help; I did not know. Once while I was dancing I was thinking about the
sun dance the way it used to be in the good days. And all at once I was
there again, and I could feel the power go through me; but it did not
stay. And when I could not dance any more and lay down to sleep, there
was no vision.
“In the Moon of Popping Trees [December] we heard that Sitting Bull was
dead. The metal breasts [Indian police] killed him in his camp on Grand
River, and they were his own people. It was cold, and we were beginning
to starve, so we came back here and camped around the Agency [Pine
Ridge], and they gave us some cattle to butcher. Soldiers were camped
there too, but they did not bother us because we did not dance. Some of
the people did not believe any more, and many were not sure that the
Wanekia would come with the young grass; but many still believed.”
The old man ceased, and it was some time before he shared with me the
pictured past that flowed behind his closed eyelids.
“_Dho_, Grandson,” he said, regarding me with a gentle look, “I found
the road.
“The Moon of Popping Trees was old and dying when we heard about
Sitanka [Big Foot] and his band. They were fleeing towards us from
Grand River where Sitting Bull was killed. They were starving and
many of them were sick, and it was cold. There were about two hundred
of them and some were Hunkpapas. We heard that they had crossed
White River and were coming up the Porcupine. Then we heard that the
horseback soldiers surrounded them over yonder by Porcupine Butte and
took them down to Wounded Knee Creek. That is where they camped that
night with the soldiers all around them.
“Next morning the wind was still and it was warmer. There were
thousands of us camped around the Agency, and all at once we heard
shooting over there across the hills. Much shooting--wagon-guns
shooting very fast! _Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom!_ Very fast! And many
other guns too, like tearing a blanket! They did not stop. They kept
on shooting fast. Somebody shouted, ‘_Aah-hey! Aah-hey!_ They are
butchering over there!’
“The people were cooking and eating when they heard the guns and they
went crazy. Everybody was crying, ‘They are butchering them! _Aah-hey!_
The soldiers are butchering them yonder!’ Young men were running for
their horses. Many started riding fast towards the shooting over across
the hills, and I rode with them. The soldiers did not try to stop us,
for our men back there were getting ready to attack. There was a
fight, but I did not see it. We rode fast, and when I looked back from
the top of the hill, I could see others riding fast after us, and the
people running.
“The shooting ahead yonder was louder when I was over the first hills.
I was riding my step-father’s horse that he brought from Grandmother’s
Land, and it was a strong horse; so I was up with the fronters. My
heart sang again. Maybe I would die on the prairie after all, and High
Horse would be waiting and he would see me far off and come running to
meet me.
“Then all at once the wagon-guns stopped shooting. It was still over
there.
“When we came to the top of the last hill, we saw the butchering. There
is a long crooked ravine and it runs down to a flat valley beside the
Wounded Knee. Along the ravine horseback soldiers were galloping this
way and that way, all mixed up. They were hunting down the women and
children who were still alive. The men were dead down yonder in the
valley where the butchering began.
“There were not many of us on the hilltop yet, but we could see others
coming behind us, and we charged down along the ravine. _Hokay-hey!
Hoka-hey!_ But our horses were worn out and could hardly gallop. I
think the soldiers did not know that we were few; and when they saw
others coming over the hill, they did not wait to fight us there. They
ran away towards the valley where there were more soldiers, and they
were getting off their horses to dig and fight lying down.
“When we charged down beside the ravine, there were dead women and
children scattered in it where the wagon-guns-that-shoot-twice
[Hotchkiss guns] caught them running away. Up on the hillside above the
ravine, there were some women and children huddled together in a gully,
and they screamed to us as we passed.
“It was not much of a fight. There were too many soldiers and we were
few, and the wagon-guns shot at those coming over the hill behind us.
“We circled back up along the hillside to where a few women and
children were still living.”
The old man paused and sat for a while with closed eyes. When he looked
at me again his face was aglow with a pervasive smile. “That is where I
found the road, Grandson,” he said. His voice was low and gentle, with
a quaver of age in it. “That is where I found the road.
“I did not know her at first. The last time I saw her she was a girl
yet; but that was when I went to Grandmother’s Land after the Rubbing
Out of Long Hair. She was older and heavier, and she was holding a
child under her blanket. I did not know her until she looked up at me,
crying hard, and said, ‘O _Shonka ’kan! Shonka ’kan!_ They have killed
him! They have killed him!’ Then I knew Tashina’s eyes with the tears
in them.”
The light went out of the old man’s face, and again he sat silent.
“It was not very far from there across the hills to the little gray log
house on White Horse Creek,” he continued at length. “I put her on my
horse and led him, walking, and all the while she held the child close
under her blanket, crying hard. It was a little boy and he was dead.
“That night the snow came and a great wind blew, and we were alone in
the little gray house. When the storm died, and it was very cold, some
people came and we heard that her man was dead in the valley where the
butchering began.
“Looks Twice and my mother came back with my grandfather and
grandmother. We lived together there until the young grass came. And
then one day when she did not cry any more, and we were talking about
the good days, I said, ‘I want to be your horse again. Do I have to go
and eat grass?’”
The old man chuckled over the memory for a while, and then he said, the
warm glow spreading from his smile: “That is when we made this little
gray house here where my daughter lives, and now she is getting old too.
“It was a good road that we walked together, Grandson. Sometimes we
were hungry, but it was a good road. Our children came to us, and when
we were old, we saw our grandchildren too. It was a good road.”
At this point it seemed that I had suddenly dropped out of the old
man’s world, and a great distance lay between us. He sat with closed
eyes, making low, plaintive sounds on his eagle-bone whistle. When
he had sat thus over long, I said, “Grandfather, you still have your
eagle-bone whistle; but what became of the sacred quirt?”
Slowly he returned to awareness of my presence, the smile and glow warm
upon his time-carved face.
“When she died--” he said in a low, gentle voice that quavered a
bit--“when she died, I just put it down beneath her dress, between her
breasts. I would not need it any more.”
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Here the word signifies white man; but see page 36.
[2] Sioux.
[3] This prayer was given to me by my old friend and teacher, Black
Elk, the Oglala Sioux holy man.
Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other
spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.
Italics are represented thus _italic_.