The view out the window of Villa VW is no longer defined by a horizon line of tableland and sky, but by skeletal maple trees, ramshackle buildings, a looming off-white grain elevator, and a dull-gray steel cone-shaped storage tank. The elevator with its fading CO-OP sign, situated alongside the defunct tracks of the Nebraska Cowboy Line, is how I remember Hay Springs. There’s not much else here: a few crumbling streets, an ancient water tower, old wood-framed houses, a one-block-long main street called Main Street. Abandoned storefronts, a few existing businesses, a grocery store, a café, a corner bank, mostly dirt roads, trailer houses here and there, and a pretty little well-manicured park. A perfect rest spot; not only did I get up early this morning, but last night I stayed up much too late, sipping whiskey at Ken & Dale’s, watching NBA basketball. Perhaps if I stop and close my eyes for a few minutes, I’ll be alert enough to move on.
I turn into the park entrance, pull up to a blue Nebraska historical marker with raised white lead type. Over the years, I must have read this sign before—as you might suspect, I make it a habit to stop at all such signs—so I read it again. It is brief and to the point: a federal Indian agency, named for a Lakota chief named Spotted Tail (Sinte Gleska), was located near here to supply food to the Indians. The Spotted Tail Agency was generally peaceful—the only bit of historical excitement came in 1877, when Crazy Horse “surrendered” here … misleading because Crazy Horse actually surrendered weeks earlier at Fort Robinson, forty miles to the west. Fearing for his life at Fort Robinson, Crazy Horse came to the Spotted Tail Agency to seek advice from Chief Spotted Tail, who was his uncle. A few days later, Spotted Tail convinced him to return to Fort Robinson, where his fears were tragically realized—on his first night back, he was murdered.
The Nebraska historical marker doesn’t tell you a damn thing about Spotted Tail, a Brulé chief who was one of the greatest Lakota diplomats, a celebrated warrior who early on saw the inevitability of white domination and did his best to minimize its impact. Spotted Tail refused to join in Red Cloud’s War and dedicated himself to both peace and defending the rights of his people. As an elder statesman, he was much revered by Indians and whites alike but often found himself entangled in a maze of competing interests, political pressures, and petty jealousies.
In 1877, Spotted Tail invited Indians from other reservations to come to his big summer Sun Dance. The whites who normally supported him, fearing trouble, urged him to cancel the event. He refused, but he made sure the dance was peaceful. Still, the government retaliated by banning all future Sun Dances, and although many were held secretly, it wasn’t until Congress passed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act in 1978 that they were made legal again. Meanwhile, Spotted Tail had plenty of trouble with his own people; some said he was pocketing money by selling tribal lands to the railroad company, even though he sabotaged efforts to extend the railway across agency grounds by refusing tribal police protection to the railroad surveyors.
Some of Spotted Tail’s Brulé rivals claimed he was an illegitimate chief. Among these were the resentful relatives of the previous chief, Conquering Bear, who in 1854 was murdered by U.S. soldiers near Fort Laramie when he tried to settle a dispute over a stray Mormon cow that had been shot and butchered by a Miniconjou Lakota warrior named High Forehead. After Spotted Tail proclaimed himself the new chief, Conquering Bear’s family spread rumors about Spotted Tail, took every opportunity to oppose all his policies, and tried to get him impeached by the tribal council. And even today the bad blood lingers, as some believe Spotted Tail stole a young wife from a crippled elder named Medicine Bear. Her name, they say, was “Light-in-the-Lodge,” implying that she was so beautiful, her presence lit the lodge she dwelled in. Trouble is, Light-in-the-Lodge is a ludicrous name, one of many stereotypes designed to make native women attractive as potential mates for white men.
Conquering Bear’s nephew, Crow Dog, hated Spotted Tail the most. As tribal chief of police, Crow Dog tried to collect grazing fees from white ranchers who were running their herds on Indian land, only to discover that Spotted Tail was already collecting such fees. The ranchers had papers signed with Spotted Tail’s X-mark, showing that the fees had been paid. Back at the agency, Crow Dog angrily railed at Spotted Tail for collecting money from cattlemen, keeping it for his personal use. Spotted Tail shrugged his shoulders; said Crow Dog intended to do the same thing. As head chief, Spotted Tail had to take care of many people who came to see him about tribal matters, thus the grazing fees were his perquisites; he kept them only to help defray his heavy expenses.
