You might think there are no bars in Whiteclay these days because Indian activists finally succeeded in shutting them down, but this is not the case. Whiteclay bartenders had to be extremely good negotiators and tough; if serving drinks was the number one task in their job description, breaking up fights was number two. When persuasion failed, bartenders resorted to ax handles or baseball bats. Most carried a pistol or kept a shotgun behind the bar. Calling the police wasn’t an option. After decades of barroom fistfights, stabbings, shootings, barstools smashed over people’s heads, windows shattered, bathrooms torched, it became so difficult to hire and keep bartenders that the white creeps who owned these places gave up. They met, decided to close down the bars.
“Shoot, if Injuns need to drink in Whiteclay, they can drink outside. When it’s too cold, plenty of abandoned buildings where they can crash.”
* * *
Whiteclay is an extreme example of do-gooding gone bad. In 1882, Pine Ridge reservation agent Valentine McGillycuddy asked President Chester Arthur to issue an executive order that would establish a ten-mile-wide buffer zone extending five miles south of Pine Ridge. In this zone, white peddlers would not be allowed to sell guns or alcohol to Indians. Valentine adroitly explained to our not-so-swift twenty-first president that Indians “just can’t hold their liquor. Something in their makeup. When an Indian drinks, he can’t function. The only thing we can do, Mr. President, is keep liquor away from him.”
Originally known as the White Clay Extension, the buffer zone served its purpose until 1904. Intensively lobbied by the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company, Theodore Roosevelt rescinded the order and returned the land to Sheridan County. Nearby tavern keepers and liquor store owners, men like Toad Frohman, leaped into action. They established the town of Whiteclay, and in so doing turned the White Clay Extension into the exact opposite of what it was intended to be.
* * *
As I drive off, I wonder if I’ll ever be in Whiteclay again. If I do come back, what will be left? A few rotting buildings, cement foundations, the whole stinking place finally burned down? Perhaps the memorial to Black Elk and Hard Heart will be all that remains. Now, however, I am off to Pine Ridge, only three miles up the road.
I need to stop at Big Bat’s. I need to buy Vernell White Thunder a case of Perrier sparkling water and a case of Dinty Moore beef stew, his favorites.
PINE RIDGE
LAKOTA TACO TRUCK
Over a slight rise a few minutes from Whiteclay and I’m already on the outskirts of the village of Pine Ridge, population four thousand, de facto capital of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Off to my right is a BIA housing project: signature wood-frame dwellings depressingly painted in subdued pastels—pale peach, chalky blue, toxic green, fading marigold—with much too much bright white trim. The windowless doors, front and back, open onto dirt yards. There are no windows on the sides of these houses; only a small window or two in the front and one in the back. Some of the yards have a few shrubs and small patches of grass or gardens, and most are filled up with old, parked cars and trucks, two or three or up to a dozen or more, as I’ve been told rez folks like to keep old clunkers around for spare parts. Believe it or not, these BIA houses are new—freshly painted, no broken glass, no apparent fire damage—and they are nicely positioned near a stand of evergreen spruce trees. By Pine Ridge standards, this neighborhood is upscale; I imagine that the people living here work for the tribal government.
