Climb the Wind: A Journey Into Another Past

by Pamela Sargent

  The Lakota chief looked around the table. “But it was red men who did most of the dying here. How many? I hear the Wasichu talking. I hear them say, not so many are dead in Washington, not so many were killed even by the rocket-arrows. We are most of the dead, and I think that all of you are at peace inside yourselves because we are most of the dead.”

  General Terry cleared his throat. “I would like to say—”

  Touch-the-Clouds shot Terry a fierce look that silenced the general immediately. “If the treaties are not kept, the Wasichu will fight us again. They will have to fight Lakota, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Comanche, Apache, and others who have become brothers. They will have to spend very much of the yellow metal to fight this war. They will have other Wasichu saying to them, Do not fight this war. They will see many of their people die. They will see their world become dust.”

  Touch-the-Clouds paused. No one filled the silence with words, or even any sounds. “I am now chief of the Plains people, chief of all those who live on the lands of Uncle Buffalo. I do not say my words only for Lakota, but for all of those people. The Great Father in Washington will powwow with me as he does with other nations. If he does not, and breaks the treaties, we will come east again, and strike at Washington again, and you will not fight men with horses and firesticks. You will fight men with even bigger rocket-arrows and spitting firesticks and the medicine of Talking Wire Man Edison. Break the treaty, and we will know you are men who will not keep your promises until you are all dead.”

  Crook plucked at his beard. “You see what the chief wants,” Rubalev said. “There should be an ambassador in Washington to represent the red people of the Plains. The treaties must be kept, and no people allowed to settle in Indian territories without the consent of the Indians who live there. That is not so much to ask, and doing it will make you more popular among some of those you will govern.”

  “I don’t think,” Crook said, “that any government that succeeds this provisional one will be in any position to fight another war, at least not right away.”

  “Then you will have nothing to lose by granting Touch-the-Clouds what he wants,’’ Rubalev said.

  Touch-the-Clouds went to his tepee after the meeting, followed by Rubalev. Lemuel trailed the two men. The Lakota chief refused to sleep behind the walls of the Great Father’s house, and was living in one of the tepees in front of the White House. Rubalev had offered Lemuel a room at his house, but he had refused the offer. He preferred to stay among the soldiers and Indians bivouacked on the White House grounds. In Rubalev’s house, he would only be reminded that Katia had once lived there.

  Lemuel expected Rubalev to say his farewells and leave for his Washington house, which was untouched by the rocket-arrows, but instead he followed them both into the tent of Touch-the-Clouds. Two men guarding the tepee, White Shield and Elk Thunder, came in after Rubalev.

  The air was still and moist, oppressive even with the tent flap tied up and open. Rubalev took out a match and lit the lamp hanging from the center pole; it seemed that he wanted to stay for a bit.

  The five men sat down, with Touch-the-Clouds facing the entrance. “When do we leave this Wasichu swamp,’’ Elk Thunder asked in Lakota, “this hive built on a marsh?”

  “The men are saying that they do not want to have the Sun Dance so close to this place,” White Shield added. “The Iron Horse can carry us back to our own lands before this moon is past. We should go home.”

  “You will want to secure your interests before you go home,” Rubalev said in English.

  Lemuel was sitting across from Rubalev. He had to know that White Shield and Elk Thunder knew no English.

  “You will need an ambassador,’’ Rubalev continued. “You will need someone here who can look out for your people and who knows the territory of Washington. You need someone who will give you what you want.”

  “I have what I want now,’’ Touch-the-Clouds said in Lakota.

  “You know what I mean,’’ Rubalev said in English. “You can be the American khan, the one who will be like your brother to the East, who ruled a great empire. This is the start of your empire. It is a good start, you can keep the Plains for your people. As time goes on, you can take—”

  “Do you say,” Touch-the-Clouds interrupted, in English this time, “that I must break the treaty the Wasichu made with me?”

  Rubalev rested his hands on his knees. “Your vision told you that you would rule in the East as well as the West. You know your people, they will have to keep fighting, they are warriors. You can settle for what you have, or you can reach for more. You know what will happen if you do not, the white men will live peacefully with you for a while, and then they will want to steal what you have again.”

