WHEN THE
TREE FLOWERED
_An Authentic Tale
of the Old Sioux World_
_By_
JOHN G. NEIHARDT
[Illustration]
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
_New York--1951_
_Copyright, 1951, by John G. Neihardt_
All rights reserved--no part of this book may be reproduced in any form
without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer
who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written
for inclusion in magazine or newspaper.
_First Printing_
Printed in the United States of America
_Contents_
CHAPTER PAGE
I “_I Used to Be Her Horse_” 1
II _When the Hundred Died_ 7
III _The New Medicine Power_ 12
IV _Wandering to Mourn_ 19
V _Was the Great Voice Angry?_ 26
VI _Chased by a Cow_ 33
VII _Going on Vision Quest_ 42
VIII “_Hold Fast; There Is More!_” 49
IX _The Old Bull’s Last Fight_ 55
X _The Boys Who Had Sister Trouble_ 62
XI _Helping a Brother-Friend_ 73
XII _The Mysterious Mother-Power_ 84
XIII _Four Against the Crows_ 91
XIV “_Am I Greater Than the People?_” 104
XV _The Sun Dance_ 113
XVI _Thanking the Food_ 130
XVII _The Woman Four Times Widowed_ 138
XVIII _Falling Star, the Savior_ 152
XIX _The Labors of the Holy One_ 168
XX _The Battle in the Blizzard_ 182
XXI _The Cleansing of a Kills-Home_ 193
XXII _Why the Island Hill Was Sacred_ 202
XXIII _Fighting the Gray Fox_ 209
XXIV “_It Was a Great Victory_” 216
XXV _The Woman Who Died Twice_ 222
XXVI _The Moon of Black Cherries_ 229
XXVII _The Dark Hills of Water_ 233
XXVIII _In the Village Called Pars_ 238
XXIX _The Girl’s Road_ 243
WHEN THE TREE FLOWERED
I
“_I Used to Be Her Horse_”
A one-room log cabin, with an indolently smoking chimney, squatted in
sullen destitution a hundred yards away. Before the door a ramshackle
wagon stood waiting for nothing with its load of snow. Down yonder
in the brushy draw an all-but-roofless shed stared listlessly upon
the dull February sky. With a man-denying look, the empty reservation
landscape round about lay hushed and bluing in the cold.
Raising the flap of the tepee, with its rusty stovepipe thrust through
its much-patched canvas, I stooped in a puff of pleasant warmth and
entered, placing my last armload of cottonwood chunks behind the
sheet-iron stove.
The old man threw back his blankets and sat up cross-legged upon the
cowhide robes that served for bed, his gray hair straggling thinly to
his shoulders about an aquiline face that had been handsome, surely,
before time carved it to the bone.
“_Palamo yelo, Kola_,” he said cheerily, as he fumbled in his long
leather tobacco sack; “Thank you, friend. Now we can be warm and smoke
together. You shall be my grandson, Wasichu[1] though you are; for it
is no man’s fault how he is born, and your heart is as much Lakota[2]
as mine.
“It will be good to remember, as you wish. The story that I have will
make me young again a little while, and you shall put it down there in
your tongue as I could say it if your tongue were mine. Too many snows
are heavy on my back, and when I walk, as you have seen, I am like an
old three-legged horse, all bone and hide and always looking for the
grass that used to be.”
Eagle Voice chuckled at his picture of himself.
“But it is only my body that stoops, remembering the mother ground,” he
continued, “for I can feel my spirit standing tall above the snows and
grasses that have been, and seeing much of good and evil days. There
are battles to be fought, and ponies to be stolen, and coups to be
counted. And there is happy hunting when the bison herds were wide as
day, and meat was plenty, and the earth stayed young. That was before
the rivers of Wasichus came in flood and made it old and shut us in
these barren little islands where we wait and wait for yesterday. And
there are visions to be seen again and voices to be heard from beyond
the world. And far away on the other side of the great water towards
the sunrise where I went when I was young, there are strange things
to be remembered, strange ways, strange faces. And yonder there is a
woman’s face, white and far away; and if it is good or bad I do not
know. I remember, and am a boy in the night when the moon makes all the
hills and valleys so that he wants to sing; but something afraid is
hiding in the shadows.”
The old man lit the pipe and his lean cheeks hollowed with a long draw
upon the stem. The brooding face went dim behind a slowly emitted cloud
of smoke, to emerge presently, shining with a merry light.
“_Washtay!_” he exclaimed, with a look of triumph; “_Lela washtay!_”
“What is very good, Grandfather?” I asked.
“It is what I see clearer than all the rest,” he answered, passing the
pipe to me; “and that is very strange, for many things were bigger long
ago.”
He thought awhile, a slow smile spreading until, with a look
grotesquely young, he fell to giggling like a mischievous boy. Then his
face went sober, and fixing serious eyes upon me he said with great
dignity and deliberation:
“It is just a little girl I see, my grandson. I used to be her horse.”
His only response to my laughter was a deeper crinkling about the
mock-serious eyes.
“Yes, I used to be her horse, and I will tell you how it was.”
It might have seemed that he had changed the subject abruptly when he
began again, talking eagerly; but I knew that I had only to wait for
the connection.
