Two Elk and dozens of native activists staged a noisy protest outside Minnesota’s Metrodome before the first game of the 1991 Atlanta-Minnesota World Series, carrying STOP THE CHOP and SHAME ON JANE placards. Perhaps as a statement of journalistic integrity, the protest was broadcast live on Ted’s CNN, which also carried an interview with American Indian Movement leader Clyde Bellecourt, who growled, “America is scholastically retarded about Indian culture and history.… It is pure ignorance.” And now, here in little ol’ La Crosse, population less than fifty thousand, hundreds of animal rights protesters stood outside the La Crosse Center with blown-up photographs of bloody buffalo carcasses. I distinctly remember one of the signs. It read, BUFFALO AREN’T FONDA JANE. Getting past the demonstrators was a bit like crossing a picket line—lots of chanting and evil stares, but no one tried to block our way. When striking janitors and maids stood in front of downtown San Francisco hotels, I refused to enter no matter what business I had inside, but this was different. Jackie and I found it amusing, but Vernell seemed confused. He had never known people to not eat meat or to find doing so offensive. “There’s no end to the craziness of white people,” he commented.
At the end of the first day, we walked five blocks up Front Street alongside the Mississippi River to a restaurant recommended to us for its prime rib. Called the Freighthouse Restaurant, it was in a historic, three-story cream-brick Italianate building built in 1880 by the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. Its rows of tall, narrow, red-framed arched windows made it easily the grandest structure we saw in La Crosse, and the prime rib was as good as you might find at Lawry’s on La Cienega Boulevard in LA at half the price. The wine list was inferior, but Jackie and I easily put away a bottle or two as we debriefed each other on what we had learned that day and how it might apply to our business ambitions. Vernell was not drinking—he had gone cold turkey a few years earlier—but if you had been sitting at the next table, you might have thought otherwise. He was unusually loud and gregarious; my worries that I might be dragging him reluctantly into this adventure evaporated. He went on and on about the opportunity we had to revive the economy of the whole reservation. We would bring the people back from hopelessness and restore their pride by providing them with jobs not dependent upon the government. “Once our herd reaches fifty or more,” he said, “I’ll have to hire some local wranglers, and when we get even bigger, I’ll need to lease more land.” He visualized a buffalo-processing plant in Pine Ridge and a meat distribution company. “We might need a brand—Lakota Meats, perhaps?”
“How about White Thunder Bison?” I suggested, and he replied, “I’m not sure my ancestors would go for this unless we gave it all away.”
After dinner, with Vernell driving the rental car, we went back to the motel and congregated in his room to catch the local evening news. A camera crew had been on the convention floor, and one of the reporters had interviewed Vernell, who was conspicuous because he was nearly as handsome as Ted Turner and the only Native American in attendance. We were excited to see this and curious about what they would say about the conference, and I guess I should have known. The local broadcast focused solely on the animal rights protest. They didn’t show the interview with Vernell, and there was no coverage of the conference itself. The only person interviewed was a young man wearing a Meat Sucks T-shirt. I was too upset to remember what he said, or care.
The next evening at the awards banquet, the president of the National Bison Association introduced Jane Fonda and asked her to introduce her husband. She began with a pointed remark aimed at the animal rights advocates. “To some it is perhaps wrong,” she said, “but to save the buffalo, you have eat them; otherwise ranchers will have no incentive.” Jane clearly explained this simple concept, said she was thrilled to be part of a historic event and had no movie acting plans, and in a stentorian voice shouted out, “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m proud to introduce you to AMERICA’S BIGGEST BULLSHIPPER!”
All of us, Ted included, had a good laugh at that line.
“When I brought Jane to the Flying D Ranch in Montana,” Ted began, “I worried she might have the wrong idea, might not realize my ranch is a workin’ ranch, not some dude ranch. But when I woke up the first morning, she was already outside, rounding up the horses with a couple of my ranch hands. God love her, Jane’s a natural cowgirl!”
