by Win Blevins
When amenities had been exchanged and it was time, the loafers said they had come to get Crazy Horse and the other headmen to come to Red Cloud Agency to talk about the sale of Paha Sapa.
The outcry shook the lodge hides. Some of the young men shouted, “Traitors!” One young warrior yelled that they would talk with bullets, not words.
It was all impolite, but Crazy Horse kept his face neutral and rebuffed no one. Out of turn or not, his young men were right. He felt proud of them.
The loafers could be impolite, too. “Fools!” said one. “Don’t you see Paha Sapa is already lost? The whites took it—stole it!”
“We may as well get something for it!” snapped another.
Their voices were not wise and patient and thoughtful, as council voices should be, but roiled and contemptuous.
Crazy Horse raised a hand slightly. He looked into the eyes of the loafers, one by one. He knew what they expected. They thought they would hear from Big Road or Black Twin or Touch-the-Sky or Little Big Man, but not Crazy Horse. The Strange Man spoke only in privacy, and let others express his thoughts in public.
So maybe his words were worth something. Maybe because he had never spoken in council, he could make his words remembered. He looked at their eyes, pair by pair, slowly, letting them see that the words were welling up in him.
Then, quietly, almost inaudibly, he said to them, “A man does not sell the earth the people walk on.”
That was all.
No one else had anything to say.
They looked at each other. One by one and two by two, they got up and left.
After a while Crazy Horse was sitting there alone.
He was pondering a fact: Lakota people had come to him with a suggestion to sell Paha Sapa.
THEY-ARE-AFRAID-OF-HER
The first thing he saw was dried blood on the legs of Stick and her sisters. They were not even his relatives, but he knew then. And blood on their arms, and their hair cut above the shoulders. Yes, he knew.
They-Are-Afraid-of-Her.
Worm and Little Hawk came out to take his lead rope and his weapons and lead him to the lodge. As he walked behind them, his feet made hollow thumps on the earth.
Black Shawl was sitting on their robes hugging herself, swaying, moaning, her clothes torn, and her face smeared with mud.
Yes, They-Are-Afraid-of-Her, three winters old, was dead.
Her cradle board was gone. The place where they had spread her robes was empty.
“How long?” he mumbled.
“Four days,” said Worm.
So while he was out killing miners, his daughter had died. He was stunned that he hadn’t known, hadn’t felt the change in the air itself.
Crazy Horse looked at Worm and Little Hawk and saw that Worm’s lips moved, but he could not make out the words. He felt he was somewhere very odd, maybe underwater, and they were far away.
Crazy Horse knelt beside Black Shawl and put an arm around her waist. As far as Worm could tell, she did not respond.
Amazingly, the old woman did respond. Grandmother Plum got up off her robes and came and sat on the other side of Black Shawl and held her hand. A-i-i-i. Crazy Horse put his hand on both of theirs. He did not act as though Grandmother Plum had done anything unusual. Worm glanced at his brother, Little Hawk. His eyes were wide.
“Be strong, Son,” murmured Worm. Little Hawk said the same words.
“It was the coughing sickness,” said Worm.
Crazy Horse sat there unaware. He looked downward into nothingness, as though into a lake infinitely deep, and he was sinking slowly in the dark water, slowly, inexorably sinking, and the water was blacker every moment.
A quarter-day or several days later—he didn’t know how long he, his wife, and his grandmother sat with their arms around each other—his father came in bringing food and Crazy Horse asked, “Where is she?”
Worm gave no emotional reaction. He simply told his son how to find the scaffold.
He knew it was the right one from a distance. He saw her red blanket. From closer he saw the cradle board Black Shawl’s sister had beaded, hanging from one of the poles. He imagined the toys they would have folded into the blanket with her small form, a rattle, a rawhide doll.
He tied his pony to a sapling, pulled himself onto the scaffold, and wrapped his arms around the lump in the blanket. “It is my fault,” he said. “I was not meant to have children.” He sank into oblivion.