“In the old days, before the hoop of our people was broken, the
grandfathers and grandmothers did not just sit and think about the time
when things were better, even if they were old as I am. Maybe a man was
so bent and stiff that he could not hunt or fight any more and maybe he
could hardly chew his meat; but he had happy work to do, because there
were always little boys who had to learn how to be good hunters and
brave warriors; and he would teach them and tell them stories that were
teaching too. When I listened to my grandfather I used to think and
think about how tall men were when he was young. I remember the first
bow and arrows he made me and how he taught me to grasp the bow--like
this; and put the arrow on the string--like this; and pull with the
fingers--like this; and let the arrow fly--so--_whang!_ And I remember
the day when I came home with my first kill, and he laughed hard and
said he could see already that I was going to be a great hunter and a
great warrior. I wondered why he laughed, but I thought maybe it was
because he was so glad.
“It was just a little bird, but it was a bison bull anyway, and I was
more surprised than my grandfather was. For I had been shooting at
rabbits in the brush along the creek for a long time, and even when
I hit them, they would just wiggle their white rumps at me and hop
away. When my grandmother saw the bird, she did not laugh at all. She
just said, ‘_hm-m-m_,’ high up in her nose, like that; for she was
even more surprised than my grandfather. Then she told my mother we
would have to make a victory feast for this young man; and it was so,
because grandmother said it. She invited some old women and old men
to come over and eat; and when they came into our tepee and saw the
little bird lying there, they all said, ‘_hm-m-m_,’ high up in their
noses. And while we were eating they made me stand up and tell just how
I did it; and so I did, like a great warrior making a kill-talk after
a victory. Then the women all made the tremolo with their hands upon
their mouths--_so_--and the men cried, ‘_hi-yay-ay_.’
“And maybe there was an old grandmother who was getting fat and heavy
because she could not chop much wood any more or carry much water;
but she could peg down green hides and tan them with ashes, and sit
down and beat them until they were very soft. And her hands were never
still, for there were always moccasins to make and warm things of
deer-hide for the winter, all fine with beads and porcupine quills.
“Or maybe there was meat to be cut in long thin strips and hung on the
drying racks--such thin strips that it was just like unwinding a bundle
of meat, around and around. The women used to hold their strips up, to
see whose was longest; and the strips my grandmother cut were always a
little thinner and longer than the others.
“And maybe there was going to be a new baby in a tepee, and it would
need a good start in this life; for it is not easy to live on this
earth. So the parents would think of two women who were good and
wise and nobody could say anything bad about them. They would be
grandmothers, for who can be wise and young too? And the parents would
ask these old women to come over and help the baby. So they would come
when it was the right time. And when the baby was brought forth in this
world, the first grandmother would cut and tie the cord. Then she would
clean out the baby’s mouth with her forefinger, and when she did that
her good spirit would get into the baby so that it would be like her.
“Then the second grandmother would take some of the inside bark of the
chokecherry that had been soaked and pounded soft, and with this she
would wash the baby; and if it was a girl she would say to it: ‘I am a
good woman; I have worked hard; I have raised a family; and I always
tried to get along with everybody. You must always try to do the same
way.’ After that she would make it dry and rub it all over with grease
and red paint, because red is a sacred color. Then she would take some
soft powder that she had made by powdering dry buffalo chips and she
would put this in a piece of hide that had been tanned very soft and
fasten it around the baby’s rump, so that it could be kept dry and
clean.
“And always there were little girls who had to learn how to be good
women; and a grandmother would teach them, because she had been a woman
so long that she knew how better than her daughters did; and, anyway,
everything was done better when she was young.
“The first thing this grandmother gave to a little girl was a deer-hide
pouch with everything in it that a woman needs to make a home--a knife,
an awl, a bone needle, and some fine sinew for sewing. And she would
say, ‘You must always keep this with you whatever happens and never let
it go if you want to be a real woman and good for something. With this
you can always make a home.’ It was the way a grandfather gave a little
boy a bow and arrows, a knife, and a rawhide rope for taming horses.
“And when a little girl was still so little that she could not yet
do much with a knife or needle, the grandmother would teach her the
rolling game. There was a stick about as long as my finger with three
short twigs on one end so that it would stand up; and the little girl
had to roll a small round stone at this to knock it over. It was very
hard to do, and she had to keep on trying and trying, so that she
learned to be patient like a good woman.
“Then when the little girl was big enough, her grandmother taught her
how to make a tepee cover out of hide, and how to set it up with the
tepee poles fixed together at the top just so; and how to set the
smoke-flap at the peak to suit the wind and make a fire burn without
smoking the people out; and how to take the tepee down quickly and put
it on a pony-drag in a hurry, if there should be an attack and the
women had to run away with the children and the ponies while the men
were fighting.
“The little girls used to get together and play village, with their
tepees all set in a circle, just right, with the opening to the place
where you are always looking [the south]; and there were buckskin dolls
stuffed with grass for children; and the little boys played they were
chiefs and councilors and warriors. Of course, there had to be horses.”
The old man sat chuckling for a while before he continued.