Turner was first attracted to bison as a boy because he liked how they looked on nickels. In 1938, the year of his birth, they stopped making buffalo nickels, but there were still plenty in circulation. He had read a book about bison, how close they came to extinction, and came to regard this as one of America’s greatest tragedies, “right up there with Pearl Harbor and the Great Depression.” Starting with three bison, which he bought in 1989 and kept on his farm in South Carolina, Turner had grown his herd to be the largest in America, just over one thousand head, and he was aiming to have many more.
“Buffalo are not only good to eat,” he said, “but they are much easier on the environment [than cattle]. Their manure and urine supply nutrients for plant cover, their hoofs stir the soil, help to bury seeds, create small pockets to capture moisture. As they graze, bison don’t damage the soil because they roam about. Damn cows stay in one place until they eat the grass down to the root.”
Looking back, Ted Turner has been true to his convictions. Today he still owns the most bison, fifty-five thousand out of approximately five hundred thousand total, and he is the second-largest individual landowner in North America, with twenty million acres, including seventeen large ranches. When Turner found it challenging to get restaurants to buy his buffalo meat, he opened Ted’s Montana Grill in Columbus, Ohio, and now has fifty-seven locations in nineteen states. Items on his menus include bison nachos, buffalo chili, bison steaks, and hamburgers.
Sadly, however, he is no longer married to Jane Fonda.
When Ted said he had over one thousand bison, I turned to look at Vernell, who shrugged. Our ambition to own the biggest herd was an unrealistic pipe dream, but I did not care. A couple of years later when we had one hundred buffalo, I relinquished my half to Vernell and went on to other entrepreneurial adventures. Vernell is still hanging in there, and I am proud to have played a small part in the return of the American buffalo.
“Vernell, you’re right,” I say. “I was the one who danced with Jane Fonda. It was at the ‘barn dance’ following the banquet. We both talked to her. I probably had a little too much to drink, and you weren’t drinking then. I asked her to dance; she thought it was funny.”
“Jackie was jealous,” Vernell said.
“I don’t think so; I think she had her eyes on Ted.”
Vernell told me he had recently gone to a buffalo sale in Rapid City, looking for a new bull to replace Jimi Hendrix, who had fathered hundreds of offspring before dying of old age.
“You wouldn’t believe it, David. One bull sold for over seven thousand, and females are now selling for twelve hundred. A few years ago I couldn’t give them away for four hundred. Cost me four thousand for my new bull.”
He paused, looking thoughtful. “I like buffalo; learned to deal with them the hard way, understand their temperament. Like horses, they are part of my life; I just like having them around.”
All across the reservation today, buffalo are around. The Oglala tribe maintains a herd of three hundred and wants to have many more. To make this happen, they are evicting white ranchers from land they leased years ago for raising cattle. Plans call for turning sixty thousand acres of currently leased tribal grassland located on the southern edge of the Badlands into a huge buffalo pasture that will support a thousand head. Today when someone dies, the tribe provides thirty pounds of buffalo meat for the traditional community meal after the memorial service. The tribe also sells buffalo meat to local schools and to Sun Dance organizers. Dozens of tribal members, like Vernell, are raising smaller herds on their private lands, often donating calves to the tribe. A native organization called the Knife Chi
ef Buffalo Nation, located near Russell Means’s boyhood town of Porcupine, has donated thousands of pounds of buffalo meat to elders across the reservation.
“Our deity is of the buffalo,” says Vernell. “They’re a source of spiritual power as well as a source of food. We received our sacred pipe from the Buffalo Calf Woman. It is even more necessary now to have them.”
HORSE PASTURE
A FIVE-THOUSAND-ACRE INDIAN
Rumbling down Vernell’s driveway, I see a middle-aged white man and his younger female companion sitting on the front steps, petting the dog. From the big waves and enthusiastic smiles, I gather they are Vernell’s tourist friends, and when we pull up, Vernell jumps out of the cab, again without bothering to turn the engine off.
“Grüezi!” he exclaims. “Happy to see you.”
He turns to me. “David, meet my good friends from Switzerland, Reto and Lillian.”
Reto has a graying ponytail but otherwise is clean shaven; his face is thin with long, thin eyebrows and blue eyes. Right away Lillian strikes me as one of those women who could be truly glamorous if she cared to be—flowing hair, oval face, sparkling eyes, sweet smile, but no makeup. When they stand up to shake my hand, I see that both are tall and athletic, fitting for people from one of the healthiest countries on earth.