Crow Dog took sides against Spotted Tail whenever disputes arose, and for this he was fired from his chief of police position by the tribal council, reinstated, and fired again.
On the night of August 5, 1881, Crow Dog and his wife happened to deliver a load of wood to the agency while the tribal council was in session. Finished with the job, they were driving their team back to home camp when Crow Dog noticed four men coming up behind him. The meeting must have just broken up. The men were chiefs, three—Two Strike, He Dog, and Ring Thunder—on foot and one riding ahead: Spotted Tail; Crow Dog recognized him from his distinct upright posture. On impulse, Crow Dog stopped his team and handed the reins to his wife. He grabbed his rifle, jumped down from the wagon, and knelt down in the dust of the trail as if he were tying his moccasin strings. As Spotted Tail rode up, Crow Dog lifted the rifle and shot him through the chest. Spotted Tail fell off his horse, struggled to his feet, and took several steps toward Crow Dog while trying to draw his revolver out of its holster. Before he could do this, he fell backward and lay still. Crow Dog leaped up onto his wagon, whipped his horses, and went flying up the trail to the safety of his camp.
The Indian police, now headed by Eagle Hawk, dared not arrest Crow Dog because they feared it was too dangerous, so they called for an emergency meeting of the tribal council. As was tribal custom, the council sent peacekeepers to meet with Crow Dog’s and Spotted Tail’s families. These ambassadors successfully arranged for Crow Dog to pay six hundred dollars in blood money for the killing of Spotted Tail, plus a few ponies and blankets. Ordinarily, this would have settled the matter, but newspapers around the country published sensationalized details of Spotted Tail’s killing, claiming that Crow Dog had gotten away with murder by paying off Spotted Tail’s family. Even though most of the readers had never heard of Spotted Tail, they were outraged.
Responding to pleas from Rosebud Indian Reservation agent John Cook, the tribal council summoned Crow Dog and his son-in-law Black Crow to another meeting. After many hours of talk, smoking of the pipe, and assurances that no lasting harm could be done to them, Crow Dog and Black Crow agreed to be arrested. Early the next morning, they peacefully rode with Police Chief Eagle Hawk to Fort Niobrara, Nebraska, and turned themselves in to the army. As soon as Eagle Hawk left the fort to go home, the soldiers grabbed Crow Dog and pushed Black Crow to the floor. They chained the Indians’ hands behind their backs, savagely beat them, and heaved them into a cold stone-walled cell. Crow Dog and Black Crow were charged with first-degree murder.
The case against Black Crow was dropped for lack of evidence, but Crow Dog was transported by wagon to stand trial in Deadwood, South Dakota. His appointed attorney defended him on the grounds of self-defense, saying that Crow Dog felt threatened by Spotted Tail, who was known to be armed. But the three chiefs who followed Spotted Tail the night he was killed testified that they saw Crow Dog crouch in the dust, concealing his rifle until Spotted Tail was close enough to make the perfect target. An all-white jury sentenced Crow Dog to hang for murder.
Crow Dog’s case was appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In a nod to tribal sovereignty, the justices ruled that the government did not have jurisdiction over a crime committed on a reservation by one Indian against another. Crow Dog was set free, and he lived to become a respected elder of his tribe. In 1885, Congress passed the Major Indian Crimes Act, making fifteen major crimes—among them murder, kidnapping, r
ape, maiming, incest, and arson—by one Indian against another Indian a federal crime, enforced by the FBI, tried by federal judges. The Hay Springs historical marker tells you none of these things.
A dirt road crosses through the park, so I pull in and drive up to an inviting bench, get out of Villa VW. Such a peaceful spot. There’s a slight cool breeze, patches of early spring grass, a few buds on otherwise barren bushes, and no one else in the park. Directly across the street from the historical marker, however, I see a balding old man puttering around in the yard of his mobile home. Neither appears to have gone anywhere in years, as high weeds grow around the trailer, which rests on cinder blocks, and the man moves very slowly. Wearing a grease-stained sleeveless T-shirt, baggy shorts, and flip-flops, he looks up at me, stares. I wonder what he’s thinking; is he suspicious of strangers? Does he think I am going to somehow defile his park, light up a joint, piss on the grass? But then he returns to whatever he’s doing, doesn’t look up again. Perhaps he wonders what I think of him. I try lying down on the bench, but the bench is too short, so I sit, close my eyes, let my mind wander. I listen to the wind; the sound of an occasional vehicle on the highway, chirping birds—the rapid-fire tap, tap, tapping of what I think is a downy woodpecker. After a brief nap, I wake up groggy, in dire need of coffee.
