Spaniards brought horses to the New World in the 1500s, but these weren’t ordinary horses; a mixture of Arabian and Andalusian blood, they were the best horses in the world. Because he had such horses, Cortés made mincemeat of the Aztec. You might wonder why the Spanish were so foolish as to lose possession of their horses, let them get into the hands of the very natives they were trying to suppress. In the early years of the Spanish invasion, they declared it illegal for an Indian to own a horse, but America’s plains and deserts are gigantic—the Pampas and Los Llanos of South America, the Great Plains and southwest desert of North America, the coastal plains of Mexico—rich in prairie grass, meandering streams and rivers. It took only a handful of stray horses, three or four lost on the trail, to form the kernel of an enormous herd of wild horses that even today overruns much of the Western U.S. rangelands, decimating grass and water resources.
Over fifty thousand descendants of American Indian horses, which in turn are descendants of Spanish horses, run wild on federal land. The Bureau of Land Management holds another fifty thousand in a system of private ranches and feedlots. In 1900, there were one million wild horses in the United States. We largely looked the other way while all but a thousand were hunted down, shot, butchered for pet food. Their total extinction was averted in 1971 when Richard Nixon signed a bill making it a crime to kill a wild horse on federal land.
Not every tribe saw the potential of this hefty, omnipotent, dog-like creature. The Mandan, who lived in dome-shaped earth lodges along the Missouri River in what is now called North Dakota, traded horses to other tribes but never took to the equestrian life themselves. Some speculate that this is why they were wiped out by smallpox, as smallpox is more deadly to sedentary communities.
The Lakota immediately saw the horse as a gift from the Great Spirit, Wakan Tanka, which is why they called horses Sunka Wakan, meaning holy dogs. In partnership with Sunka Wakan, Lakota territory quadrupled, and then quadrupled again and yet again. Horses tipped the balance of power in favor of mounted warriors. It was easier to hunt buffalo. Warriors could travel hundreds of miles to steal horses from enemy tribes. They made life for women easier too, because unlike dogs, horses could lug heavy loads from camp to camp.
These big dogs were low maintenance. You didn’t have to feed them meat, they ate grass, and during the winter snows when grass was unavailable, they survived on cottonwood bark. Owning many horses became a sign of wealth. When a young warrior picked out a potential bride, he tied one of his finest horses outside the tepee of the parents of his bride-to-be as a gift and sign of his intentions. Many religious ceremonies came to be based on Sunka Wakan and its contribution to Lakota life; there even evolved a horse medicine cult that was practiced by a dance with imitation horses. And, of course, medicine men like Poor Thunder performed the Horse Dance ceremony.
Young boys grew up obsessively practicing horsemanship skills. They learned how to maneuver galloping horses from side to side so that they could ride in the middle of stampeding buffalo without being trampled or so they could avoid oncoming arrows or bullets from an enemy. They practiced shooting arrows riding full speed, hanging from one side, aiming at targets on the other side by leaning low to the ground beneath the horse’s neck. More skilled riders leaped from one galloping horse to another. They could pull a horse up short, slide off, take a few running strides, swing up onto another horse, and gallop away, only to do it again. These skills as much as anything explain how the Lakota and their allies defeated the U.S. Army.
Today Vernell has twenty-seven horses, but at times he’s had over a hundred. There isn’t much money in buying, raising, and selling horses, but part of his summer business involves taking visitors on scenic horseback rides. Some are brief one- or two-hour trips; others are much more involved. One example is a six-day excursion to Pine Ridge promoted by a London-based adventure travel agency called Spirit Trails, three days of which involve four- to six-hour horseback rides with “famed Lakota horseman” Vernell White Thunder.
Nowhere in the Spirit Trails brochure or Web site does it mention that for gringos, riding a horse for more than an hour or two at a time can give you a profoundly sore butt, that bowlegged cowboys are bowlegged for a reason. The day after I rode with Vernell through the Badlands, I could barely walk; no way could I have gone on another ride. When I ask him about this, he shrugs his shoulders and says, “But they do it.
