Red Tomahawk

by Jory Sherman

  Red Tomahawk never forgot how close Crazy Horse's vision came to be fulfilled.

  In time, Crazy Horse became the strong man of his people and the old bad times were forgotten. He had chased No Water away once, and could have killed him, so many looked upon Crazy Horse as a holy man like his father, and looked to him to lead them out of their troubles.

  More troubles came when runners came to the camps bearing news of white soldiers, led by the Yellow Hair, Custer, going into the sacred place, the Black Hills.

  Red Tomahawk sat in his lodge, Lady Walking Crow bent over from the age of many winters, hobbling about, wondering why he moped like a stomach-sick child. He could not tell her, but let his heart roam back to those days when he went to the Black Hills with his enemy and took out the yellow metal to trade for a long gun and some powder and ball.

  Now, he wondered if his violation of that sacred place was not connected to this latest news. He had gotten his rifle from White Buffalo, traded the ponies in for lead, a bullet mold, powder, and many of the shooting caps. Since then, he had traded with Banded Eagle for a revolver that shot six times, giving him the one-shot in exchange.

  He sat for two days, with the worry lines making furrows in his forehead, before his mother brought Crazy Horse to his lodge.

  "What troubles you, my brother?" asked Crazy Horse.

  "Yellow Hair, going into the Paha Sapa. Is it true?"

  "Yes."

  "Why is he there where so many of our fathers are buried? Where so many warriors have gone to make their dreaming? That is not a white man's place."

  Crazy Horse's face, pale as a white woman's still, shadowed with a hidden pain.

  "There is a wide trail there now, where once there was only a narrow travois-path. It goes past Bear Butte, the ancient place of the Teton Councils. The soldiers say they have come there to protect the whites who seek the yellow metal they call gold. The whites have come because Yellow Hair says the yellow metal is all over the hills, from the grass roots down."

  "My heart is on the ground about this, because I went there for the yellow metal. Perhaps that is why Yellow Hair has come."

  Crazy Horse put his hand on his friend's shoulder.

  "No, Red Tomahawk," he said, "this is not your doing. I knew that you had gone to the Paha Sapa and that this was a bad thing. But you were young then, and your enemy led you there. I have heard Worm and Little Hawk, old men now, speak of this yellow metal. Many winters ago, some of our people took the yellow stones to Black Robe, the one the whites called Father De Smet. He told them to bury the stones deep in the ground and forget they had ever seen them. He said that they must never tell the whites where they found the yellow stones."

  "Why?"

  "He said that when a white man looked at the yellow stones they would give him a burning in the brain, a craziness that would make him kill and steal, even from his own people, his own mother or wife."

  "But who told Yellow Hair about the yellow stones? I only found one and it did not do anything to me." He thought about what Vallentine, White Buffalo, had done to the buffalo robes that he had taken out of the creek. He had soaked them in a big wooden tub, the kind that white men bathe in, and shaken them out, over and over again. Then, he had poured the water and mud into a long wooden box that shook. After that, he had taken the metal bowls and swirled the water and mud around until even he had seen the yellow metal, as fine and bright as powdered goldenrod or pollen from a bee's legs. Vallentine's eyes had glittered, and he had asked Red Tomahawk where he had found the yellow stone and the dusty yellow powder.

  "I do not know," he had said, speaking true, because his fear of that sacred place where dead warriors dreamed had put a shadow in his mind.

  Crazy Horse saw that his friend was looking into his heart.

  "You did not cause this thing," he said again.

  "Yellow Hair found the yellow stones himself and he told the men who use the talking wires and those who make the dark scratches on paper. Now, we will go to war. All these little fights will be as nothing."

  Red Tomahawk knew he was talking about Fetterman and the Wagon Box fight, the fights with the soldier chief Cole, the Hayfield fight, Horseshoe Station and those men with Major Baker who wanted to make a place for the iron horses to come through Lakota lands. Crazy Horse had proved to the people that he was a good warrior, very wise, very strong.

  "Maybe the whites will not find much gold and they will go away," said Red Tomahawk.