Straight ahead is the “Pine Ridge 4-way,” the only four-way traffic light on the rez. Here highway SD-407 intersects with Pine Ridge’s main street, which is actually another highway, U.S. 18, one of the Midwest’s first paved roads. Lightly traveled these days, U.S. 18 was an important route before they built the Interstate System. It was opened in 1926 to connect the breweries in Milwaukee with all the thirsty people out West in South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada, and Northern California. And looming to my left is an enormous, bright-red-and-white Conoco gas station, home of Big Bat’s, one of the weirdest combination café–convenience store–tourist stop–local hangouts ever conceived. As I turn at the intersection and into the station, past the gas pumps, my eyes are drawn above the front entrance to an avant-garde metal sculpture of three fierce warriors on horseback charging forward—feathers and horsetails flying behind—looking as if they are about to overrun the 7th Cavalry. Next to this “corporate trademark” is a bigger, even bolder Big Bat logo. And just below these images, nearly as conspicuous, a message in sun-bright yellow type on a blue background reads:
Waves of Change
There are at least a dozen parked cars and trucks around the place; some obviously clean tourist rentals, others unwashed forever, belonging to the locals. Extracting myself from Villa VW, I am greeted by extremely loud country music coming from outdoor speakers, which must originate from KILI Radio, the Voice of the Lakota Nation, an FM station perched on a nearby bluff overlooking the little village of Porcupine. Everybody on the rez listens to KILI. When it isn’t broadcasting local news and gossip alternatively in English and Lakota, indigenous music, or born-again religious banter, it plays country music. I can’t believe my ears—Charlie Daniels belting out “The South’s Gonna Do It (Again)”! I don’t know why Indians like this shit, but the lyrics “Well you can be proud” follow me into Big Bat’s cavernous dining area with its sloppy mix of round wood, square wood, and rectangular Formica tables, and a long horseshoe-shaped counter in front of the food preparation area where you can order from an immense menu of hamburgers, sandwiches, onion rings, hot plates, bean soup, ice cream, sodas, and Indian fry bread. The shelves are neatly stocked with junk food and souvenirs, but what most catches my attention inside Big Bat’s are the story murals that wrap their way along the top half of the walls and ceiling; murals that illustrate for anyone who cares to know the complexity and beauty of Lakota spiritual mythology, mythology every bit as meaningful and poignant as that which has stirred human imagination since the dawning of civilization and probably for many millennia before. Beings from all cultures, forever curious, seek answers to probing questions about their world, beginning with questions about human origin and the origin of the stars, the oceans, the land, and the myriad other creatures with which we share this universe. The result is creation stories, stories difficult to understand without science and the scientific method, and even then. Using visual literacy and oral tradition to teach Lakota mythology to Lakota children is a powerful way to counterbalance the absurd colonial notion that white people, and particularly Christian white people, have a lock on religion and thereby cultural correctness and knowledge. Among the Brulé, who are related to the Lakota, origin starts with a great flood, when the first people were attacked by Unktehi, the Big Water Monster, who sent the waters to kill them. The people climbed a steep hill to escape, but still the water immersed them and they drowned. The remaining pool of water turned to blood, which became a quarry from which the surviving people made sacred red stone pipes. These pipes had great power because their smoke represented the breath of the ancestors. After the flood, Unktehi turned into stone and became the Badlands. Only one person—a young girl—survived the flood, having been picked up by Wanblee, the eagle, and flown to Wanblee’s home in a tall tree. The girl became Wanblee’s wife, and from their union came two pairs of twins, one set male and the other female. These were the parents of the Brulé people, who take pride in being known as the “Eagle People.”
When I was fired after my first year in Kyle, Linda landed a position teaching high school sophomore English in Wanblee, thirty-three miles west of Kyle, where we lived in a leaky two-room trailer with our infant daughter, Mara. Strangely enough, Vernell too moved to Wanblee, starred on the Crazy Horse basketball team, and continued to be our best Indian friend. The Wanblee creation story is the first of many on the walls of Big Bat’s; another tells how a young Lakota warrior captured and tamed the first horse, how people acquired the flute, and, most important to the Lakota and many related tribes,
of White Buffalo Calf Woman’s gift of the peace pipe—my favorite of all Lakota legends, and in my opinion the most beautiful. When I was teaching in Kyle, I memorized and recited this tale to all my classes, and I still can recall much of it.
During a time of winter hardships and starvation, two young warriors leave the camp in search of buffalo. They wander for many days not even seeing hoofprints, and are about to give up when they see the ghost of a beautiful young woman dressed in white buckskin walking toward them. She carries what looks like a stick wrapped in a bundle of sage. So struck by her, one of the men declares he is going to make her his wife, but the other man objects, saying that she is holy, that it would be wrong to claim her.
But his friend does not listen. He runs up to the beautiful woman and tries to hug her. At that very moment, he disappears with her in a violent whirlwind reaching high into the sky. When the whirlwind stops, the woman is still standing as before with the bundle in her arm. The man, however, is now a pile of bones.
Too afraid to run away, the surviving warrior stares at her. She speaks to him: “Go back to your camp and tell your people I will soon be there to meet with a good man who lives among you. His name is Bull Walking Upright. Tell your people to pitch their tepees in a circle, leave an opening that faces north. In the center of this circle, place a large tepee, also facing north. This is where I will meet with Bull Walking Upright.”