“David, it is easy to be romantic about horses, but if I am lying in bed and it’s thirty below, I know the horses are thirsty but can’t drink water because there is ice on the creek. So I haul myself up, go out to the creek, and break a hole in the ice. I am not in it for money; for me it is way of life. I have respect and admiration for my horses. My horses have souls; their souls absorb everything we are feeling. When the soldiers killed our horses, they killed our souls.”
Incapable of defeating the Lakota warriors on the battlefield, the U.S. Army resorted to search-and-destroy tactics, early morning surprise attacks on sleepy villages where the operational goal was to kill as many Indians as possible—women and children included—burn all the tepees, destroy food supplies, tools, clothing, and weapons, saving the horses for last. In 1876, after routing an encampment of Comanche and Cheyenne, Colonel Ranald Mackenzie ordered his men to shoot fourteen hundred horses left behind when people fled on foot. The troopers roped the crazed horses and led them to the firing squads, where they were killed twenty at a time. The massive piles of dead horses rotted to the bones, which lay bleaching in the sun for many years.
“When you decided to marry Suzy, did you give her mom a horse?” I ask.
Vernell laughs. “No, but later I gave one to her brother.”
As Vernell recklessly drives me back to his ranch house, bouncing up and down, I realize that my butt can get just as sore in his ATV as on one of his horses. At least my hat is now pulled tightly on my head and I’m hanging on with two hands instead of just one. We suddenly stop to secure the gate. Vernell jumps out, yanks up the section lying on the ground into its proper position, jumps back in, and we are off before I can catch my breath. Down the gully, as we splash across No Flesh Creek, I look up a dirt embankment, where I see Reto standing in front of his trailer house in boxer shorts.
Vernell slows down, yells out, “I’ll turn on the water for you.”
We whip down another gully, ricochet, bounce into the air, and stop suddenly in front of a quaint little log house that I know nothing about. Hidden in a scenic spot behind his ranch house, it is his guest cabin, Vernell says; he built it himself. Another surprise.
“Look around while I turn on the water,” he says.
Spanning the front of the cabin is a finely crafted, covered wooden porch. Sturdy tree trunks support the roof; there’s a gas grill on one end, an easy chair, logs to sit on. The cabin has dark-red-painted vertical wooden slats, windows, door. It looks very homey. If a person wanted to get away from the hustle bustle of city life for a few days, a week or two, this could be the ideal place. Inside I discover a polished knotty pine interior, a double bed, a single bed that doubles as a sofa, a kitchen table, a dresser, and plenty of natural light.
“Can I stay here next time I come up?” I ask Vernell.
“You might want to wait until I finish building a bathroom and shower, and there’s no electricity.”
The sun is low in the sky. It hides behind a cluster of stratus clouds near the western horizon, glowing brightly on top, pure orange on the bottom. Not as spectacular as the sunsets I once experienced in New Mexico, but still a glorious end to a holy day, Good Friday on the rez. I want to stay here. I have thoughts of moving back to Kyle, perhaps teaching again at Little Wound School if they will have me, horseback riding with Vernell, participating in the Chief Big Foot Memorial Ride, Native American Day at Wounded Knee, yuwipi ceremonies. Purifying myself in the sweat lodge, attaining oneness and harmony with all forms of life. I thank Tunkashila for the four directions, Sun Dance sacrifices, the Giving of the G
ifts, the Rabbit Dance, vision quest, Rezball, the spirit of Crazy Horse, Buffalo Calf Woman, sage and sweet grass smudging, staring into the sun, piercing, fancy dancing, the Sacred Pipe, Pahá Sápa, Mato Paha.
I want to stay, but I am not an Indian, not a wannabe, just your average aging white man, and there is a family gathering tomorrow in Alliance that I must attend. Vernell has offered to take me to a nearby sweat lodge, and while this is tempting, the last time I did a sweat lodge with Vernell, the heat made me so dizzy that I had to lie down for a couple of hours before I could go anywhere. I politely decline.
I reluctantly say good-bye to Vernell, Suzy, Reto, and Lillian. They stand out front as I get into Villa VW.
“Guess I should get out of here so Vernell can work on his paper for law school.”
“Eat more meat,” Vernell proclaims.
“And you eat your veggies.”
“Next time I’ll arm wrestle you; we’ll see which makes you stronger, meat or lettuce.”
