Heartsong

by James Welch

  Charging Elk had been looking for Indians that were about his age, but there were very few. Most were far too young to have been in the show in 1889. Even though the acts were familiar, the riders were not. The announcer had said that the chief of the Indians was Queue de Fer, but he had not heard of an Iron Tail among any of the Lakota bands in his previous life.

  Charging Elk watched the other acts—Buffalo Bill shooting glass balls out of the air, the trick riding of the cowboys, the elaborate synchronized maneuvers of the various military groups, a young woman who held a mirror before her eyes and shot a cigarette out of the mouth of a man behind her, and the vaquero in the shiny suit and big, decorated hat who performed lasso tricks. And when the entire company took the arena for the grand finale, he again watched the Indians trot their ponies by the grandstand, this time close enough so that he could see each face distinctly. But out of the whole troupe, the only person he recognized was Buffalo Bill.

  And as he watched the old man lead the troupe out of the arena, a thought came to him: Would Pahuska recognize him? He had been hoping all along that some of the Lakotas would recognize him, but he hadn’t thought of Buffalo Bill. He remembered the night in Paris that Black Elk had come to the Indian village behind the arena, how he was welcomed and feted, how Buffalo Bill had tried to get him to join the show again. Charging Elk, in spite of his exhaustion from the intensity with which he had watched the show, felt his heart suddenly beat strong again. Buffalo Bill had recognized him once before, on a train platform somewhere between here and Paris. He had complimented Charging Elk for being a “wild” Indian. Would Pahuska recognize him now? He was certainly not that wild Indian from the Stronghold anymore. He was no longer young and reckless. He had not seen any of his people for many years—except in his bad dream. The fleeting memory of the dream triggered another thought: Most of the Indians he had watched were Lakotas—Oglalas, Hunkpapas, Brûlés—and they were alive. He had seen them. His dream had been wrong.

  Since that dream, he had not really thought of going home because there would be no one there. The dream had shown them sprawled among the rocks under the cliff, pitiful and lifeless. And the words above the wind—You are my only son—meant something else. But what? Charging Elk realized now that his isolation had been more complete than he had ever imagined. If he had been at the Stronghold, Bird Tail, the old wicasa wakan, would have listened to him, smoked awhile, then told him what the dream meant. Even more—and the thought struck him like a lightning bolt—Wakan Tanka was not here in this land, had never been here! All those times he had prayed to the Great Mystery had been futile. He might as well have been praying to a stone or the silver timepiece in his breast pocket.

  Charging Elk was so lost in these thoughts that he didn’t notice that the grandstand, except for a few stragglers, was now empty. But even such discoveries—instead of causing his heart to fall down in despair—gave him a kind of hope, and that hope blackened his heart with the wickedness of it.

  Charging Elk paid fifty centimes to wander around the avenue of sideshows. He wanted to give the Indians time to put away their horses, to change into warmer clothes, to settle down for a smoke or a card game. He knew how tiring the day-after-day, night-after-night performances could be. He knew that if you were injured—spraining an ankle from jumping off a horse, hurting your back from a fall or breaking a rib—it would take days, even weeks, to fully recover. But because they were proud, the young men would ride with these injuries. Charging Elk himself rode when he could barely get on his horse because of the flu, and that had been his downfall. He could have taken the night or even a couple of days off, but pride had won out over judgment. And where had it gotten him?

  Charging Elk walked unseeing by the various tents of the sideshows. The barkers were enticing the crowds to come in and see the performers, the freaks. On a small stage, a female contortionist was walking around on her hands, her ankles locked behind her neck. On another, a giant in a white singlet and tights was holding a tiny woman in a sequined top and tutu. She had a pretty, round face framed by tight auburn curls. A man dressed only in shorts stood watching them, shivering in the cold November night. His head was shaved and his body, from top to bottom, was a bright shade of blue. But Charging Elk, even though he glanced at them, did not see. The images in his mind, the Indians in the show, his homeland, the Stronghold, his lonely nights of wandering around Marseille, Marie and Breteuil, the years in prison, were all that occupied him. He had been a stranger all along in this country and had paid the price for his ignorance. Even now he walked on the edge of the crowds, as solitary as he had always been.

