by Tatjana Soli
The peace advocate Black Kettle admitted to not being able to control his young men. Warriors were still routinely murdering settlers and wreaking havoc. The only way for them to gain power was to make war, and so they clamored for it, just as Custer’s only way to rise had been through his War. The native elders, secure in their status, tried to quiet the younger generation and counseled an end to fighting. With age one could not help but fall into wisdom (he hoped the same for himself someday), and here wisdom was clear that the Indians were doomed for anything other than accommodation. If they managed to survive such a peace was another question.
Custer was of the hope that once introduced to the boons of civilization, they would embrace it and thus spare themselves extinction. The larger body of plainsmen—officials, ranchers, settlers—on the other hand, did not want to bother with the effort of salvation and instead would shuttle the natives immediately to history.
Diplomacy was needed for peace to be lasting. One of the main obstacles was the barrier of language. Most half-breed translators knew only their own tribe’s language and the most basic English. Custer suspected much strife was due to poor translation or outright lies. Determined to learn as much as he could of the tribal languages himself, he would start with Cheyenne.
Custer and Libbie were having dinner when his favorite scout, Frank Gerard, asked to speak with him. A young Cheyenne man recently had gotten into a scuffle with the chief of his tribe and decided to leave. He was volunteering to scout. Should they recruit him?
Golden Buffalo had gone into the mountains and fasted, looking for a sign for what he should do next. In a dream, he saw a military officer with long blond hair, and understood that he was to go live with him and learn the white ways in order to better advise his own people. He’d spent time with a trapper and learned a fair bit of English, had even written in a journal.
Custer looked bemused, not quite trusting the story, but ordered the young man to come in. The Indian was slight compared with the average warrior. He had dressed in a fighting breechclout and full war paint for the interview despite the implied hostility of such dress. Libbie blanched.
—What kind of fighter is he? Custer asked.
Gerard translated but Golden Buffalo answered directly.
—I am the best warrior in the tribe. The chief fears me because I earn more coup than any other.
Custer burst out laughing.
—Me too! Are you loyal? You are here consorting with the enemy.
—To those loyal to me, I am loyal. My leaders are blind. I see the future.
Custer stood up to look imposing, but Libbie could tell he was holding in a laugh for all he was worth at the young man’s preening.
—I know what I’ll teach you. What will you do for me?
Golden Buffalo got effusive. He moved around the room with vigor, then came right up to Custer’s face and yelled.
—I will teach you to find the Sioux. I will teach you to fight like the Indian. So you won’t be slaughtered like dogs.
—Can you teach me to speak Cheyenne? Sioux?
—If your head is big enough to fit it.
Custer guffawed and clapped his hands, enjoying Golden Buffalo’s braggadocio.
—Wash off that paint and put some military issue on. Welcome to the U.S. Cavalry.
Later, as insurance policy, Custer had one of his men steal the journal from Golden Buffalo’s belongings and bring it to him. Only a few pages had been filled out. He read:
Stories tell a people’s source. Their meaning is beyond the words used or the cleverness of the teller. They mean more than the truthfulness of the story. They are the people’s beating heart.
I was born from the pairing of a buffalo and a tawny wolf. That is how the Cheyenne explained that I grew up Cheyenne but something different was inside me. The different thing was my father’s Sioux blood.
We were asleep. Then the war came to us. I was a fifteen-year-old boy in my mother’s tent the day Chivington came to our village on Sand Creek. Chief Black Kettle tied the American flag to his lodge pole, convinced by the promises of white men sympathetic to his cause that it would provide good medicine and prevent the soldiers from harming us …
Captain Soule refused to give the order to his men to fire. He saw my mother was wounded and took her to hide behind his men. Her leg was shattered, and he helped me to find a doctor to give her aid. My mother did not like their medicine and tore it off. The medicine man put earth on her wounds and she died of gangrene. Captain Soule testified against Chivington, and was shot shortly after in Denver. Some said it was in revenge.
At their first meeting Golden Buffalo came into Custer’s study and promptly folded himself to sit on the floor. Favorably impressed with the cleanness of his features, the straightness of his back, his confidence, Custer plopped on the floor opposite him.
—You like life here? he asked.
—It is fine. The barrack food is good.
—The food is abominable! I’ll have Eliza let you sup in our kitchen.
—This is generous.
—This is bribery. So what are my first Cheyenne words?
Golden Buffalo thought. He put his hands on his chest.
—I am Tsitsistas. Cheyenne.
—Tsitsistas.
—Yes.
—What do you call me? The white man?
Golden Buffalo’s face grew serious. He put his palm hard on Custer’s chest.
—Ve’ho’e. White man. Trickster.
—Oh.
—Motsé’eóeve. Sweet Medicine. It is a sacred name.
Golden Buffalo nodded. He proceeded with an indecipherable spill of language. His eyes welled at one point, and Custer looked away as one did when another’s pain is not understood. The Indians did not equate tears and crying with weakness.
—It is our tribe’s prophecy. It is why I am here.
—Tell me.
