by Win Blevins
Of those who were still wholly believers one was Yellow Bird, a medicine man. My heart rose. Take me to him, I asked Raven.
Immediately I stood before a man of indeterminate age sitting in front of his lodge, smoking his Pipe. Behind him the door was fastened with pegs, and I saw that no one was inside. Surely he had a family, but I couldn’t tell. He sat near the cooking fire, and seemed to be staring into it. I looked at the coals, as though to see whatever world Yellow Bird saw in their glow, their dark edges and yellow-hot centers. I saw nothing but flames and coals.
I studied his face. It was set hard and impassive. Aside from brushing the smoke from the Pipe over himself from time to time, he made no movements at all. I could not read the expression on his face. It was alien, it was blank. I tried to see his heart. Often during a journey, people’s feelings and spirits are as clear to me as their facial features. But Yellow Bird’s heart was closed like stone.
All I knew was what the book said—Yellow Bird believed passionately in the vision of Wovoka, that the ancestors would return and the buffalo would come back. He knew powerfully that the white people would be wiped away. And he was sure beyond sure that the soldiers’ bullets could not harm anyone wearing a dance shirt.
Out of faith in you young men will die tomorrow. Or out of the desperation that seduces them to vest their faith in you.
Because of them, other men will die.
Women and children will die.
The nation will die.
My mind whirled with it. I wanted to walk with my relatives as they perished or lived. To walk with Blue Crow, who gave me his very body. To walk with Elk Medicine, my own great-grandmother, as she bore my grandmother, Unchee, in her womb. To walk with four hundred of my people as most died and some lived. My arms goosebumped. My legs trembled.
Will I pass through to resurrection and come at last—O! at last!—from ravenShadow into the sunlight?
I couldn’t envision that—it knocked my imagination for a loop. What I could picture was wanting to die with them. Would Blue Crow sit in council until the shooting started? Would he wear a dance shirt? Would he then work the lever action of his precious Winchester, firing at the soldiers? My spirit would scream to leap in front of a bullet thrown back at him.
Would Elk Medicine be in the village when the Hotchkiss crews started the deadly shelling? I wanted to throw myself over the very muzzle of the cannons. Yet I would be futile as the dance shirts. The murderous metal will pass harmless through me and devastate the warm flesh behind, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. It would devastate the vision offered by the Spirit Dance, and devastate a people’s hope for a future. It would break the hoop of the people. It would blight the flowering tree.
Thus I would be led deeper into ravenShadow, there to abide forever.
Pain spasmed through me. I felt the shells blasting through my body, not touching me, yet working unspeakable agony. I fell to the ground, writhing. I gagged. I thought I would vomit, and I knew the vomit would choke me.
Panic struck at my heart.
Barely able to think, I reached out my right hand into some other world.
Sallee took it.
And she held it.
Plez clicked off the drum tape.
I opened my eyes and looked into Sallee’s, then Plez’s. They smiled. In the solace of Sallee’s grasp I returned to the normal world.
Plez said, “Welcome back.”
I squeezed his hand. “I got scared.”
He waited to see if I would explain. I couldn’t.
Finally he repeated. “Welcome back to this world.”
“Thanks,” I said gratefully.
I couldn’t speak. A little of me wanted to tell him everything I’d seen, the horror and the pathos, and the elusive beauty of it all. But I couldn’t speak yet. Besides, most of me wanted to hold it in my heart, like a precious liquid in the innermost vessel of my being, not to be disturbed, only to be held and cherished, still motionless—hold it now, hold it on your return journey back to the spirit world.
I looked around. The hour was late, the basement light and shadow from a single guttering candle. Lumps represented Emile and Chup in their sleeping bags. The other pilgrims of Sitanka Wokiksuye were at the school or at home in their beds. We kept this small vigil alone.
“Plez,” I said, “what’s normal about the normal world?’
He cackled. “Time to sleep,” he said.
That startled me. I looked at him, jumpy. Then I knew. “I want to go back now,” I said.
“Now?” He checked out my eyes. “You sure?”
