And so were we.
Chapter 5
By late summer, the number of whites crossing our land had become a matter of grave concern to my people, and to our chief, Black Kettle.
Black Kettle was a man of peace, and it had long been his hope that we could live in harmony with the vehoe. In this one thing Black Kettle, who was a peace chief, and my father, who was a war chief, disagreed. Sun Seeker did not believe there could ever be peace between the Indian and the white man.
“They have no honor,” I heard my father say time and again. “Their word is like the wind, changeable and without substance. We must fight for what is ours before they take it away from us.”
Many of the young men, myself among them, agreed with my father. But Black Kettle yearned for peace and it was his influence that kept our young warriors off the war trail.
As time passed, battles between the settlers and the Indians increased. More and more whites flocked westward, drawn by the promise of free land and rich black soil, by the will-o-the-wisp allure of gold.
Wanting no part of any full-scale war with the whites, Black Kettle went to Fort Lyon and talked with the Post Commander, who informed Black Kettle that he had no power to negotiate a treaty with the Cheyenne. However, he told Black Kettle that we could make our winter camp at Sand Creek under the Fort’s protection until someone holding the proper authority could be summoned and a treaty signed.
Thus it was that in the fall of 1864 several hundred Cheyenne and Arapaho made the trek to Sand Creek, an almost dry river, which was located in the badlands of Colorado some forty miles from Fort Lyon. It was there we erected our lodges, looking forward to a peaceful winter.
But such was not to be. Early one bleak November morning all hell broke loose as the Third Colorado Volunteers, led by Colonel John M. Chivington, attacked our village. Chivington was a man of ponderous bulk, well over six feet tall. He was a Methodist minister-turned-soldier, an Indian-hater known to one and all.
In the pre-dawn darkness, Chivington and his men surrounded our village, which was made up of more than a hundred lodges, and sheltered two hundred warriors and over five hundred women and children. Chivington’s men, who had been traveling all night and nibbling on scant rations, were ill-tempered and tired, and spoiling for a fight.
Despite the early hour and the stealth of their approach, they did not take us unawares. Several of our women saw the column approaching and ran through the village crying a warning.
Still, our men did not immediately grab up their arms. There had been no gunfire or any sign of attack, and our safety had been guaranteed by the commander at Fort Lyon.
Ever the optimist, Black Kettle ran out of his lodge, assuring us that the soldiers meant no harm. After all, we were under the fort’s protection. Nevertheless, as proof of our own good faith and peaceful intentions, Black Kettle raised a white flag over his lodge, together with the red, white and blue flag of the vehoe.
Another of our chiefs, White Antelope, went out to talk with the soldiers. He had made a vow never to fight the vehoe again, and his mission now was to tell them that we wanted only to live in peace with our white brothers. But before he could speak the words, Chivington and his blood-hungry troops opened fire on the village. Shocked by the wanton slaughter caused by the guns of the white man and knowing he was only moments away from death himself, White Antelope began his death song.
“Nothing lives long but the earth and the mountains,” he chanted, and died with his head high, as a warrior should. He was scalped and castrated by the soldiers.
Shells from four, twelve-pound Howitzers rained down on our village, igniting tipi-covers, causing women and children to flee into the open to escape the flames, while the soldiers swept through the village, cutting down everything that moved, sweeping through our camp like a great human scythe.
Images of death and destruction imprinted themselves on my mind.
My best friend, Soaring Eagle, went down in the first massive volley, the top of his head blown away.
Old Crooked Horn fell beneath the merciless hooves of a trooper’s horse.
A young mother burst out of a flaming lodge, her day-old infant cradled to her breast, only to be shot in the back as she ran toward the river. The child fell from her lifeless arms to be trampled by a wild-eyed pony.
A young boy was clubbed to death as he tried to defend his crippled grandmother.
A pasty-faced militiaman, who kept shouting, “Death to the heathen!” shot a child who was sitting in the middle of the battlefield wailing for its mother.