—A person is going to come to the Tsitsistas. He will be all sewed up [in clothing], nowhere will he not be sewed up, this person who is going to come to us. He is going to destroy for us everything that we used to depend on, he is going to destroy everything … And this one who is going to come to us will take over all the land throughout the world.
Silence lay between them long after Golden Buffalo finished his story.
Custer sighed and then asked—You believe this?
—It is ordained. I am here to find out if it is the white man. If it is you. Maybe I can learn your ways to save my people.
—But you said it was ordained.
—It is ordained that I try to stop it, even if I fail.
—You might … shoot me to do this.
Golden Buffalo looked aggrieved.
Custer assumed the young man intended to betray him at some point. Ever confident, he believed he would turn the young soul around before that time.
* * *
THEY RODE IN SEARING DRYNESS, no water for the horses for days, before finally arriving at the Republican River when nature capriciously decided to rain nonstop for a week. Custer sat out on the muddy plains immobilized. In their exhaustion, the men slept on saddle blankets and covered themselves with rubber ponchos against the rain, wrapped up like small leathery bats, some going so far as to cover their faces. In horror he blinked, seeing again the fields after battle during the War, bodies shrouded and collected in such manner for burial. This seemed a too-literal example of the parable that life was simply a preparation, a dress rehearsal, for death. He thought he would soon go mad.
He noticed Golden Buffalo on his periphery as the Indian mingled with the soldiers, earning their good will. He made sure the boy had a full uniform and a sound mount. Many nights they ate together in his tent, and as his store of language increased, he tried to explain things to the boy. When he described the War of the Rebellion, Golden Buffalo was shaken for days, not able to comprehend the size of such carnage. A friendship was developing.
* * *
MAIL DELIVERY BECAME ERR
ATIC, so his roaming thoughts over a week poured out to Libbie in thirty- to forty-page ramblings, convincing her that he must have turned madman. When her letters arrived he snatched them hungrily and went off to savor the words like a dog with a prized morsel. The paper was scented with her Florida Water.
Her words were melancholy over their separation, although as time passed they grew more distanced. Some of the more recent ones described entertainments to while away the time. One particular officer’s name kept recurring, her high opinion of whom he did not approve. He wrote back counseling caution, omitting mention of a letter he’d received hinting that she was creating a scandal with said officer. Instead he chided her for the perceived coolness of her letters. Has my gurl already forgotten her beau?
Even Tom complained over the paltriness of Libbie’s communications. He said in a petulant tone that he was done with her if she didn’t improve. Tom and he were like two starved tomcats waiting at the back door for a scrap of her affection.
Custer wrote a letter begging Libbie to join the wagon train of supplies for his camp, despite the path being considered rife with the possibility of Indian attack. He included a shopping list of personal supplies he lacked: one hundred pounds of butter; cans of lard; any vegetables she might scrounge, including potatoes and onions. This delivery missed its recipient, and instead he received a letter that she waited for his signal to join him at another fort. More Indian raids stopped the mails altogether and then there were only silent imaginings.
* * *
FINALLY A RESCUE MISSION broke the malaise Custer struggled under. He felt his old energy marshal itself riding out in search of Lieutenant Kidder, sent from Fort Sedgwick with the 2nd Cavalry to deliver orders and reinforce them. The time to have met had long passed. Each day diminished the chances that the escort remained alive and unmolested. Custer pressed to cover as much area as possible. The horses were ridden till they were racks of bones. Rather than galvanized by the urgency of the search, his men were made sullen by the proximity to danger. They moved charily, doing no more than necessary to avoid reprimand. They looked without wanting to find.
His solution was to drive them harder.
Tom came to him in his tent.
—So, brother, there’s grumbling in the ranks.
—Who?
Tom shook his head.
—You know I won’t tell you. Maybe we should turn back for supplies. Hungry men don’t fight well.
—Neither do cowards.
Tom looked away, took a deep breath.
—You’ll lose their loyalty.
—That’s enough, Captain.
Tom stood up to leave.
—Aren’t you staying for dinner? Custer asked.
Tom shook his head again, put on his hat.
—Something in here made me lose my appetite.
* * *
THE RAIN STOPPED, and the sun again scorched.
In the saddle for hours, over unyielding ground, the horses stumbling over their own tired feet, Custer spotted great black birds circling the yellow sky. Ill omen. He knew what it portended, and a great melancholy invaded his bones. In the way of such things, he felt relief that now the worst had come, he could face it and go on.
They were riding up a gravel gorge following the heavy trail leading to Fort Wallace when they saw an object far ahead. Slowing to a walk, they approached to discover the shot carcass of a cavalry horse. Two miles farther, they came upon a second. The guide read the land and told its story: shod hoofprints from the missing party were joined by new pony tracks from the sides—the entire party had been forced off the path and down the slope of the valley.
The men’s faces turned long and glum. He felt himself wobbling inside, his stomach knotted as if it could turn itself inside out. They climbed to a plateau, following the frenzied hoofprints, then made a gradual descent into a shallow valley where there was an unmistakable stench. The reek of battlefields. Deep, intimate, and mysterious death itself. He could not be sick or show fear in front of the men so he straightened his back, spurred his horse, and joined the advance guides.
Tom rode up beside him, ghostly despite his sunburn.
