Crow Dog : Four Generations of Sioux Medicine Men (9780062200143)

by Dog, Leonard C.

  Stan Holder told me that people wept when the agreement was signed. They knew it was just another treaty that would be broken. Forty people walked out during the last night. They tried to get through where nobody ever went because the area was too open, but they set off a trip wire flare. Some marshals opened up on them and did not even wait for them to hit the ground. I still can’t figure out why nobody was hurt. They all made it to Porcupine and from there scattered themselves to wherever they had a home. I was glad for them.

  I could have walked out with the others without any trouble, but I had signed that agreement. I couldn’t walk out on my words. Stand Down happened on Friday, May 8, 1973. On that day one hundred forty-six men and women laid down their arms and surrendered. Not a shot was fired. All was quiet. The feds took down our four-color AIM flag and raised the American flag. A marshal made some kind of a victory speech. With a helicopter whirling overhead, the marshals and FBI in full battle dress swarmed all over the place looking for booby traps and holdouts. They thought some of us were hiding in the ruins. The feds rummaged through the debris. Finally a loud voice came over the loudspeaker: “Gentlemen, the village of Wounded Knee is secured.”

  The feds lined us up for processing. Everybody was questioned, searched, and fingerprinted. Wallace Black Elk told them that he was a medicine man. They slammed him against the side of a car, ripped his headband off, and took away his medicine bundle and sacred things. Carter Camp and I were the last ones to be helicoptered out. I was handcuffed and the cuffs fastened to a waist chain. My legs and feet were also chained. Trussed up like this I was the last of the “hostiles” to leave the Knee. We never got our Black Hills back, the Treaty of Fort Laramie was not honored, nor did the government recognize us as an independent nation. And yet I think that this was the greatest moment in my life and that our seventy-one-day stand was the greatest deed done by Native Americans in this century.

  twenty-three

  THE BIG RAID

  They won’t let Indians like me live.

  That’s all right. I don’t want to

  grow up an old woman.

  Annie Mae Aquash

  Of the Wounded Knee of 1973 nothing is left. Of the Sacred Heart church, only the square hole that was once the basement remains. The trading post, the museum, the wooden house that was our clinic, the gas station—all are gone. Patches around what had been the perimeter are today just black scorched earth where nothing will ever grow again. The only thing left was Gildersleeve’s huge, open, rusting safe, full of buzzing wasps. But that, too, disappeared a short time ago. It is as if the government has wiped out every indication that Indians made a stand there. But Wounded Knee lives on in our hearts.

  After having been taken in a copter, chained and handcuffed, to Rapid City and the Pennington county jail, I was released. I went back to Crow Dog’s Paradise, but that was not the end.

  A short time later, after the sun dance, Mary Ellen Moore moved in with me together with her little boy. We were married Indian style, not in a church but with a blanket around our shoulders, holding onto the pipe.

  The three years following Wounded Knee were years of fear, fighting, and tension, the bloodiest years in my experience. At Pine Ridge, as long as Wilson was in charge, it was murder, pure and simple. At Rosebud it was mostly a matter of endless harassment and surveillance.

  Someone put the number of persons killed by Wilson’s goons at more than one hundred. Others thought the number was higher. But nobody really knows, because most of the acts of violence were never investigated. In June 1973, Clarence Cross and his brother, Vernal, were shot by tribal police while sleeping in their car. Clarence died. Vernal survived a bullet wound and was arrested for “assaulting the BIA police.”

  In late summer, goons were firing M-16s through the windows of the Little Bear family home, shooting out the eye of seven-year-old Mary Ann.

  At about the same time, Helen Red Feather was attacked and arrested for “being an AIM sympathizer.” The goons kicked her in the side and belly, although she told them that she was three months pregnant.

  In early October, Aloysius Long Soldier was shot to death at Kyle by unknown goons. He was known to be working for the impeachment of Dick Wilson.

  On October 17, 1973, my friend the Oglala civil rights leader Pedro Bissonette was provoked by a man at White Clay, Nebraska, who made racist remarks and shoved him around. Pedro knocked the man down. This gave the BIA cops the opportunity to stop him at a roadblock, where he was killed with a shotgun blast. The cops claimed that Pedro had reached for his gun while resisting arrest.