“I think I was about eight years old that time, and I was getting big
fast, for my grandfather would let me have some sharp arrows if I would
be careful, and I had killed a rabbit already--maybe two. Many of our
people were camped not far from the soldiers’ town on Duck River [Fort
Laramie]. It was summer, and there was big trouble coming. The old
people were all talking about the bad Wasichus and how they were crazy
again because they had found gold in our country; and they wanted to
make a road through it and scare all the bison away, and then maybe we
would all starve. It was the time just before Red Cloud went to war,
and the people were camped there waiting to see what would happen.
“We little Oglala boys were playing killing-all-the-soldiers; but we
got tired doing that, because nobody wanted to be a soldier, and we had
to kill people who were not there at all. And one of the boys said,
‘Let us quit killing soldiers. They are all dead anyway, and they are
no good. The Miniconjou girls and boys have got a village over there.
Let us charge upon them and steal all their horses!’ So we all cried,
‘_hi-yay_,’ and began to get ready for the charge with our bows and
blunt arrows and old sunflower stalks for spears.
“And when we had crawled up on our bellies as close to the village as
we could get without being seen by the enemy, we leaped up and cried
‘_hoka-hey_’ all together and charged on the village.
“It was a big fight, a big noise. We could have won a victory,
because we all said that one Oglala boy was better than two or three
Miniconjous; but some of the bigger boys over there got after us, and
we had to run.
“And while I was running, I looked back over my shoulder to see how big
a boy was chasing me. And it was not a big boy or even a little boy.
It was a girl--a pretty little girl--but she looked terrible with her
hair all over her head in the wind she made with her running; and she
was yelling and swinging a rawhide rope while she ran. I was longer
legged than she was, but she caught me around the neck with her rope
anyway. Maybe all at once I wanted to be caught. And she said, ‘You bad
boy! You are just a _shonka-’kan_ [horse], and you are going to pull my
tepee.’
“So I let her lead me back to her village; and all the Miniconjou boys
poked their fingers at me and yelled and wanted to charge me and coup
me; but she picked up a stick and yelled back at them, ‘You leave my
horse alone or I will hit you.’ And, of course, if I was a horse I
wasn’t a warrior any more.
“So I got down on my hands and knees and she hitched the drag-poles
on me and packed her tepee on them. And when I snorted and pranced,
she petted me on the rump and sang to me, so that I was as tame as the
other little boys who were being horses too and helping to move camp
away from the enemy country.”
For a while, Eagle Voice seemed to have forgotten me, gazing over my
head with a faraway illuminated look. Then he spoke slowly in a low
voice as though talking to himself:
“Tashina Wanblee [Her Eagle Robe]. She was a pretty little girl. I
liked to play over there; and she said I was the best horse she ever
had.”
Then, becoming aware of me again, he continued, chuckling: “But one day
I got tired of playing horse; so I stood up on my hind legs and I said:
‘When I get just a little bigger I am going to marry you, and you are
going to be my woman.’ And she stuck her tongue out at me and said:
‘You are only a _shonka-’kan_. Go and eat grass!’”
The old man’s laughter trailed off into silence and the boy look went
away.
II
_When the Hundred Died_
“--And what became of the little girl, Grandfather?” I asked at length.
“Did you marry her when you got a little bigger?”
For some time the old man had seemed unconscious of me as he sat there
studying the ground, blowing softly now and then upon an eagle-bone
whistle suspended from his neck by a rawhide thong. He fixed a
squinting, quizzical gaze upon me and said: “That is a story, Grandson,
and so is this whistle. I can hear it crying across many snows and
grasses. Why are Wasichus always in a hurry? It is not good.”
Then he lapsed into meditation as before, blowing softly now and then
upon the wing-bone, polished with the handling of many years.
“_Sheetsha!_” he said at last in an explosive whisper.
“What is bad, Grandfather?” I asked.
“I was thinking of all that is gone,” he answered, the meditative mood
still strong upon him. “When I was a boy I heard the old people tell
about a great _wichasha wakon_ [holy man] who did wonderful things; and
his name was Wooden Cup. He had a vision of the Great Mysterious One,
and that is how he got this power. He could make fire with his fingers,
just by touching the wood; and he could see far off into the days that
were going to be when babies that were not yet born would be walking
with their canes. He saw it and he said it. A strange people would come
from the sunrise, and there would be more of them than the bison. Then
the bison would turn to white bones on the prairie. The mother earth
would be bound with bands of iron. The sacred hoop of our people would
be broken by the evil power of the strangers, and in that time we would
live in little square gray houses, and in those houses we would starve.
He said it, and we have seen it. I will not live in them, for the Great
Mysterious One meant all things to be round--the sky and the prairie,
the sun and the moon, the bodies of men and animals, trees and the
nests of birds, and the hoop of the people. The days and the seasons
come back in a circle, and so do the generations. The young grow old,
and from the old the young begin and grow. It is the sacred way.
“My daughter in the little gray house yonder is good, but her heart
is half Wasichu. She feeds me of the little that she has, and her
man brings me wood. They say it is warmer in there; but I was born a
Lakota, and I will die in a tepee. It would be well if my young bones
had been scattered on the prairie to show where a warrior fell and to
make a story, for it is not good to grow old.”
For a while the bone whistle called plaintively to him as from a great
distance, and he listened, staring at the ground.