Relieved that he too is not going to be turned into a pile of bones, the man runs as fast as he can back to the camp. The people listen to him and follow all the instructions. When White Buffalo Calf Woman meets with Bull Walking Upright in the center tepee, she unwraps her bundle and gives him the gift of a small pipe made of red stone upon which is carved the tiny outline of a buffalo calf. This is the sacred pipe. She teaches him the prayers he should recite to the Strong One Above. “When you pray to the Strong One Above,” she says, “you must also use the pipe. If the people are hungry, unwrap it and lay it bare in the air. The buffalo will then come where your warriors can easily hunt and kill them.”
White Buffalo Calf Woman slowly turns and walks out of the tepee. With all the people watching her in awe, she lies down on the ground and rolls over and over. When she stands up, she is a black buffalo. Again she lies down, rolls over and over. This time she rises as a red buffalo. The third time, she is a brown buffalo. The fourth and final time, she takes the form of a spotless white buffalo. In this form she walks into the distance and disappears.
There are all kinds of people inside Big Bat’s—three or four chunky truck drivers from faraway places devour cheeseburgers; a bald tourist stands at the deli counter and orders a submarine sandwich with the works, and I can’t help but notice his open Hawaiian shirt, his camera with a much too conspicuous zoom lens and high-powered binoculars awkwardly suspended from his neck. A group of Lakota teenage boys wearing Oakland Raiders jerseys and backward caps sit sloppily at a far corner table swearing and laughing. They toss French fries at each other, make loud squeaks scooting their chairs, and dare anyone to object. Nearby sit two young women, towheaded Germans, much too stylish for this place, oblivious to stares. Opposite the unruly boys in the other far corner is a drunken man who must have popped in from Whiteclay. He stares into his coffee, and I have a feeling he is going to be here for a very long time. Most striking, though, is a table of old Lakota men; one in particular catches my fancy, the one with a large-brim cowboy hat wearing two worn but classic polo shirts, with suspenders holding up his blue jeans—a good thing because they sag below his portly belly. His raccoon eyebrows rise above the upper rim of his glasses as he skeptically looks over at me to convey the message You definitely not fooling anyone, white man. The other two glance my way as well, so I meekly wave and say, “Hi, there.” Poker-faced, they go back to their conversation. Only then do I realize that they must have thought I was trying to listen in to their subversive talk, as I hear one of them say “Keystone Pipeline.” Naturally, I look downward and focus as hard as I can on what they are saying. One phrase is crystal clear, and it warms my greedy little green heart: “The people will never allow the pipeline; they will block the bulldozers.” Once I dare to look up again, I notice that there is no coffee or food on their table; they are simply having a strategic meeting. I wonder, do they come to Big Bat’s every day to plot counterrevolution?
In the midst of the junk food I spot a rack of so-called “healthy choices”: peanuts, sunflower seeds, gluten-free cookies, cheese sticks, and something called Tanka nutrition bars, which look similar to granola bars. Picking one up and reading the label, I learn that Tanka bars are made on the reservation, that they are a combination of smoked buffalo meat and flavor additives including apple, orange peel, and spicy pepper. And I see that they also have Tanka jerky and Tanka trail mix. Unfortunately, Big Bat’s does not carry Perrier or Dinty Moore—for that I’ll have to try the nearby Sioux Nation Shopping Center. So I select a few Tanka bars and walk up to the counter, where on impulse I ask the cute girl behind the cash machine, “Why is this place called Big Bat’s?” She shrugs, turns, and points her finger at a giant middle-aged man wearing an elegantly embroidered yet dog-eared cowboy shirt and chatting with the cook, and says, “That’s Big Bat. He’s the owner.”
“Can you tell him I would like to introduce myself and ask him about this place?”
“You’re not the FBI, are you?” she jokes.
“Hell no. You kidding? I lived near here. I’m on my way to Kyle to visit my friend Vernell White Thunder. Do you know him?”
“I don’t know no Vernell.”
Much louder than the occasion requires, she shouts out, “Hey, Big Bat. This white dude wants to talk to you!”
