in a village on the Powder River. I was loath to let them go, but Digging Woman had not seen her sister in a long time, and the aunt was a particular favorite of our son. In March of that year, General Crook led an attack on the village. It was a short but vicious skirmish. While Digging Woman managed to escape unharmed, her sister was shot while attempting to flee the camp. Eight-year-old Small Wolf, standing over his fallen aunt with nothing but a toy spear for protection, was shot through the head by one of the bluecoats. There was little pleasure to be taken from the knowledge that Crook later bungled the follow-up to the attack and was forced to retreat.
When the news reached me of my son’s death, I was inconsolable. My son—my only child—was dead at the hands of the Whites. I screamed and howled like a thing gone mad and ran into the snow-covered hills on all fours, baying at the frigid moon until my lungs bled. Digging Woman was equally distraught. She cut off her braids and burned them as a token of her grief, ritually cutting her breasts until they were wet with blood. Sitting Bull assured us both that there would soon come a time for vengeance against the bluecoats. And that it would be sweet indeed.
Within two years, the number of Indians fleeing the reservations for the non-treaty camps had reached epidemic proportions. There were twelve hundred lodges represented, and easily two thousand warriors gathered in one place. Our camp, located along the Greasy Grass River, extended for three miles. Never before had there been such a gathering of tribes in the history of the Plains Indians. Hunkpapa, Oglala, Brûlé, Miniconjou, Sans Arc, Blackfoot, Northern Cheyenne—they were all there. Several powerful and influential chiefs made camp with Sitting Bull, among them Black Moon, Hump, and Crazy Horse. None of these men were looking for a fight, but neither would they avoid one, should it come looking for them.
Earlier that season we had staged the annual Sun Dance on the banks of the Rosebud, where Sitting Bull had received a vision of great strength and clarity. He claimed to have seen many dead soldiers fall into our camp as if they were dolls dropped by fleeing children. Everyone liked this vision and no one doubted its truth, for Sitting Bull was known to be a true seer. And, besides, he had the luck of Coyote at his right hand—how could his medicine fail?
When the news came that bluecoats were marching down the Rosebud, Crazy Horse took a large war party and rode off to do battle. They fought the bluecoats for six hours, after which Crazy Horse called off the fight and the soldiers retreated. While this fight had been good, Sitting Bull knew it was not the battle he’d seen in his vision.
Meanwhile, General Terry and Colonel Gibbon joined at the mouth of the Rosebud, and sent out a strike force of six hundred cavalry under the command of the same Yellow Hair who had violated the sanctity of the Black Hills, the most holy of Sioux places. Yellow Hair followed the Indian trail up the Rosebud, across the Wolf Mountains and down to the Greasy Grass, which the Whites called Little Bighorn.
I did not take part in the battle. Nor did Sitting Bull, for that matter. Shortly before Yellow Hair’s regiment arrived on the scene, we retired to the nearby mountains to work our medicine. We were so wrapped up in our prayers and rituals that we did not hear the clash of sabers or the crack of gunfire until the battle was well underway. I remember looking down at the blue-clad figures scurrying about in the dust as the smell of their fear rose to greet me on the wind. As I watched my adopted people slay those responsible for the death of my son, I knew I should feel elation or victory. Instead, there was a taste of ashes in my mouth.
I turned to Sitting Bull and said, “The Whites will not let this go. They will hunt us
down like wild animals.”
Sitting Bull shrugged. “Better to be hunted down like wolves than to live like dogs.”
After the battle was over and the gun smoke had cleared, we left the mountains and headed into the valley to count the dead and aid the wounded.
Over the years, all sorts of wild tales have come out of Custer’s Last Stand. The one that gets repeated the most is that Crazy Horse took Custer’s scalp for his lodgepole. That’s pure crap. The other story is that Sitting Bull cut open Custer’s ribcage and ate his heart. That’s an out-and-out lie. I was there, and I can testify that Custer’s body was not mutilated.
We butt-fucked the bastard’s corpse, of course, but that’s a different thing entirely.
Within a few days of their victory at Greasy Grass, the various bands broke up and went on their way. Some even headed back to the reservation. Despite being faced with a common enemy, it was still difficult to get the different tribes to band together. Little Bighorn was an exception, not the norm. Although Sitting Bull was greatly respected, he could not hold a three-mile-wide camp together.
What should have been the Plains Indians’ greatest triumph ended up being their undoing, of course. The massacre at Little Bighorn shocked and outraged the Whites and shook the Peace Policy to the point of collapse. It also brought a flood of bluecoats into Indian country, and rationalized the forced sale of the Black Hills to the United States.
Five months later, eleven hundred cavalry fell on Dull Knife’s camp, slaying forty braves. The rest were forced to watch the soldiers burn their tipis, clothing and food supply. The temperature plunged to thirty below that night, and eleven babies froze to death at their mothers’ breasts. Those who managed to escape made their way to Crazy Horse’s encampment on the Tongue River, but the soldiers followed them there as well. Come that spring, Crazy Horse led his Oglalas to the Red Cloud Agency and threw his weapons on the ground in token surrender. Four months later he was dead, stabbed by a soldier’s bayonet during a skirmish with guards.
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