Joseph M. Marshall III
Page 30
Arrow after arrow he sent from his new bow, farther and faster than any bow he had made or shot. Truly, this bow had a power and a spirit he had never seen, or felt, in any other. The Bow Maker returned home to his village with six staves from the lightning tree and his new bow. All the hunters and warriors were curious as he took his new bow to the river to shoot arrows into a sandbank. To a man they marveled at the speed and power of the bow. Each arrow flew almost faster than thought and drove itself deep into the bank.
Men of the village came with offers to trade for the powerful new bow made from the lightning tree. Word went out to other villages and although it was winter many came. The Bow Maker allowed each man to shoot the bow. Not one of them had ever seen such a bow and all praised its strength.
Offers were made for the bow; each man who touched it and used it wanted it and promised anything the old Bow Maker would want in trade. The Bow Maker patiently listened to all the offers but said nothing. Days passed and the men in the village were growing impatient, some returned and increased their offer of payment. The Bow Maker didn’t want to trade. He had enough to make his life comfortable for he required little in the way of material things. He had it in mind to give the bow to the man he thought was most deserving. So he patiently waited.
More days passed and the village was growing restless, anxious for the Bow Maker to make a trade, but nothing happened. The men began to talk among themselves, asking what they must do for one of them to have the bow. Some suggested there be a contest of some kind, a foot race or a test of strength, and the winner would receive all the possessions of each man who lost and then he could trade for the bow. But others had different ideas and arguments grew, some men became angry and accused the Bow Maker of some kind of trickery. Fights broke out among some and families joined in until there was a deep unrest in the village. The Bow Maker watched and was sad. He hoped that one man would show himself worthy of owning the bow from the lightning tree, a bow with the power of the Thunders. But a bow such as that could not be given to anyone who was willing to stoop to anger or deceit to own it. The old Bow Maker was heart broken. He had not meant to cause such trouble. Even the best of gifts can bring out the worst in some, he had learned. He was just as sad that not a single man could prove himself worthy of the bow from the lightning tree. There was only one way to fix the difficulty he had caused.
The Bow Maker sent a Crier through the village to announce that on the sundown of the fourth day hence, he would have an answer. The people grumbled that it was about time. During the night the Bow Maker slipped away unseen from the village with a sad heart and a long bundle under one arm. The people noticed that his lodge door was tied shut and grumbled all the more. On the sundown of the fourth day the Bow Maker returned, empty-handed.
“The power of the bow made from the lightning tree is a special gift,” he told the people when they gathered to listen to him. “It is more than a thing to be owned. I did not want to trade. Though I made it, it did not really belong to me. I would have given it to the man with the humility to own it. All I saw was arrogance and anger and how you made yourselves more important than the gift. Therefore I have given it back to the Thunders. I still have six more staves from the lightning tree, someday before I die, perhaps I will make another bow. Perhaps . . .”
The people were ashamed of what they had done, of the manner in which they had behaved, and expressed their regret to the Bow Maker. And all hoped that someday he would make another bow from the lightning tree, before it was too late. The Bow Maker didn’t have to remind them that until then they would all need to live in a good way, so they could be worthy of such a bow if one were to be made again.
Sources
Storytellers from the Rosebud Reservation—Sicangu Lakota
Horse Creek Community
This district or community was named for the creek that drains into the Little White, or Smoking Earth, River.
My maternal grandparents were Albert and Annie. Lucy and Maggie were my grandfather’s sisters. Lucy married Moses Rattling Leaf. In the 1950s when many Lakota were still using horses and wagons (and buggies), Grandpa Moses had a very good-looking pair of matched draft horses for his wagon. Maggie married Paul Little Dog, who was also known as No Two Horns.
My parents are Joseph and Hazel. My mother has patiently answered questions in the past three years, especially concerning the names in this Sources section. I was not surprised to hear various bits of family, cultural, and historical information from my father in the years before he died; which I always suspected he knew, and am exceedingly glad he finally saw fit to divulge.
Sam Brings (aka Brings Three White Horses) George Brave
Sam told me of a place along Horse Creek where he had found arrowheads and flint chips when he was a young man or boy. My grandfather and I later found stone flakes there, too, but no arrowheads. The site was bulldozed when Highway 83 was widened in the 1960s. George was an avid hunter and later in his life drove a bus route for the local school district that hauled only Indian students.
Harris and Millie lived west of us on his land that bordered the Little White River, adjacent to my grandmother Annie’s land. We walked to their log house often, especially in the summers. I remember trying desperately to stay awake as he and my grandfather would talk far into the night about the old days.
Swift Bear Community
The Swift Bear district or community is located on the northern edge of the Rosebud Reservation. Its northern border is the Big White or White Earth River. It is named for one of the Sicangu Lakota headmen, Swift Bear, also known as Quick Bear. All of the following were in some way related to my maternal grandfather, Albert.