The buzzard perched on top of the vertical pole. It looked at the pile spread out below, red cloth and bare flesh. This was a puzzle. It watched flies land on the flesh and crawl around. It watched ants crawl from the ground up the pole and under the blanket. But something was wrong. The buzzard saw all the indications of death and smelled death, a certain sign. But it saw the flesh above the ribs moving slowly but unmistakably, up and down, up and down.
How could something be alive and dead at the same time? How could this conflict of pictures and smells be? It knew rotting, and it knew what was not yet rotting.
It heard sobbing noises. But death was silent. It saw movement. But death was still. It smelled decay. Everything was confusing.
The sobbing noises got louder, very loud. A scream came from the pile. Part of the pile sat up.
The buzzard pushed into the air and flapped upward. It winged away. It could wait.
“I HAVE COME TO KILL!”
Crazy Horse did not come back from their daughter’s scaffold for nearly half a moon. When he did, he looked more gaunt, more dispirited, more distracted than Black Shawl had ever seen him. She tried to get him to stay and eat and rest and take the comfort of her body, but he would have none of it. He gathered together some warriors, including Little Big Man and her brother Red Feather, and went back out against the miners. Custer was come and gone now—his survey was completed and gold officially discovered. The miners infested Paha Sapa. Crazy Horse acted as though he intended to kill each one, like a man savoring his favorite fruit, bite by slow bite.
When he got back, he had little to say. He sat around indifferently, in a world of his own. A sad world, she supposed, a melancholy world. A bitter world? She didn’t know.
It was the feeling of helplessness that drove her wild. They had not made love for four years, since she knew she was making life within. Good husbands did not approach wives when they were with child or nursing. Now she was ready for him, but he would not come to her. It was as though she had nothing that could please him, nurture him, ease his heart.
And if she could not give him solace, neither could she take it from him. She was helpless and lonely.
She heard the talk of the camp. Little Big Man said Crazy Horse had acted brash and reckless against the miners. “Ah,” the people murmured, “recklessness killed his brother.”
Until now Crazy Horse had been known as bold but judicious. He never shot his rifle from horseback, for instance, but always dismounted to make sure of the shot. He would charge the enemy head on, but only when he felt his bullet-proof medicine rising him. He never led others into unnecessary risks.
Now all that was changing, said Little Big Man.
Black Shawl could hardly sleep for fear.
In the Winter Seven Loafers Were Killed by the Enemy, which the whites called 1875, Red Cloud and many other chiefs went back to Washington. Most of the agency chiefs went this time, all but Young Man-Whose-Enemies. When they got back, they said Red Cloud insisted on a new agent and someone to keep him from stealing from them. They were tired of cattle being driven around the mountain and counted twice. They were tired of sacks of food that didn’t weigh what they should. They were tired of being hungry.
“And what else did he say?” the people in the wild camps wanted to know.
“The whites asked us to sell Paha Sapa,” said the chiefs, acting surprised.
“Of course, you’re surprised,” said the hostiles. “Who would think the whites would ask for Paha Sapa?”
“We said we’d have to tal
k to the people,” the chiefs went on.
“Of course. And do you want to listen, or are you just telling the One You Use for Father that as a tactic to get a few more dollars?”
Young Man-Whose-Enemies came to Crazy Horse and they talked a long time. The agency chiefs and the whites had agreed on a big talk in the Moon When Leaves Turn Brown. They were going to talk about selling Paha Sapa. Young Man-Whose-Enemies, the peace chief, had come to ask Crazy Horse, the war leader, to join in the talk.
The chief said what direction he was leading the people. The world was changing, like it or not. He was not living in the past. He was trying to make a future for the people. The Lakota were going to have to live a new way. They would farm, because there were no more buffalo. They would come to terms with the white man. They would make a transition into a new order of existence.