“Yes,” I said. I didn’t real comfortable, but I knew it was time. “I’m sure. I want to see it all before the ceremony tomorrow.”
He looked at me like a buyer checking a horse’s teeth. “Okay. This may be a big trip.”
“I’m ready.”
“Just stick your hand out and we’ll help you come back.”
“I’m ready.”
He chuckled, and, uncanny, it seemed the chuckle of Blue Crow, my great-grandfather, from the deep well of the past.
PART SEVEN
Death and Resurrection
The Storm
First came the tape hiss, then the drum beat filled my mind.
I traveled sideways through a big tunnel, or a huge version of whatever you call one of those ducts that goes from a clothes dryer to the outside world. (Yes, Spirit does have a sense of humor.)
I floated like a leaf into the dark valley of Wounded Knee. Let it be the last time. I felt wildly afraid and oddly calm at once. No, this doesn’t make sense, but feelings don’t. The day had not begun, for I could see the Morning Star in the east. The Morning Star is actually the planet Venus, visible just before dawn. Therefore, the way your mythology tells it, the universe sends this planet love even before it sends light, which I find wonderful.
Freezing air filled the valley before that dawn, and it felt to me like evil. I told you how, in our ancient stories, evil came into the world. Passion had been cast out by her companion, Earth. Stone became entranced with Passion, and ignored his companion Thundercloud for her. From this illicit union was born Iya, the Evil One, whose other name is Wind Storm, and he delighted in tormenting both men and the gods.
I knew the Evil One was playing on these grounds today. If you prefer to substitute Satan from your stories, I have no objection.
I meandered through the village in the predawn light. A few people were awake, edgy. Most slept restlessly. There were reasons such as the mind knows. They went to bed expecting a hard day. The soldiers would demand the guns. The older warriors probably would cooperate. The younger warriors would refuse. They’d paid plenty of money for their weapons, especially those Winchester repeating rifles, which were better than the single-shot Springfields the soldiers carried. The Indian men needed those rifles to feed their families over the winter. They might need them against the soldiers. And their hot, youthful blood needed them.
There were also reasons the mind does not know: for instance, the despair of a people who, in their own eyes, have fallen from the favor of the gods—people who have lost the good way to live, people who have lost harmony with the Earth and with each other, and are descending into confusion, anger, and bitterness. Add to this the presence of Evil One, hoping as always to inspire human beings to deeds that are ridiculous and shameful.
Now more and more people were stirring, and their spirits arose dark. I slipped like the gentle morning breeze into their tipis and stood among them as they rolled over in their blankets—warriors, leaders, elders, mothers and grandmothers, children. I wanted to feel their despair, and I did. It was stronger than a smell, louder than the language of faces. It was more tangible than the cold air settled in the valley bottom. It was like dark water seeping into the hearts of the Mniconjou, drowning their spirits. Though the sun would soon be up, the people could not rise from their blackness.
I went to the lodge of Blue Crow, my forefather. The fami
ly was stirring. Elk Medicine’s words prodded the children gently. I could not bear to go inside.
Fifty years before this day in 1890, within the memory of some people here, my people the Lakota were the most powerful tribe on the plains. The buffalo provided our food, our lodging, our way of life. Our men were strong and virile, feared by their enemies, cherished by their families. Our leaders were wise. Our women were fertile, our children happy. Even the white man was a boon to us. He was so few, and he gave us things we wanted, like guns, in exchange for buffalo robes. It was a fine bargain, for we possessed robes in abundance and more than abundance—the buffalo were as many as the very grasses.
Thirty years later some of us were put on a reservation for the first time, forbidden to follow the buffalo and hunt, forced to eat the skimpy rations handed out by the Indian agents, just enough to keep the bellies growling.
In 1881, when Sitting Bull surrendered to the soldiers, every last one of us was on a reservation, and the buffalo were gone from Earth.
