Black Hills

by Dan Simmons

  —the interrogative form, as it were, is also used by women and men informally, but if it were an official situation, talking in council, for instance, I’d… that is a male Lakota… would have to end the question with hwo… or hunwo… or so. Oh, yes, Han means “hello” for men but “yes” for women.

  Miss de Plachette sighs, but not, it seems, out of impatience, only at the first glimpse of the complexity of her mother’s people’s language. She is still smiling.

  —So you’re saying that if a Lakota man says hello to me and I reply in kind, with the same word, I’m simply saying yes to anything the man has suggested?

  —Well… ah… um… that is…

  She rescues him before his blush darkens his already dark skin too much further.

  —So how would I say “Hello, Paha Sapa”?

  —Paha Sapa, Han.

  —And how would a woman say “Hello, it is really good to see you” to a man? To you?

  —Paha Sapa, han! Lila tanyan wacin yanke. Only you couldn’t… wouldn’t… come up and say that.

  Her smile seems almost teasing.

  —Really? Why not?

  Paha Sapa clears his throat again. His only salvation is that, true to her promise, she has not turned to look fully at him. She keeps watching the lake and the White City as the car rises quickly—too quickly—toward the top of its arc this second and final (forever for them together! he is sure) and too-fast-for-his-taste revolution of Mr. Ferris’s amazing Wheel.

  —Because, Miss de Plachette, in the Ikče Wičaśa culture, women do not initiate conversations with men. They are never the first to say hello.

  —Not even with their husbands?

  She is definitely teasing him. He opens his mouth to answer, realizes that his mouth stays open during the entire time it takes them to pass over the top of the arc of the wheel, and then manages…

  —I’ve never been married.

  Now she laughs out loud. The sound is so soft that it is almost lost in the loud exclamations and excited talk in the crowded car, but Paha Sapa will remember the pure tones of that easy, friendly laugh for the rest of his life.

  She touches his forearm again.

  —All right, I surrender. I won’t learn the Ikče Wičaśa’s women’s language during two turns of Mr. Ferris’s Wheel. But is there a special term that Lakota women use to say hello to someone they really like… a special friend?

  Now Paha Sapa’s throat feels so constricted he can barely get the syllables out.

  She leans closer to him, her eyes finally turning from the scenery outside, and says very softly—

  —Maske, Paha Sapa, lila tanyan wacin yanke…

  It is still wrong because… it does not matter. The power of her intimate greeting and the “It’s really good to see you”… she had stressed every syllable exactly as Paha Sapa spoke it earlier, except for that extra emphasis on the really… to hear her say this to him in his language… He will never forget it. He wonders then if it will be the last thing he chooses to think of before his death.

  —We’re almost down, Paha Sapa. I’m a greedy woman. I have three more requests for you before we go meet Father at the Grand Basin at six…

  She consults the tiny watch on the ribbon pinned to her vest.

  —… still ninety minutes away! Three greedy requests, Paha Sapa.

  —I will do anything you ask, Miss de Plachette.

  —First then, at least until we meet Father and the other gentlemen, please call me Rain, as you promised and did for a short while.

  —Yes… Rain.

  —Second—and this is just a silly woman’s request, since you seem so… hot… with them on. Please remove those gloves after we get off the Ferris Wheel.

  —Yes, Miss… Yes. Yes, of course.

  —And finally, tell me what the Lakota word is for my name. For Rain.

  —“Rain” is… magazu.

  She tries it out. Says it twice softly as the view of the prairie is reduced, is eliminated, and the Midway Plaisance and loading platforms come up under them. Then she says very softly—

  —Mother was right. It is prettier in English.

  —Yes, Rain.

  Paha Sapa has never more agreed with any statement. The car is slowing to a stop. The other passengers are growing louder in their laughter, exclamations, and praise of the ride.

  —This qualifies as an extra request, Paha Sapa, but how do you say in Lakota—“I will see you later”?

  Without thinking of gender language or anything else, Paha Sapa looks into her hazel eyes and says—

  —Tokša ake wancinyankin ktelo.