All this was not unprecedented, said Young Man-Whose-Enemies. Twice seven generations ago, before the memories of the oldest men now living, the Lakota had lived by growing corn and other crops along the Muddy Water River. Then they had learned to follow the buffalo herds. That seemed a better way at the time—Young Man-Whose-Enemies himself loved it. But it was over now.
A wise leader thought of the children, the aged, those who could not fend for themselves. He did not make a life only for the strongest hunter-warriors but for everyone. That was what Young Man-Whose-Enemies was doing. Now the old life was too hard. The Lakota had to find a new way. He asked his friend Crazy Horse to join him in the search.
Crazy Horse puffed on his short pipe a long time, to let his friend know that his words were heard. He rubbed the scar below his nostril. He turned all the words over in his mind once more. He thought of what he would say. He thought how much Young Man-Whose-Enemies’s words were like his uncle Spotted Tail’s. And how treacherous the words seemed to him, and how hard it was for him to remember that he was dealing with honorable Lakota leaders, men who were looking out for the best interests of all the people.
Finally he answered.
“Yes, life changes, sometimes changes in big ways. There was once a time when only Inyan was, Stone, and then a time when Inyan helped make Earth and the waters and Sky. There was the time when the pte, two-legged creatures, were created and multiplied. There was the time when the four directions were created, and the thirteen moons. I am sure that other great ages will exist, but I don’t know whether two-legged people will be part of them. It is not my place to think about the great ages, but to live within this time of pte.
“It is our spirits that must live,” he said. He paused awhile. “Live in awareness of mystery. Live according to what knowledge of Spirit we have, through our visions, by the guidance of our spirit animals, and in time with the pulse of the earth, which is the pulse of our blood.”
He set the pipe down, cut a chunk of sweetgrass off a braid, set it on the fire, and watched the smoke rise to the spirits. “I cannot go against my vision, or what I see with the cante ista. The only life is the path they open.”
He paused a long moment. “Even if life at the agencies looked good to me, I would only walk the path revealed to me. But everyone sees that the agency life is bad. People become lazy, inept, dependent, helpless. Instead of hunting they beg. They demean themselves. The women become pay women for the whites. Men and women alike become drunkards.
“Worst, the people get so greedy for handouts, a little more beef, a little more cloth, a bit of flour, whiskey, sure, even coffee, so greedy they are willing to sell Paha Sapa. The people’s best hunting grounds, where the bones of our ancestors lay, where we receive visions from Spirit.
“It doesn’t take sharp eyes to see that this is no life at all.”
He made no big rhetorical climax. The words themselves were enough. The two friends sat and smoked in silence for a long time. Both knew there was nothing more to say, nothing more to do. Two Lakota had truly looked, and what they saw was different. Young Man-Whose-Enemies would work to get the best terms possible with the whites for the people’s new life. Crazy Horse would fight against that life, which was really death.
So they gave each other the handshake of respect, with arms crossed, and went their separate ways forever.
To open the council the white treaty talkers asked not only for Paha Sapa, but for the Shifting Sands River country and the Shining Mountains, too.
Riders immediately went to Crazy Horse, Touch-the-Sky, He Dog, Big Road, and their hostile warriors.
The agency Indians were split. Some people said, “The land is lost anyway—let’s get what we can for it.” The young warriors said they would fight first.
For four days there was no talking. The people were split by the new request like a tree cleaved by lightning.
On the fifth day the Lakota came to the council place, but they were still divided.
At noon 200 warriors charged the council tent, painted, feathered, and carrying their rifles. They circled the tent at a gallop, singing their war songs.
At a signal hundreds more galloped down from the hills. At another signal, hundreds more. The men willing to bargain for Paha Sapa and Shifting Sands River country and the Shining Mountains were surrounded by perhaps a thousand angry warriors.
The agency chiefs knew that these warriors came from both the friendly and the hostile camps. The rumor was that they would kill the first chief to speak up for selling the land. The chiefs talked among themselves, uncertain.