—You were right to push us on. Poor souls.
Custer nodded.
—You’re a good officer. The men like you. Matter is, great men don’t need to be liked.
It was petty to rub it in, but he did.
Officers and scouts spread out like spokes of a wheel through the rushes and willows that led to a small stream. One of the guides gave a shout and all moved in his direction. Custer felt the same numbness descend on him as during the War when he walked the battlefields and witnessed the utter waste, the same whether in victory or defeat. The bodies lay in a small circle they had formed to protect themselves. Mounds of empty cartridge shells gave testimony to how desperate was the fight to avoid such an end.
All had been scalped, the skulls crushed. The one Indian guide, Red Bead, had been scalped, too, but the prize thrown down next to him. It was a mark of disgust at the treachery of turning on one’s own. This pointed to the perpetrators being Sioux, led most likely by Pawnee Killer. Custer noticed that Golden Buffalo spent special long minutes examining the Indian and possibly contemplating his own future in the white man’s employ.
The bodies lay in beds of ashes, tortured by fire, stripped of clothes that had been carried off. Noses and ears had been hacked off. Bristling with arrows, most were pierced twenty times or more. Sinews of arms and legs were cut away, a defacing by every imaginable method. Eyes torn out and laid on rocks. Teeth chopped out.
Custer’s recourse was to fall back on protocol. He ordered an official identification of each soldier. A mass grave was dug. He walked down to the stream, where he sat heavily, silent until his adjutant approached to ask final instructions. His hands trembled so badly he pressed them between his knees to still them. He stood up, stiff, determined to say the right words, to consign the bodies to the earth with dignity. First, though, he washed his hands in the stream and then, dissatisfied, went to his saddlebag for soap and brush. He scrubbed harder, until the skin was raw and abraded, but it made no difference. At last he quit. Inside him there was dread of the haunting to come.
Feeling a coolness at his neck, he turned to see Golden Buffalo watching him. Just at that moment he could not talk to the young man.
Even if it meant resigning his command, he would find a way to his Libbie, no matter the cost.
GOLDEN BUFFALO
Golden Buffalo dreamed things that were true but of which he had no understanding. This would be his way in life, holding visions in his mind until he found their meaning in the world, fitting them together like the broken shards of a pot.
The hunting had been bad for many years, the tribe growing poorer and weaker with each passing season. He decided to take himself off to the top of a ridge and seek guidance. The only way to enter the spirit world was to break the body, so he slashed his chest until it ran red. Although it was the height of summer, he brought no water, no food. He simply laid himself out on the rocky ground and stared at the sun until it blinded him. Inside and out.
After three days a vision came to him. He saw white people in numbers far greater than the largest Indian camp he’d ever known. So many people that he walked through them for days and did not come to their end. He understood that his experience of the world was too small to understand what he saw. They crowded in narrow canyons created by more buildings than he’d ever imagined possible. He guessed that this was only one among hundreds of such villages of the white man, all of which could be emptied out to fight against the Indian.
He saw his people’s futility in fighting such numbers, such rapaciousness. It was as useless as killing off coyotes. More would always come. They trailed out of their villages like ants looking for food, in their wagons and trains, because like the ant they were always busy with hunger. What did they want with the empty land? he wondered. Why did they enjoy shooting the buffalo when th
ey had no use for its meat? Then he knew.
Long valleys covered with the lifeless bodies of buffalo, almost as many buffalo dead as there were white people, but these would not be replaced. The great bodies looked sorrowful—naked of skin or tongue or horn. The buffalo soul was shamed by this treatment and would disappear from the earth. The prophecy had started. The white man would destroy the Creator of All. The long valley had snakes crossing it, snakes that turned out to be railroads and fences of wire, heralding the end of the great migration of both buffalo and Indians. It would be as if the sun in the sky was stuck in place and could not move the day forward. Fences of wire would impale the bodies of buffalo and men.
A mother buffalo and her calf ran through the great hilly fields, she smashing through the barbed-wire fence as if it were grass, trailing strands behind her even as the barbs embedded themselves in her flesh, partly tearing it away, red muscle showing, great ropes of blood flying off her as she ran. The calf by her side was drenched in his mother’s blood, his eyes white-rimmed in fear. Then to Golden Buffalo’s astonishment the mother ran over a cliff, her calf following behind.
The shock woke him from his dream, and he lay there bathed in sweat even though it was still early morning and the sun had not risen. His heart was fit to bursting. He sorrowed for the unborn future. It was a dream from which he would never entirely awake, that would haunt his daily life. The only thing he could do was to go to the heart of the enemy, learn his ways, and try to use that knowledge to save what was left.
LIBBIE
Autie came to her against all advice, against all reason, accused of abandoning his command, riding his horses to exhaustion, taking a night train, and thus almost ending his career in court-martial. He came like a little boy seeking comfort, a sinner seeking salvation. He came as an angry lover, infuriated over a slight. Perhaps in jealousy at false rumors over a certain officer. Maybe Libbie was a silly, vain woman for being gratified that he risked all for that one long, perfect day they spent together. He redeemed himself after his neglect of her. He was then quickly placed under arrest.