Ring Thunder and Soldier Creek Communities
Katie (Katherine) Roubideaux Blue Thunder and M. Blanche Roubideaux Marshall were sisters. Blanche was my father’s mother. Their mother (one of my great-grandmothers) was Adelia Blunt Arrow, a Sicangu Lakota, and their father was Louis Roubideaux, a mixed-blood of French descent and a district agent and interpreter for the Indian Bureau at the Rosebud Agency. My grandmother Katie lived to be nearly 101 years old.
Sam and James Provincial were brothers. Sam was a very distinguished-looking man with a strong baritone voice. By contrast, James was very soft-spoken. Sam’s wife was Mercy and Jim’s wife was Ollie Lodgeskin Provincial. My maternal grandmother Annie and Ollie were first cousins, and had known each other since childhood. Ollie’s mother, Lulu Lodgeskin, was a small woman who also lived to be a hundred years old. I never heard her speak English.
My father’s older brother was Narcisse Brave. Both of them were involved in tribal politics with the Rosebud Sioux Tribe at one time or another. My father was a council representative from the Horse Creek Community and Uncle Narcisse was tribal vice president.
Laban was my uncle by marriage. He was married to my father’s sister Adelia. He, like my grandfather, the Reverend Charles Marshall, was an avid fisherman. Uncle Laban liked to tell stories as he fished.
Storytellers from the Pine Ridge Reservation—Oglala Lakota
Wilson and Alice lived along a creek bottom not far from my grandparents, Charles and Blanche Marshall, near the town of Kyle on the Pine Ridge, in the Potato Creek District. They walked a lot because Wilson was blind and Alice, as I recall, didn’t drive. Alice had extensive knowledge of midwives in the old days, and Wilson just knew a lot. Adolph was my uncle by marriage, married to one of my father’s sisters. He was not an old man when I first met him, when I was eight, but I suspect that much or all of what he knew historically and culturally he learned from his father, Guy Bull Bear, who lived through some interesting times. Bull Bear, is, of course, an old and distinguished name among the Oglala Lakota.
My grandfather Charles was tall and very distinguished. He and my maternal grandfather, Albert, had a deep mutual respect. Grandpa Charles, in his life, was a rancher, a gold miner (having worked in the Homestake Gold Mine in the Black Hills), and an ordained Episcopalian deacon. I
remember watching him play baseball when he was fifty-five years old. He was the son of a Frenchman, Joseph Marshall (probably originally Marichale). (Joseph and his brother, Francis [François] had an interesting journey that eventually led them to the Pine Ridge Reservation, via Fort Yankton and Fort Laramie, among other places. They both married Lakota women and raised large families.)
Many of these people from Rosebud and Pine Ridge were related to me, or took me as a relative. Each of them gave me a piece of themselves because of a story or stories they told me, or because they taught me something. My grandfather Albert taught me to make bows and arrows, for example. Grandpa Isaac Knife taught his son, Israel (my cousin), and me to weave fish traps out of sandbar willows. I can’t remember who it was that taught me how to play the Snow Snake game first, sliding willow rods on the river ice. All my grandmothers showed me about beading and quilling, and hide tanning. The list goes on and on. Most of all they all taught me to be aware of who and what I am, and always to be proud of it.
Suggested Reading
Andrist, Ralph K., The Long Death. Macmillan, 1964.
Brown, Dee A., Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Bantam, 1970.
Buecher, Thomas R., ed., The Crazy Horse Surrender Ledger. Nebraska Historical Society, 1994.
Hardoff, Richard G., The Oglala Lakota Crazy Horse: A Preliminary Genealogical Study and an Annotated Listing of Primary Sources. J.M. Carroll and Company, 1985.
Kadlecek, Edward, and Mabel Kadlecek, To Kill an Eagle: Indian Views on the Last Days of Crazy Horse. Johnson Books, 1995.
Sandoz, Mari, Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas. University of Nebraska Press, 1942.
Scott, Douglas D., Richard A. Fox, Jr., Melissa A. Conner, and Dick Harmon, Archaeological Perspectives on the Battle of the Little Bighorn. University of Oklahoma, 2000.
