by Jonis Agee
“If anyone else shows up on this doorstep, shoot them,” Dulcinea said.
PART FOUR
THE NOISE of THEIR WINGS
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
When the Sioux family stopped at the ranch in late November of 1890 to trade for food, their story of the coming messiah and the dancing that would welcome him stayed with J.B. until he finally left Higgs in charge, took Hayward, and rode up to Rushville, arriving midmorning. He wasn’t a religious man, but he’d heard rumors of the Indians gathering since summer and decided to see for himself. If he could find Dulcinea, he’d leave the boy with her. He tried the telegraph office, but couldn’t give them her address so he gave up on that notion and thought maybe he’d see her in town. The place was teeming with cavalry troops, newspaper writers, politicians, and curious citizens.
Unable to secure a bed for the night, J.B. had to choose between returning to the ranch and pushing on. Despite the boy’s cries of hunger and sobs of Mama, Mama, J.B. held him in the front of his saddle. By the time they rode up to the military encampment, Sibley tents stretched wide across the flat landscape, while the thin winter light outlined every object as if it were drawn by a sharp pencil. The tents glowed white against the brown grass and dirt, and the horses in the rope corrals were silent, hipshot, heads down. The smoke from cooking fires and mess tents rose lazily into the white-gray sky.
On a small rise to his right, J.B. saw a man with a box camera on a tripod sighting on the camp in the late-afternoon light. Across the country newspapers printed drawings based on photographs of the Lakota encampment, the dancing, and the cavalry. He figured their reports were largely exaggerated. The Omaha Bee one of the worst for rumors and outright lies. The Omaha Herald tried harder for the truth, but it eluded them when there were powerful money and business interests at stake. He wondered what the government wanted here. He’d heard the Indian agent, Royer, was a fool and a coward, and called in the troops as soon as he could to stop the dancing. Some of J.B.’s men bragged about coming here to fight the “murdering redskins” and to save the white women and children who had earned their rightful place on Indian land. Another reason to come see for himself. If he had to hold his men at gunpoint, he would.
After a night on the hard ground, J.B. woke covered in blankets soaked with cold dew and frost. He saddled their horses and woke Hayward at sunrise. He didn’t want any further discussion, and refused to gratify Hayward’s desire to spend time with the rough soldiers. Once the boy was mounted, J.B. handed him two cold biscuits stuffed with bacon and a canteen of fresh water. He could eat like a cowboy on the trail. Last night he heard that Drum was prowling, and he wanted to avoid him if possible.
The dancing was well under way when they reached the Indian encampment, and J.B. was stunned by the number of tipis and people. Pulling up beside two white men in a buggy along the ragged edge of spectators, he used his binoculars to scan the dancers and supporters. The only guns seemed to be in the hands of young men acting as guards, who blocked anyone who tried to break into the circle and disrupt the dance. Women wore white cotton dresses with blue around the V-neck, painted with flowers and birds and animals. Men wore pale blue shirts painted with butterflies, buffalo, deer, and flowers . . . the life they would bring back when the road to the spirit world opened again. Later, he was told the people believed their garments bulletproof, but that story only appeared among whites after the cavalry drew close and trained their guns on the dancers, who fled to the Stronghold and Wounded Knee Creek.
The dancers moved slowly around the circle, lifting legs with the beat of the big five- and six-man drums. Soon J.B. felt the drumbeat move into his own body; his blood pulsed in his veins, throbbed in his head, demanded he keep count. Beside him, Hayward lifted his feet and knees in rhythm, too. Powdered by months of dancing, the dirt gave beneath his feet, springing back as the earth answered his step. Thoughts began to recede in the distance, and he was on a long road away from the land he knew. The ground itself carried the thudding rhythm into his feet and up his legs. It climbed his spine and encircled his chest, shoulders, neck, and finally smothered his skull until he almost danced himself, his heart beating as one with the others.
