Lakota Woman

by Mary Crow Dog

  Monday, just as the morning star came out, my water broke and I went down to the sweat lodge to pray. I wanted to go into the sweat but Black Elk would not let me. Maybe there was a taboo against my participating, just as a menstruating woman is not allowed to take part in a ceremony. I was disappointed. I did not feel that the fact that my water had burst had made me ritually unclean. As I walked away from the vapor hut, for the third time, I heard that ghostly cry and lamenting of a woman and child coming out of the massacre ravine. Others had heard it too. I felt that the spirits were all around me. I was later told that some of the marshals inside their sandbagged positions had also heard it, and some could not stand it and had themselves transferred.

  After that nothing happened until Tuesday morning when some stuff came out of me. At four o’clock in the afternoon I began having spasms at intervals of half an hour. They made me lie down then. At nine o’clock at night the cramps became severe. The pains lasted all night. On Wednesday morning they became harder. A firefight started, but I was too preoccupied to pay it any attention. My friends kept me strong. Pedro Bissonette, who was later killed by BIA police, was pacing the floor, pacing and pacing. Every now and then he would look in on me to see how I was doing, trying to reassure me: “An ambulance is waiting for you. Just in case anything should go wrong. It’s ready to take you through the roadblock to the hospital. Just give the word.”

  “No,” I said, “it’s all right.” But it wasn’t. The pains were bad and they lasted so long. And they were so real, blotting out everything else. I was too tired to push, too tired to live. Then I got lonesome. I missed my mother with whom I had never gotten along, missed my sisters, missed Grandma. I wished that there had been a father waiting for me and the baby. And yet I was so lucky in having such devoted women friends standing by, helping me. Josette Wawasik acted as the chief midwife. She was a seventy-two-year-old Potawatomy lady from Kansas who had been at the Knee from the very beginning and had also taken part in the BIA building takeover half a year before. Ellen Moves Camp and Vernona Kills Right were assisting her, and naturally Annie Mae Aquash was there, too. Mrs. Wawasik had delivered thirteen babies before and Ellen Moves Camp had delivered three or four, so they knew what they were doing. Ellen’s case was tragic; she was such a strong-hearted woman, and later had to see a son turn into an informer against us. Their hands were gentle. I had no injections, or knockout medicine, just water. I gave birth inside a trailer house. As I said, I had wanted to deliver inside the tipi but that would have been risking all our lives. Well, my labor lasted until 2:45 P.M. and then it went zip, easy, just like that.

  A couple of hours before Pedro was born a cow gave birth to a calf. The old-style Sioux are proverbial gamblers and they had been betting which would come in first, the cow or me. And the cow had beaten me by a length.

  When the baby was born I could hear the people outside. They had all come except the security manning the bunkers, and when they heard my little boy’s first tiny cry all the women gave the high-pitched, trembling brave-heart yell. I looked out the window and I could see them, women and men standing there with their fists raised in the air, and I really thought then that I had accomplished something for my people. And that felt very, very good, like a warmth spreading over me.

  Dennis Banks came in and hugged me, saying, “Right on, sister!” and he was crying, and that made me cry, too. And then Carter Camp and Pedro Bissonette came in with tears streaming down their faces. All those tough guys were weeping. And then my girl friends came in, taking turns holding the baby. Grandma Wawasik went to the window and held up the baby and a great cheer went up. They were beating the big drum and singing the AIM song. And that led to another song, many songs, and my heart beat with the drum. They wrapped my baby up and laid him beside me. They brought in the pipe and we prayed with it, prayed for my little boy whom I named Pedro. I am glad I did because this way Pedro Bissonette’s name is living on. And right away after my son was born he lifted up his little, soft head and so I knew that I had a strong child, because they don’t do that until they are two weeks old. And the macho Sioux men said, “For sure, that’s a warrior.” As I looked at him I knew that I was entering a new phase of my life and that things would not, could not ever be the same again. More and more people crowded in, pumped my hand, and snapped my picture, and I wasn’t even done yet. Grandma Wawasik and Ellen Moves Camp had to throw them all out so that I could have my afterbirth. Out of the window I could see smoke. The feds were burning off the sagebrush to deprive our guides of cover. The whole prairie around Wounded Knee was burning. Vernona said, “They’re sending up a smoke signal for you.” I was very, very tired and finally slept a little.