  “That will not happen,” Touch-the-Clouds said, and then in Lakota, “Grab Yellow Hair’s arms.”

  Rubalev threw himself back, but did not move fast enough. Elk Thunder and White Shield had him by the arms. Touch-the-Clouds pulled out his knife and slashed the Alaskan’s throat. Lemuel had barely grasped what was happening when Touch-the-Clouds said, “Don’t worry, Orphan. I am not about to kill you.”

  The blood pumping out of Rubalev’s neck looked black in the dim light of the lamp. He fell forward as the two men holding his arms let him go. “That’s good hair,” Elk Thunder muttered, putting his hand on Rubalev’s head. “Do you want it?”

  “No,’’ Touch-the-Clouds said, “and you will not take it either. The men in the Great Father’s house treat me as one of themselves now. I will not have them calling me and my men—” He paused. “Savages,’’ he finished in English.

  “Where do we take him?” White Shield asked.

  Touch-the-Clouds answered in Lakota, “Roll him up in a blanket. Morning Star Brother Rowland will find a place for him, maybe at the bottom of the Potomac.”

  “Why?” Lemuel managed to say.

  “He called himself my brother, he spoke to me of my visions, he told me of the great chief on the other side of the world. His deeds helped to bring me to the house of the Great Father. But now I see he was another Wasichu who thought he could make me his weapon, use me as his war club to take what he wanted.”

  “And what did he want?”

  Touch-the-Clouds lifted his war bonnet from his head. “His northern land. Revenge on the ones who took it from him. More of the yellow metal I gave to him to buy us weapons. To be a man set at the head and front of other men, a man of much power. I do not know all of what he wanted, and he can no longer tell me.” The Lakota grasped Lemuel’s shoulder. “There is another reason for him to die. He brought death to Graceful Swan, he sent death to her and to those with her. Who do you think bought those men who went raiding in blue coats? The man who was brought to me before we went east on the Iron Horse told me who paid him and the others to raid and kill. Now Yellow Hair has been punished for that, for being a spider with his spies and his bought men and his schemes. He wanted a war, he made it come about, he had his war, and now that war is over.”

  Lemuel supposed that he should rejoice that Rubalev was dead, that the man who had used Katia for his own ends, traded her, cast her aside and then caused her death, was dead. There was nothing left inside him to feel satisfaction at this revenge.

  “My vision was a true one,” Touch-the-Clouds said as White Shield and Elk Thunder put a blanket over Rubalev’s body. “I saw it clearly. Yellow Hair did not. I will be the great chief, this khan, this man he saw in his vision, but I will follow my own trail to that end.”

  Lemuel rode across the Long Bridge toward the hills of Arlington. The sentries posted at the Virginia end of the bridge saluted him as he passed. He remembered that he was still wearing his officer’s coat, the one he had worn to the meetings in the White House. His horse carried him up the hill as he followed the road toward the place where so many had been buried.

  Rubalev would not lie here. Lemuel had taken the body to Rubalev’s house in a hired carriage, paid the driver well with some coins from the dead m
an’s purse, and carried the blanket holding Rubalev’s body inside. There was no one in the house; the servants had fled during the siege, and Denis Laforte would not come there now. He had taken the body down to the cellar and concealed it behind a shelf of wine bottles and barrels. Eventually the body would be found, but Lemuel had taken the buffalo hide blanket with him; there would be nothing to connect the death of Rubalev with the Lakota camped around the White House.

  He came to a path that wound among the trees. In the shade under the trees, the late afternoon air was cooler. Above him, he heard women’s voices singing in Lakota: “We came east along the Iron Trail to the home of the Great Father. We sent our arrows against those who had taken the Great Father’s home from him. Now Uncle Buffalo is calling to us again, calling us home.”