“Stay with your pa, boy.” A stranger pulled Hayward back. J.B. nodded his thanks and looked down at the boy, who was as dazed as he was. Maybe they were both tired of being alone. He felt the hope here. Hope in the people dressed in rags, without shoes even in the cold, beloved children running and playing, dogs bouncing at their sides, patched and torn tipis with smoke trickling from the tops, big kettles of watery stew for the dancers outside the loose circle, old men and boys returning from the hunt with barely enough rabbits to feed themselves, the elderly and sick lying on the ground or propped on blankets around the circle so their spirits could encourage the dancers. None of it mattered as much as continuing the dance that would redeem their land and heal the rents the whites had torn in its fabric. J.B. was overwhelmed by the profound sadness: a vision of so much hope in a doomed world. What had he done? It was the first time he questioned his right to the land his father claimed, the land for which he had paid a terrible price.
“That’s a scalp dance,” the bearded white man next to him announced.
“No, that’s an Omaha dance. It’s harmless. Women aren’t part of a scalp dance,” another man said. J.B. glanced at him, noticed the priest’s collar and black robe under the heavy black wool coat. Mission priest. He might know something. J.B. introduced himself and discovered one was a storekeeper from Gordon named Swan, and the other a Jesuit from the Rosebud mission school named Hansen, a tall, thin man with thick blond hair and pale blue eyes.
“There’s that photographer fellow again, Morledge, he’s been here since summer.” Swan pointed to a young man in dark clothing who drifted between groups, apparently welcome by all. “Goes out among them like he’s on a Sunday picnic. Lucky if he doesn’t leave that fine head of hair behind.” Swan was not to be persuaded about the dancers, despite the women and even children who danced through the next several hours without respite. If anything, the rhythmic chanting and steady nodding shuffle took them to the edge of transport, such as J.B. had seen in Missouri tent revivals as a young man. He had never felt it his place to decide another person’s religion, and if the messiah appeared to other folks, so be it. He just hoped to make it through a day.
“Can I look?” Hayward stretched up a hand for the binoculars.
The priest nodded at J.B. as if to say he was doing a good job bringing the boy here to witness.
“Sure hope those troops get off their duffs and put a stop to this nonsense.” Swan pointed to the steady stream of Indian families making their way into the encampment. “Folks around here, whites that is, are scared to death they’ll lose everything they’ve worked for now. Religion, my ass.” He snorted loudly.
“Those whites are squatters wanting to carve up more reservation, Mr. Swan,” the priest said, his tone dry.
“Indians don’t use a tenth of what we gave them. They got no money and they won’t work, what good are they? We beat ’em fair and square. Now the government gives them food so they don’t have to farm. Beef so they don’t have to ranch. Wish I could join up!” He gave a war whoop and did an exaggerated dance step, knees rising like the great pistons of a draft horse.
The priest shook his head and glanced at J.B. with a smile. “Maybe you should.”
J.B. thought about the beef issue on annuity days that he’d witnessed last summer when it was so dry and the ranch struggling. He’d culled the best steers he could find and driven them to the reservation. The families standing on the perimeter looked half-starved and tried not to appear anxious for their cut of beef once their relative rode it down on horseback and shot it, a poor replica of their buffalo-hunting days that made the white spectators cheer and clap as if at Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. A quarter of skinny beef was to last each family a month, regardless of the number of children or relatives. Last month Roye
r, the Indian agent, suspended the allotment until the people stopped dancing, and now the families must be hungrier than ever. J.B.’s stomach clenched. If he could, he’d find a way to push some cattle to the reservation, maybe in a place that wasn’t so heavily guarded. He’d think on that. Maybe the priest would help, unless he was starving them to accept his Christian god.
“Will you look at that young fellow!” Swan pointed toward the photographer, who had loaded his equipment on his horse and made his way toward the dance. The guards immediately stopped him, but after some negotiation, allowed him to join the crowd as long as he didn’t unload his camera. J.B. nodded to the two men and led his horse toward the dance, his son behind him.