Though badly outnumbered, the warriors fought valiantly in an effort to protect their women, their children, and their old people. But it was a losing battle.
Within minutes, a heavy layer of powder smoke hung over our village like a great blue-gray shroud. Animal-like cries of agony and childish screams of terror punctuated the sharp crack of rifle fire and the sibilant twang of bowstrings.
Snow Flower died that day, and a part of my heart died with her.
I saw my father killed, shot in the back as he guided a frightened group of women and children down river, away from the heat of the battle.
Quiet Antelope met death that day as well, impaled on a bayonet as she sprang at the soldier who had killed my father.
With tears in my eyes and a war cry on my lips, I charged the soldier who had killed the two people I loved above all others.
He grinned at me over his gun sight, but before he could pull the trigger, I dragged him from the back of his horse and plunged my knife into his throat. Blood spurted from his severed jugular vein, warm and red and gratifying as it gushed over my hand and arm.
My own blood ran hot as I jerked my knife from the man’s throat. Another militiaman materialized before me and I struck a second time, driving my blade deep into his chest, my lips drawing back in a savage grin as he crumpled to the ground.
Eager to kill again, I whirled around, seeking a fresh victim for my hungry blade. I heard the sound of hoof beats coming up behind me, but before I could turn around, something struck me across the back of the head. There was a blinding explosion of light, brighter than the sun at noon day, and then a sudden darkness that blotted everything from sight...
* * *
I awakened to an eerie stillness. My head throbbed with a steady monotonous ache. When I tried to move, I discovered that my hands were shackled behind my back.
The battle was over, and we had lost. The bodies of more than two hundred Cheyenne and Arapaho, mostly women and children, lay unmoving on the blood-stained snow. A few of the bodies had been mutilated. One had been clumsily scalped. Another had been decapitated.
I felt the vomit rise in my throat as I saw the bodies of my friends and family lying about like so many broken toys. Somewhere in the distance, a man laughed. It was a hearty robust sound, full of merriment - obscene in the face of so much death and destruction.
A flag waved in the wind. The colors were red and white and blue. Red for Indian blood, I thought bitterly; white for the trampled snow littered with our dead; blue for the endless sky above. Ever after, the sight of the white man’s flag would remind me of Chivington and the massacre at Sand Creek.
Miraculously, my mother had survived. Ivory skin still fair after sixteen years under the relentless prairie sun, she had been quickly identified as a white woman when she ran out of my father’s lodge and had been whisked to safely.
I learned later that only my mother’s fervent pleading with Chivington had saved my life. All other prisoners, regardless of age or sex, had been shot.
Still later, I learned that Black Kettle and a handful of warriors had managed to escape.
And so it was that I found myself in chains, walking toward the white man’s world. The irons locked around my ankles made walking difficult at best. At fifteen, I was nearly full-grown. My legs were long and the short length of chain between the thick iron cuffs curbed my stride, forcing me to take short, awkward steps.
<
br /> One man, a sergeant by the name of Polanski, thought it quite amusing to watch me stumbling along. He took to riding beside me and at least once a day, oft times more, he managed to trip me up. With my hands shackled behind my back, I had no way to break my fall and usually ended up flat on my face, which caused Polanski to roar with laughter.
It was Polanski, forever thinking of ways to torment me, who fanned the embers of my dislike for the white race into full-fledged hatred.
One day he made me walk backwards for three miles. Another day he insisted I carry a six-foot log across my shoulders. Another time he forced me to my knees and ordered me to crawl in the dusty wake of his horse. When I refused, he kicked me in the ribs a few times, then laughed and rode off to the front of the column.
Polanski considered himself somewhat of an expert on Indian lore and spent many an evening spreading his dubious knowledge among the other militiamen, many of whom listened with rapt fascination as Polanski related one tale of Indian treachery after another, accepting every word Polanski spoke as the gospel truth, though most of the man’s stories were little more than a bunch of lies tied together with a slim knot of fact.