The white historians speak of how that made us poor. They show all the things we got from the buffalo. We used the hides for our tipis, for blankets, and for clothing. We used the meat for food, the sinew for bowstrings, the skin of the neck for shields, the bladder for a bag, the hair for ropes. We used the bones for tools, the horns for dippers and cups, the ribs for sleigh runners, the teeth for necklaces, the spinal bones for dice, even the dung for firewood. Yes, we used every bit of the animal—pte, buffalo, was our general store.
But the loss of all these things was not the biggest loss. Not at all. Thinking so is another sign of how the white man is limited to understanding in material terms.
The buffalo came to us as a gift from the Powers, because the people lived in a way that honored the Powers, and the Powers were pleased with them. This is what one of our leaders, Bad Wound, said about it. “The buffalo were given to the Lakotas by Inyan (Stone). They came from the Earth. Their tipi is the Earth. They know all the ceremonies. They dance in their tipi. Where round depressions are on the prairies are where the buffalo danced.
“The spirit of the buffalo stays with the skull until the horns drop off. If the horns are put on the skull, the spirit returns to it. The Earth eats the horns and when they are eaten, the spirit goes to the buffalo tipi in the Earth. The way to the buffalo tipi is far in the west.
“Tatanka—the buffalo god—is like a buffalo bull. He is like a spirit. He is wakan.”
When the buffalo disappeared, the people were confused. Had we offended the gods? Did we allow our spirits to wander from the right way? The way of the Pipe, the Sun Dance, the Vision Quest, and our other ceremonies? Was our way of life at an end?
This did not mean primarily our physical way of life. Our alliance with the Powers, with Earth, Sky, Stone, and Sun—was all this gone wrong?
And so, as a people, must we perish?
That was the awful fate in the minds of the Mniconjou people that dawn by Wounded Knee Creek. That was the reason for their black despair.
And it was true meaning of the Spirit Dance, and why the dance was so important to us. Wovoka envisioned utopia returned. If the people performed this dance faithfully, the buffalo would come back. The spirits of our departed ancestors would come back. And all would live together in harmony on an Earth that was renewed. In harmony with Earth, with each other, with the great Powers Stone, Sky, Earth, and Sun, and with the Mystery, Wakantanka.
It’s not primarily that our material life would be restored, but that the world would be right spiritually.
People without Spirit try to hold life in their desperate hands, but the precious liquid dribbles between their fingers.
Now half the people had given up on the Spirit Dance. The other half clung to it desperately. They wanted to believe in Wovoka’s utopia. They wanted to believe in the parts Kicking Bear and Short Bull added to Wovoka’s vision, that the dance shirt would protect them against bullets, and white people would soon disappear. To live without belief was to condemn yourself to the death which is worse than death, life without Spirit.
Walking through the village, despair, purposelessness, emptiness washing over my head, I could feel the consequences. All the people feared they were truly doomed. They saw no prospects except for a life with their blood and their spirit draining away every day. They feared that their children would find no red road to walk, and so would get lost in the white man’s firewater, as my father did, and I did. They feared they and their children would become husks, bodies without Spirit.
All this has come to pass.
That day some of them grasped with the desperation of the doomed. They would take the last chance, test the dance shirts against the lead in the soldiers’ rifles and the Hotchkiss muzzles. If the shirts failed, Wovoka’s vision was false. Then they were willing die—they preferred to die. And they would go like gods. Apocalypse.
Wandering through the camp in the last of the darkness, I avoided Blue Crow’s lodge, for it was too much to bear. In another lodge headmen were meeting, talking in muted tones. They conferred without their leader, Big Foot, who was in the big wall tent at the edge of the soldier camp, perhaps to be closer to the doctor. I noticed that Horn Cloud was among these councillors. During the time I watched, he listened and did not speak. I did not try to hear what they were saying, for I knew all too well.
In another lodge the medicine man Yellow Bird was painting himself by the light of the center fire. The dark humps on the edges of the lodge were probably members of his family, still sleeping. He rubbed blue paint all over his body, leaving big spots bare. I watched while he covered himself head to toe. He painted slowly, deliberately, with the concentration that attends an important act. Then he filled in the bare spots with yellow paint, so that his body became one large blue background with yellow dots the size of silver dollars. I did not know what the paint meant, but I thought of what it would suggest to the soldiers’ minds. Alien. Primitive. Crazy. Let us rush our civilization forward, away from this black magic; let us hurry to a future of reason and progress. On the way, let us squash these dark fiends.