  Then he found himself at the far end of the avenue of sideshows. He walked out the gate and stood and rolled a cigarette. In the distance, he could see the bulk of Notre Dame de la Garde on its high, craggy hill. It was lit with electric spotlights.

  Charging Elk called out a greeting before the first lodge he found that was lit from within.

  “All my relatives!” he called in Lakota. “I am Charging Elk and I come to talk with you!”

  After a minute, a head appeared, fingers holding the flap closed around it.

  “I am Lakota. Oglala. But I have been gone a long time.”

  The head was that of a young man. He looked Charging Elk up and down, then said, “What do you want?”

  Charging Elk was taken aback by the English tongue. “Are you Lakota?”

  The young face looked at him blankly neither friendly nor unfriendly.

  “Lakota?”

  The young man stepped out of the lodge. He was almost as tall as Charging Elk, but thinner. He pointed to a group of tipis across the circle. “Lakota,” he said.

  Charging Elk thanked him, but the youth had ducked back into the lodge without a word. He heard other voices inside and guessed that he had interrupted a card game.

  He walked across the circle and announced himself before one of the larger tipis, taking in the layout of the village as he waited. It could have been the village of sixteen years ago. Several wasichus were wandering around but not like the crowds that came after the afternoon performances. He didn’t see any Indians.

  The flap opened and a man stepped out. He was dressed in wool pants and a canvas shirt. He had a blanket over his shoulders. His face was narrow, with wide cheekbones and a mouth that arced up at the corners, which gave his face an almost leering quality. He looked to be just short of thirty winters.

  “Hoka hey! I am Charging Elk, son of Scrub, the shirtwearer, and Doubles Back Woman. Oglala people. I have been gone a long time.”

  The man looked at him a little longer than was necessary. Charging Elk could tell he was seeing the dark suit, the high, white collar, the necktie, the topcoat. The eyes seemed both confused and suspicious.

  “I came to this country with the show in 1889.” Charging Elk wondered if the man understood the wasichu way of counting winters. It didn’t occur to him that he had given the date in French. But he had left Pine Ridge before the winter count could be made for 1889, so he didn’t know the Lakota year. “Sixteen winters ago I came. With Pahuska and Rocky Bear.”

  “Ah,” the man said. “I am Andrew Little Ring. Come in.” And he stood aside with a disbelieving look to let the big dark man pass.

  Charging Elk took off his cap and entered the lodge, and it was warm. A small stove sat in the middle where the fire pit would be. A stack of coal was piled beside it. He greeted a woman who was nursing a baby. And a young man, who was lying against a backrest, smoking a cigarette. He was still wearing the leggings and moccasins from the show and was bare-chested beneath the blanket over his shoulders. A small leather pouch hung from his neck.

  Little Ring indicated a stool near the young man’s feet. Then he went around the stove to sit beside the woman. “This is my wife, Sarah. And that one”—he indicated the young man—“is my nephew, Joseph.”

  Charging Elk smiled at each, then sat down on the stool and unbuttoned his topcoat. “Do you know my fath
er and mother?” he said. He knew it was impolite to begin in such a way, and he hadn’t planned to, but he had been anxious to know the fate of his parents for many years. The question just came out.

  The woman set the infant on a doubled-up quilt, pulled her blouse down, and poured a cup of coffee from a pot that rested on the stove. She walked around and handed the cup to Charging Elk. He thanked her and took a sip. He would have liked some sugar but he didn’t see any.

  Andrew Little Ring sat with the peculiar grin creasing the lower half of his face. He was looking at Charging Elk as though trying to remember him or deciding whether to trust him. Finally, he said, “Double Strike Woman still lives at Pine Ridge Agency. She has her little cabin. She is well.” Then he was silent again.