  The drumming and singing and cheering had gotten the marshals excited. As was usual with them, they thought we were getting ready for a banzai charge. They were running in all directions, waving their M-16s about. Soon half a dozen APCs came lumbering up, closing in on our positions, and started a firefight. Luckily nobody got hit. That would have taken the joy out of the day, April 11, a good day for all of us. And so, though I was hardly grown-up myself, I had become a mother.

  A few days after the baby was born came the air-drop, and among other things, I got an onion. I was so happy, after two months inside Wounded Knee, to see a fresh, real-life onion again. My good mood did not last long, however. Over the two-way radio I heard a guy saying, “A man got hit in his head. He’s bleeding. He’s not going to make it. Hold your fire so we can get him to some facility, we got to get him to a hospital.” I felt so sad then, but at the same time I felt that: in some mysterious way I had given a life to replace the one that had been lost. The fatally wounded brother was Clearwater, a Cherokee.

  When the firefight started on that day, I happened to be in the trading post to which I and the baby had been transferred. The bullets were going right through, coming through one wall and tumbling out through the other. Everybody was telling me to take my boy and get the hell out of there to a safer place. I was told to go with Roger Iron Cloud over to the housing area and hide in a basement. So I bundled up the baby and got his diapers together and we started running. We got into a crossfire and had to hit the dirt three times. I was scared, really scared, the only time during the siege—not so much for myself as for the baby. I was praying: “If somebody has to die, let it be me, grandfather, but save him!” I was concentrating upon survival, upon getting us out of this situation alive. I was lying on top of my child to shield him. Sometimes Iron Cloud interposed his body, putting it where he thought it would do myself and little Pedro the most good. That’s the type of Sioux macho I can appreciate. Well, we made it safely into the basement. I had experienced a moment of panic thinking that the voices I had heard, the vision I had received years ago, might mean that I and my baby would have to join the spirits up on the hill. Those bastards! Forcing me to run like a track star four days after giving birth! My knees kept shaking for quite a while. More from the running, I like to brag, than from anything else. Well, that was Pedro’s baptism of fire.

  Leonard sneaked back into Wounded Knee a few days after Pedro was born and gave him an Indian name. He also held a peyote meeting for us. I took medicine and all the pain I still had went away. I also gave baby a little bit of peyote tea. Some people from California sent my child a sacred pipe and a beautifully beaded pipe bag, which made me happy and him well equipped on the road of life.

  I left Wounded Knee the day Buddy Lamont got shot, roughly a week before the siege ended. I was resting with the baby in my room and some guy came in and said, “Somebody got killed.” I asked him if he was sure and who had been hit. He told me it was Buddy and I said, “Oh, no, that’s my uncle!” I went over to where Kamook, Dennis’s wife, was staying and found her crying, with Dennis holding her in his arms. I was so mad, I could not cry. I did not want to believe it. A friend took me over to our improvised hospital to see Buddy and I held his hand. It was still warm. His relations asked me to come out of Wounded Knee with
them and help with the funeral. I went into Wounded Knee poor and I left it poor. All that my baby and I had was the clothes on my back and a bundle of diapers and a blanket for him. Of course, we had also the pipe, but it was not an auspicious start for setting up a mother-baby establishment.

  I had been promised that I would not be arrested, but the moment I passed the roadblock I was hustled to the Pine Ridge jail. They did not book me, just took all my things away and were about to take my baby too. They told me I would have to wait, they could not put me in the tank before the Welfare came for my baby. Being poor, unwed, and a no-good rabble-rouser from the Knee made me an unfit mother. The child would have to be taken to a foster home. I was not going to give up my baby. I would never see him again. I was ready to fight to the death for my child, kick the shit out of the Welfare lady, scratch the guard’s eyes out if necessary. Luckily Cheyenne, Buddy’s sister, showed up just then and persuaded them to let her take care of the baby until I came out. I do not know what I would have done without her. Instead of helping her in her grief, she was helping me. Then one of the marshals came in in his pretty blue outfit and said, “Why are you so ornery? Why don’t you try to be nice to me?”

