by Don Bendell
Because he had always been trained to keep his weapons clean and his knife sharp, Joshua pulled the large knife from its sheath and examined the blade. As usual, it was scalpel-sharp.
Lila Wiya Waste handed him a cup of hot coffee from a large pot he had given her months earlier. He sipped the steaming brew and thought about his childhood quest to learn about his biological father and search for blood relatives.
His biological father, Siostukala, “Claw Marks,” had disappeared when Joshua was young and had been a total mystery to him for many years. His mother would not tell him anything about the man, and Joshua quit asking, because tears would well up in her eyes every time his name was mentioned. Joshua figured he must have caused her very painful memories.
Whenever family friends went off to trade with the Sioux, he traveled with them, seizing every opportunity to locate his father. Finally, at sixteen, he met his half brother, who grew up with Siostukala . His thirteen-year-old half brother, named Cate Waste, meaning “Cheerful,” told him that his father had died a year earlier.
Joshua was very sad that his father had died, but he was also excited to meet a brother and several cousins. His half brother had since grown to manhood and proven himself in battle several times. At eighteen, Cate Waste’s name was changed to his manhood name, Akayake Mato, meaning “Rides the Bear.”
Joshua recalled the story of their shared legacy.
Claw Marks was one of the few men in the village along the banks of what was called the Greasy Grass. In three years, many Lakota, and their brothers the Cheyenne and Arapaho, would fight there against Long Hair Custer. They would call the mighty victory the Battle of the Greasy Grass, while the wasicun would always refer to it as the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and some would call it Custer’s Last Stand.
In the small circle of lodges, Claw Marks had been recovering from a stab wound to the thigh suffered when he vanquished two Crows in a hand-to-hand fight with knives and war clubs on the banks of the Hehaka Wakpa, which meant “Elk River” but was called the Yellowstone River by the wasicun. Most of the men had left the tribal circle and gone out on a great hunt when a vast herd of buffalo was spotted a half day south.
A large band of Crows approached the circle of lodges and the warning went up.
Claw Marks, a war chief, had been hobbled and was walking with a makeshift crutch, but this day he tossed the crutch aside. With two older warrior volunteers, he faced the charging band, after sending the young warriors and children, including Cate Waste, down the banks of the Little Bighorn to what the warrior called the Badger Coulee. From there the remnants of the tribe could escape up the coulee, covering their tracks as they went.
He and the two gray-haired warriors knew they would die. Although he was wounded, he was younger and stronger than the other two men, so he knew it fell to him to keep the Crows at bay as long as possible, to cover the retreat of the family circle. They sang their death songs while firing shots and arrows at the charging Crows. He looked up at a pair of red-tailed hawks swirling high overhead in the cloudless, endless Montana sky, and he smiled to the warriors, saying in Lakota, “This is a good day to die.” They nodded and smiled.
Leaving them, he raised his hand to bid them stay back, and ignoring the leg pain, he leapt on his pinto mount and rode toward the reassembling Crows. They had lost several warriors already and were shocked at the ability of these three determined men. They had to admire their perennial enemies.
The Crows were planning a final charge, with the idea to count as many coups as possible, touching the enemy in battle. They were encouraging each other to “Brave up!”
Thirty yards off, Claw Marks dropped off his war pony and tied a long rawhide thong to his leg. He tied the other end of the twenty-foot leather thong to a stake, which he jammed into the ground and pounded down with a nearby rock.
Claw Marks then faced the Crow, a challenging grin on his face, and raising his rifle into the air with one hand and his war club with the other, he yelled, “Hokahey!”