  Charging Elk suddenly felt his whole body go limp. He set down the coffee cup and fixed his eyes on the black stove. He wished it were an open fire. He wanted to look into an open fire, as he had so often so many years ago. “My father?”

  The man looked at his wife, who looked down at the infant. “He died three winters ago. Influenza. I didn’t know him well, but there was a big ceremony at the church, then at the community hall. Everybody went.”

  Charging Elk sat, looking at the smoke curling up toward the smoke hole from the short pipe of the stove. He was trying to see his father’s face.

  “He was an important man, your father—a shirtwearer.” This time it was the young man, Joseph, who spoke. “You should have been home for him.”

  Charging Elk looked at him for a moment, until the young man looked away. “You are right, Joseph,” he said. “I failed him—and my mother. For a long time I have thought only of myself.”

  “Your mother is still there. She lives alone, but many people look in on her. I’ll bet she would like to see you there.”

  “How is it you have been away from the reservation all this time, Charging Elk? What did you do all these years? I can see you are still one of us, yet you are different.”

  Charging Elk looked back at Andrew Little Ring. He looked at the Lakota face, the dark skin, the eyes so like his own. He looked at the woman, Sarah. She wore her hair in long braids, in a way that he hadn’t seen for a long time. Her face was round and smooth and the color of pecans. He looked at her and realized how much he had missed being with his own people.

  “Do you live here in this town?”

  The voice brought him back, and he felt the warmth of the stove, the small draft on his backside. “Yes. For sixteen years. I work here, loading and unloading the big boats.”

  “But why would you stay here? Why stay here now? Why not go home?”

  Charging Elk laughed at the innocence of such a question. In the old days it was a question he would have asked of a stranger a long time gone from home. But now he didn’t know how to answer. He would have to tell the whole story or nothing. So he lied: “I was curious to see how the wasichus lived over here—so I stayed. I have many friends here. They take me into their lodges and give me good things to eat and drink. They are very strong for me.”

  “Do you speak the Frenchmen’s tongue?”

  “Yes. We talk of many things—Teddy Roosevelt, New York.” Charging Elk spoke fast, but he was uncomfortable with his lies. “And do you speak American?”

  “Yes. We have all been to school, even Sarah. Young Joseph here went away to school. Everybody goes away to school now.”

  Charging Elk smiled at Joseph, who was sitting on a rug close to him. “Did they teach you to be smart like your grandfathers?”

  Joseph looked up at Charging Elk, his eyes suddenly cold. “They taught me many things—how to cut off my hair, how to wear clothes just like them, how to use my knife and fork properly, how to say ‘Yes, sir, yes, ma’am.’ Oh yes, they taught me many things so that I could be smart—just like them.” He snorted loudly, a sound of disgust that made Charging Elk aware of his own wasichu clothes.

  “You see—they treated Joseph and the other children very badly. They were forbidden to speak Lakota, even to each other. If they made a prayer to Wakan Tanka at night, they were put in a dark room by themselves. If they sang one of our songs, they were beaten.” Andrew Little Ring sighed. “Joseph went to the boarding school for eight years. Every summer we had to catch him up on Lakota—then his last two years they wouldn’t let him come home. They said he was still stuck in the old ways.”

  “It is the same at home.” Sarah was now rocking the infant in her arms. She spoke softly but bluntly. “We are forbidden to speak our language. We are forbidden to practice our ceremonies. If we do, they threaten to cut off our rations. Many people who didn’t believe them now go hungry. There are many hungry people who beg at the agency.”

  “Are things so bad for our people?” Charging Elk couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He remembered the white teacher who had torn up his picture of the dead soldier on the Greasy Grass, who wouldn’t allow the children to speak Lakota. But to forbid the grown-ups to speak Lakota, to perform the ceremonies—it was unthinkable. It was all they had left even when he was there. But even then things were changing. “I remember, many people went to the white church when I was there. But I didn’t like it, so I ran away even though I was just a boy. I went out to the Stronghold with my kola, Strikes Plenty, where there were still some Oglalas who preferred to live like the old times. But it was hard to live that way. The winters were hard and there was never enough to eat. And now I wonder what became of them, of Strikes Plenty.”