“I think I did not believe what Wooden Cup said,” he continued; “for I
was young and the world was new. There was strangeness everywhere so
that maybe something wonderful was going to happen. I remember, before
I had sharp arrows for my bow, the way I would be in a valley all
alone, and there would be no sound, and all at once the hills would be
wrinkled grandfathers looking down at me and saying something good that
I could almost hear.
“When we were camped near the soldiers’ town on Duck River that time,
I heard the old people talking about the iron road the Wasichus were
making all along Shell River [Platte]. And there was a long high dust
of Wasichu wagons full of people always going and going to the sunset.
It was part of what Wooden Cup saw. Little boys talked about it, and
they said afterwhile all the bad Wasichus in the world would be yonder
where the sun goes down; or if there were any left when we got big, we
would just kill them all, and then everything would be the way it was
when our grandfathers were boys.
“I remember there was a big meeting at the soldiers’ town [Fort
Laramie] the day before we broke camp and went north to fight. It was
the day more soldiers came to steal the road up Powder River if our
people said, ‘no.’ I can see Red Cloud talking to the people and the
Wasichu chiefs who came from the Great Father in Washington. They came
to ask for the road through our hunting country; but the soldiers came
to take it. When I remember, Red Cloud is standing on a high place
made of wood, and he is taller than a man. I cannot hear his words,
but he is very angry at the Wasichu chiefs. The men cry, ‘_how_,’ and
‘_hoka-hey_,’ and the women make the tremolo. We are going to fight,
and I am scared; but I am glad too.
“So our people broke camp and we traveled fast with Red Cloud until we
came to the Powder River country. There many others came to us. Much of
what I remember about that time is like something I have dreamed, but
some of it is clear; and I have heard much that is like remembering.
But I can see my father going away with a band of warriors; and I can
see them riding on a hill into the sky, until the sky is empty and the
hill looks afraid. I can see warriors coming back, and my father is
among them. They are driving many mules that they had taken from the
soldiers, and some big Wasichu horses. I can see the warriors riding
about the circle of the village with Wasichu scalps on their coup
sticks. I can see my father making a kill-talk, and I can hear the
drums beat between his tellings of brave deeds, while the people cry
out to praise him. And while I listen, far away now, I can see Wasichu
wagons burning yet and the people in them dying on the road that was
not theirs.
“The big sun dance that summer made the hearts of the people strong to
fight and die; and my heart was strong too. When I got a little bigger
I would be a great warrior like my father. The little boys played
killing Wasichus harder than ever; and we had victory dances and made
kill-talks about the brave deeds we were going to do.
“Then it is winter. The snow is deep and heaped along the creek. The
wind howls in the night, and the smoke whirls round inside the tepee.
Maybe it is afraid to go out there. I crawl deep under the buffalo
robe, for there are angry spirits crying in the dark.
“Then there are nights when the wind is dead and something big is
crawling close outside without making any noise. If I peek out
through the tepee flap, the stars are big and sharp, and everything
is listening. Trees pop in the cold. It is the Moon of Popping Trees
[December].
“That was the time when the hundred soldiers died. Lodge Trail Ridge is
steep and narrow where it goes down to Peno Creek. It is near to where
the soldiers built their town of logs, and that is where they died. I
heard it told so often that when I think about it I must tell myself it
was my father who was there and I was just a little boy at home with my
mother.
“We had our village where Peno Creek runs into the Tongue, and Big
Road was the leader of our band. The day was just coming when our
warriors rode away to fight the soldiers and many others rode with
them--Cheyennes, Arapahoes. They rode up Peno Creek; and when the sun
was halfway up the sky, they stopped where the Wasichu road came down
the steep, narrow ridge to the ford.
“It was a good place to fight; so they sent some warriors up the road
to coax the soldiers out of their town; and while those were yonder, we
hid in the gullies and the brush all along the sides of the ridge. No,
I was just a little boy at home, but so our warriors did.
“And when they had waited and waited, there were shots off yonder and
the sound of horsebacks riding fast. It is our warriors coming back.
I can see them there at the top of the hill, and they have stopped to
shoot at the soldiers. Then they turn and gallop down the ridge.
“The road is empty. It is still. We hear iron hoofs yonder. Now the
soldiers come out of the sky up there. They stop and look. Now they are
riding two together down the ridge, walking their big horses. There
is a long blue line of them. Their breaths are white; their horses’
breaths are white. They are looking here and looking there, and they
are seeing nothing. They are listening and listening. They are hearing
their saddles whine. They are hearing iron hoofs on the frozen road.
Maybe a horse shakes its head, and they hear the bridle bit.
“It is still. There is no sound in the gullies and the brush. We are
holding our ponies’ noses so that they cannot cry out to the big
Wasichu horses.
“The first soldiers are at the bottom of the ridge.”
Eagle Voice paused. Leaning forward tensely, with a hand at his brow,
he gazed beyond the tepee wall, listening open-mouthed and breathless.
“What do you see, Grandfather?” I urged.
He threw both hands aloft and in a high excited voice, cried:
“Yonder! He is standing up! He is waving a spear! It is the Cheyenne,
Little Horse! _Hoka-hey! Hoka-hey!_ It is a good day to die! It is a
good day to kill and die! Poof!” He clapped his hands like gunshots.
