Man on Two Ponies

by Don Worcester

  One afternoon a few days later Short Bull came to the trading post with a letter in his hand. He was a small, sharp-faced man who had been a famous warrior; at forty-five he was a medicine man and a leader of the nonprogressives. Known for his generosity, he was respected and popular. Like other nonprogressives, he’d always ignored Billy. Now he showed him the letter. “You can read it for me?”

  Billy took the letter, which had been written by a white man or mixed blood for a Shoshoni named Blue Horse, who lived on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming.

  “Brother, there is good news,” he read. “A God or Messiah has come to earth far to the west of us, in the land of The-People-Who-Wear-Rabbitskin-Blankets or beyond. I have not seen him, but they say he is the Messiah of the Indians and has come to earth to save all Indians from whites. He has promised to bring back the buffalo, so we can hunt again. I wanted you, my friend, to know of this good news.”

  Short Bull eyed Billy suspiciously. “You’re not making it up? He really said that? That an Indian Messiah has come to save us?”

  Billy translated the letter again for him. “That’s exactly what it says. It’s too bad it can’t possibly be true.”

  Chapter Eight

  “It didn’t matter after all that they kept us from planting,” Billy said one day in July, as hot winds seared the withered grass under a cloudless Dakota sky. He shaded his eyes and stared at distant hills dancing in heat waves. “The corn wouldn’t have lasted this long. The Oglalas’ corn was coming up good, only Three Stars kept them at the agency so long their cattle ate it. But it would have died by now anyway.”

  Culver wiped the sweat from his face with a red bandanna and squinted at the sun. “You’re right about that. Two Strike says this is the driest summer he remembers, and he’s one of the oldest. I hear that homesteaders are leaving the Dakotas in droves, most of them skin and bones.”

  “Like us, only they don’t have to stay here. We’re prisoners.”

  As he watched the Brulés at issue time, Billy knew from their sunken eyes and air of resignation that they had nearly lost hope. They had been hungry much of the time for several years before the drastic cut in the beef ration, but now real hunger was chronic. Bishop Hare and others estimated that their rations were sufficient for only two-thirds of the ten days for which they were issued. Billy knew only too well that was true.

  Having no tangible enemy to attack, the Brulés quarreled bitterly among themselves. Tribal leaders continued to condemn the squaw-men, mixed bloods, and Christian fullbloods who had signed the agreement—everyone still blamed the land sale for all of their troubles. “You have betrayed your own people by helping the Wasicuns, “Two Strike said. “You are traitors.” Others said much the same things or worse.

  Billy observed all of this with mounting concern. The whites have us in a big trap, and there’s no way we can ever escape. Little by little they’re starving us to death, making our people mad enough to kill each other and save them the trouble. It was all so confusing and hard to understand. The Sioux commissioners claimed that the Great Father watched over them like they watched over their children. They lied. People who called themselves Friends of the Indian were willing to make the Sioux go hungry if they refused to do their bidding. The Grandfather, the Wakan Tanka, had thrown his children away. Then the troubling thought arose—perhaps he is dead, killed by the white men’s God.

  In early August, Chasing Crane returned from a visit to the Crows and stopped at the trader’s store for tobacco. “The Crows have heard about a god who has come to earth,” he told several Brulés who were there. “He has been grieved by parents crying for their dead children, and he has promised to let the sky fall down on the whites and to destroy the disobedient.” The Brulés looked at him skeptically. What he said reminded Billy of Short Bull’s recent letter from his Shoshoni friend. Others also appeared to have recalled it.

  “We heard that before, but who believes it?” Lame Deer asked. “It sounds like a Wasicun promise. They say sign this, believe what we tell you, and you’ll have everything you want. What you get is nothing.” The Brulés talked about it some.

  “It sounds like a big lie,” Gray Eagle said to Chasing Crane. “Who would help Indians? And how do we know you’re telling the truth?”

  “I tell you what the Crows told me,” Chasing Crane growled. “They believe it’s true. That’s all I know.”