ACT FOUR
They were a great people, these old buffalo-hunting Sioux, and some day their greatness will reach full flowering again in their children as they walk the hard new road of the white man.
—MARI SANDOZ, CRAZY HORSE: THE STRANGE MAN OF THE OGLALAS
GORDON
SOME WHITE BOYS ROUGHED HIM UP
I’ve had an incredible day and would love to get to Alliance before Ken and Dales closes at eleven p.m. Perhaps I’ll make it, but there is one more thing I must do. Driving up the hill from White Thunder Ranch to the main road, I turn left. Instead of going back through Kyle, I head south toward Yellow Bear Canyon, determined to take the same sixty-two-mile route Raymond Yellow Thunder took dozens of times as he went back and forth from Kyle to Gordon, Nebraska, where he worked as a ranch hand.
Unwittingly, Yellow Thunder became one of the most significant figures in Native American history. His tragic murder in 1972 was the spark that set off a series of events ending in the occupation of Wounded Knee, and a new native assertiveness that has in turn led to many good things. Vernell was just sixteen, Yellow Thunder fifty-one, when the killing took place; they never met, but they are related. Raymond’s mother, Jennie, was one of the daughters of the great chief American Horse, and Vernell’s mom, Mary, was one of his granddaughters.
Born in 1921, Raymond had an impressive lineage, but his family was dirt poor. He lived with his parents and six brothers and sisters in a one-room log house just outside Kyle on American Horse Creek. His father, Andrew, was a sober, hardworking man who disdained the traditional ways. He made his sons cut their hair short, do daily chores on their meager farm and horse ranch, and go to the day school in Kyle. They spoke English and were taught to be obedient and work hard. On Sundays, Raymond’s mom made sure all seven children were scrubbed and wearing their best clothes for services at Kyle’s Episcopal Church of the Mediator.
The coming darkness turns the hills one-dimensional as Villa VW descends to the bottom of the canyon, past the survivalist camp, before winding its way up again. A few more hills and curves later, I am on the far side of Yellow Bear, where there is still enough light to see a couple of farmhouses, barns, tractors, cows, gigantic rolls of hay immobile in fallow fields; a sprawling pancake boredom that extends to Gordon and just beyond before you enter the majestic Sandhills of Mari Sandoz’s Old Jules. The road itself is empty: no rez cars, pickups, semitrailers, dogs, or horses; no Raymond Yellow Thunders thumbing a ride into town. It’s just Villa VW, the great American desert, KILI Radio, and me.
* * *
Like Vernell, Raymond Yellow Thunder loved horses, excelled as a basketball player, and was a superb artist. However, he had no aptitude for study; quitting school before the ninth grade, he found work doing odd jobs for neighboring ranchers. Thanks to the influence of his father, Raymond always showed up, kept all his promises, and never got into a single fight. A loving uncle, he drew pictures for his nieces and nephews while they pulled his hair and crawled over him. Unlike their parents and the teachers, he never raised his voice. At his memorial service, his brother Russell said of him, “If Raymond had any enemy in the world, it was the bottle.”
After a failed marriage and the death of his parents, Yellow Thunder started drinking heavily on weekends or whenever he didn’t have a job or family matters to attend to. Still, his talent for working with livestock and willingness to do any job required on a ranch or farm made him very much in demand. In the early 1950s he landed a cowhand job with rancher Harold Rucker, just a few miles south of Gordon, which was to last eighteen years. He lived in the Rucker bunkhouse, and except for cheap wine that he bought on the weekends and a few changes of clothes, all his money went toward buying groceries for his sisters’ families and gifts for the little ones.
The Yellow Bear Canyon Road, aka Allen Road, aka BIA Highway 4, ends at Highway 18. From there it is a ten-mile drive west toward Pine Ridge before you head south again on Nebraska Highway 27 straight into Gordon. I slow down, take my time; you never know what hazard will be just in front of you at night on these roads—perhaps a deer or a cow, a stalled car, a staggering drunk, a wild turkey, an old buffalo … or a boy on a bicycle. The turn onto Highway 27 comes as a relief because I will soon be off the reservation, which I foolishly imagine is more dangerous at night than Highway 27. More miles of monotony, except for the strangely located Dohse Auto Sales lot that pops up out of nowhere. I imagine that the good folks at Dohse sell respectable clunkers to Indians who have just gotten a tribal check for their remaining little spot of land, land that’s been in the family since the 1887 Dawes Act.