  Joseph had been rolling a cigarette, but now he looked up with wide eyes. “You were a ghost dancer?”

  All three of them were looking at him intently. “I don’t know about this ghost dancer,” he said. “You must tell me.”

  Andrew Little Ring looked confused. “You were at the Stronghold. That’s where the Ghost Dance took place.”

  “Fifteen years ago, three of our men went out west to meet a prophet who said that if we performed the Ghost Dance all the white people would go away. He told them the buffalo would return and we could live in the old way—as though the wasichus had never existed, as though our misery was just a dream.” Joseph lit the cigarette he had been stroking into a cylinder with his fingers.

  “What happened?” Charging Elk held his breath. He was remembering.

  Joseph blew some smoke into the air above the stove. “It ended in sadness. They killed Sitting Bull, the Hunkpapa chief, up north. Then they killed a whole band of Minneconjous on Wounded Knee Creek. What was it, Uncle—how many were killed?”

  But it was Sarah who answered. “Nearly two hundred—men, women, and children. Those people were sick and starving. They were dressed in rags. Now they are all buried in one grave overlooking Wounded Knee Creek. The government didn’t have the decency to let their relatives have them, to give them proper burials.”

  Charging Elk looked away from Sarah. In the dim light of an oil lantern hanging from a lodgepole, he had seen a tear running down her cheek. Andrew held her hand, looking down at it. Joseph pulled his blanket higher over his naked shoulders, his cigarette dangling from his lips. The lodge was quiet enough to hear some voices speaking French outside. The language that he had finally learned sounded strange to his ears.

  “I have seen all this in two dreams,” Charging Elk said softly, breaking the glum silence. “In one dream I saw people heading up to the Stronghold. Some were riding horses, others were in travois, and many more were walking. I was coming back from somewhere, so I rode up among them. On top I first heard drumming and singing that was unfamiliar to me. And when I looked I saw many people and they were dancing hard, as though their feet were on fire. Some just jumped in one place, up and down. They were singing and crying, some women wailed. Then they began to fall down. I didn’t recognize any of this, but now I see they were performing this Ghost Dance. It made me uneasy to see such a display. But now I see it for what it was.

  “In my other dream, I saw people lying at the bottom of a cliff among the boulders. Their bodies were ben
t and broken, but I could see that they were Lakotas. I cried for them. I was afraid that all my people were dead, so I tried to join them. I tried to jump off the cliff, but the wind pushed me back. Many times I tried to jump and many times the wind prevented me. And I heard a voice enter my head and it said, ‘You are my only son.’ And when I went back to my camp at the Stronghold there was nothing there—no people, no horses, no dogs, no lodges. There were no tipi rings, no fire pits, just the long grass that covered everything. It was as though the Lakota people had vanished from the earth.”

  Charging Elk smiled at Joseph. “But now I see I was wrong. I had no one to interpret my dreams for me. You are here. I saw many Lakotas in the arena tonight. And you tell me that we have survived, pitiful and powerless as we are. But it doesn’t have to always be this way. You three young ones fill my heart with your strength. And I see the little one asleep in Sarah’s arms. We will go on because we are strong people, we Lakotas.”

  Joseph smiled for the first time, uncertainly but perhaps a little hopefully. “I don’t know—maybe.”

  Charging Elk squeezed his shoulder, then stood up, smoothing his topcoat into place, buttoning it. Joseph too got to his feet and stood face to face with the big man. Although he was slender, his shoulders were wide and his bare chest was almost a man’s. His long arms with the brass bands around his biceps held the blanket in place. He was as tall as Charging Elk, and his loose hair fell to the small of his back.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Home,” said Charging Elk. He walked around the stove and knelt before Sarah. “What is the infant’s name?”

  “Rose.”

  He held out his hand and the baby wrapped her tiny brown fingers over one of his. She looked up at him. Her brown eyes were alert and curious.

  “That’s a good name, one that will always bring you happiness when you say it.”