I helped the others gather cinder blocks and line them up around the perimeter we’d outlined that afternoon in the security building. Cinder blocks made great barriers because if stacked well, we could lie behind them and place our guns through the openings to shoot. When I thought I couldn’t move no more, I grabbed a shovel and went back to digging more trenches.
Night came full on, and the shooting began. I guess nothing gets you ready for the line of fire. I suspect the Feds wanted to scare us into giving up the siege. I suspect they were hoping we’d surrender and give up our fight. But our people were not going to give up the pride we had finally found again. Even though I knew we were dealing with the Feds, I didn’t expect it to go down like that. Didn’t think nobody would shoot even though I’d spent most of the day preparing for that moment. See, the Feds or the pigs, that’s how we called them—were well armed, much better than the rest of us. They had tanks, and automatic weapons. We knew we were outnumbered. We didn’t have good weapons and if we were going to win this, we’d have to outsmart them with our knowledge and passion of the land, and our unity with each other.
I couldn’t see shit except for a sliver of moon. I was sitting around in the security building finally trying to rest for a minute with Jerome and Sammy when the fire started.
“Holy shit!” I yelled out when the firing started.
“Yeah, little buddy. That’s what happens in warfare. You can actually get shot!” Sammy laughed while cocking his gun.
M60 shots whizzed by us. We could hear the 7.62 NATO rounds crackling in the night air. Grey jumped up and grabbed his hunting rifle and began to take aim at something moving in the distance. At first I didn’t know what he was shooting at. I remember thinking: We ain’t got a chance in hell with the kind of weapons they have. But I didn’t say nothing. I just thought it, got up and grabbed my rifle too. I ran to my post at Lil’ California. That was the plan. Run to your post and guard. Billy Joe was already there. All of a sudden, I could see what Grey had been shooting at—a car was driving right up without stopping. We kept on shooting until it drove right up within a mile of the roadblock. The car stopped, did a U-turn and drove away again. Goons no doubt trying to come in.
Billy Joe and I sat down and took a breather. He was unphased by what had just happened.
“In Nam, we used to used to wait around in the bush at night until we smelled them, then we’d blast their ass.” Before I had a chance to say something I heard a shot in the distance and then a flurry of ‘em came right at us. I could see them crossing the grass in the distance like fireflies traveling faster than the wind. The shots were coming closer, I heard them whizzing by.
“Jesus, man! I don’t think I’m cut out for this!”
“What did you think was gonna happen? People shoot at you, that’s what happens. You can actually get killed!” It was Billy Joe’s turn to laugh at me now. They were really giving me shit. They were right, even though I’d been preparing for this moment for days, the reality of getting shot at was a whole different thing than just plain imagining it.
“Hear that? Ain’t no automatic weapon. That’s fucking .30-06 hunting rifles. Billy Joe knew his guns. He’d grown up with guns. Even before the war, his father had owned a collection of them. As a kid, he used to play with them in the back of the shack where they lived until one day his father shot himself in the head. They said it was suicide but Billy Joe told me it was an accident.
“I bet those are white ranchers trying to shoot our asses.” Billy Joe was right. Vigilante ranchers had signed up wanting to shoot us directly and take care of the problem as they later said.
“Those bastards can’t sign up fast enough to get a chance to kill an Indian.”
My heart was racing. I wanted to run to Felicia at the clinic, but I knew that once the shooting had started, we had to stay at our posts until things calmed down. I could see the clinic from where we were—the lights were out. I was relieved. With the lights off, it made it harder for the enemy to shoot.
I pictured Felicia all alone with Lou and Lea sittin’ in the dark not saying a word. Then, we heard a strange sound, and then we smelled it: the grass around us was on fire.
“Did you see that?” Billy Joe almost yelled.
“I think that was a flare or something,” I said almost whispering.
“Yep they just shot a flare at us to set the grass on fire.”
The problem with hunting rifles is that they ain’t made to shoot so far away. So we sat quiet waiting for them to try to get closer. They did. Suddenly, I saw a shadow in the smoky grass. It was hard to see and truth be told I did wonder if I wasn’t hallucinating or nothing ‘cause of the sliver of moon, the real dark night and the smoky grass and all. But then I saw it again. I tried a clear shot in its direction and saw whatever it was, retreat in the distance.
“Fuck! I think you got one. You shot ‘im good!” Billy Joe was laughing. Billy scared me a little. The way wild animals scare humans. There was something unpredictable about him which made him dangerous to the enemy, to himself, and to us who worked with him. Billy came back from Nam like the rest of them, all crazy, and unwieldy.
“There ain’t nothing like the moment you first kill a man,” Billy Joe said looking at me with madness in his eyes. The way he talked about the enemy was nothing like the ideas I’d heard from Grey, Jerome or Juan about our fight to reclaim our land.
“Killing is not the way, Grey had told us. “Red, black, white, or brown, every single life is precious.”
But that’s not how Billy Joe thought.
“All you have to do is aim your rifle at the line of fire and take your enemy down,” Billy Joe said looking in the cross hair of his rifle. He’d been trained to kill by the American government and now that he’d been wronged, he didn’t know how to stop.