“The brush and the gullies are alive! There is noise everywhere--cries
everywhere. We are swarming up along the sides of the ridge. The arrows
are a cloud. They are grasshoppers clouding the sun. The soldiers’
horses are feathered. They are screaming in the evening that the arrows
make. They are crowding back up the hill in the smoke of the guns.
Saddles are empty; feathered soldiers are falling. They are fighting
hard and falling, full of arrows, and the kicking horses upon them are
sprouting feathers.
“They are all dead at the ford.... Halfway up the ridge they are
dead.... They are huddled together fighting at the top with the dead
around them--and they are dying. A great cry goes up and they are
covered with warriors swarming in.
“It is over.”
The old man strove to light his pipe, his bony hands trembling as with
palsy. I steadied the bowl and held a lighted match to it. “Thank you,
Grandson,” he said, in a voice gone thin and quavering on a sudden.
For some time he sat studying the ground through the slowly emitted
smoke. Then, handing the pipe to me, he continued. His voice had lost
its former tone of harsh immediacy and seemed weary with its burden of
dead days remembered.
“There was a dog--a soldier-chief’s dog. He was tall and thin and
long-legged, and he was crying and running towards the soldiers’ town.
Somebody shouted: ‘Let him go and tell the other dogs back there!’
But many bow-thongs twanged, and he went down rolling in a cloud of
feathers.
“A storm was coming on. The sun was covered, and the wind came very
strong and very cold.
“I remember when the warriors came back to the village. The night was
cold and dark and the wind was howling. There were many voices shouting
louder than the wind out there, and the sound of many hoofs. When I
’woke, I thought the soldiers had come to kill us all when our warriors
were away, and I was afraid. But my mother said: ‘It is our people,
and they have killed many enemies. Do you not hear them singing?’ She
stirred the fire and fed it, so that it would be bright and warm for my
father. Then she went out into the dark full of shouting and singing
and the wind; and I listened and was afraid again, for I could hear
women’s high voices mourning.
“But my father was not dead. There was one at his head and one at his
feet when they brought him in and laid him on a robe beside the fire.
His face looked queer when he smiled at me, and it was not the war
paint. He was almost somebody else. His hands and feet were frozen and
there was an arrow deep in his hip--a Cheyenne arrow. When they cut it
out, he grunted but he did not cry. He shivered and shivered by the hot
fire until a _wichasha wakon_ came and made sacred medicine. Then it
was morning and my mother was still sitting there beside my father, and
he was sleeping.
“There was mourning in many of the lodges--high, sharp voices of the
women crying for those who died in the battle and the wounded who died
coming home. _Oosni! Lela oosni!_ It was cold, very cold.”
For some time the old man sat with his eyes closed and his chin on his
chest. At length he said, as though muttering to himself:
“They all died, a hundred soldiers died in the country that was ours.
But the forked-tongued ones who sent them did not die. I think they are
living yet.”
III
_The New Medicine Power_
“We have lost Tashina somewhere, Grandfather,” I said.
The remark, dropped into a long-sustained silence, fell like a pebble
upon empty air. The old man’s eyes remained closed and the sharply
cut features expressed nothing but age. At length his face came alive
with a slowly spreading smile, and he looked at me with gentle,
grandfatherly eyes.
“The pretty little girl is not lost,” he said. “There is a long road,
and she is yonder. But when we get there she will not be playing with
her tepee, and I shall never be her horse again.
“That time when the hundred died, the Miniconjous were camped up the
creek from us, and our mothers would not let us leave our village to
play. ‘If you do not stay at home, and if you are not good,’ they would
tell us, ‘the bad Wasichus will get you.’ So I did not see her then;
and when the big trouble was over for a little while, her band was far
away.
“I think the soldiers who were left in the town they built on Piney
Creek were cold and hungry all that winter. If they wanted wood, they
had to fight to get it. Our warriors burned their hay, and if they
wanted brush to feed the mules and horses, they had to fight and die.
If they wanted water from the frozen creek, they had to give some blood
for it.
“More soldiers came with oxen pulling their wagons. Then the snow was
deeper and deeper on the road, and there were no more wagons. Always
there were hungry wolves about the soldiers’ town. Our younger men were
the wolves.
“Before the snow melted, my father was not sick any more and he could
ride a horse and fight. But his hip was not good, and I can see him
walking on one side with his hand on the other leg.
“The grass came back. It was summer, and the hearts of our people were
strong because they knew the Wasichus could not steal the road to where
the yellow metal was--the stuff that always makes them crazy. There was
a big sun dance that made our people new again. Then it was the Moon
When Cherries Blacken [August], and there was another big fight. We
call it the Attacking of the Wagons. It was bad. I saw it from a hill,
and I was only nine years old; but after that I think I was never all a
boy any more. I saw, and when I sit and think, I see it all again; but
I have heard much too, and part of what I see I must have heard.
“There were many camps along the valley of the Tongue, for many more of
our own people had come to us, and many more of our friends, Cheyennes,
Arapahoes. Everybody was talking about rubbing out the soldiers’ towns,
the one on the Piney and the one on the Big Horn too; then the buffalo
would not go away, and we could be happy again.