“What brings you to the reservation?” I ask.
“Been here many times,” Reto answers, and Lillian adds, “I think we lost count.”
Married without children, Reto is a software engineer and Lillian teaches high school. A few years ago they found themselves visiting so often, they bought a camper trailer and permanently parked it near the pond behind Vernell’s house. “We save up to come here when we have vacation time,” Lillian says.
“Sounds incredible,” I tell them as we walk into the house, where Suzy is heating up the coffee and making herbal tea for Lillian. Everyone sits, and I am content to just listen as they reminisce about horseback rides in the Badlands, misadventures in Rapid City, muddy roads, going to the Pine Ridge Sun Dance, and their times together in the sweat lodge.
“You remember ‘Old Wooden Eagle,’ don’t you?” Vernell says. “The man from England who wanted to get a photo of an eagle, so I stopped the car on the gravel road through the Badlands, told him there was an eagle up there on that fence post and if he walked quietly, he might get close enough to take a picture. From where we stopped, the eagle was about the size of a hummingbird. The man crouched, walked cautiously toward it. Amazingly, the eagle did not move. When he got close, he realized it was a wooden eagle someone had carved out of the top of the fencepost. He turned around and waved his arms—he was really mad—but when he saw we were all laughing, he started to laugh too. I told him, ‘From now on your name is Old Wooden Eagle.’”
I enjoy Reto and Lillian but would much rather spend my time with Vernell, so I’m happy when Lillian says they need to go to their trailer and get some rest. It is none of my business, but after they walk out, I ask Vernell how much he charges them to stay at his ranch.
“Oh, nothing,” he answers. “When people become my friends, I can no longer charge them.
“Last summer, we had over a hundred visitors, from Europe but also Japan and Australia. Most are respectful, want to know about my life, our history, and even spiritual things. Two guys from Russia spoke fluent Lakota.”
“How could that be possible?”
“They had language tapes, talked Lakota for an hour a day. Said they started a year before their trip.”
“Wow. You can’t even get most Lakota people to learn to speak Lakota, at least not fluently.”
“Two gay guys from Australia, very nice men, come here every summer. They also speak Lakota.”
“And you charge these people?”
“Except for the seminarians from Pennsylvania who come to broaden their spiritual perspective. I cannot charge for anything spiritual.”
“Considering your experience with the Catholic boarding school, I would think you would charge them double.”
“No, no, never. Do you want to come with me to check on my horses?”
I grab my camera thinking he means the few horses in the nearby corral. But once outside, he points to a green all-terrain vehicle near the side of his house, says it belongs to Suzy, motions for me to get in.
“Different wheels for every occasion?” I remark.
As with the other vehicles parked in front of Vernell’s little three-room estate, the keys are in the ignition. Suzy comes out on the porch, and Vernell says, “I hope you don’t mind if we borrow your little green monster.”
She smiles as if she is in on the joke—I rather doubt if she has ever driven this thing, but Suzy is full of surprises. With me hanging on tight to the roll bar, we take off with a sudden start, swing around the corral, and head down a hill to where No Flesh Creek meanders from the Kyle Dam toward Yellow Bear Canyon. Then we zoom up a barren, bumpy hill, back down a step impression, and then up again to a sudden stop in front of a barbed-wire fence.
“Help me open this gate,” Vernell says.
We hop out of the still-running ATV. Vernell pushes the fence post while I pull up the strand of wire that serves as the top latch to the gate, which is just a section of fence. Elegant engineering—two posts held together by two strands of wire, one on the bottom, the other on top. Vernell moves the gate section of the fence out of the way and lays it on the ground. We jump back in the ATV and take off, leaving the gate open, as he did on the bombing range.
“Now for the fun part,” Vernell says. “Hang on tight.”
“I know you, Vernell White Thunder,” I answer.