  "The shooting has already started," Crazy Horse said sadly. "There were some friendly Indians in the hills. Custer sat down to talk some peace to them. While he did this, his Mandan scouts killed Old Stabber and wounded Slow Bull, the son-in-law of Red Cloud. Black Elk and his small camp were hunting along one of the lodge trails near the hills and decided to go north. Chips, the medicine man, made a sweat and heard a voice saying that the band must run away because something bad would happen there. It was almost evening when Black Elk heard this, but he turned his people back toward the agency and made them walk all night. At first sun, they met some scouts who said that many soldiers had gone into the Black Hills and Oglalas were being killed. Now, some Lakotas who thought that Yellow Hair should be killed, have set the grass on fire to drive him away. They did this because they have little powder and the soldier chief's wagons are full of weapons and many soldier guns guarding them."

  "What will we do?" asked Red Tomahawk.

  "We will wait and see what the whites do next."

  * * *

  The Black Hills rang with the sound of picks and shovels, as many whites came in to mine the yellow stones. There was trouble when the whites at the agency cut down a tree and brought it to their stockade. When the Indians asked what it was for, they were told that the whites would use it for a flag. The Indians were outraged, saying they would have no flag flying of them. They said they would not have soldiers there or any of their things, and so they charged the stockade and chopped the flagpole to pieces with their axes. The whites ran and hid. Soldiers came in and the warriors charged, shooting, circling them, bumping into their horses. Sitting Bull, Young Man Afraid, and some other friendlies, stopped the attack with clubs and whips, driving the warriors back as they escorted the soldiers inside the stockade. They slammed the heavy door shut but the troubles among the Indians rose up again over this happening.

  There was bad talk now against Crazy Horse, but he, Red Tomahawk and others were off to the Black Hills attacking the white miners. Red Cloud sat and smoked, doing nothing, waiting. Sitting Bull spent his time attacking quarreling Indians and people spoke of the waste of such deeds, remembering how brave and fearless he had been against their enemies, the Crow.

  Red Tomahawk returned to the Oglala camp with a white man's scalp and took a woman, Blue Wing Teal, for his wife. With his own lodge now, he was a man known as a friend to Crazy Horse, one destined for greatness if his woman did not wear him down with her tongue.

  There were bad winters, and many councils between tribes and between whites and Indians. Presents were given by the Great White Father in Washington, but the soldiers grew in number and the whites continued to violate sacred lands. The winter before the big troubles began, was called in the Winter Count, the Time of Hunger. When the thaw came in the Moon of the Dark Red Calves, February, the people were weak and helpless.

  Scouts came into the camps, telling of many soldiers on the Platte getting ready to ride north.

  The people began to mutter and grumble, with many saying that it would be best to take the white man's trail today, before it was too late.

  This talk made its way to the council, where Crazy Horse sat and listened, without speaking, as each man told what was in his heart.

  "What are you thinking, my brother?" asked Black Elk. "We could fight the soldiers and beat them if we had guns and ammunition. But now, our buffalo herds have grown small and our people starve without the white man's food."

  Crazy Horse stood up, his braids long, past his wa
ist, and drew his blanket around him.

  "Yes, we need guns and buffalo," he said. "If we do not get these, we might die or be rubbed out. But I will never go to the agency." He spoke of past times and the sadness of his people, those driven crazy by the white man's whiskey and the women and children killed by soldiers.

  "I have no words against you who wish to take the white man's trail today," he said. "Many of you have little children who cannot run in the snow from the horse soldiers. Each of you must do what will be good for you and your people, your families.

  "No man can fight when the hearts of his women have fallen down. But for me there is no country that can hold the tracks of the moccasin and the boots of the white man side by side."

  And Red Tomahawk thought of Blue Wing Teal and the child she carried in her belly. She was thin as a kildeer, but her tongue was sharp as an iron arrow-tip.

  His woman was one of those who wanted to take the white man's path.

  He looked up at Crazy Horse.

  Then he stood up.

  "I will follow my brother," he said, "wherever he goes."