“Our band and many others moved up Peno Creek and camped not far from
where some Wasichus and soldiers had a camp on the Little Piney. They
were sawing trees to make the soldiers’ town stronger, and getting wood
for winter too. We were going to attack this camp so that the soldiers
would come out of their town. Then we would rub them out, as the
hundred were rubbed out, and after that we would burn their town.
“It was in the cool dark before daybreak when our warriors began riding
away from our village, and my father rode with them. I remember how big
and bright the Morning Star was--big and bright and still, just waiting
up there for something that it knew would happen. It was going to be
a hot day. There was no wind, no cloud. I can hear men singing low as
they ride away, and dogs barking. It is still again, and the star is
waiting. It makes me a little afraid the way it looks and waits and is
so still; but I am glad too and I want to sing.
“Then the star is gone and the sun is big and hot.
“Many of the women began going to a ridge where they could see what
would happen, and where they would be close enough to take care of the
horses for their men. Many of the older men went with them. Little
children stayed with their grandmothers, but I was good with horses
already, so I went along with my mother and grandfather. We were
waiting on the north side of the ridge where the Wasichus could not
see us, and there was a crowd of warriors waiting there too and in the
gulches on both sides of us. They were naked and painted for battle,
and they were waiting for our warriors over there on the other side
of the Wasichu camp to start the attack. That is where my father was.
Some of the warriors were lying on the top of the ridge looking over;
and some of us little boys sneaked along in the grass on our bellies
to see what they were looking at. Nobody noticed us because everybody
was excited. I crawled up beside a big man lying on his belly with his
chin on his arms so that he could see through the grass. He turned his
head and looked hard at me, and he was a Cheyenne. I thought he was
angry and was going to make me go back; but he just grinned at me and
said: ‘_How_, cousin! Where’s your gun?’ I showed him the bow and sharp
arrows my grandfather made for me, and he said: ‘_Hm-m-m! Washtay!_’
Then he went on looking through the grass. I felt big and brave, for it
was just like being a warrior already.
“The Big Piney was there below us; then there was a prairie, and beyond
that we could see the trees along the Little Piney where the Wasichu
camp was; and beyond that were mountains. Down there in the middle
of the prairie there was a little ring made of wagon boxes where the
Wasichus kept their mules at night, so that our warriors could not
drive them off. There were two tents beside the ring, and we could
see two or three soldiers walking around. There were some thin smokes
rising straight up off yonder where the camp was in the trees. That was
all there was to see. The prairie and the hills around and the trees
over there and the mountains yonder looked asleep in the bright sun.
“Then there were cries away off yonder and the sound of singing. Some
of our warriors over there were galloping in single file down a hill
towards the Little Piney where the Wasichu camp was, and I tried hard
to see if my father was one of them, but they were too far away. Gun
smoke puffed from the brush and it was a cloud before the boom came.
Some Wasichus began running out of the trees towards the ring of wagon
boxes in the middle of the prairie. They would stop to shoot, and run
again. There were not many and they looked very small. The big Cheyenne
jumped up and all the others did too, shouting to each other and
running back to their horses; and I ran with them.
“The people were all mixed up, and I could not see my mother and
grandfather, but I was not afraid. I felt big inside of me and all over
me, with horses crowding and squealing, and men mounting and shouting
to each other. Then they were swarming over the hill, all singing
together, and I sang too as loud as I could sing. Everybody crowded up
the hill, and I crawled through the people’s legs to see.
“It is still down there now. Some of our warriors are coming up out
of the Little Piney. Our men have stopped down there by the Big Piney
below us. I wonder what they are waiting for. Away off yonder some of
our people are chasing mules. In the little ring of wagon boxes a few
Wasichus are standing and looking around. On the hill over towards the
sun there are many of our people waiting too. They say that is where
Red Cloud was.
“Looking glasses are flashing over by the Little Piney. They are
singing again below us. Some of the warriors break away from the
crowd and gallop out on the prairie. Over by the Little Piney others
are galloping. They circle around the ring of boxes, hanging on the
sides of their horses, getting closer and shooting arrows from under
the horses’ necks. One is very brave and he is closer than the others.
There is a puff of smoke from the ring, and his horse turns into a dust
cloud before the boom comes.
“Then the singing and the shouting and the sound of horses’ hoofs are
like a big wind coming up all at once and thunder in the wind. They are
coming from over by the sun; they are coming from the Little Piney; our
men are swarming up out of the creek valley below us. There is dust,
dust, and thunder in it and singing over it like a high wind blowing.
The horses and men are floating in it. It is closing in over the
prairie, but the ring of boxes looks empty and is still.
“No! It is not empty and still. It puffs smoke all around and goes out
in a cloud and a roar. The cloud gets higher and does not go away. The
roaring does not stop. It is like a great blanket ripping. There is
smoke whirling all around it, and horses’ heads and men’s heads and war
bonnets are flying in it.
“They are trying to ride over the boxes. The horses will not go.
“Now they are all coming out of the smoke and circling away from it
towards the creek valley below us and the Little Piney yonder. Many of
them are riding double.
“All at once it is still down there again. The smoke spreads and the
sun shines in. Many horses are down and some are kicking and trying
to get up, and some are dragging themselves along. When one of them
screams, it is thin and far away, but it fills the big empty place
because it is so still out there.