  Lemuel emerged from under the trees. On an open field of grass, hundreds of graves had been erected on poles. The body of each fallen warrior had been wrapped in a robe or a blanket and laid to rest on one of the wooden platforms atop the poles. Every man had been brought here in a wagon or on a pony drag in a long procession through the streets of Washington and across the Long Bridge. Crazy Horse had demanded that. They could not bring the bodies of the dead back to the Plains, but at least here they would be closer to their western lands; so Crazy Horse had reasoned. Many in Washington had turned out to watch the strange procession, to peer at the Indians in their beaded and fringed shirts and feathered headdresses who rode with their dead comrades.

  All of them, Lemuel knew, had been prepared to die in battle. They would have been satisfied to know that victory had followed their deaths. But the way that they had died held little honor or glory.

  “We kill from afar with our rocket-arrows. Our enemy kills from afar with iron balls and spitting firesticks. How can a man prove his courage with such weapons? Can a man count coup on an enemy killed from a distance? Does a man send others to ride in front of him, as our Blue Coat comrades did, and watch them die? The battle is over, the victory is ours, but there is no honor in it for a man.”

  That was the kill song Crazy Horse had sung as he led the procession of the dead through Washington. However bewildering the world of the white man was to the Oglala chief, Lemuel thought, he had seen this battle, and the kind of battle it was, very clearly.

  Buffalo Calf Road Woman and Walking Blanket Woman were mounted on their pinto ponies, gazing out at the field of raised platforms holding the dead. “Uncle Buffalo is calling to us again,” Walking Blanket Woman sang, “calling us home.”

  A small herd of Indian ponies grazed under the graves. Lemuel rode past groups of warriors sitting under trees toward the northern side of the grassy field. Two men were there on a gently sloping hill, sitting on horseback, unmoving. One of them wore a long feathered war bonnet and held a pipe in his hand. The other man was barechested and wore hawk’s feathers in his long hair.

  Lemuel rode toward Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and reined in his mount. “I have come to tell you,” he said in Lakota, “that if it is your wish, I will go to the Great Father’s house tomorrow and ask for an Iron Horse and wagons to carry your men back to their hunting grounds.”

  Crazy Horse shook his head, but did not speak. Sitting Bull lifted his pipe. “How could it not be our wish to go home?” he asked.

  “Both of you have the right to be at the meetings in the Great Father’s house,” Lemuel said. “Touch-the-Clouds would welcome you there.”

  Sitting Bull shrugged his shoulders. “I do not want to sit behind walls and listen to men babble in speech I do not understand. Anyway, I would be useless at such meetings. Touch-the-Clouds has made himself a chief over many chiefs. He has made himself the head and front of our people and other peoples as well. He does not need to have me sitting with him in a room full of Wasichu so that he can pretend in front of them that he still listens to other chiefs.”

  “Touch-the-Clouds has won,” Lemuel said. “The Wasichu will not break the treaty. They will not steal your lands from you. They know how much it would cost them to do so, and they do not want to pay the price. They will form a new council and the treaty will be kept as long as the buffalo graze. They will keep it because Touch-the-Clouds has made himself a great chief.”

  “Yes, he has won what he wanted,” Sitting Bull said, “and now I want to go home.” The Hunkpapa chief was silent for a while. “What will you do, brother to Touch-the-Clouds? Where will you go?”

  ‘‘Touch-the-Clouds wants me at his side during the meetings. After that, I suppose some post will be found for me.” Lemuel was suddenly overcome with longing for the wooded hills and green land of Tonawanda, for the places he had known as a child.

  “Touch-the-Clouds thinks that we will go on riding our horses and hunting Uncle Buffalo,” Crazy Horse said. Lemuel started, surprised to hear the voice of the Oglala chief. “He thinks that we will go on as before, but coming here has changed us, the battles we fought have changed us. The air of this place smells of farts and rotting plants and Wasichu sickness, and I will take it into my lungs and carry it home with me, and others will breathe of it, and it will change us all.”

  Lemuel was about to ask the Oglala what he meant, but Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull were already riding down the hill toward the dead.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The crowds had begun to filter into the park next to Independence Hall at dawn. By midmorning, hundreds of Philadelphians were standing shoulder to shoulder as the dignitaries made their way past the crowds to the grandstand that had been set up for them.