I went close to Yellow Bird’s face and looked into the eyes of the most intense devotee, among these Mniconjou, of the Spirit Dance. I saw blankness, deadness, like the stone eyes of a statue.
I wandered. I went to the Horn Cloud tipi. Now Horn Cloud the elder had roused his family and was speaking to them as husband, father, head of household. This is what he said.
“I will give you advice. They say it is peace but I am sure there is going to be fighting today. I have been in war all my life, and I know when my heart is growing bitter that there is going to be a fight. I have come to tell you—all my sons—what I want you to do. If one or two Indians go to start trouble first, I don’t want you to go with them. If the white people start trouble first, then you can do what you want to—you can die among your own relations in defending them. All you, my dear sons, stand together, and if you die at once among your relations defending them, I will be satisfied. Try to die in front of your relations, the old folks and the little ones, and I will be satisfied if you die trying to help them. Don’t get excited. When one or two under the government laws start trouble, they are arrested and taken into court and put in jail, but I don’t want any of you to get into such trouble. Stand back until all the whites assail us, and then defend our people. I have come to tell you this as advice before the trouble begins. I want to you heed my warnings.”
My heart plunged down, like it was tied to a boulder and flung off a cliff, and an ocean of sadness waited below. Pictures of the carnage to come danced across the screen of my mind like mocking demons. By an intense effort of will I banished these pictures. To live through the dying when the time comes, that will be more than enough, more than I can bear.
I went out of the tipi. For some reason I wanted to find the spot in the village that was the very center, an equal distance from the furthest tipis in the great half-moon. When I decided where that p
oint was, I sat down and held my head in my hands. The hidden sun was dispelling the darkness now, bringing a day that was like a thousand million other turns of the Earth around the fiery star. Yet today would change many lives forever. It would kill my ancestors. It would maim, emotionally, the woman who raised me. It would cast my life into ravenShadow. It would cast my people into ravenShadow.
I grieved so dry and bitter I couldn’t cry.
I was brought back to that moment, dawn of December 29, 1890, by a bugle blowing reveille.
Soon a crier walked through the camp calling, “Come to council! Come to council!”
With these words began the march to death.
Trembling, at the same time resolute, I stood near Colonel Forsyth as he watched the Big Foot men file into the space in front of Big Foot’s tent, just toward the village from the soldier camp. Forsyth looked the way Americans like their military heroes to look: a lion’s mane of hair, jutting chin, piercing eyes. He saw his duty clear this morning. His instruction was to disarm Big Foot’s people. Forsyth knew this Big Foot was a slippery character. He was on the list of troublemakers compiled by the Indian agents. After promising to come in to Fort Meade, he fooled Sumner on the Cheyenne River and escaped into the Badlands. Yesterday Lieutenant Whitside had been talked out of taking the weapons immediately by one of the half-breed interpreters, Shangreau. But General Brooke’s orders were clear. Disarm Big Foot’s band. Take care to prevent the escape of any.
Unstated was, “Sumner may have damaged his career with leniency. Whitside was soft yesterday. We need a man who can enforce the will of the U.S. Army on the Sioux.” Forsyth made up his mind to be the man to accomplish the primary objective of this military mission—confiscate those guns.
He remembered the rest of General Brooke’s orders—“If they fight, destroy them.”
I watched the Mniconjou men sit in a big, rough semicircle facing the officers. Horn Cloud was there in the front row, sitting with other headmen. At the west end of the semicircle sat many of the young men, including Horn Cloud’s sons Daniel, Joseph, Sherman, and William, with Horn Cloud’s oldest son Iron Hail, and his friend White Lance. Blue Crow sat behind the young Horn Cloud men, powerful-looking, somber-faced.