There must be coffee somewhere in Hay Springs. Much too small for Starbucks, the town doesn’t have a single fast-food restaurant or convenience store—no McDonald’s, not even a 7-Eleven, where they might at least have some horrible caffeine facsimile. My best shot is probably the funky downtown café I remember from previous visits. So I drive back to the highway, turn past the grain elevator to the only stop-light, turn left on Main Street, and drive up a broad street, two blocks long, where most of the businesses on both sides have been shuttered. The bank, newspaper office, drugstore, grocery store, hair salon, Western clothing store … closed for a long time, and from the looks of them—boarded-up doors and windows, crumbling roofs, general disrepair—closed forever. The only open businesses I can see are a pawnshop and what looks like a hardware store. And oh, yes, there is the old funky café, but wouldn’t you know it, it is open only for lunch. Utterly defeated, I turn Villa VW around, drive back to Highway 20.
I wonder what Mari Sandoz would say if she could see her hometown now?
RUSHVILLE
WAKAN TANKA SPEAKS TO SITTING BULL
Only fifteen miles east of Hay Springs, but ten miles past the turnoff to the rez, is a bigger town where they are bound to have coffee or I’m on a fool’s errand. It would be damn embarrassing to find myself soundly snoozing in a ditch, so I turn up the radio and am pleasantly surprised to hear a Hank Williams Jr. song I know. This should keep me going. I sing along.
* * *
And before I know it, looming ahead is Rushville, Nebraska, county seat of Sheridan County, named for Civil War “hero” General Philip Sheridan. How vile to name anything other than an execution chamber after this five-foot-two maniacal exterminator, the Yankee strategist who invented the “scorched earth strategy.” From May to October 1864, Sheridan’s forty-thousand-man Union army obliterated the Shenandoah Valley—the vast “Granary of Virginia.” They looted and destroyed all the buildings they could find, including homes and even slave cabins, destroyed the livestock they couldn’t eat and burned the fields, killed civilians who got in the way and randomly raped women, including slaves. Sergeant William Patterson wrote in a letter to his sweetheart: “The whole country around is wrapped in flames, the heavens are aglow with the light thereof and such mournings, such lamentations, such crying and pleading for mercy by defenseless women I never want to see again.”
Post–Civil War, Sheridan was appointed Commander of the Military Division of the Missouri; in this role, he advocated the wholesale extermination of Indians, their horses, and the buffalo they depended upon for food, clothing, and shelter. In 1868, he ordered then–Lieutenant Colonel Armstrong Custer to lead an expedition to traditional Cheyenne wintering grounds in present-day Oklahoma. Sheridan’s instructions were unambiguous: “Find and destroy Indian villages and ponies, kill or hang all warriors, bring back all women and children.” In a dawn attack on November 27, Custer’s men charged a large Cheyenne village on the Washita River, killing more than one hundred Cheyenne warriors, including the peaceful chiefs Black Kettle and Little Rock, and capturing eight hundred ponies. To save ammunition, Custer ordered his men to cut the ponies’ throats. Men who witnessed this slaughter are said to have remembered the flow of blood and the shrieks of horses for the rest of their lives.
When a Comanche named Tosawi told Sheridan, “Me Tosawi, me good Indian,” Sheridan is said to have replied, “The only good Indians I ever saw were dead.” Thus came the racist saying I remember from my boyhood days: “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”
Rushville looks much like Hay Springs—grain elevator along the defunct Nebraska Cowboy Line tracks, better-looking water tower, and no welcome signs, only a green highway sign:
RUSHVILLE
POP 890
Out the window to my right is a baseball park, Modisett Ball Park, a state-of-the-art field of dreams built by donations from rich ranchers, the Modisett brothers. Queerly enough, their fortune originated from the massive mounds of buffalo bones found on the land they bought in 1878. The clever boys shipped these bones to a refinery in Pennsylvania, where they were processed for the bone char used to make cane sugar. They lent the proceeds from the buffalo bone char to foolish homesteaders, waited a season or two, and bought back their land for cheap in subsequent foreclosures. By the early 1900s, the Brothers Modisett owned a substantial ranch and much of Rushville, including the local bank. When both died in a fiery car crash in 1944, it was discovered that they had willed some of their fortune for the construction of a baseball park. Rushville was free to operate Modisett Ball Park with only one restriction: they could never, under any circumstances, use it for “kitten-ball,” by which the brothers meant girls’ softball.