  Lemuel Rowland, from his seat on the speakers’ platform, estimated that more people were here today than for President Crook’s appearance earlier that summer, during the 1884 Independence Day celebration. George Crook was more a master of the concise statement as opposed to the stemwinder, nor was he much of a politician; but like his predecessor General Grant, he did not have to be. His campaign for president had brought together the northern states east of the Mississippi along with Nebraska and Kansas, and his election had dampened separatist sympathies in those regions. Crook had not wanted to run again, but he was a president who had saved the South from the excesses of the Council’s generals, and thus a candidate who was likely to win most of the former Confederacy’s electoral votes.

  There was a Union now, if a fragile one. The largely Negro population of northern Mississippi had attracted more black residents, some of whom wanted autonomy. The Republics of Texas and California, as well as Utah and the southwestern territories of New Mexico and Arizona, considered themselves independent, although that might change if their hostilities with Mexico grew more heated and they needed more men to defend their borders.

  As for the Plains—Lemuel glanced at the other scheduled speakers on the platform. The romance of the Plains, which his fellow speakers had done their share to cultivate and promote, had drawn this mass of listeners to Independence Hall. There, sitting at his left, was Calamity Jane Cannary, with her new associate Susan B. Anthony, prepared to speak on the subject of woman’s suffrage. Lemuel had noticed a few boys hawking copies of Jane’s ghostwritten autobiography, Scouting and Stagecoaches: My Life and Adventures on the Plains, at the edges of the crowd. There was Theodore Roosevelt, running for Congress from New York and likely to win his seat largely because of his own book, Hunting Trips of a Ranchman, and his lectures on that subject. Next to Roosevelt sat Ely S. Parker, Secretary of the Interior, with one of his duties being the maintenance of diplomatic ties with the West. And there was Lemuel himself, although he was probably the least important member of this assemblage, being merely Consul and Trade Representative of the Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming Territories. Both President Crook and Touch-the-Clouds had preferred to keep his title vague. President Crook’s advisors could maintain the appearance that the territories were potentially a future part of the United States, while Touch-the-Clouds remained free to regard Lemuel as the envoy of an independent nation.

  Surveying the audience, Lemuel easily saw which of
the speakers had most attracted the crowd. The men with small children sitting on their shoulders, the women shielding themselves from the sun with parasols, the Philadelphia dignitaries in the grandstand—all of them were looking toward the Lakota chief who sat between Roosevelt and Ely Parker.

  The American khan, the ruler of these lands—that was the destiny Grigory Rubalev had seen for Touch-the-Clouds. The Lakota looked the part of such a leader today, in his elaborately beaded buckskin shirt and fringed leggings and a headdress of eagle feathers that fell to his waist; a leather shield with painted symbols of past battles—two painted hills, the wall of a fort, an arch that was probably meant to represent the Capitol Dome—rested next to his chair.

  Would Touch-the-Clouds ever be an American khan? Lemuel wondered again, as he more often did these days, whether Rubalev’s dream for Touch-the-Clouds had, in some sense, already been fulfilled. For a man who had sought and gained guarantees that his people would be free to live in their own way in their own territory, Touch-the-Clouds spent a good deal of time in the East. He had published his own ghostwritten autobiography two years ago, Touch-the-Clouds Speaks: The Wisdom of a Lakota Warrior, copies of which still sold almost as soon as they came off the presses, thanks partly to the praise lavished on the volume by Mr. Mark Twain and also by Mrs. Elizabeth Custer, who would soon contribute to her husband’s legend with the publication of her own memoir. Touch-the-Clouds had also authorized the publication of several dime novels in which he was featured as the hero. He had become a popular lecturer and had appeared in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show for a season, and those who had not seen him had probably heard a phonograph recording of his voice. He had, as much as General Crook, become the victor at the Battle of Washington and had been invited to parade down New York’s Fifth Avenue in full regalia with some of his warriors. Among the children who dreamed of the West and imagined themselves as George Armstrong Custer, Buffalo Bill Cody, or Calamity Jane Cannary were many more who imagined themselves as Touch-the-Clouds, a man who owed nothing to anyone and who was truly a free individual. If he did not rule them as chief, he had gained a foothold in the territory of their hearts and minds.