  He Dog, watching, turned his face away.

  Crazy Horse put his hand on Red Tomahawk's shoulder and looked at his oldest friend, He Dog, with sad dark eyes.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Blue Wing Teal, the sister of Banded Eagle, daughter of Wild Fox, loved her man, Red Tomahawk. She was proud of him, too, but smart enough not to tell him this to his face. Small of stature, slender of limb, she had large eyes, like the spotted fawn and graceful dark lashes like tiny fans made of greenhead duck curly tail feathers. She was an eager partner in the blankets, did not turn her face toward other men, and she kept the lodge neat. Her only fault, Red Tomahawk decided, was her endless wogalaka: talking, talking, talking.

  She talked mostly of herself and her unborn child. She gave him endless commands in the form of wishes and warnings.

  "Your friend is well-named," she said this morning, in the Moon of Being Snowblind, March. "Tashunka Wilko, Crazy Horse. He's crazy. He will get you killed if you stay out. Look back in your heart to what has happened. Lone Bear giving up his spirit on the Piney; Hump, his warrior father, falling in the fight against the Snakes; Little Hawk rubbed out on the Platte. He Dog is wise. Going to the agency, like Young Man Afraid. There is food and new warm blankets there, no fighting. The soldiers do not kill the Indians there."

  She spoke to him as she went in and out of the lodge, nervous as a bird, her voice low and husky with the guttural Lakota flowing from her mouth like breath strong from the burning cup. Red Tomahawk, sitting in his robes, worked on his revolver and rifle, rubbing tallow into the wood of the grips and stock, polishing the barrels with a soft skin of rabbit fur. He had other thoughts to think about. Crawler had come through the camp, telling them: "Red Cloud sends you this message: 'It is spring. We are waiting for you.'"

  As if hearing the things in his mind, Blue Wing Teal, came back inside the lodge, waddling under the weight of the baby inside her belly, her sharp voice filling his ears with words tumbling over each other like stones falling down a mountain.

  "Red Cloud says to come in. He is the agency chief. You should listen to him. If the warriors go to him, the other men will follow."

  "Maybe he is waiting for something else," said her husband. "Maybe there is some trouble about to start."

  "You go in. Like He Dog."

  "There is no knowing what Red Cloud means. He might be a prisoner of the soldiers. They might have told him to say this thing."

  He got up from his robes, bent down to go through the flap. There was a noise outside, people shouting about a runner. The snow had stopped the month before, but now there was snow again and he thought of He Dog, caught out there on the plains to the south. The Crazy Horse camp was well-protected here on the little creek east of the Powder, but He Dog would be in the open, with no way to escape the freezing winds and the blowing snow.

  "There is a runner coming," he said to his woman. "Do not talk now."

  It was true. He came into the camp talking loudly, saying he was from a camp near Fort Fetterman.

  "It is being told in my camp," he shouted, "that the whole Crazy Horse village has been destroyed. All wiped out. The people are scattered in the snow."

  A great cry rose up, followed by laughter.

  "This is the Crazy Horse village," yelled someone.

  "Then it must be someone else," said another and the women began to trill, the men to grumble.

  "Look," said Banded Eagle, "up on the hill."

  Crazy Horse walked to the center of the camp where the runner, a look of confusion on his face, sat his pony.

  "This is bad," he said. "The scout is signaling that many people are coming up the creek. Something bad has happened! Herald, tell the women to fill the kettles. Red Tomahawk, Banded Eagle, all of you, pack horses with meat and robes, bring travois for the sick and old. There might be wounded. We will ride to meet them."

  It was bad. He Dog and Two Moons, the Cheyenne, led their ragged band, while the men and women and children streamed out behind them, their feet tied in water-logged scraps of blankets, their backs bent under the weight of their bundles. Crazy Horse and the others helped load the weak and the sick onto travois, then brought in the poor stock that had been saved, thin horses, stolen soldier beef barely able to stand after the long retreat away from the soldier guns.