  Pedro’s sister-in-law, Jeanette Bissonette, a mother of six, was shot and killed by a sniper’s bullet as she changed a tire on an isolated road.

  Matthew King, a respected elder and tribal interpreter, had twenty rounds fired into his house. He called it a miracle that he wasn’t hit.

  My sister’s stepdaughter, Jancita Eagle Deer, was found dead on the highway. Her death was ruled a traffic accident. Like so many other Indian women, she had had abusive encounters with white authority; however, instead of keeping quiet, before her death AIM had helped Jancita publicize her experience. My sister Delphine Eagle Deer wanted to continue to pursue Jancita’s accusations. She was found beaten to death on an icy road.

  Russell Means had gone to visit friends on the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota. He had applied there for a job as director of a youth ranch for kids with problems. Russ was in a caravan of three cars that was stopped at the Cannonball River by BIA police. Russell got out of his car to ask what they wanted and was shot in the back. The shot pierced one of his kidneys, but he survived.

  On January 17, 1975, Dick Wilson was easily defeated in an election for tribal president by Al Trimble, a good man who tried to clean up the reservation. But Wilson was in office until April, when the new administration took over. So he had three months to let his goons avenge his loss. The village of Wanblee had voted heavily for Trimble. On the evening of January 31, the goons unleashed a reign of terror at Wanblee, shooting into and fire-bombing people’s houses. They ambushed the car driven by the tribal lawyer, Byron DeSersa, a Wilson opponent, and sprayed the car with automatic guns. DeSersa’s leg was ripped up by the bullets. Prompt medical aid could have saved him, but he was left to die in a ditch.

  One of the last victims was Annie Mae Aquash, whose body was found in a snow-filled ravine near Wanblee. The FBI reported that their autopsy concluded that she died of exposure. They then had her buried in an unmarked grave. AIM and Annie Mae’s relatives insisted that she be exhumed and a second autopsy be performed. The doctor found that the FBI had cut off her hands to send them to Washington for fingerprinting. He also found a .38-caliber bullet lodged in her skull.

  On June 26, 1975, occurred the big shoot-out at Oglala, on the Pine Ridge reservation, during which two FBI agents and one Indian were shot and killed. Oglala, in the northwest corner of the reservation, is a small village of mostly traditional full-bloods. The goons were especially hard on them. The people there asked AIM for help and protection. Harry and Celia Jumping Bull had their place nearby, together with some relatives—three houses, a barn, some sheds, and a little way off an old cabin. Harry donated five acres of his land and the cabin for Dennis Banks to set up an AIM camp. Dennis moved into the cabin together with his wife, Kamook, and their baby daughter, Tashina Wanblee Win, Eagle Shawl Woman. Kamook is a Lakota woman from Pine Ridge. The camp, along White Clay Creek, was made up of some twenty to thirty-five people—Lakota, Navajo, Inuit, Klallam, and Coeur d’Alenes. On the day of the shoot-out, Dennis Banks and Kamook were away on business. In Dennis’s absence the people in the camp looked up to Leonard Peltier as their leader. Peltier was from Turtle Mountain, North Dakota, part Sioux and part Ojibway. He was active in AIM and had been involved in a number of confrontations with the police and FBI.

  By this time things had come to such a pass that any little incident could set off an explosion. The reservation was swa
rming with goons, tribal police, FBI, and swat teams.

  The way the shoot-out happened had to be a setup. There is no other way to explain it. The feds were determined to wipe out the AIM camp. They had a media blitz going, preparing the minds of white people for what was to come. They said the camp was made up of a bunch of heavily armed renegades who had built bunkers. There were no bunkers, just an old root cellar. The feds talked about “fortifications and entrenchments.” These existed only in their imagination. Attorney General Janklow said, “The best thing to do with an AIM member is to put a gun to his head and pull the trigger.”

  On the evening of June 25, two FBI agents drove up to the Jumping Bull place. They went into people’s homes without warrants, saying they were looking for a kid, Jimmy Eagle, who, they said, had stolen a pair of old cowboy boots. Now, to come into that place, at that time, looking for a pair of stolen boots was crazy. The feds, of course, had other reasons. They wanted to provoke the Indians to a fight so that the FBI would have grounds for going in there and making an end of that camp. The agents were watched by some members of the AIM camp, looking down from the top of a ridge. It made the agents uneasy and they drove away. During the night there were heavy storms, thundering and lightning, as if some spirits were trying to warn the people.