  It’s silly to expect the impossible, Billy thought. But unless something happens, all of the Tetons are doomed to die of starvation or disease. Biblical stories he’d heard Sundays at Carlisle kept running through his mind. Could it be possible that a new Messiah was actually coming to save the Indians? He shook his head. It was foolish to think that was possible, so he put it out of his mind.

  Talk of the Messiah spread among the Brulés and Oglalas, who desperately embraced any phantom of hope. Finally, Red Cloud, Young-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses, Little Wound, and American Horse agreed they should hold a secret council to discuss what to do. They sent letters to Short Bull at Rosebud and Kicking Bear at Cheyenne River, inviting the Brulés and Miniconjus to send representatives. After Billy read the letter to him, Short Bull and two other Brulés slipped away and rode to Pine Ridge without informing the agent.

  Because the land commission had made so many promises to the Sioux that were not part of the land agreement, Foster got permission to invite a delegation of chiefs to Washington in early December. Crook went over all of the promises with them, so there could be no misunderstanding, for he was determined to see that every promise made was fulfilled. He was particularly concerned over restoration of the beef ration, for he knew the cut must have caused widespread hunger.

  He protested to Indian Commissioner Morgan that beef is the mainstay of the Sioux diet. They were already suffering from hunger, he said, and the cut meant severe hardship, even starvation. He had, furthermore, assured them that if they signed the agreement their rations would not be reduced. Both their survival and his honor were at stake. The Sioux had been talked out of half their land and were being forced to work hard to support themselves. Starving them at the outset was not the way to make the program successful, he said.

  Morgan airily dismissed Crook’s protests. The Indians had cheated the government, he said. Congress had cut the Sioux appropriation and only Congress could restore the beef ration. The chiefs returned to their agencies with Crook’s promise to urge Congress to restore the beef issue, but with little else. They knew that the commission’s report stated that the Sioux had signed only because they trusted the commission to secure a number of additional benefits not incorporated in the land agreement.

  Some of the benefits, such as employing Indians at the agencies whenever possible and permitting them to hold certain dances, required only the approval of Secretary of the Interior John W. Noble, and he agreed to most of them. Others, especially an appropriation of $100,000 to restore the beef ration to the amount promised in treaties, required action by Congress. Knowing that Three Stars was an honorable man, the chiefs were confident that this time, at least, the promises would be fulfilled.

  When they arrived back at their agencies in mid-December, the chiefs found many adults dying of influenza, while children succumbed to measles and whooping cough at an alarming rate. The Brulés were sunk in depression.

  Hunger was nothing new, but in the fall and winter of 1889 it was worse than ever. Commissioner Morgan denied that any of the Sioux were hungry, and he quoted figures to prove it. The beef contract called for buying fat northern ranch cattle, but to save a little money, he had allowed the beef contractors to buy Texas trail cattle that arrived in the fall in poor condition. On the parched range these animals continued to lose weight; steers that weighed 1200 pounds when fat were down to half that weight after a few months of poor grass and cold weather. They became so pitifully thin that the embarrassed agent stopped having them weighed on issue days.

  It was customary to provide one steer to sustain thir
ty people for ten days, which was adequate only if the animal was large and fat. The practice continued even when the animals were half-starved. The severe loss of weight the steers suffered during the winter months reduced the already shrunken beef rations by another fifty percent or more. It’s part of their plan to destroy us. We are starving and children are dying, but no one in Washington cares. Only Bishop Hare expressed concern. The Sioux, he said, were so weakened by hunger that when they became ill of any disease it often proved fatal.

  None of the papers Billy saw even mentioned that the Sioux were dying of hunger and disease, although as many as thirty a month, mostly children, succumbed at Rosebud, and even more at Pine Ridge. Then he read the plans of the Friends of the Indian.

  “We will make the Sioux self-supporting farmers during the coming year,” they cheerfully announced. “The whole Sioux tribe must perforce be jostled from the apathy and sluggishness of its old condition and be thrust into one that must, of necessity, compel a struggle in which all will be tested and many saved.”

  We are being tested right now, Billy thought, but few are likely to be saved, and many have already given up hope. Our children are dying, they said; we may as well die too.