The Crow knew he was going nowhere, but would fight to the death, taking as many of them as he could with him. They yelled back, more in admiration for his raw courage than to taunt a warrior. They agreed they would ride him down, and each warrior wanted to count coup on this mighty enemy, touching him without killing him, with a coup stick, bow, or rifle. They charged screaming and yelling, and he raised his rifle taking careful aim, and bodies started falling. The group rode down upon him, and he swung his rifle one way and the other and broke the stock over the face of the largest Crow. Then he started swinging his war club, as he felt stab wounds and strikes hitting his body all over. His scalp was a great reward for the hardest fighting of the Crows, who finally struck the fatal blow against him. Near Siostukala’s body eight Crow bodies also lay on the grass by the shallow sand- and rock-bottomed Little Bighorn, and several more moaned with wounds.
The two elderly warriors wanted to help the courageous young man, but they knew they must lay back and wait, buying more time for their extended family members. They knew they, too, would make the great walk this day. Inspired by the young warrior’s ferocious fighting and tremendous courage, they too held the Crows off, for another hour, giving the tribal remnants plenty of time to hide in Badger Coulee.
After they hid far down the river valley, Joshua’s young half brother crept through the tall, waving buffalo grass high on a ridge that would be traveled years later by Custer and his men. He found a vantage point and actually watched the heroic death of his father. With no other warriors or tribal members around, he cried. But then he returned to the others. He was bursting with pride at the incredible courage of his father and vowed then never to tarnish such a family legacy.
Joshua felt like he could easily cry wishing he had known his father. After his stepfather died and his mother gave him the gun and knife, only then did she reveal to him her relationship with Claw Marks. When his name was mentioned, she did not cry out of bad memory, but out of pure love-loss.
2
Forbidden Love
Abigail Harrison was the daughter of a British-born father and French-born mother. They were shopkeepers back east, where she was born in a small Ohio town, New Philadelphia, along the banks of the Tuscarawas River, in the midst of southern Ohio farming and coal-mining country. New Philadelphia, or as locals called it, “New Philly,” was first settled in 1777 by German immigrants, who named it Schoenbrunn, which actually meant “beautiful spring.”
But wanderlust struck the Harrisons, and having heard about the green of Oregon and mining riches in California, they headed west. They were headed to see both and then settle in one. However, the trials of the westward movement took their toll. He died first, when trying to free a mud-encased Conestoga wagon wheel. As it came free and the horses lunged forward, he slipped, and the wheel rolled over his neck, crushing his larynx and fracturing his cervical spine in two places.
He was buried not far from the tamer lower headwaters of the mighty Mississippi.
Ironically, in Montana, Abigail’s grief-stricken mother fell getting off the wagon, striking the left front wagon wheel with her forehead and snapping her head back, fracturing her neck as well. She died instantly, and Abby quickly became even more of a survivor, as she was the only child.
After the loss of both parents, she was in a state of total despair and depression. Abby knelt by the hastily dug grave and just stared. She did not care about living or dying. After many attempts to motivate or move her failed, she was left alone with her family wagons by a heartless wagon master. After two days of crying, and taking nothing but little sips of water, she built a fire as her father had taught her and made a nice breakfast. She had come to the realization that she did indeed want to survive, and she would. The beautiful fifteen-year-old made herself a hearty breakfast of bacon, biscuits, eggs, and coffee.
That is when, two miles away, the big silvertip plains grizzly bear stood on his hind legs and slowly popped his teeth, sniffing
the wind. On the breeze, he picked up the delicious smells, and he headed that way at almost a dead run. Bears have an incredible sense of smell, and this big bruin was no exception. He had survived thirteen winters already and was cunning, ferocious, large, and very powerful.
He came up out of a draw and again stood on his hind legs, testing the wind, his nose well over eight feet in the air when he lifted it and smelled. He picked up Abigail’s scent as well and dropped to all fours, let out a ferocious growl, and made his charge. A grizzly bear can outrun a Thoroughbred racehorse on flat ground, and his flat-out charge was so unnerving that Abby stood transfixed and actually paralyzed in fear and denial. As a last resort, she raised her frying pan.