Never having owned a car, Yellow Thunder was adept at hitching rides. One fateful Saturday night (February 12, 1972), he asked Bucky Rucker, his employer’s teenage son, for a ride into town to buy some new blue jeans (plus there was the temptation of the Sheridan Lounge). Bucky was reluctant—his friend Jerry had just stopped by—but Yellow Thunder knew just what to say: “I’ll buy you and Jerry a half-case of beer.”
It was an offer Bucky and Jerry could never refuse. “Hell yes, Big Chief, let’s get us some beers.”
With Raymond in the back, they sped off for Gordon, and after a pit stop at Wagon Wheel Liquors on the edge of town, the boys dropped Raymond off on Main Street. It was early evening, but the temperature had dropped into the mid-twenties, and it felt like a winter storm was on the way. Yellow Thunder went to Saul’s Discount Department Store, where he bought his jeans, and then he hiked up to the Sheridan Lounge for a few boilermakers. He was well known at the bar, the old quiet Indian who drew sketches and always paid up, never caused any trouble. Not much better than a Whiteclay liquor store, the Sheridan Lounge was perfectly suited for out-of-luck cowboys and invisible Indians who were welcome as long as they paid for each drink as it was served to them.
“Sorry, Injun,” the bartender would say. “Only white guys can run a tab here.”
* * *
Gordon is a little town of about 1,544 people (in 2013), dumbly named after John Gordon, whose claim to fame is that he was the first white man to sneak a party of miners into the Black Hills after Lieutenant Colonel Custer’s 1874 gold-discovering expedition.
Investors in Sioux City, Iowa, saw an opportunity to outfit and organize trips to the Black Hills for miners and wannabe miners. You might think of this as the original adventure travel agency. Everyone knew the risks. If they were caught by Lakota warriors, the clients would be gleefully burned alive. If they were captured by the soldiers, their wagons and supplies would be destroyed, and they would be confined for trial at the nearest military post. Fueled by irresponsible newspaper headlines and shameless promotions about the instant fortunes to be made, the rush for gold was on—there were plenty of fools willing to fork over the three-hundred-dollar deposit.
There was just one thing missing: a tour guide. Enter John Gordon, the only applicant for the job ballsy enough to claim that he had extensive knowledge of the Black Hills and knew how to drive oxen. Truth was, Gor
don had never been to the Black Hills, and his experience with oxen was dubious.
After secretly assembling wagons and supplies three miles outside Sioux City, Gordon led his tour group of twenty-six men, all wannabe miners, on a zigzag course through the Sandhills. At night he posted sentries and allowed no fires. Miraculously, they made it into the Black Hills without seeing a single Indian or soldier. Emboldened by Gordon’s success, the Sioux City investors organized a much bigger trip. This time there were 150 fools, and not all were miners—they included merchants, Civil War veterans, immigrants who could barely speak English, blacksmiths, cowboys, railroad workers, and one determined woman fleeing from an abusive relationship with the strongbox of money her husband had hidden under their bed in Kansas City.
Five weeks later, his party having traveled hundreds of miles, Gordon’s luck ran out; the army caught up with them. At sunrise, Gordon and his sleepy followers woke to find themselves surrounded by sixty heavily armed U.S. cavalrymen under the command of Captain Anson Mills. Two Gatling guns had been set up on top of nearby ridges. After arresting Gordon, Captain Mills sent a few of the wagons down a ravine and had them set ablaze. The other wagons were pushed on top, creating a gigantic bonfire that would have dwarfed those at the biggest college football pep rallies.
News of the Gordon party’s fate caused a sensation in the nation’s newspapers and only encouraged thousands more gold seekers to invade Lakota land. The army caught a few and handed them over to civilian courts, but they were freed, and many went right back to their Black Hills claims. By the end of 1875, the U.S. Army had given up trying to hold back the tide. When a group of Methodist settlers from Indiana built a town twenty miles from where Captain Mills had burned his wagon train, they named it Gordon.
Good Friday on the Rez Page 20