“Everything is holding its breath and looking.
“Now some warriors are going back with their horses on the run, and you
can hear their death-songs. They are riding two and two and hanging low
on their horses’ necks. They are going back for their dead and wounded
brothers out there. A great high sound goes up from the women on the
hills. They are making the tremolo and singing, for those are very
brave men.
“There is shooting from the ring of boxes. Some horses go down and some
are dragging their riders, but others go on at a run. Two and two the
riders lean and lift the wounded ones, where arms are held up among the
dead horses; two and two they lean and lift the dead, and gallop away.
They are very brave, and the voices of the women are one great voice on
the hills.
“Looking glasses are flashing over there. The warriors are singing
again, and they are coming back. They are coming from the Little Piney
and from over by the sun. They are galloping up out of the valley below
us, whipping each other’s horses and riding fast. _Hoka-hey! Hoka-hey!_
This time they will go over and the Wasichus will be rubbed out.
“The ring of boxes is a cloud of smoke with thunder ripping in it. It
is the same as before. Dust and smoke and horses whirling in it, and a
great noise floating high above it like a kind of cloud.
“They are closer than before. They are going over now and it will be
finished.
“No! They cannot go over. They cannot make the horses go, and they are
coming out of the smoke, circling back towards the creeks. Many, many
are riding double.
“It is still again out there, and the smoke begins to get thin. The
women on the hill over by the sun have seen, and you can hear them
mourning. It is like a little wind high up in pine trees. Now our
own women have seen, and they are crying and mourning. I am crying
too--because I want to kill Wasichus and I cannot.
“There are many more horses down now, scattered around the ring of
boxes. Some of our men are lying at the top of the creek bank below us,
shooting with guns and bows at the Wasichus. Fire arrows are falling in
the ring, and the mule dung there begins to burn and smoke.
“There is not much shooting from the boxes when the brave ones ride
back to save the wounded that are left out there and to pick up the
dead. Maybe the Wasichus are getting tired; maybe they are blinded by
the mule dung smoking, I do not know. The women are not making the
tremolo now. The hills are sending forth a great voice, but it is a
voice of sorrow for their men and boys down there.
“We waited. What could we do if the horses would not go over? The
ring was little, the Wasichus were few, we were many; but we could
not go over. Our people had never seen anything like it before. The
Wasichus did not shoot and then wait to load their guns. They kept on
shooting--_br-r-r-r_--just like tearing a big blanket all around the
ring. It was some new medicine power they had, and it made their few
like many. Afterwards we learned about the new guns that were loaded
from behind, and that is why they could shoot so fast. It was the first
time they had such guns, and we could not understand.
“The sun was high and hot, and we were waiting. The prairie was asleep.
The dung smoke rising from the ring of boxes looked sleepy too, and
that was all that moved down there. The dead horses scattered around
looked lazy, all stretched out and resting in the hot sun.
“Afterwhile we could see some horsebacks galloping both ways from the
hill over towards where the sun comes up. Maybe Red Cloud was telling
the warriors what to do. Then, as far as we could see, everything was
waiting and sleeping under the high sun.”
For some time Eagle Voice waited too, his eyes closed, his chin on his
chest. I put a chunk of cottonwood in the sheet-iron stove, and still
he sat motionless. It seemed that he had lost interest in his story, or
had fallen asleep.
“And then what happened?” I asked at length.
“I was thinking about my father,” he said, looking through me and far
away. “I was thinking how young he was then. If he could come back now,
he would be like my grandson.” Then he fell to brooding again with his
chin on his chest.
“And did the horses go over at last?” I urged.
He came slowly out of his daydream, as though reluctant to continue.
“It was the new medicine power,” he said, “and they were afraid; but
our warriors were very brave. They had gone away from the creek valley
below us, and only a few were lying along the top of the creek bank,
waiting for something.
“Then there was a great wind of singing all at once over to the right
towards where the sun goes down. They were coming out of a draw there,
all afoot and packed together like a wedge pointed at the ring of
boxes; and it was a death-song they were singing all together! I have
seen a mountain meadow full of flowers high up in the Pa Sapa [the
Black Hills], and their war bonnets were like that meadow walking in a
wind, and the wind was a death-song. It was long ago and I am old, but
I see it and hear it yet. The high sun stared; the hills listened, the
ring of boxes slept in the drowsy dung smoke.
“They did not hurry; but they came and came, swaying together in
the wind of singing that they made--a loud wind dying, a low wind
rising--loud and low, loud and low.
“Some horsebacks charged from over by the Little Piney, and a great cry
went up from the women on the hills. And then--the ring of boxes was a
whirling cloud again with that ripping thunder in it.
“They were coming faster now and we could hear their singing high above
the thunder. We could see the point go dull and sharpen again, go dull
and sharpen, until it was hidden in the whirling smoke. Then there was
nothing to hear but the voices of the women like one great voice.
“Now our warriors would go over, and it would be finished. They had
given themselves to death, and what could stop them? They would go over
now, and it would be finished at last.”