  —I asked for that phrase, Paha Sapa, because Father has decided that he must return to the missionary fields, and in September we will be moving to the Pine Ridge Agency in Dakota Territory…. I believe that is not too far from where Mr. Cody mentioned that you live.

  All Paha Sapa has to say is No, not too far, but this time he can not get the syllables out.

  The great wheel stops its turning. The car they’re in rocks, creaks, settles. The conductor—with a tin badge saying something other than Kovacs; Paha Sapa has temporarily forgotten how to read English letters or words—opens the door for them all to depart before the next sixty people squeeze aboard.

  THE NEXT NINETY MINUTES are delightful and infinitely rich for Paha Sapa, but they fly by like so many seconds.

  On their way back to where they are to meet Rain’s father on the steps outside the domed Administration Building on the west side of the Grand Basin, they take time to poke their heads into the Fine Arts Building, with its many art galleries north of the North Pond, then take an almost running tour of the gigantic Women’s Building—Rain especially wants to stand in front of a huge mural by a woman artist named Mary Cassatt, the allegories of which would have been lost on Paha Sapa if she had not been there to translate them—and then they take their time strolling on the Wooded Island as the July afternoon slowly melts into a golden July evening. Paha Sapa is only sorry that they will not be together when all of the thousands of electric lights come on. What, he wonders again, would a turn in the Ferris Wheel be like at night?

  It is on the Wooded Island, where they are sitting for a moment on a comfortable bench in the shade near the Rose Garden and having tall, iced drinks purchased from one of the ubiquitous canvas-covered refreshment stands, that Paha Sapa fulfills his promise by peeling off the too-tight, sweat-lined dress gloves and tossing them into the nearby wire wastebasket.

  Rain laughs, sets her drink glass on the bench, and applauds.

  Paha Sapa feels no anxiety about an accidental touch turning into an invasive contact-vision with her now. She has kept her own white gloves on and her long-sleeved blouse leaves almost no skin of her wrist exposed. Besides, it is only a few minutes until they are to meet her father.

  Then she surprises him again.

  —Paha Sapa, Mr. Cody has told Father that you were a friend of Sitting Bull’s.

  —Yes. Not a close friend, he was much older than I, but I knew him.

  —And you were with him… with Sitting Bull… when he was killed?

  Paha Sapa takes a breath. He does not want to talk about this. He feels it will only put distance between the young woman, her father, and himself. But he truly is at the point where he can and will deny her nothing.

  —I did happen to be there when he died, Miss… Rain. It was an accident that I was present. None of us had any idea that he might be murder… killed.

  —Please tell me. Please tell me everything about it.

  Paha Sapa sips his iced drink to gain a few seconds to organize his thoughts. What should he tell this young Wasicun girl? He decides… everything.

  —It was three years ago, you know. Winter. December. I’d gone up to the Standing Rock settlement… and agency, really, a reservation… where Sitting Bull was living, because my tunkašila… not my real grandfather, but an honorary name for a man who helped raise me… was living there. He was there because he w
as an old friend of Sitting Bull’s. Wait, this won’t make any sense unless you’ve heard of a Paiute holy man named Wovoka and his teachings, especially about his advocating a sacred dance called the Ghost Dance. Have you heard these things?

  —Fragments about them, Paha Sapa. Father and I were in France when all this happened, and I was only seventeen. I was more interested in grand balls in Paris than in the Ghost Dance that correspondents told Father about in letters. Please do explain.

  Paha Sapa sighs. It is not a happy sound. He catches a glint of light in the trees and realizes that it is one of the thousands of little colored “fairy lamps”—tiny lights of wick and oil—that turn the Wooded Island into a magical place after dark. He very much wishes that he and Rain could wander the Wooded Island under such lights, with the White City buildings blazing in light and the Ferris Wheel steel turning, painted white by huge carbide searchlights, in the distance.

  —The Paiute Wovoka’s sermons and religious teachings were as confused as your scattered fragments. I heard him talk near the Pine Ridge Agency before I went to visit my tunkašila and Sitting Bull. The Paiute holy man had taken large pieces of the Christian story—he said a messiah had come to earth to save his children from the control and clutches of the wasichus and…

  —Please, what are wasichus, Paha Sapa?