They stayed a day, talking and watching, sharing the food cooking in big pots over campfires in front of tipis. J.B. liked how his son seemed interested and open to anyone who came near, soon joking and sitting with younger boys and girls resting from the dance or joining in their games. Close to dark, J.B. accepted the priest’s offer to spend the night in his tipi. At least they wouldn’t wake to wet blankets. After a supper of cornmeal in a thin meat broth of some sort, a Ghost Dancer named Jack Red Cloud, son of the famous chief and one of the first dancers, came to the tipi to discuss the increasing presence of the cavalry. A handsome young man with strong features, he posed the question that had bothered J.B. for months. Jack Red Cloud refused to look at the stranger as he addressed Father Hansen, and asked, “You have your religion, why won’t you allow us to have ours?” The Jesuit shook his head once and stared at the fire in the center of the tipi, until finally he said, “It’s not up to me. Ask the president. Ask Congress.”
“American Horse agrees with them, says don’t fight the white government. We’ll all be killed. How can that be right?” When the priest didn’t reply, instead staring moodily into the fire, Jack Red Cloud stood and left, muttering to himself. J.B. was torn by the argument. He thought every person had the right to believe as they wanted, but the Indians were in a tricky position. Was it really so important to continue a doomed cause? The government was wrong to starve the families, but maybe the Indian leaders should consider their survival, instead of insisting on make-believe. But if it was make-believe, why were white people so upset about it? Surely they didn’t believe the Indians regained their power by dancing. J.B. threw a stick on the fire, watched the flames lick then gather it in until it turned orange and powdered into red coals. He glanced at Hayward asleep in his blankets, dark blue circles under his eyes like bruises.
“They have to be careful,” the priest said with a sigh. “Big Foot is very sick, in the hands of the military. Who knows what they intend to do with him. Tribal factions and the military want Sitting Bull dead. Royer wants Little arrested, but the dancers protect him.” He hunched, holding himself. “This isn’t going to end well. More people arriving daily. Indian agent calling for troops to stop the dance and the so-called threat. Man’s a fool!” He suddenly stood and flung something into the fire that looked like a rosary. J.B. couldn’t be sure as it sank into the ashes and disappeared.
J.B. left Pine Ridge after three days and felt he’d witnessed a historic moment: the conversion of thousands of people to a new religion. Everywhere he sat and talked to Indians who spoke only of living in peace with creation again, without war and hunger, a world where their children could return to their families and be raised in the traditional ways in harmony with the animals and all people. It was a Christian vision without hell and damnation. On his way back through the cavalry encampment, J.B. stopped at the tent of General Brooke. He explained his assessment, saying, “The Indians are only practicing their religious beliefs. It’s peaceful. No threat at all.”
Brooke laughed openly at him. “All respect, sir, but you have no experience with these people.”
“There are a lot of elderly, women, and children out there. Hardly anyone has a gun. Most of the young men have died or run off,” J.B. protested.
The general nodded and stared at him. “You’re lucky the hostiles didn’t slit your throat or steal your guns, my friend. You don’t know the force we’re dealing with. They have weapons hidden all over that camp, and I intend to find them, or they will be made to pay.”
A glint in his eyes assured J.B. that the general believed his words, and would happily massacre the entire camp without a thought. The military seemed bent on retribution for Custer and the Seventh Cavalry’s defeat at Little Bighorn. And when the Indians were finally blotted out, the Black Hills and all the reservation lands would be open for white settlement. The argument still raged in Congress. There was money to be made here.
J.B. went through Rushville again, and noted the train that arrived loaded with more troops, horses, and supplies, as if a major battle would soon be fought. It worried him, but he reassured himself that it was a religious celebration, nothing more. Surely the military would eventually recognize that. He stopped at the telegraph office again, noticed the Indian girl tidying the place. The operator, Crockett, was notorious for his slovenly ways, and it was a treat to enter the room without the stench of sweat and garbage. When he asked after Dulcinea, Crockett shook his head, and from the waves of alcohol coming off him, J.B. felt he probably didn’t understand the question. The Indian girl paused after Crockett stumbled to the back, and motioned him closer.