Finally, the warriors opened a way and Little Big Man charged through. Dressed and painted for war, holding his rifle high, his chest bleeding from scarifying, he galloped right into the council tent.
He roared out what he had to say: “I have come to kill the white people who want to steal our land!”
Finally the whites saw it. They were surrounded, outnumbered, outgunned. The treaty talkers were nervous, their women were nervous, the writers and photographers from the newspapers were nervous—even the soldiers were afraid. Even the traders’ sons, some of them half Lakota, wished they were somewhere else.
Everyone thought the first person to speak would be shot and the massacre would start.
Everyone looked at everyone else, waiting, hoping, wondering.
It was Young Man-Whose-Enemies who stood up. He fixed Little Big Man with his eyes and stared him down for a long time. Everyone waited for the shot that would end his life and start the slaughter. It didn’t come.
At last Young Man-Whose-Enemies said quietly but clearly, “Go to your lodges, my foolish young friends. Come back when your heads have cooled.”
Little Big Man stared back. Maybe he would strike at Young Man-Whose-Enemies. Maybe—no one knew.
Maybe the shot would come from outside. Maybe no one would even know who fired it.
Young Man-Whose-Enemies stood, waiting.
Little Big Man stood, thinking.
Finally, he thought of what Crazy Horse would say. Lakota must never raise a hand against Lakota. That way is death.
And he thought: Crazy Horse respected Young Man-Whose-Enemies-Are-Afraid-of-His-Horses.
Little Big Man turned his pony and walked off.
The ring of warriors outside backed away.
The agency chiefs picked up their pipes and blankets and left.
The treaty talkers got up and started breathing again. The soldiers sighed in relief.
Red Cloud announced a price. So did Spotted Tail. So did others. But most of the Lakota went back to their villages. No one signed anything.
The Oglala decided they would make a big winter camp on the Buffalo Tongue River. Crazy Horse, Black Twin, Big Road, and the others thought there would be elk in the bottoms along the river all winter and the bark of the sweet sunpole tree to feed the horses. Last winter they had killed horses to eat. This winter they needed to keep every pony possible alive. Maybe for food. Maybe for fighting soldiers.
SETTING DOWN BURDENS
They didn’t find out Plum was missing until they stopped for the night.
&nb
sp; When they got to the Buffalo Tongue River camping place, Black Shawl discovered that the old woman had rolled up some blankets to make it look as if she were under the robe on the travois. Then she had walked off. Black Shawl had seen the old woman walk away but thought she was just going to relieve herself. Now they knew better.
Crazy Horse started on the back trail fast, leading an extra pony. He had a panicky feeling. Hawk was restless on her perch.
The very old people did this sometimes. Grandmother Plum knew that food would be short this winter. She had little flesh anymore and didn’t look forward to shivering in her robes. She didn’t expect to live much longer anyway. The last two nights had been bitingly cold. Today was clear again, and would be bitter. Everyone had heard that freezing was a pleasantly dreamy way to die.
But she had no idea how important she was to him. He had lost his daughter. He had lost Little Hawk. He had lost Hump. For a while he had lost Hawk. He had lost his mother. He couldn’t stand to lose Grandmother Plum.
And … And … He wanted to hear her speak aloud. He was sure she could, and now he was in a rage to hear her talk. He would ask her directly, “Please, speak.”
He pushed his pony hard along the lodge trail. The last place Black Shawl remembered seeing Plum was almost back at the start of the day’s travel. He would get there after dark.
In his imagination Grandmother Plum did speak to him for the first time in twenty-five winters. What would she say?
“Grandson,” he imagined.
“I love you,” he imagined.
The people often had not loved him. Our Strange Man, they called him. Even his father had not always loved him.
In his imagination the one person who had never failed him with her love was Grandmother Plum. She had listened to him. They had understood each other without words, which was a deeper way to understand.