  He looks at her.

  —Fat Takers. White people.

  She blinks. Paha Sapa wonders if she feels as if he has slapped her.

  —I thought we… that whites… were called Wasicun. I seem to remember Mother using that term.

  Paha Sapa nods sadly.

  —That term was also used, but later. Wasichus, the Fat Takers, are what we called you… whites. But Wovoka was preaching that if his followers, of any tribes, all tribes, danced this sacred Ghost Dance, there would come a sacred flood that would drown all the wasichus but leave the red man alone. And then, when the whites were all gone, the buffalo would return and our long-departed ancestors would come back and all of us, Natural Free Human Beings and all the other tribes, would live in abundance and peace forevermore.

  Rain is frowning for the first time since they met at the Wild West Show.

  —Your ancestors would come back? Like ghosts?

  —No, I don’t think so. More like resurrected real people, like your Bible promises in Heaven. But not nagi, not spirit people, just people. We would see all our ancestors again, which is a promise that held tremendous power to us, Rain. And the return of the buffalo and the departure… deaths… of all the wasichus in our land, in the West. Well, you can see why this scared the whites, all the way up to President Harrison.

  —Yes.

  Her voice is flat, emotionless, for the first time this day. Paha Sapa has no idea what she is thinking. He rubs his jaw with his bare hand and goes on.

  —Anyway, the summer of 1889, Ghost Dancers had appeared on all six agencies where the Lakota lived. They just… appeared. They wore shirts—special sacred shirts, Ghost Shirts, that Wovoka had promised them would stop any bullet. The whole idea was that the Ghost Dance itself, if all the Indians in all the tribes believed in it and danced it, would itself provoke the disaster that would take away all the wasichus and give the red men back their land, their old world, their universe, even their gods and protective spirits. And, if the wasichus tried to interfere, there were always the Ghost Shirts to protect the warriors….

  —Did you believe in this prophecy and in the Ghost Dance, Paha Sapa?

  —No.

  Paha Sapa actually considers telling her the reason he could not believe in it—his own Sacred Vision from 1876, the wasichu Stone Giants rising out of the Black Hills and consuming all the buffalo and the Natural Free Human Beings themselves—but then he comes to his senses. He knows he will love this young woman for the rest of his life, whatever that life brings him, but why have her thinking that he, Paha Sapa, is as crazy as that crazy old Paiute Wovoka?

  He sips the last of his cold drink and goes on.

  —Anyway, the local Indian agents got very nervous—as well they should—and then the politicians got nervous and finally the army, the cavalry, got very nervous. The agents on all the reservations were ordered to use the tribal police to break up any gatherings of Ghost Dancers. The dance itself was outlawed on every reservation except little Standing Rock, way over on the Missouri River, where Sitting Bull and my tunkašila were living in little cabins rather than tipis.

  —Did Sitting Bull believe in the Ghost Dance and the prophecy?

  Rain’s voice is still flat, emotionless, save for curiosity.

  —I don’t think so. I don’t think he’d made up his mind about it. At least he hadn’t said he had when I arrived there on the fourteenth of December, the day before they… the day before he died. But a lot of Lakota were sure that Sitting Bull was the messiah that Wovoka was preaching about. A lot of Lakota men were ready to follow Sitting Bull if the old chief had proclaimed himself that messiah. So, right at the end of November, Buffalo Bill showed up at Fort Yates on the Standing Rock Reservation with orders signed by Bear Coat… our name for General Miles… authorizing the arrest of Sitting Bull and…

  —Mr. Cody arrest Sitting Bull? They were close friends! Mr. Cody talks about him with great respect and affection to this day! Father has always said that the two men were close.

  Now there is emotion in her voice… true shock.

  —Yes, well… perhaps that’s why the wasichus… the agents and the president… sent Mr. Cody with the arrest warrant. Mr. Cody had just returned from the successful tour in Europe with the Wild West Show. But anyway, he arrived too drunk to carry out the arrest and…

  —Mr. Cody? Drunk? I thought Mr. Cody never touched spirits or liquor. I am sure that Father believes this to be the case! Good heavens!