  I told him that I did not talk to pigs, which turned him off sufficiently to leave me alone. Because I could not nurse, my breasts swelled up and became hard and painful. So I was not too happy in that jail which the goons jokingly called “Heartbreak Hotel.” They told me I was being held for questioning and debriefing, but I would not talk to them. I was not allowed to make any phone calls, send out messages, or talk to a lawyer. After twenty-four hours they finally let me go because the baby had to be nursed. Some of the government press officers said it was bad PR to hold a nursing mother. As I left the jail I found my mother waiting for me. I had not seen her in a long while. She was crying, telling me over and over again that I should not have come to Wounded Knee, or at least I should have come out early before things got tough and when I would not have been arrested. I told her there was nothing to cry for. She said, “Those militants you are hanging out with are no good. They’ll get you killed. Why on earth can’t you settle down, have a nice home, lead a peaceful life.” But then suddenly she stopped weeping and went on in a completely different vein: “Those goddam sons of bitches, doing that to my daughter and grandchild! They are not supposed to be doing that, jailing you just after delivery and taking your baby away. Why doesn’t somebody shoot a couple of them for a change?”

  I said, “Yes, I’m a mother now and made you a grandmother.” Suddenly we got along very well and could understand each other. Her anger did not last and somehow things were better between us after this.

  I was not free to go, though. I and the baby were taken to Rapid City to wind up in the old, buggy Pennington County Jail, but only for a few hours because they saw that nothing could be gotten out of me. That is how the state and the feds kept their promises that I would not be subject to arrest. It did not surprise me. They gave up on me and just let me go. After I got out I had to hitchhike about a hundred and fifty miles to get home to Grass Mountain. I got picked up by a goon called Big Crow and he tried to take me to his house and to bed with him. I held the baby tight and jumped out of his pickup truck, rolled over easy, and ran like hell into the sagebrush, hiding myself in a culvert. He was fat and winded, so I had gained on him. Also it was dark. He could not find me. I could hear him muttering and cursing until he drove off. I did not dare come out of hiding for two hours because I was afraid he was playing a trick upon me and would double back. It was dark, spooky, and very cold in the ditch and I had a hard time keeping the baby from crying so that he would not give us away. It was like in the old days when our women with their babies had to hide themselves from the cavalry, except for the culvert of course. In the end a nice old skin gave me a ride home and that was the end of Wounded Knee for me.

  For Crow Dog, the end came about a week later when an agreement had finally been reached. Inside the Knee some warriors wept when the agreement was signed, saying, “Just another treaty to be broken. We made a commitment. This is a copout.” One man said, “Why don’t you just kill us and make our bodies plead guilty?” There were only some hundred and twenty people left to surrender: the others had all walked out, forty of them on the last night by way of a route that was not being watched because it was so open that it was almost suicide to take it. And even on that last evening there was still a firefight. The hundred twenty remaining could have walked out too but chose to stay to the end. Among the leaders who stayed to the last was Leonard. He was the last one out, I think. He was taken off in handcuffs by helicopter to the Rapid City jail. The feds were not satisfied with the twenty-odd old rifles that were surrendered, and the head of the government negotiating team proclaimed, “They just turned in a lot of old crap. I feel the White House need not fulfill its commitment to AIM because of this violation.”

  Two years later, seven of us who had all been at the Knee went to see the movie Billy Jack. There was a superficial similarity to Wounded Knee—an Indian making a last stand inside a white clapboard church surrounded by a lot of state troopers—but afterward Crow Dog was joking, “That Billy Jack had it easy. He was besieged for only twenty-four hours and there were no heavy MGs or APCs. And he was taken out with just a pair of handcuffs on him while they trussed us up with manacles, leg irons, and waist chains like something out of a medieval torture movie. Yeah, Billy Jack had it easy.”