We ascend at an unsafe speed, straight up—never mind the rocks, the ruts, clumps of thistle and sage, hardened mounds of horse dung. This thing has seat belts, but of course, like the ones in his Ford Fairlane and his truck, they don’t function. I hang on for dear life to the roll bar, my butt bouncing hard up and down. I look at the ground. It is a blur. Mercifully, Vernell brings us to a jarring stop at the top of the hill.
I look out at the endless expanse of early spring grass, patches of golden brown, clumps of wildflowers in front of me, literally miles and miles of undulating hills stretching to the distant horizon. I don’t see any fences or trees, just a few chokecherry and buffalo berry bushes in the gullies, no signs of human life. My God, it must have looked exactly like this when Oglala warriors on horseback stopped at this very spot, scanned the horizon for marauding herds of deer, buffalo, or other wild game.
“My biggest holding is on the Rosebud, and I have many small parcels. I tried to get the tribe to swap bits of land with me, but they won’t do it. I tore up the hundred-and-ninety-thousand-dollar check they sent for my small parcels, told them, ‘You can have the parcels only if you give me equivalent land next to my other land.’”
Stunning me, Vernell adds, “My children don’t want to live here. Chris has his life in Denver, and Ellen hers in Memphis. I tried to get them interested in carrying on. Maybe I’ll create some foundation.”
“Well, you’ll be a lawyer,” I remind him. “You can fill out the paperwork yourself, file it with the court.”
“This is true, David.”
I take a few photos, wondering if the Happy Hunting Grounds look something like what I am seeing through my camera lens. Vernell doesn’t like to sit still, but he patiently waits as I click away. It must seem odd to him how we white people are always taking photographs. Many of the great chiefs—Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, Standing Bear, American Horse, Vernell’s great-grandfather White Thunder—dressed up in their finest Indian regalia to pose for photographs. Crazy Horse was a famous exception. He refused to let the white man capture his shadow, as did Vernell’s maternal grandfather, the medicine man Poor Thunder.
Back in the ATV, Vernell guns the engine, we turn right, head straight down, bounce off the bottom, then up again, and my baseball cap flies off. I tell Vernell it is not important, but he makes a wide circle and picks it of
f the ground without slowing down. We are on our merry way, my stomach in my throat, Vernell grinning, laughing.
Suddenly we stop again.
“Look over there!” Vernell points to a far hill, where I see a dozen Hereford cows and two white men on horseback.
“Aren’t they trespassing on your land? You should shoot their asses.”
He ignores my comment. “The land on the far side of my pasture is leased to some white dudes who run cattle, but they don’t take good care of the fences—their cows are always getting in my pasture. When I see them, I make sure they see me. Just look at the sad cow ponies they ride. If you look behind you, you’ll see some real ponies.”
I swing my head around to a magnificent sight. Headed in our direction are about twenty Indian ponies—American Paints—magnificent horses galloping, manes flying and tails swishing, kicking up dust, no two the same, splashes of white on black canvas, brown canvas … chestnut, sorrel, tobiano, overo, and a single speckled gray Appaloosa.
We chase after them. Shouting over the roar of the ATV engine and pointing wildly, Vernell says, “Little Crow is the black-and-white one, the chestnut one is Billy Bow, Fry Bread is running up the hill, and Lunch Meat is the funny speckled horse. I call him that because when I tried to break him, he bucked me off, so I told him, ‘If you buck me off again, you are going to be lunch meat.’ I have names for all my horses.”
Vernell lets up on the gas and coasts to a stop, as do the horses when they realize we are no longer chasing them … serenity settles back in on this little piece of the prairie paradise.
“Sometimes,” Vernell says, “I meet people who think they know all about horses, but I come to find out they only have one or two horses, a little corral alongside their house. They look at my muddy boots, old jeans, my hat, and they say, ‘You must be a cowboy.’ But I’m not a one-acre cowboy, I’m a five-thousand-acre Indian.”
I swear if you tell a Lakota that once they had no horses, that they relied on dogs to pull their travois, they will look at you like you are fucking nuts, even if they know this is true. Tepees were much smaller; you might point out that this was because dogs couldn’t carry such heavy loads. You hunted buffalo by stampeding them over a cliff, you tell them. Such insulting thoughts—only a white man would think like this.
Good Friday on the Rez Page 19