  Paha Sapa is not sure if he should—or can—continue. He starts to drink from his glass, sees that it is empty, and sets it down to consult his cheap watch. He is so disturbed that he thinks of checking the time in Lakota—Mazaškanškan tonackca hwo?—literally “Metal-goes-goes what?”

  —It is twenty minutes to six, Miss de Plachette. We should cross the bridge to the west side of the Great Basin just in case your father is early and…

  —Oh, no. Please finish your story, Paha Sapa. I insist… no, no, I have no right to insist… but I beseech you. Tell me how Sitting Bull died. Mr. Cody was too drunk to arrest him?

  —Yes. And the wasichu military men there kept him drunk for several days. Those officers were terrified that arresting Sitting Bull, much less hurting him, would cause the very catastrophe that Wovoka was prophesying about. Anyway, after about three days, Mr. Cody sobered up and headed down the road to arrest Sitting Bull. He was traveling with another Wild West Show fellow, whom we called Pony Bob…

  —Oh, my! Father and I know Pony Bob. He used to come to Father’s sermons.

  —Anyway, Mr. Cody and Pony Bob ran into the agency’s interpreter, a fellow named Louis Primeau, who lied to them… told them that Sitting Bull wasn’t on the reservation. That he was on another road. By the time Mr. Cody and Pony Bob figured things out, President Harrison himself had… I’m sorry, what is the word for changing orders one has given? Reversing them?

  —Rescinded?

  —Yes, that’s it. The president himself had rescinded the arrest orders. Sitting Bull was safe. For the time being. That was around the first of December.

  —But he died in December… did he not?

  —He did. Bear Coat… General Miles… was so angry that his old adversary Sitting Bull was getting away that he sent the Seventh Cavalry in…

  “Do not say anything to libel the Seventh Cavalry,” rasps a familiar voice deep in Paha Sapa’s skull.

  Silence! The ghost is like a prisoner who gets out of his cell from time to time but can never escape the prison.

  —Is something wrong, Paha Sapa?

  —No, no, I was just gathering my thoughts. At any rate, I arrived at Standing Rock on the fourte
enth of December. Sitting Bull and my tunkašila were leaving with me and a few other younger men the next day, going back to Pine Ridge—and then planning to go to Rosebud—to visit these Ghost Dance leaders and finally decide what he thought, what Sitting Bull thought, of the whole prophesy thing. But he was skeptical. I know he was skeptical.

  —Didn’t you say that the Ghost Dancers were banned from all the other reservations?

  Paha Sapa nods. She is obviously paying close attention.

  —That’s true. The leaders Sitting Bull wanted me to meet with had taken about twelve hundred Oglala and Brulé to a place we call the Stronghold—a mesa way up in the Badlands part of the Pine Ridge Reservation surrounded by sheer cliffs on three sides. The Natural Free Human Beings have fled there in threatening times since before we had horses.

  —And the cavalry pursued Sitting Bull there?

  —No, he never got out of Standing Rock. The next day, the fifteenth, around six a.m…. we should have left earlier, but Sitting Bull was an old man and packed and acted slowly… the army sent more than forty local Indian policemen to his cabin on the Grand River. It was a very small cabin. My tunkašila and I were sleeping in a sort of lean-to out back where Sitting Bull kept his horse.

  —So it was a tribal policeman… another Indian… who killed Sitting Bull?

  Paha Sapa nods again.

  —Sitting Bull at first said he wouldn’t go with the policemen. Then he agreed. They let him get dressed. It had been dark when all the policemen rode up, but it was getting light by the time the old holy man came outside. Others had gathered outside the cabin. Sitting Bull’s youngest son—still a teenager—started mocking his father for submitting to the wasichu. Sitting Bull changed his mind again and said he wouldn’t go after all. There was pushing and shoving. Someone in the crowd shot a policeman, and that policeman, before he died, shot Sitting Bull in the chest. Another policeman shot Sitting Bull in the back of the head. When it was all over, there were six tribal policemen dead as well as Sitting Bull and six of his friends and followers.