  A few days after the chiefs returned from Washington in the Moon of Frost on the Tipi, the Brulés who had gone to Pine Ridge for the secret council brought word that the Oglalas had decided to send men to the Shoshonis to learn what they knew about the Messiah. They invited the Brulés and Miniconjus to send some of their people to accompany them.

  The Brulés held a secret council away from the agency to consider the offer. Some of the progressives, who had been too young to remember the old days, called the Messiah story nonsense. Older men, especially former hostiles, insisted that they must learn more before dismissing the story as false. Finally all agreed that several men should accompany the Oglalas to hear what the Shoshonis had to say.

  Billy watched Short Bull and two others ride off to the west toward Pine Ridge, wondering what they might learn. I wish they’d discover that it’s true, but it’s probably just a cruel trick to get our hopes up for nothing. He wanted to put it out of his mind and forget it, but it refused to be banished.

  A few weeks later, early in the Tree Popping Moon, Short Bull and the others returned, and everyone gathered around them to hear what they had learned. “It is true what we have heard,” Short Bull said. “There is a Messiah come to earth who lives in the land of The-People-Who-Wear-Rabbitskin-Blankets. He promised to save the Indians from the Wasicuns.”

  The Brulés pondered this news, some of them eagerly, others suspiciously. “The Oglalas are sending men across the mountains to seek the Messiah,” Short Bull continued. “We must send men at once to accompany them.”

  “Across the mountains in mid-winter?” White Bear said. “Who would go?”

  “I, for one,” Short Bull replied. Flat Iron, Yellow Breast, and Mash-the-Kettle also volunteered.

  The council approved and the four men set out at once for Pine Ridge. Billy watched them disappear over the hills, this time with a feeling of rising hope, although he told himself to forget them.

  A month after Short Bull and the others had departed, Billy read that on February 10, President Harrison had announced that the Sioux land agreement had been approved. The ceded land, he said, was now open to settlement. He did that, Billy thought, even before a single promise made to us has been carried out. There had been no survey to establish the reservation boundaries, nor was there any provision for allotments for the Sioux families living in the area opened to whites. The beef ration had not been restored. Where is Three Stars?

  On the same day the President also sent the commission’s report to Congress along with a draft of a bill containing all of Crook’s promises to the Sioux. Billy felt better when he read that the President had urged Congress to pass the bill quickly. If the Great Father asks them, like us they must do as he says. He watched the papers for news of action on the bill in Congress.

  The long-awaited land rush to the ceded area failed to materialize, although a few families did buy farmsites. Because of the prolonged drouth, however, there was more movement away from the Dakotas than toward them. “They took our land against our wishes,” Billy said. “Now that they have it they no longer want it.”

  “That’s the way it looks right now,” Culver admitted, flicking tobacco off his lip. “And if the drouth doesn’t end pretty soon, in a few years they can buy the best land for seventy-five or fifty cents an acre.”

  “That’s what some men said they’d do. They probably intended to do that all along.”

  “No, it wasn’t any deep-laid plot. It’s just one more example of Sioux bad luck. It seems that ever since they settled on the reservation they’ve been under a curse. It’s been all downhill, straight for perdition. And now if the best land goes cheap it’ll be a huge swindle, even though that wasn’t intended.”

  Late in March the downcast Sioux learned that General Crook had died suddenly of heart failure. Billy felt sick. Congress will never carry out his promises now, he thought. Others reached the same conclusion. “With him dies our last hope,” wrinkled old Two Strike said gloomily. “They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they kept only one—they promised to take our land, and they took it.”

  The Oglalas had the same reaction. “General Crook came,” Red Cloud said, “At least he never lied to us. His words gave the people hope. He died. Then hope died again. Despair came again.”