When Big Bat looks at me, I notice his facial features—green eyes and cocoa complexion, pointed nose, narrow chin, and thin eyebrows. More European than native. He smiles, motions me to sit at an empty table, and ambles over to join me. Extending a bear paw hand, he says, “People call me Big Bat; my real name is Tye, Tye Pourier. Suppose you want to know about this place, right?”
“Good guess,” I answer. “I lived in Kyle long ago, was in Pine Ridge many times, but back then there was nothing like Big Bat’s. I love this place, but how did it come about?”
Proud and convivial, Big Bat tells me the business was started in 1990 by his parents, who wanted a place for people to gather; in Lakota, a “tiyospaye,” an extended family place where anyone can come to eat decent food and talk, stay as long as they want, a place that reflects the generosity and beauty of Lakota culture. They named it “Big Bat” after his great-grandfather, a famous French trader originally from St. Louis who married the sister of Oglala chief Smoke and became a trusted member of the tribe. The original Big Bat could speak fluent Lakota and was friends with Chief Red Cloud. He also knew all the other chiefs and went on many hunting trips and even on pony raids against the Crow. Big Bat was present when Crazy Horse was stabbed to death at Fort Robinson. When Big Bat wasn’t riding with his warrior friends, he traded beads, cooking pots, hunting rifles, and bullets for beaver pelts and buffalo hides. To get more inventory for his trading post, and to sell the pelts and hides, Big Bat routinely rafted down the Missouri River all the way to St. Louis—an arduous twelve-hundred-mile journey—and returned by pack mule.
“My great-grandfather never sold alcohol,” the younger Big Bat says. “In 1996 a terrible kitchen fire, never should have happened, burned down this whole frickin’ place, right to the ground. We rebuilt it, made it bigger and better. Big Bat is no joke; for us it is a road map to the future. We come from a warrior culture; my grandfather and father were warriors, and I too am a warrior. Business is today’s battlefield.”
“And when did you become ‘Big Bat’?”
“When my dad opened Big Bat’s, people thought he must be Big Bat, so they started calling him Big Bat, and he accepted this. When I took over, I became Big Bat, and when my son takes over, he too will be Big Bat.” He paused and nodded slowly.
/> “I guess there will always be a Big Bat.”
* * *
Before leaving Big Bat’s, I pause to look across the highway in utter disgust at the Pine Ridge Agency, official BIA headquarters housed in an anemic redbrick building, once occupied by imperial-minded bureaucrats who thought God had put them on earth to annihilate Indian culture. Something must be going right, because these days the agency is just a stopover for unhappy government employees who spend most of their time filling out transfer forms to better places—say, the Great Plains Regional Office in Aberdeen or, better yet, the Northwest Regional Office in Portland. I imagine how worthless they must feel as they try to maintain the fiction that they are in charge of something, that they still matter. To many, the agency is a symbol of past oppression and failed policies such as the Indian Removal Act, which forced people onto reservations; the Dawes Act, which reduced the size of these reservations by more than half; and the 1956 Indian Relocation Act, which moved people back off the reservation into cities, where they found only more poverty and despair.
The agency itself is an unsightly structure except for one thing—positioned near the front entrance is a sweet memorial to thirty-one Lakota soldiers from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation who died during World War II, their names etched in marble next to the date of their deaths: Albert Chief Eagle, Mar. 14, 1943; Floyd Bear Saves Life, June 6, 1944; Lester Red Boy, Nov. 17, 1944; Clement Crazy Thunder, Mar. 11, 1945; Chester Afraid of Bear, April 8, 1945; Earl Two Bulls, Nov. 30, 1944; and so on. Like all Indians, the Lakota are tremendously proud of their soldiers. As a proportion of their population, by far more Native Americans serve in the armed forces than any other ethnic group, remarkable considering that the U.S. Army exterminated so many. More than ten thousand native men volunteered to serve during World War I despite the fact that most were not U.S. “citizens” at the time and were unprotected under the Constitution. In fact, it was not until after World War II with the 1965 passage of the Voting Rights Act that all states were required to allow Native Americans to vote on the same basis as any other American. Despite decades of persecution and broken promises, despite being dispossessed of, and often forcibly removed from, their ancestral homelands, American Indians served and continue to serve in our nation’s armed forces in numbers that belie their small percentage of the American population.
Good Friday on the Rez Page 5