On the left side of the road sits a sprawling one-story Family Dollar store, freshly painted, white with red trim and bold signage; ten or twelve cars and pickup trucks are parked out front, and people are coming and going. It’s the most life I’ve seen since leaving Alliance—you sure as hell aren’t going to see a Macy’s or J. C. Penney here. Ahead is a strange highway sign: NO DOWNSHIFTING TO BRAKE. I have no idea what it means. There’s a shuttered Frontier gas station and a rusty old train caboose; strange that no one has turned either of these into a tourist shop or hamburger stand. Behind the odd sign sits an overturned combine harvester awkwardly positioned next to a genuine Mobil gas station with its familiar flying horse logo, the paint now chipped—they must have pumped its last tank of “tetraethyl lead” gasoline out of this baby in the mid-’50s. I turn off the highway onto the main downtown street, just as in Hay Springs named Main Street, only here you have North Main Street to the left and South Main Street to the right, and while half the stores are empty, at least half are still in business.
“Welcome to Rushville. It’s half full, not half empty.” I chuckle to myself driving up North Main Street looking for the grand two-story redbrick building I remember, the one with stylish circle-top entrances and windows, the old hotel I visited years ago.
My wife and I stopped there many times when we taught at Little Wound Day School in nearby Kyle and at the Crazy Horse High School in Wanblee. There are crumbling structures on both sides, including a small grocery store with a vintage Pepsi sign and a box of produce outside the front window; a classic western saloon with a flashing neon Budweiser sign and what look to be actual hitching posts; the old Sheridan County Journal Star building; and at least one new establishment: the U.S. Department of Agriculture Service Center, with its freshly mowed lawn, American flag at full staff—a convenient place where ranch hands from nearby farms and ranches can stop in to shop for chewing tobacco and new boots. And at last I see it, the once proud Pfister Hotel, boarded up and sadly
abandoned.
I drive past the hotel to where North Main abruptly ends at a small grove of evergreen bushes, turn around, and go back to the hotel, park out front. There’s a padlock on the door, a sign with missing letters that reads, B E D WO K. Helen, the craggy-faced, chain-smoking lady with cheddar-colored hair who once ran the pawnshop located here long after the hotel business had run its course, is probably dead. I last saw her thirty-five years ago, and I don’t see her spirit. Inside the lobby, several long glass display cases are crammed with a mind-boggling collection of Lakota porcupine quillwork, the oldest form of Indian embroidery—porcupine quills colorfully dyed with berry juice, dried and pulled through teeth until they are flat, folded, twisted, wrapped, plaited, worked into geometric diamonds and triangular shapes, or made to look like birds, flowers, animals, stars, the sun. Quillwork once used to decorate moccasins, medicine bags, headbands, war clubs, war shirts, and many other objects—an art form that flourished among the Lakota until the early nineteenth century, when French trappers brought their glass beads to trade for beaver belts. I never knew for sure if Helen understood the value of what she had, and I was reluctant to buy any of it, though now I wish I had. She acquired her collection cheaply only because people were desperate; perhaps desperate for a drink, true, or for food and gas money. When I bluntly asked her how she felt about this, Helen coughed and in a raspy smoker’s voice said, “I have to make a living, and there’s not much else to do around here.” And then she added, “You should see the cavalry stuff I have in the basement.”
I followed Helen down the creaky staircase to a large room that was probably once used by the Modisett brothers for banquets and meetings. How or why she had all those saddles, I’ll never know. Dozens of for-real 7th Cavalry McClellan saddles nicely displayed on slickly varnished sawhorses next to several upright glass cases filled with uniforms, sabers, pistols, rifles, boots, spurs, canteens, and at least one short, triple-twist bugle, plus soldiers’ personal effects—tintypes of sweethearts and family members, wallets, watches, medals, rings. “How did you get all this?” I asked, but I never got a straight answer. She just said she had been collecting things for years. And then one time, as an aside, she mentioned that she’d rented out “some of this stuff” to Kevin Costner when he was filming the movie Dances with Wolves.
Good Friday on the Rez Page 3