He was almost upon her when the arrow penetrated his rib cage from the right side, passed through his right lung, left lung, nicked his heart, and wedged into his left shoulder muscle. He let out a roar and stopped mid-charge, then stood again to face his new enemy: the powerful, handsome Lakota warrior Zuzeka, whose name meant “Snake” and who stood there with a large Bowie knife in his hand, his bow cast aside on the ground next to him.
Now the bear redirected his charge and dashed for the warrior, who refused to give ground. At the last second, the bear stood on its hind legs, bent slightly forward at the waist, and took a swipe at Zuzeka, raking his upper chest with four large claw marks, from the left side to the right side. Blood started streaming down the warrior’s chest and rippled abdomen. He plunged the knife into the bear’s chest just as it let out its death howl from the arrow. As it fell forward in a heap, its shoulder slammed the brave young man back ten feet, and he lay there unconscious.
He awakened to the smells of food and was very hungry. The startled brave sat up and looked around. It was daylight, and he finally realized that he was in the wagon of the wasicun woman, lying on her bed. He shook his head trying to clear his brain. Zuzeka looked around the inside of the wagon and recognized that this young woman was a good housekeeper.
She bounded up the steps and into the back of the Conestoga, and he jumped, reaching for his large knife, but the sheath was not around his waist. They looked at each other, and their eyes locked. Her chest started heaving a little in and out. His eyes entranced her. She smiled softly, and he relaxed, and she opened a box and pulled out his knife and sheath and handed them to him, as well as his bow and quiver full of arrows.
Abby said, “Do you speak any English?”
“Yes, a little maybe,” he said. “What happened?”
She smiled. “You saved my life. This giant bear was charging at me. You killed it with an arrow and your knife. You are so brave. Thank you.”
“Ah, I remember. Where is bear? When?” he asked.
“Three days ago,” she replied. “You were wonderful. I skinned the bear and saved it and the paws for you.”
“You did?” he said, then it hit him. “Three suns? I sleep three suns?”
“Yes,” she said. “Your chest wounds got infected, but I have medicine, and it is getting better now.”
She had to teach him how to drive her second wagon, loaded with the many supplies that her parents had brought with them to open their new store in Oregon or California. As they traveled in the coming days, Abby and Zuzeka both spoke constantly about what would become of them, for they were two people from very different worlds. His courage to her was incredible, as he traveled alone with her to protect her, driving a white man’s wagon in the area known as Montana, which was not even a territory yet, let alone a state.
After a few weeks, with the canvas off the Conestoga, and lying under the millions of stars in the night sky, they made love for the first time. And it was on one of those nights in the big sky country that Joshua Strongheart was conceived.
Abby and Zuzeka first headed toward Oregon on a route known by fur trappers and Indians, which would become the northern route of the Bozeman Trail to Oregon some years later (and more than a century later, Interstate Highway I-90), but the farther they traveled the sadder Abby became.
It was in a lush, fertile valley surrounded by high mountain ranges that Zuzeka hid the wagons in a thicket where he and his father had camped years before on their way to the Yellowstone, ninety miles to the southwest. Where they camped and hid the wagons would, years later, become the city of Bozeman, Montana. From there they traveled on horses with a packhorse. Zuzeka wanted Abby to see what life was like in the lodges of the Lakota.
She met his family, and the baby grew inside her. Abby was shocked by how family-oriented, clean, organized, hardy, and happy these people were. She was made to feel at home in the lodges of Zuzeka’s tribe. When she had revealed the story of his amazing courage and his people had seen the wound on his chest, he had been given the warrior name of Siostukala, “Claw Marks.”
On their way back to the valley that would become Bozeman, he planned to finally make the talk he had contemplated. They stopped in a thicket along a crystal-clear glacial creek, and she prepared them a meal, as they had not eaten for hours. He had the horses positioned so he could talk but still watch their ears and heads for signs that anybody was approaching or nearby. One horse was worth ten watchdogs, if you simply watched what the horse did with his head.