Chapter 25 – Owl
By morning, the shots had died down and we all took turns getting some shut eye. When I woke, I went down to the Crow’s Nest roadblock and saw a fed drive up right up to the barricades with a white cloth for truce, on his car antenna. The boys at The Crow’s Nest roadblock made him get out of his car and walk the last 100 yards into the camp.
“I want to talk to the man in charge,” the Fed said.
“We’re all in charge here,” Grey told the man with the beady blue eyes and a balding head of red hair.
“We’re very concerned about the hostages and we’re aking you to free them,” he told Grey.
“Can you promise us that your boys won’t fire at us no more or try to move in here?” Grey asked the man.
“I can’t promise you that we’ll never move in or fire at you but I can say that we’ll notify you first.” I wondered what he meant. I remembered us the night before with ranchers shooting at us and the flare burning the grass. I could see it now, all black and dead. The fire had stopped, but the grass was burnt.
Would the Fed run up to us and say,” Hey, we’re about to shoot your ass, get ready!” I didn’t know.
“Can you promise that you’ll release the hostages safe and sound?” The Fed asked again.
“Why don’t you come back later this afternoon and we’ll see once I’ve had a chance to talk to the people of the Oglala Nation.”
Before the man left, Grey handed him the name of the prescription medicine for Mr. Rivers, one of the hostages. I loved that Grey had said, The Oglala Nation. That was what we were—a nation, under God.
Later that afternoon, the man came back with the medication for the old man and more information for us. This time, it was Juan Baronnette who met him, instead of Grey.
“Is there any way you could release the hostages today?” The Fed asked again.
Juan gave him a card with the names of some of our people who’d been arrested the night before.
“This is a list of our hostages we’d like released in exchange. Can you do that?”
We wanted the release of our people from the jails. This was a tactic the government had used on us a mil
lion times. I thought about Jimmy’s cousin Marty rotting in jail for no good reason, other than being Indian. How many wrongful arrests had we all endured just to intimidate us? But now we had bargaining power.
The agent just handed him a list of the names of our people who had been arrested, only confirming what we already knew. In return, and as a way to return the insult to the agent, Juan handed the man a list of the hostages. We were determined to get our way and not let them get us down.
“The white man has killed our people before at the last Wounded Knee massacre and we’re prepared to die again.” Juan’s anger rose like a whip with a life of its own.
“Your only hope for change is to surrender. I strongly advise you surrender.” The agent barked back. Tension was rising.
“This is our land, we’re the landlords and the rent is overdue!” Juan added. The agent must have felt scared shitless cause he said nothing and took off like a lightning bolt in the sky.
In the days that followed, all kinds of people made their way to the camp. Senators McGovern and Abourezk came to see us to find out about the hostages. McGovern walked around crooning and shaking people’s hands like he was running for president. The Feds and their people had called the press and made a declaration about the unfair situation with our keeping hostages. But they just about took a shit in their pants when one of the hostages said to the press, “We’re free to go. We’re not the hostages, the Indians are.”
We had a good laugh over this one. Turns out we’d told people they could leave whenever they wanted but most of them opted to stay. The senators left in a huff and the war really began. Nobody likes to lose face in front of his enemy, and after this, it seemed war was the only way.
**
At night, Felicia, the others, and I sat around the Sacred Heart church to rest. We took turns to keep watch of our posts and when we were off, we sat around talking. I loved listening to people’s stories. Our people had so many stories to tell. I’d never been around such a strong need to tell their stories. Grey lit a cigarette. I didn’t know he smoked, and I guess he didn’t either cause when Jim looked at him real strange, he cocked his head to the side and said:
“What are you gonna do? War does that to a man.” And he took a deep drag and let the smoke out slow.
“Umm it’s been a good…10 years since I’ve had one. Ten years. Feels so good.” I could tell from the way he held himself that he was about to tell us a story.
“You know, people keep asking us: why AIM? Why did AIM get involved? And you know what? I remind ‘em of the old man in Rushville, Nebraska. That was just three years ago, but I remember this story like it was yesterday. An old Indian man was on the streets of Rushville, walking along, minding his own business when the police came right up to him and knocked him over. Every time the old man tried to get up, the sick policemen would hit him with a club and kick him in the ribs. Now, Rushville is a real small town and that poor old man crawled on his hands and knees from one end of Main Street to another. The two Indian women who saw this attack and couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it came to see us and told us the story. We listened to it and knew we had to do something for our people.”
We’d all known and lived the horrors of our people firsthand, but hearing it from a man like Grey sure made it all the more real.
Gun shots were slowing down and Billy Joe called me over to a game of chess. I’d never played before. He put the game board down on the ground next to me and said:
“I learned in Nam. Sitting around waiting to kill more gooks. People always think that in war, you’re always running around killing people. That ain’t true. There’s a whole lotta time spent on our asses, waiting to kill more people.” He let out this laugh that made me think he was going to start coughing. Billy got up from the overturned case where he sat and went to the altar where we kept some of our ammo.
“OK, so the .50 caliber shells here are your king and queens. Then we’ve got our ponds, tons of little ponds. Those are you .22s. And these short and fat suckers here are your fucking towers. Go that? Bro?”