  The Word Carrier quoted a Protestant missionary on the condition of the Sioux following news of Crook’s death. Their state of mind, he said, is “one of uncertainty, almost consternation, like men on a vast ice floe that is about to break up.” He’s right, Billy thought. We trusted Three Stars. Now he’s gone, and there’s no one else who might help us. We’re lost. At this point, when all of the Tetons were plunged deep in gloom, Short Bull and the others returned to Rosebud. The expressions on their faces contrasted sharply with the despairing countenances of the Brulés who greeted them. It’s clear, Billy concluded, they bring good news, but it’s too late. The half-starved Brulés had given up hope. The death of Three Stars was the final blow, and they were stoically waiting their turns to travel the Spirit Trail. But the chiefs called a council for the following afternoon, then sent riders to the nearest camps with the news so they could spread it to others, and many could attend.

  All morning the next day a stream of families arrived at the meeting place, a few miles from the agency, in wagons and on ponies, wrapped in their blankets against the cold. All were lean, the skin on their faces hanging loosely over the shrunken flesh. They spoke little, waiting mutely to hear what the wayfarers had to say, but with no sign of expectation in their dull eyes. Finally, when all were squatting in a big circle, Short Bull rose to speak.

  Billy noticed at once that Short Bull had changed as a result of his journey west. Earlier he had seemed reserved and soft-spoken, as if hesitant to voice his opinions. Now he stood before them exuding confidence; he reminded Billy of American Horse when he spoke at the council in Pine Ridge. Short Bull’s sharp face turned slowly as his keen eyes swept over the circle of somber faces.

  “My brothers,” he began, “our search was successful, but first let me tell you about our journey. At Pine Ridge we joined Good Thunder, Cloud Horse, Yellow Knife, and five other Oglalas. As we left, Kicking Bear arrived in time to accompany us.” The Oglala Kicking Bear, Billy knew, was married to a Miniconju woman and lived with her people at the Cheyenne River Agency on the Missouri.

  “When we reached the Shoshonis we found five of them and three Northern Cheyennes and an Arapaho ready to start out, so we all rode together. At Salt Lake City we came to a railroad, where a train of empty cattle cars was stopped. Some cowboys invited us to ride the train with them, and helped us load our ponies in the cattle cars. We got off the train in the land of the Paiutes—Nevada, the cowboys called it. The Paiutes took us to their reservation a
t Walker Lake, where we met the Messiah. His name is Wovoka.” A murmur of expectation rose from the crowd.

  “Wovoka told us that on the day the sun died, a year ago in the Tree Popping Moon, he also died and went to heaven. He saw God and all the people who had lived long ago. God gave him a new religion and sent him back to earth as the Messiah of the Indian people. Many tribes have heard about him and sent men to see him while we were there. He taught all of us the Ghost Dance and some of the Ghost Songs God gave him.” Billy leaned forward, eager to hear more. He glanced at the faces of the others. They were also listening intently, but the expressions on a few faces made it clear they were skeptical.

  “Wovoka told us that a new world is coming for the Indian race,” Short Bull continued. “It is coming from the west, and it will arrive when the grass turns green in the spring. When it comes the earth will tremble. That is the signal for all of the believers to tie the sacred eagle feathers in their hair. With these feathers we will soar aloft while the new earth buries the old. The new earth will bury the Wasicuns or push them before it, clear across the great water to the land they came from. Then we will come down from the sky and find all of the Indians who ever lived. Everyone will live forever. The buffalo will return and we will hunt again.”

  He went on to say that they had followed Wovoka’s instructions to fast for a day, perform the Ghost Dance, and sing the Ghost Songs; they had died and traveled to the Spirit Land. “There I saw Chasing Hawk and his wife, who told me they would soon be coming. Good Thunder talked to his son, who was killed on a raid many summers ago.” Exclamations rose from the listeners, who clapped hands over their mouths in astonishment.

  “He gave us these orders. We must obey them exactly so that the new world will surely come. They are: ’do no harm to anyone. You must not fight. Do not tell lies. When your friends die, you must not cry, for they will soon return. Do right always.’ ” Another murmur rose from the throng of Brulés, and Billy found himself holding his breath. It seemed incredible, but it was obvious that Short Bull and his companions believed it without a trace of doubt. When the murmuring stopped, Short Bull resumed his strange tale.