“The wasicun use the word ‘love’ and it means many things,” he said. “I have thought of this and it is what I feel with you, here in my heart.”
Tears welled up in Abby’s eyes.
He said, “You carry our son in your belly. I know he is a son.”
He thought of the honor that had just been bestowed on him when he was renamed.
“My family circle has begun a good thing. It is called the Strong Heart Society.” He paused, sadly. “Maybe someday all the Lakota will have a Strong Heart Society. It is our best warriors; only a few can belong. I now belong,” he said, as he proudly pointed at the fresh claw marks.
“I will make you safe,” he went on, “then I must go.”
“No,” she protested and started crying, “I love you!”
“You hear my words, Abby. They are iron,” he told her. “My world is red and yours is white. You carry our baby. It will be hard for him, for he will have two hearts. My mother was sold to a wasicun, a, what do you call, a wanasa pi, a hunter—no, a trapper. He trapped beaver, shot tatanka, buffalo. This is how I learn to speak the white talk. My life was very hard, but we did not live in the towns.”
“Siostukala,” she said, “I need you! Please?”
Claw Marks set his jaw and spoke. “No. I have spoken. You will name our son Strongheart, for he will grow and become a mighty warrior with two hearts. Sometimes, you will visit my people or the Cheyenne or Arapaho, our brothers. They will know of him. We will talk more.”
They finished the trip to the green valley and her wagons and sat the first night by the fire. She had spent the trip there quietly thinking about his words.
She said, “You are right, but I am not going to Oregon or California. You would be killed.”
He started to speak, but she raised her hand. “Please, let me finish. I love you, but I have been thinking when we rode. You are right. This world is unfair. If we want to marry, we should be allowed, but that is the way it is. I will stay here, so our son, or daughter, can grow up in this beautiful valley, and I know white men will move here, and they will buy things from my store. Maybe someday there will be a town here.”
He left the fire then and walked long into the night.
The next day, Claw Marks told her he would find a place for her home and rode off. He knew of a place in the valley where the mountain men would sometimes rendezvous, and some Crows and other red men would come to it, too. The Crow and Lakota were bitter enemies, so he had to be very careful.
Two hours later, he found a bonanza. He saw two families near a stream with several other men. The warrior rode forward, his right hand up in greeting. He was met warmly. The two families had been on an early wagon train and decided they could make a wonderful life in this valley. There were also two fu
r buyers there, planning a mountain man rendezvous, and a man in a large tent who was an engineer, and even Claw Marks knew he was working on the planning for either a railroad or a spur for a mining operation. Another man was a farmer, and another a blacksmith and lay pastor. They were excited about having someone join them with all the supplies to start a mercantile, especially the men planning the rendezvous, who would now have a source for the many items they lacked. Little did Claw Marks know that in just over a decade, the Bozeman Trail would go through this valley. Little did he know it would become what would be called Bozeman, Montana, and Abby would then make a lot of money and own several successful businesses.
For now, they knew this place only by the name the Indians used, the “Valley of the Flowers,” because it got more rain than other parts of Montana and had very fertile soil.
Abby was welcomed with open arms as a new member of this small community, but soon it became time for Claw Marks to leave her. He removed his large knife and fancy sheath and handed them to her.
“I am a warrior,” he said. “This is my store. When you know our son is a man, you give this to him. Tell him he must keep it clean, keep it sharp, and only use it with wisdom. Tell him of his father. Let him learn of my people, too.”
“I will. I promise,” she said.
Abby threw herself into his arms and kissed him the way she had taught him, which he always liked very much. She would never forget how safe she felt wrapped in those massive arms. She would never forget the feeling of wrapping her own arms only part of the way around him, as if she were hugging a giant, gentle bear that would always protect her.
He turned and walked to his pony, then vaulted onto its back and rode away without looking back. That day was the last time Joshua’s parents ever saw each other, but she kept her word.