“They can really hand it out,” Polanski declared one night. “But they can take it, too. Why, I’ve seen Injuns skinned alive that never made a sound.” He snorted low in his throat. “Course, Injuns is trained from infancy to endure pain without a whimper.”
“You’re full of crap, Polanski,” sneered a grizzled trooper. “I been out of the woods long enough to know that a red stick will holler just like anybody else if you yank his tail hard enough.”
“Says who?”
“Says me, Patrick Casey. And I got me twenty silver dollars that says I’m right and you’re wrong.”
Polanski dragged a callused hand over a week’s growth of bristles. “Twenty dollars,” he mused. “Well, I’ll just take that bet.”
“Yeah, I figured you would,” Casey muttered sarcastically, “seeing as how there’s no way to settle it one way or the other.”
“Shit, we can settle it right now if you’ve a mind to,” Polanski declared, glancing in my direction. “We’ve got the perfect guinea pig right here.”
There was a sudden silence as all eyes swung in my direction, and what had begun as a verbal fencing match between two hard-nosed veterans suddenly took on ominous over-tones.
I felt a quick shiver of apprehension as Casey said, “He’s a mite young, but I reckon he’ll do.”
“He ain’t too young,” Polanski said.
“Well, then, what have you got in mind?” Casey asked.
“We’ll just cut him up a little,” Polanski said casually. “If he hollers, you win. If he don’t, I win. Agreed?”
“Sounds simple enough,” Casey said. “Only I’ll do the cuttin’.”
“Suits me,” Polanski replied with a shrug. “But you only get one chance to make him squeal.”
“Done,” Casey said, and the two men shook hands to seal the bargain.
At Casey’s order, one of the troopers held a gun to my head while a freckle-faced militiaman removed the shackles from my wrists.
“What now?” Polanski asked, echoing the thought running through my own mind.
“You’ll see,” Casey said. “All right, Injun, put your left hand on that there stump, palm down, and spread your fingers wide less you want to lose more than one.”
The wood was cold beneath my hand, the muzzle of the gun unwavering against the side of my head. My mouth went dry and I felt my insides turn to ice as Casey drew a knife from his belt and held the broad, two-edged blade over my left hand. I knew the sharp strength of that knife. I had seen Casey use it to chop wood for the fire. Had seen that gleaming ten-inch blade slice through a buffalo haunch as if it were made of butter.
I couldn’t believe they meant to do it. Heart pounding, I glanced from one man to the other, hoping this was just another of Polanski’s cruel jokes. The other troopers gathered around as Patrick Casey laid the shining blade across the second knuckle of my little finger.
At the same time, Victor Polanski’s voice sounded in my ear, barely audible above the murmur of voices rising and falling around us as the other men wagered on what my reaction would be.
“If you make so much as a whimper,” Polanski warned ominously, “I’ll slice off the other four.”
I didn’t doubt him for a second.
A taut silence fell over the watching militiamen as Polanski grabbed my left wrist so I couldn’t jerk my hand away. I had expected Casey to chop my finger off. I knew it would hurt, but I thought it would be quickly over. Instead, Casey began to saw through my flesh.
I sucked in a deep breath as a thin stream of bright red blood bubbled in the wake of the blade. Every muscle in my body tensed as the blade of the knife struck bare bone.
I was sweating profusely now. My knees felt weak and tears of pain, rage, and impotent fury burned my eyes, but I blinked them back, refusing to allow these men to know how much I was hurting.
And then Casey placed the point of the blade on the second knuckle of my finger. Using the butt of his gun like a hammer, he struck the handle of the knife, severing two-thirds of my little finger from my hand.
Waves of excruciating pain and nausea swept through me. The temptation to scream was strong, but Polanski’s threat rang loud and clear in my mind and I clenched my teeth and kept silent.