I don’t think I learned much about chess. But I did learn about Billy’s vision of the world.
“See, the white man likes to lock shit up and fight neighbors for what they already own. Look at their houses. All fenced up, locked up with security and shit. Why they do that? You know why? ‘Cause they know they’ve got enemies everywhere. Their neighbor is their enemy. Their children are their enemies. Their wives are their enemies.”
Billy moved a .22 shell forward. I was trying to think about my next move.
“Like the Paiutes in Nevada. My cousin’s a Paiute and he told me that when the settlers came through in the beginning, they were lost. Didn’t know the land, didn’t know where nothing was. And the chief Winnemucca, he’d come around and help them out. He figured out, that’s the Indian way. You help your neighbor. The land belongs to everyone. But when spring came, whites were strong again, back on their feet and they’d get drunk and go out and shoot the Paiutes like coyotes. The Indian and the white man, we don’t think the same way. Your turn to play asshole.”
I moved a .22 caliber ammo forward on the board.
“You bastard, you think you’re gonna get me?” I heard Billy Joe laughing. I looked up and saw him making a strange face like he was trying to hold his breath under water. He clutched his chest. Blood came out of his nose and then I saw that he’d been shot.
Chapter 26 – Owl
Billy Joe was our first casualty in the camp. The next day, the government declared a ceasefire and asked that women and children leave immediately. We held a meeting. The Feds said they wanted to negotiate with us and it couldn’t be done at the barrel of a gun. For once, we agreed. We wanted to remind them that we hadn’t been the ones declaring war in the first place.
As I stepped into the trading post building for the meeting, a man tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to see the medicine man Whitetail Deer standing behind me. I’d seen him around at the meetings in the church and the trading post. The skin on his face was wrinkled and loose. He wore a traditional beaded suede jacket, fur tails tied around his braids and beads around his neck. The thick bottle glass look of his glasses gave him a strange air magnifying his eyes as he came closer to me.
“Do you have the wolf stone?” he asked resting his hand on my shoulder. I’d never spoken to him before. He looked at me piercingly through the distortion of his glasses and when my eyes found his, I felt a pang in my chest, like someone had just punched me.
For a second, I tried to understand what he was saying then I remembered the stone Felicia’s grandmother had given me. People were pouring past us, leaving the building. Felicia was walking in to find me when she saw I was with Whitetail Deer. She hesitated, stopped, and then turned around to give us privacy.
“Yes,” I answered. Fumbling in my pocket for the stone I’d been carrying ever since. I opened my palm and showed it to him as a sign of good faith.
“Good,” he said leaving the stone in my hand. “Tomorrow, you will come with me to the sweat lodge at sunrise. I’ll see you there.” And before I had a chance to say anything he was gone.
The meeting where we talked about the government’s ceasefire swallowed me. I didn’t have time to think about Whitetail Deer or the wolf stone.
Negotiations were under way, and we told our women and children to leave, if they wanted. A friend of Jerome Bean named Flores was about nine months pregnant. We told her it’d be better if she left but she refused. She was as round as a bubble ready to burst, sittin’ on an overturned case, pride written all over her face.
“There is nothing for me out there. My home is with my brothers.” She stayed.
In the end, two people left the next day, only to be replaced by a hundred more who came from all over the country. A small plane carrying 400 pounds of food owned by the Chipewas in Michigan landed in the field behind the church. We spend the evening carrying this precious delivery they had brought
for us. People all over the country had started to hear about our struggle and they were joining in. We formed lines and carried the hundreds of pounds of eggs, powdered milk, flour, baking soda and rice inside the trading post. People were happy. But some of the warriors and I felt that the government had something else up its sleeve. We felt they were planning a massive attack and they were trying to get our women and children off the land so they could finish us off and not be blamed for killing the innocent.
That night, Felicia and I made ourselves a little nest in the corner of the clinic and tried to sleep behind the medicine cabinet.
“What did he want?” Felicia asked me that night.
“Who?”
“Whitetail Deer. What did he want?”
“He wanted to know if I still had the wolf stone your grandmother gave me. He also told me I need to join him in the sweat lodge first thing tomorrow morning.”
She smiled proudly, like she’d suddenly turned into a mama hen.
“You better get some sleep. Your first sweat lodge, you will need the energy.”
The next morning, I found Whitetail Deer sitting outside of the lodge cross-legged and praying. Gordon, a guy I’d seen at one of the roadblocks was poking rocks in a roaring fire. He nodded at me in recognition and continued his task. His face was covered in soot from the smoke. He was shirtless and bathed in sweat.
Whitetail Deer opened his eyes.”Take out the wolf stone,” he said.
I pulled it out of my pocket and held on to it like my life depended on it. When I came closer to the lodge, I saw a handful of guys getting ready for the sweat. I knew a few of them, guys like White Crow Dog, Juan, and Jerry. I wondered what a guy like Jerry could be looking for in a sweat. He just didn’t seem like the spiritual type. I removed my clothes and crawled inside with them. Whitetail Deer entered the lodge last.
One String Guitar Page 29