  The little white church on the hill burned down in a fire which has never been explained, though I have heard that it has since been rebuilt. The trading post is flattened out like a stomped-on tin can. The museum is gone. Of the great Gildersleeve trading empire only a huge, rusty open safe remains in which wasps have made their nest. It is the only sign of the white man’s “civilization.” Everything is gone. No landmark is left. The feds bulldozed our bunkers as well as their own and only the spirits remain up on the hill, roaming in the night by their ditch. If you are lucky you might still find a .50-caliber shell or an empty trip-wire flare canister in the sagebrush. I believe that the government tried to extinguish all visible reminders that Indians once made their stand here. It will do them no good. They cannot extinguish the memory in our hearts, a memory we will pass on to generations still unborn. Today the perimeter looks very much as it did before the white man came, as it looked to Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Big Foot. Maybe that is as it should be.

  CHAPTER 12

  Sioux and Elephants Never Forget

  A beautiful tepee is like a good mother. She hugs her children to her and protects them from heat and cold, storm and rain.

  —Sioux proverb

  After Wounded Knee I became Crow Dog’s wife. I think he had had his eye on me for a long time, but I didn’t have my eye on him. I was not even eighteen years old and he was about a dozen years older. So he seemed to me to belong to another generation. Also I looked upon him with a certain kind of awe. He was a medicine man and the spiritual leader of the American Indian Movement. Also I called him uncle after the Indian fashion, and he called me niece. So I did not look upon him as I would have upon one of the wild young warriors I was used to going with.

  Now, in many ways the Sioux are prudes. They have a horror of nudity. They are in a way bashful. Boys and girls feel inhibited about showing affection for each other. Their fear of incest and the taboos connected with it are so severe that in traditional families a son-in-law will never speak to his mother-in-law, while a father-in-law will not behave in a familiar, easygoing way with a daughter-in-law. On the other hand the approach of a man to a woman is very simple and direct, and sex is taken for granted, as something natural or even sacred. Also medicine men are not supposed to be holier than other people, or sanctimonious like white preachers. As old Lame Deer used to say, “They respect me not because I am such a good boy, but because I have the power.” When it comes to women, medicine men are supposed to behave like everybody else.

  I met Leonard at
the Rosebud Fair and Rodeo. He took me for a ride in his old red convertible. Suddenly he had his arm around me and was kissing me. We were going to a party. I did not want to stay long. I did not want to be with him. I wanted to leave. I had a date with a young man from Oklahoma. But Leonard grabbed me by the arm and somehow maneuvered me out of the house down to the pasture, lifting me across the fence. Nobody was there. So in the end I went home with him. But I had not made up my mind about him. I was not ready to be tied down. So the next day I told his mother that I was going away, to another state. She said that Leonard had told her that I would be his wife for sure. I told her that I was not right for him. And I did not stay with him then. That came later.

  At Sun Dance time Leonard approached me. He said he needed my help and my family’s pickup truck to go into the hills for tipi poles. I went and borrowed a pickup from my brother-in-law. Leonard took me way up to the highest hill. It was pretty up there. I stood and looked around, admiring the beautiful view of the whole valley of the Little White River spread out before us. But there were neither tipi poles on that hill nor lodgepole pines. Leonard said, “Give your uncle a kiss.” I kissed him. We stayed up on that hill for a considerable time. Again he asked me to be his wife, and once more I told him, “No, I won’t.”

  After Wounded Knee, on the day the AIM leader Clyde Bellecourt was shot, we all got him to the hospital in the town of Winner where he was operated upon. Leonard was there and old Lame Deer, to pray and smoke the pipe for him. Then we drove in a caravan back to Rosebud and the Crow Dog place where Leonard held a big ceremony for Clyde’s recovery. Everybody vowed to drink no more and! to quit the wild life. After the ceremony he asked me to stay. I said, “No, I am going to leave.” He cornered me and would not let me go. Again and again he said, “Be my wife.” My ride had left in the meantime and so I ended up staying—for good.