  On the morning of June 26, two FBI cars drove up to the camp. They were driven by special agents Ron Williams and Jack Coler. What was bound to happen, happened. It doesn’t matter now who fired the first shot, the agents or the AIM men. The agents had gotten themselves into a situation they could not handle. They were screaming into their two-way radios to their backup cars: “We’re drawing fire! Come quick or we’re dead men!” But their back-ups didn’t come. When the firing finally stopped, Coler and Williams were lying dead near their cars. Later, the body of an Indian, Joe Stuntz, was found in a mud puddle, where the feds had dumped him. In no time the whole area was swarming with agents and police. People afterward could never figure out how they arrived so quickly on the scene. They had to have been ready for this confrontation. The death of a human, whether Indian or white, is a tragedy, but I have a strange feeling that Coler and Williams were set up by their own people as a sacrifice, to have a reason to make an end of AIM.

  The whole crowd of agents, tribal police, and goons formed a ring around the area, searching the gullies and ravines for AIM members. It seemed they covered every foot of ground so thoroughly that not even a mouse could have gotten through, but somehow the people from the camp, led by Leonard Peltier, cut their way through during the night, finding shelter and a hiding place wherever they went, in Pine Ridge, Rosebud, and as far away as the Cheyenne River reservation.

  Peltier and most men in his group were sun dancers. Peltier had first danced and pierced the year before. That meant he would have to sun dance three more years, because you make your vow for four years in a row. According to the traditional Lakota way, I had to let Peltier come to Crow Dog’s Paradise to fulfill his vow. The FBI knew that he was there, and they did not like it. They did not like me or my father, either, for letting him dance at our place. A report from an FBI informer, released years later under the Freedom of Information Act, is heavily censored, but what is left reads, “[Name deleted] advised August 1, 1975, that Leonard Peltier is at Crow Dog’s Paradise staying at the residence of Leonard Crow Dog’s mother. [Name deleted] saw Leonard Peltier evening of July 31, 1975, and day of August 1, 1975, at this location [name of location blacked out]. That there are approximately 300 to 350 people at Crow Dog’s Paradise participating at the ‘Sun Dance,’ an Indian religious ceremony sanctioned by the National Council of Churches and other religious groups, and the fact that there are 300 to 350 persons at Crow Dog’s makes it inadvisable to arrest Peltier at Crow Dog’s. There is a good chance a gun fight could break out, thus endangering the lives of innocent people. Further, it is felt that a raid at Crow Dog’s at this time could be interpreted as interfering with a religious ceremony. [More lines deleted.]”

  Informers also spread the rumor that during the four days of the dance we discussed plans to blow up churches, FBI headquarters, and the state capitol. This was particularly implausible because the National Council of Churches and the Methodist, Lutheran, and Catholic Churches had helped us with food and medicines at Wounded Knee and were still supporting us at the time. Anyhow, the FBI was waiting for a better time to come to Crow Dog’s Paradise.

  There was a man called Robert Beck living on the rez. He was not a tribally enrolled Lakota, he was probably not even Indian. He was an alcoholic and a man of violence. On July 28, 1975, Beck got some bootleg liquor and was drinking heavily. He invited my nephew Andrew Stuart, son of a Native American Church road man, to go “hunting” with him. They picked up two girls, Virginia and June Elk Looks Back, and went up into the hills south of Crow Dog’s Paradise. There, in the hours before dawn, Andrew was shot and killed with a bullet through his forehead. The rifle that fired the shot belonged to Beck. There was blood all over his car. The girl Andrew was with came running down onto the road, screaming with terror. She was run over by a car but recovered. The case was never investigated. Beck called it a “hunting accident.” He never went before a grand jury or faced trial.