  In Council, Red Tomahawk heard the whole story of the day the soldier called Reynolds, part of Three Stars' army, the one the whites called General Crook, attacked the fifty lodges of He Dog and Two Moons.

  Grabber had brought the soldiers to He Dog's camp,

  "They cut us off from our horses, shot the repeating rifles into the lodges," He Dog told the Council. "Our young men caught up the old tired horses that did not run away. They got the old people and the children out of camp. Ice, Two Moons and I, some others, had guns. We held the soldiers off. There were five of them to one of us. We lost only one man killed, one woman wounded. We came to your village, Crazy Horse, after the soldiers burned our village. They destroyed everything: meat, robes, lodges, parfleches, even the beadwork, our shields and our medicine things."

  This was a time of runners going back and forth between camps. There were many councils. Red Tomahawk had gotten his wife to shut up after she saw what had happened to He Dog.

  "If Three Stars had come later," he told her, "none of the people would have survived. Your relatives and mine would all be dead. The snows kept the soldiers from killing more of us."

  Now, they had made a big council and named Crazy Horse as chief over all the people. It was a solemn, serious thing, for life. Runners were sent to the Spotted Tail and Red Cloud agencies with the message: "Come! Crazy Horse leads us all!"

  There was word of Three Stars' anger at the Oglala and Brules at the agencies who refused to scout for him. But, then he noticed that the agency Indians were starving and so were not a good reason for hostiles to come in and put down their weapons.

  Scouts came with news of buffalo up on the Rosebud, and soon Lakota were streaming in from all over, joining the many who followed Crazy Horse. The camps moved slowly, giving the horses time to gain new strength from the spring grasses. Minneconjous, No Bows, even Santees, joined the growing mass of Lakota and when the grass was good, the Blackfoot Lakota came, too.

  Yellow Hair was moving out from Fort Lincoln on the Missouri and there were reports of soldiers coming from the northeast, more along the Yellowstone.

  The camp in the valley of the Rosebud grew and kept growing. Lodges dotted the earth as far as the eye could see and more people coming in every day until even old crippled Black Elk came in from the Red Cloud agency with a large number of lodges.

  "I have returned to my cousin, Crazy Horse," he announced, "where I will fight with him until the end."

  Even Blue Wing Teal was happy. There were plenty of relatives around, lots of good gossip and the many lodge circles gave everyone confide
nce. There were even those who wanted to attack Three Stars, Crook, and wipe him out, but Crazy Horse said they should never attack the soldiers in their own camp.

  "Let them come to us and fight. Then we will show them how to die."

  In the Moon of Making Fat, the Hunkpapas held their sundance. In this white man's year of 1876, the ceremony was held near the sacred Deer Medicine rocks where hunters always went for help.

  Sitting Bull gave out one hundred pieces of flesh, fifty bits of skin no bigger than grass seed, cut from each man's arm. The Hunkpapas sang as the blood ran.

  The medicine man stood facing the sun from its rise until its fall until he fell into a sleep like death. It was said that he had died and his spirit had gone away. When he became alive again, he told the people of his vision.

  Crazy Horse, when he learned of this, told Red Tomahawk.

  "This is what I have been waiting to hear," he said. "Sitting Bull has seen what will happen."

  "Ahh. What is that, my brother?"

  "Many Soldiers Falling into Camp."

  * * *

  Red Tomahawk went with Crazy Horse to look down on Three Stars and his soldier camp. They lay flat on the ground, hidden from the Crow scouts.

  "Wait here," said Crazy Horse.

  The leader of all the Lakota, then made a path down to the beef herd, killed a calf, skinned it out.

  He came back, silent as a ghost.

  "This will make a fine cape."

  Red Tomahawk nodded. In battle, Crazy Horse stood out. Now even the enemy would know who he was.

  In the council, Crazy Horse spoke words that made the hearts of his warriors soar.

  "The soldiers are close to our camp. Three Stars is strong. If we wait here, they will find us and we will see our women and children scatter like quail, our lodges burned, our horses taken."

  "Let our warriors stand around Three Stars like a wall," spoke one at the council.

  "We hear old men talking!"