The old man sat tense and breathless for a moment, peering narrow-eyed
through and beyond the tent wall. Then the look of battle left his
face and his eyes returned to mine. “It was the new medicine power,”
he said wearily, “and it was stronger than ours. When they came out of
the smoke, fleeing back towards the draw, they were like that blooming
meadow in a hailstorm. Many, many were carrying their comrades on their
backs, the wounded and the dead.”
IV
_Wandering to Mourn_
“We all went away from the hill back to our camp on the Peno,” the old
man continued, “and I heard them say the soldiers were coming from
their town. But they did not follow us. Maybe if they had followed we
could have rubbed them out like the hundred on the ridge, for the anger
of our people was as strong as their sorrow, and the village was full
of mourning.
“When they carried my father into our lodge and laid him on a buffalo
robe, his face was a stranger’s and it made me afraid. His war paint
was all smeared with the sweat and dust of the battle. His eyes were
empty and his mouth was still open for the song he was singing to death
when it took him, and the blood was black on his chest.
“My grandmother and grandfather came to mourn with my mother and me;
and two good old women came also. It was the way they would come to
help a baby get started right to live in this world, and now they came
to help him go away to the world of spirit. They washed him all clean
and rubbed his body with sacred red paint. Then they unbraided his hair
and combed it, and when it was all clean and shiny, they braided it
again very carefully and tied an eagle feather in it for spirit power.
And when this was done, they painted his face, with a young moon on
his forehead, blue for the west where it would lead him. There all the
days of men have gone, and the black road of trouble ends. The grass
is green forever there and the sky is always blue and men and animals
are happy together. There nothing is afraid and no one is old. Then
they dressed him in a fine buckskin dress that my grandmother had made
for him; tanned very soft, it was, and beautiful with beadwork and
porcupine quills. And when I looked at him I was not afraid any more;
but I cried hard when they wrapped him in a buffalo robe and tied it
tight about him with thongs until he was only a bundle, for I would
never see his face again in this world, and the land of spirit was very
far away.
“It made me cry harder to hear my mother and grandmother mourning. I
can hear my mother saying like a song: ‘He was so good to us and he
always brought us plenty of meat and always gave to the old people too.
And now we are all alone.’ And I can hear my grandmother singing a low
sleepy song to him now and then, as though he were a baby, and I can
hear her saying: ‘I fed you at these breasts when I was young and you
were little. Now my breasts are dry and you have gone away, my son,
and I want to go too.’ I can see my grandfather with tears shining on
his cheeks in the firelight, and I can hear him singing a low song for
courage over and over, so that his son would still be brave.
“Afterwhile I cried myself to sleep; and it was morning.
“Then some people came and my grandfather told them he wanted to give
everything away. So the criers went about the village calling out to
all the people:
“‘Gray Bear’s son is going on a long journey and will not come back.
His mother will not see him again in this world, and his woman is left
alone. Let the needy come to Gray Bear, for now he has no son and he
wants to give away the little he has left.’
“So people came to our lodge, mourning with us; and when they went
away, we had nothing but sorrow. Only one horse we kept, my father’s
buffalo-runner, and that was for him to ride on his long journey.
“Then when the day was going to the spirit land, some friends came
leading a pony with a drag. When they had placed my father on the poles
we started away towards the hills. Behind the drag was my grandfather
leading the buffalo-runner; then my grandmother, then my mother, and I
followed her; and behind us were relatives and those who had the gifts
that made us poor. And as we walked we wept.
“I remember how a big flock of crows saw us coming up a little valley,
and rose with many voices of mourning and fled from us, still crying
far off; and how the hills looked down at us, all listening and sorry.
“Then we came up out of the valley where the shadows were growing, and
in the low sunlight on a hilltop was a new scaffold that our friends
had made that day. The four standing poles were stripped of bark, and
the story of my father’s deeds was painted on them, to tell how brave
he was.
“They unhitched the pony and leaned the drag against the scaffold. Then
two men climbed up and pulled the bundle to the top and tied it down
with thongs against the winds. And when this was done, they led the
buffalo-runner under the scaffold, with his face towards the setting
sun; and just before they shot him, he lifted up his head and sent
forth a great, shrill neigh, as though he were calling to my father
away off yonder.
“The people all went away in the twilight, and the night up there was
big and still and starry; so big and still that it did not seem to know
about my father and our weeping and moaning there by the scaffold. Only
the coyotes heard us; and when they raised their high sharp song of
sorrow and ceased, the night was bigger and stiller than before, and
nothing cared.
“I remember my grandfather standing still and dim and tall against
the stars, facing the end of earthly days with his hands held high.
Sometimes I could hear him praying aloud to Wakon Tonka, then for a
long while he would just stand there holding up his hands. When I
heard him asking for ‘the strength to understand and the eyes to see,’
I forgot to cry with wondering how strong I’d have to be. Maybe the
buffalo-runner could understand because he was so strong; maybe he
had the eyes to see; and maybe that was why he called so loud towards
where the sun goes down. Maybe a buffalo bull, a very big one, could
understand everything. Then I got to wondering what it would be like if
I were strong as a big buffalo bull and had the eyes to see into the
land of spirit. How blue would the sky be and how green the grass? If
there were never any clouds, how could it rain and keep the grass from
getting yellow? What was my father doing now, and had he caught his
buffalo-runner yet?
“Then all at once I wasn’t there on the hill any more, and I could see.