Through a red haze of pain and hatred, I saw one of the men pluck a burning brand from the fire and walk purposefully toward me. There was a faint glimmer of pity in his eyes, and I shuddered violently as I realized what he meant to do. Before I could twist away, Polanski grabbed my hand and held it out while the man slapped the burning brand against the raw wound.
There was a gentle hissing sound followed by the cloying stench of scorched flesh.
Things went hazy after that. As from far away I heard Polanski holler for Casey to pay up. I heard my mother’s voice, shrill with righteous anger as she demanded to know what was going on, heard the anger turn to concern as she called for a doctor.
I must be hallucinating, I thought groggily. She had never been concerned about me before.
The rest of that night blurred into nothingness as the sedative the doctor gave me took effect.
In the morning, Polanski and Casey received a mild reprimanded from Chivington. To my knowledge, nothing more was said.
I found it hard to believe that Chivington had once been a holy man among his own people. He was a belligerent creature, big as a grizzly, and just as mean. He was a great believer in Manifest Destiny, and believed it was his sacred duty to wipe the Indians from the face of the earth.
“Nits make lice,” was his theory, and he had backed up his words with action at Sand Creek when he ordered all the children killed.
Following the incident with Polanski and Casey, my mother went to Chivington and pleaded with him to let me ride in the supply wagon with her, but Chivington adamantly refused.
“Your son is a savage,” the colonel replied crisply. “More than that, he is of fighting age and must therefore be treated as a prisoner of war. Consider yourself lucky that I did not have him executed.”
I did not consider myself lucky.
It was a long cold walk. Clad only in clout and moccasins, I trudged through the wind and rain, shivering uncontrollably. My mother had offered me her own buffalo robe coat, but it was far too small, so she went from man to man, trying to find someone who would lend me something warm to wear, but they all refused.
“Shucks, ma’am,” I ain’t got but one extra shirt,” drawled one of the men, “and if I was to let that gut-eater wear it, why, I’d have to burn the dang thing to get rid of the Injun stink.”
Inwardly, I seethed with anger, wishing my mother would just forget the whole thing. Better I should freeze to death than she should demean herself by begging those men for anything.
“You’re a fine bunch of men,” she cried, her voice sharper than a two-edge
d sword. “You call yourselves Christians. Civilized! Well, let me tell you, Black Kettle’s Cheyenne may have been godless savages, but they knew the meaning of Christian charity and human decency!”
It was the first kind word I had ever heard her speak in reference to the Cheyenne.
Shamed by her tirade, one of the men threw a blanket around my shoulders. It helped ward off the wind and the cold and I was grateful for it, though I would never have admitted it.
My mother was allowed to bring me food twice each day, to offer me water at noon. Other than that, she was not allowed near me.
At night, I was shackled to one of the wagon wheels. Knowing it was futile, I struggled to free my hands. The heavy manacles cut into my flesh until my wrists were slick with blood, but try as I might, I could not slip free. I had once seen a wolf snared in a trap gnaw off its leg to win its freedom. I knew now just how the wolf had felt. Had I been able, I would have gladly sacrificed a hand for my freedom.
Chivington and his men returned home victorious, brandishing scalps, looted Indian blankets, baskets, moccasins, and weapons. Heroes, all.
Later, before a Congressional Committee, stories began to come forth: shocking stories of soldiers scalping the bodies of Indian men and women, cutting off the fingers and breasts and genitals of the dead for souvenirs. There were hideous stories of soldiers using Indian children for target practice; gruesome tales of soldiers standing in line to rape dead Indian women.
Still later, when all the facts were known, the Army’s Advocate General would call the Sand Creek massacre a cowardly, cold-blooded slaughter. But that was in the future. For now, Chivington and his volunteers were lauded as heroes and were treated as such by the whole town, and I found myself behind bars, awaiting an uncertain fate.
Chapter 6
The sheriff was an incredibly fat man with a balding pate, three chins, and a bulbous nose. He insisted I remain shackled hand and foot, even inside my cell.
In the Shadow of the Hills Page 6