Index
Adventure
Afghanistan
Agencies
Crazy Horse offered
Lakota disarmed on
order to report to
of Red Cloud
of Spotted Tail
Allotment (Dawes) Act of 1887
Ambrose, Stephen
American Horse (Long Knife Horse)
Annuities
Antelope
Apache
Arikara
Arrows, crafting of
Ash Creek
Backbone. See High Back Bone
Badger, grizzly bear and
Bad Heart Bull
Bad Wound
Battle of the Hundred in the Hand (Fetterman Battle)
Battle of the Little Bighorn (Greasy Grass Fight)
Battle of the Rosebud
Bear Butte
Bear Coat (Nelson Miles)
Beaver Creek
Beaver Mountain
Big Horn (Shining) Mountains
Big Horn River
Big Nose
Big Road
Bird Ash
Black Buffalo Woman
Black Crow
Blackfeet
Fort Laramie Treaty Council and
Black Hills (the heart of all things)
Crazy Horse in
government’s offer to buy
whites in
whites’ supposed ownership of
Black Kettle
Black Moon
Black Shawl
Crazy Horse’s second wife and
daughter of
daughter’s death and
Black Shield
Black Twin
Blind Wolf
Blue Clouds
Blue Water River
Bordeaux, Jim
Bordeaux, Louie
Bows, crafting of
“The Lightning Bow,”
Bozeman Trail (Powder River Road)
Bozeman Trail (Powder River) War
Broken Hand (Thomas Fitzpatrick)
Buffalo (bison)
lodges made from hides of
whites and
Buffalo Calf Road
Buffalo Creek
Bureau of Indian Affairs
Calendar, Lakota
Camp Robinson
Canada (Grandmother’s Land)
Canvas lodges
Carrington, Henry
Chalk Buttes
Chips
Chiracahua Apache
Christianity
Clark, White Hat
Comanche
Comes in Sight
Conquering Bear
Cottonwood Creek
Councils at Horse Creek:
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868
Cow incident. See Grattan incident
Crane, Stephen
Crazy Horse (Tasunke Witko; Light Hair; Jiji ):
agencies and
agency offered to
in Battle of the Little Bighorn (Greasy Grass Fight)
birth of
Black Buffalo Woman and
in Black Hills
bows of
boyhood of
brother of. See Little Hawk (Little Cloud; Crazy Horse’s brother)
Camp Robinson journey of
daughter of. See They Are Afraid of Her
death of
dream of
Elk River ambush and
father of. See Worm
in Fetterman Battle (Battle of the Hundred in the Hand)
as fighting man
Gathering the Warriors ritual invoked by
Grattan incident and
hair of
Hollywood portrayals of
horses of
as hunter
leadership of
Little Thunder camp attack and
mentors of. See also High Back Bone
mothers of ; See also Rattling Blanket Woman
myths and legends surrounding
names of
No Water’s shooting of
petroglyph carved by
photographs of
on raids
in Rosebud Fight
as Shirt Wearer
sister of
surrender of
in sweat lodge
turning points in life of
weapons of
whites as viewed by
whites battled by
wives of. See also Black Shawl
worries of
Crazy Horse (Worm; father of Crazy Horse). See Worm
Crazy Horse and Custer (Ambrose)
Crazy Woman Creek
Crook, George. See Three Stars
Crow (Absaroka)
Fort Laramie Treaty Council and
Crow (Absaroka) (cont.)
raids on
soldiers and
Crow King
Custer, George (Long Hair)
Dakota
Dawes (Allotment) Act of 1887
Death
Decoy actions
Deer
Deer Creek
Denver
Dull Knife
Eastern Shoshoni. See Snakes
Elk
Elk Mountain
Elk (Yellowstone) River
ambush at
Euro-Americans. See Whites
Fast Thunder
Fetterman, William
Fetterman Battle (Battle of the Hundred in the Hand)
Fitzpatrick, Thomas (Broken Hand)
Fleming, Commander
Fort Caspar
Fort Fetterman
Fort Laramie
cow incident and. See Grattan incident
Fort Laramie (Horse Creek) treaties:
of 1851
of 1868
Fort Phil Kearny
Fort Reno
Fouts, Captain William D
Gall
Gathering the Warriors
Geronimo
Gold
in Black Hills
Good Weasel
Goose Creek
Grabber
Grandmother’s Land (Canada)
Gr
asshoppers
Grattan, John
Grattan incident (cow incident)
Greasy Grass Fight (Battle of the Little Bighorn)
Greasy Grass (Little Bighorn) River
Great Muddy (Missouri) River
Great Sioux Reservation
Grizzly bear, badger and
Gros Ventures
Harney, Woman Killer
Harney Peak
He Dog
in Battle of the Little Bighorn
on Camp Robinson journey
on raids
as Shirt Wearer
Hero stories
Heyoka
Hidatsa
High Back Bone (Hump; Backbone)
ash stave given to Crazy Horse by
death of
Fort Phil Kearny and
Grattan incident and
in raid in Snake country
High Back Wolf
High Bear
His Enemies Are Afraid of His Horses. See Young Man Whose Enemies Are Afraid of His Horses
Holy Road (Shell River trail)
Honoring songs
Horse Creek (Fort Laramie) treaties:
of 1851
of 1868
Horses
taken from Lakota
Hump. See High Back Bone
Hunkpapa Lakota
Hunkpatila
Hunting
crafting bows for
by Crazy Horse
See also Buffalo; Deer; Elk
Ihanktunwan Dakota
Iktomi
Indian Nation
Iron Plume
Iron Shell
Itazipacola Lakota
Jipala
Joseph, Chief
Julesburg
Kiowa
Lakota
at agencies. See Agencies
Black Hills and. See Black Hills
calendar of
childrearing among
Fort Laramie and. See Fort Laramie
Lakota (cont.)
Grattan incident (cow incident) and