“Chadron,” she whispered. He thanked her and quickly composed a message saying he’d be in Rushville late December if she sent word. The girl looked at him, read the message, and glanced toward the other room where Crockett’s drunken snores rattled the dishes. J.B. laid the coin on the counter and left reassured.
Over the next month, he followed the mounting alarm over the Ghost Dance on Pine Ridge. He read papers from Chadron, Gordon, and Omaha, and rode into town as often as he could get away. Elaine Goodale Eastman, an Indian agent, said the ghost shirts only became bulletproof after the army arrived, and that should be evidence this was a peaceful gathering. He couldn’t rid his mind of the images: gaunt children in threadbare clothes playing happily while their families danced and prayed to change their futures. At night he held Hayward for longer than usual and let him sleep with him when bad dreams threatened.
Then the news turned desperate. A Sioux cowboy passing through from North Platte to Pine Ridge told them Sitting Bull was murdered on December 15, by agency police at Standing Rock Reservation. The army feared he was urging his followers to join the Ghost Dancers and create an uprising. Buffalo Bill had come to Sitting Bull, his old friend, and tried to trick him into surrendering, but the ruse failed and Bill departed. The Indian ate sparingly though he was clearly hungry, and J.B. and Vera both urged more food on him. When he pushed away from the table he thanked them and J.B. let him sleep on the sofa so he’d have at least one warm night. In the morning, Vera gave him all the leftover beef, a chicken, and twenty biscuits she woke early to bake. Later, when Buffalo Bill was granted the use of the braves who held out in the Stronghold after Wounded Knee, J.B. wondered if the cowboy, Roy Dancing Spear, was among them. The men were allowed few choices: become part of Bill’s show and travel to Europe, go to prison, or be relocated to Oklahoma, where the Lakota people were the most hated by all the other tribes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
In late December J.B. received a message from Father Hansen that urged him to return to Pine Ridge. J.B. was in a quandary. He didn’t want to leave Hayward, and had no notion that he’d be of any help, yet the man asked and he still couldn’t shake the images of those children. The priest said the military was poised to attack simply because it was winter, they were cold, and their patience had worn thin with a people who wouldn’t stop dancing despite the lack of food and warmth. Families starved, and it made no difference. They danced with rags wrapped around their feet. Finally, a large contingent of Indians fled the encampment, but were followed by the army, found and taken to Wounded Knee Creek, and assured they’d be safe. One of their leaders, Big Foot, ill with pneumonia, was among them.
/> When he heard the news, J.B. decided to go, despite the frigid weather and the snow that would bury them any day now. He brought extra clothing, blankets, and food on a packhorse. Hayward was left in the care of Jorge and Willie Munday, since Vera and Higgs had taken the train to Denver. The hands wore grim expressions as he waved good-bye, and something in the pit of his stomach told him they were right. He had no business in the middle of this. He secretly hoped to see his wife, but he couldn’t tell them that either.
When J.B. arrived at Wounded Knee Creek and met Father Hansen on the evening of December 28, the soldiers were drunk on whiskey a freighter sold out of the back of his wagon. Hardly anyone slept that night with the drunken yelling, singing, and fighting, and on the morning of the twenty-ninth the camp’s mood was tense, soldiers prepared to shoot at any provocation, Indians wary despite the children playing around tipis, and the dancers and drummers organized at first light. As Father Hansen and J.B. drank their coffee and ate hard biscuits, they remarked on the sense of dread and hostility among the surly troops. “The army wants to attack,” Father Hansen warned. “Their patience is gone. They’ll attack. There’s nothing else they can do.”
“Then why am I here?” he asked in a bitter voice. The man had no right to drag him into this mess.
Father Hansen stared at him, then shrugged. “I couldn’t think of anyone else who cared enough.”
“To do what?” J.B. wanted to hit the priest.
“To bear witness. Someone has to know the true story. The army’s already writing their version, the one that makes them heroes. I thought between us we could gather the facts. The truth.” He shook his head. “Something terrible is about to happen, and there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it but stand and watch.” He clenched his fists and hit the ground, producing a crackling in his bones.