  As a kid, Beck had done time in a reformatory. In 1974 he had driven past my place and fired a rifle at me. According to the Rosebud tribal police, Beck was arrested seven times in 1975 alone for acts of violence. He entered people’s homes; he fired into their houses. He used force entering my sister’s home, firing at her. He was arrested by the tribal police but he just grinned: “I’m immune from arrest. You can’t hold me. All I have to do is make one phone call.” And he was right. No matter what crimes he committed he always remained free to commit some more. Much later he murdered a peaceful man by the name of No Moccasin in front of witnesses. He was convicted for this crime and sent to jail, but that was after the FBI had no further use for him.

  On September 2, 1975, Beck was seen driving around with some FBI agents. In the evening he drove to Parmelee, about twenty-five miles from Crow Dog’s Paradise. There he and a sidekick, Bill McCloskey, without provocation, started a fight with my sixteen-year-old nephew, Frank Running, and beat him up badly. When Frank arrived at our place a little later, there was blood all over him and he was in shock.

  On the same night we were celebrating my father’s birthday. All the men purified themselves in the sweat lodge. Then we had a yuwipi ceremony. After that we went to bed. At one-thirty A.M. a car came crashing through two wooden gates at the entrance to Crow Dog’s Paradise. The car drove about one hundred fifty feet into our land, coming to a stop in the yard between my and my father’s houses. The driver was Beck. With him was McCloskey and their two women, all drunk. In the car they had two cases of bootleg beer and a bottle of lemon vodka. Beck and McCloskey came out of the car spoiling for a fight. Frankie ran out of the house to see what was going on and they began beating him for the second time. Then my security came running, Coke Millard and my brother-in-law, Frankie’s father. They got into a fight and Coke cracked McCloskey’s jaw. The whole fight lasted maybe five minutes, then Beck and McCloskey drove off. I arrived on the scene after they were gone.

  Now, most of the Pine Ridge murders were never investigated. At Rosebud there are drunken fights every weekend, with bloody noses and teeth knocked out, and such things are handled in tribal court with a fine and a night in the drunk tank—if there is a complaint. But that cracked jaw of McCloskey’s, a case of self-defense against violent trespassers, got Beck a federal warrant for assault and battery against everybody who had been at our place, and the warrant was issued within twenty-four hours. That gave the feds the excuse for their Omaha Beach-style raid, which cost me two years of my life.

  They came to Crow Dog’s Paradise at dawn on September 5, 1975—one hundred eighty-five of them, FBI, marshals, and SWAT teams. They came in full battle dress, with flak vests. They came with helicopters, heavily tracked vehicles, trucks, and even rubbe
r boats “to prevent the Indians from escaping across the Little White River.” Some even came down the hill under an artificial smokescreen. I woke up when I heard a shout: “This is the FBI! Come out with your hands up or we’ll shoot!” Some agents smashed the windows of my house and climbed in. Others broke down the doors. They dragged me out of bed. I was sleeping in the nude but they would not let me dress. They pushed me down on the floor and held an M-16 to my head. They put plastic handcuffs on me, the kind that tighten with every movement and cut off your circulation. They put M-16s to my wife’s head. They dragged three-year-old Pedro from under his blanket and threw him against the wall. He was crying. Mary wanted to go to him and comfort him but the feds would not let her. One FBI kept asking me again and again who shot those agents, who shot Coler and Williams. I told him I didn’t know. I was in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at the time. They kept on: “Where’s Peltier? We know he’s around here somewhere. You’re hiding him.” When I said, truthfully, that he wasn’t here, they dragged me by the hair out of the house and tied me to a tree. I still was naked. There were women and children around, weeping. Some of the women were only half dressed. They searched even the children. My wife tried to bring me some clothes, but the feds wouldn’t let anyone come near me. Choppers were landing and taking off in my yard. The feds were wrecking houses, tipis, and cars. They shot my old horse, Big Red, out of sheer meanness. He had been the kids’ pet. My dad tried to bring me my pipe, but the feds stopped him. They looked into my beaded pipe bag, saying, “There might be a gun in it.” I told them that I was a medicine man and allowed no weapons in my place, but they paid no attention. My wife asked them to show her their search warrants. They did not have any, only blank arrest orders against John Doe and Jane Doe. As usual, we had people staying at the Paradise, and wherever I looked I saw men and boys tied to trees. There wasn’t one tree without somebody tied to it.