“Unlike Red Cloud and those at his elbows,” growled Crazy Horse, thinking of his old nemesis, No Water, and Red Cloud’s nephew, Woman’s Dress, “we are men who keep our vows. The Hunkpatila will return from our hunt because we are men of honor!”
Little Hawk appeared dubious of their chances. “Nephew, we must convince the White Hat that Red Cloud’s warnings are the whispers of a toothless old woman.”
“Can’t White Hat see the truth?” he asked angrily, thinking to himself, Why can’t the wasicu see the truth, see when he is being lied to and manipulated?
“No, he can’t see the truth,” Little Hawk said with bitterness, “because Red Cloud has the white man’s ears, and we do not.”
For a long moment, Crazy Horse gazed in admiration at his father’s brother. He thought of how Worm and his two Sicangu wives were living on Beaver Creek, having chosen to camp with Spotted Tail’s people rather than staying with Crazy Horse on the Red Cloud Agency. Again and again it had made Crazy Horse angry, how the Oglala were not allowed to go visit friends and relatives at the other agency. Without the white man’s permission, they were forbidden to travel down the White Earth River to visit Spotted Tail’s agency. So it was that whenever Crazy Horse had some advice to ask of his father—realizing that there were far too many eyes watching him on both reservations—Little Hawk volunteered to ride in darkness to Beaver Creek, seeking out Worm’s lodge in complete secret. Time and again Little Hawk had been successful in hiding from those who would alert the Sicangu chiefs—next then the chiefs would tell the agent, and finally the agent would tell the soldiers that one of the Northern People had been spotted where he was not supposed to be.
On his last trip to Spotted Tail’s agency, Worm had admitted to Little Hawk how heartbroken he was that even the Sicangu chief was starting to talk against his own nephew, Crazy Horse. Not only were a growing number of Spotted Tail’s people saying that Crazy Horse was a troublemaker … but in the last few days Spotted Tail himself had taken up Red Cloud’s refrain that the Northern People would bring down on the heads of all Lakota the retribution of the army when they broke out and did not return from their hunt. Spotted Tail had even added his voice to that of Red Cloud in giving a warning to their agents: Three Stars must not allow the planned hunt!
How it had saddened Crazy Horse when Little Hawk told him how Spotted Tail was talking so hard against his nephew: saying the soldier chiefs must take back their offer and tell the Northern People that everyone must stay in their place, on their reservation, and make a new life for themselves. No one could ever go back to the way they used to live.
On that last visit to see Worm, Little Hawk had waited out the following day, safe from prying eyes inside Worm’s lodge, hidden behind the tightly closed lodgedoor, slipping away only when it was completely dark and Worm found the path to escape was clear. Little Hawk had dashed into the shadows, hurrying up Beaver Creek on foot until he reached the trees where he had tied his pony the night before. Riding all night to get back to Red Cloud’s agency, Little Hawk brought a report to his nephew on everything he had learned from Worm.
The poisonous words being spoken about Crazy Horse on this very agency were spreading like glowing embers scattered by the wind on summer-dry grass. Miles away, more and more of Spotted Tail’s Sicangu had begun to echo those Bad Face warnings hissed into the ears of the wasicus and soldiers.
“Crazy Horse will never be an agency Indian.”
“He will forever stay a wild Northern warrior.”
“Crazy Horse cannot be trusted.”
“The Northern leader will always lie to a white man to get everything he can for himself.”
“Ta’sunke Witko is going to bring terrible trouble down upon the heads of us all!”
“What will it take for me to get the attention of the white man’s ears?” Crazy Horse asked his friends.
“Perhaps you must play at the white man’s game the way Red Cloud has done?” He Dog suggested.
“Only Crazy Horse can answer that,” Little Hawk responded with a wag of his head. “He must be true to the voice of his spirit.”
“I speak the truth,” Crazy Horse said. “While others tell lies about me, and make the wasicu believe them.”
“It is easy for the white man to believe the bad words Red Cloud’s friends tell them about you,” Looking Horse said, “because they do not want to believe you could be a truthful man. The soldiers fought you for so long, they see you only as their enemy.”
Crazy Horse nodded, saying, “And while I fought the soldiers, Red Cloud, No Water, and the rest stayed right here, loafing in the shade of the Soldier Town—friends and cronies to the wasicus.”
Kicking Bear said, “White Hat and the agent believe that Red Cloud’s people should know you best, so they must surely speak of things that really are.”
“Perhaps the time will come when we can show White Hat that our vow is our honor,” Crazy Horse said grimly. “There was a time when I let myself think that we might stay on in the north country, to spend our winters on the Powder River, and live as free men. But maybe the best we can do for our people now is to go on this hunt with our families … and when our time is over, we will come back here. Just so we can show the wasicus that our word is who we are.”
The face of Black Fox grew long and sad. “I don’t know if we will have a chance to prove that to White Hat.”
Crazy Horse’s eyes touched his old friend. “The soldiers have decided to listen to those old women like Red Cloud and Spotted Tail who whimper against me?”
“Perhaps,” Looking Horse said. “Or the hunt might be canceled because new reports have the Nez Perce escaping this way … at least until the soldiers lost track of them. If the army goes to fight a war in our hunting grounds, Three Stars and White Hat won’t let us leave this reservation.”
Crazy Horse asked, “Your heart tells you the white man is going to take back this hunt?”
But it was Black Fox who answered grimly, “Yes. The soldiers will refuse to let us go when it is time.”
That made his heart go as cold as a stone. Eventually Crazy Horse said, “This means there will be no parfleches stuffed with dried buffalo to see us through the winter, no smoke-cured bladders of wasna.1 One more promise broken.”
“Is there anything any white man tells us that he will stand by!” Kicking Bear roared.
“I came here instead of going to my uncle’s reservation with Touch-the-Clouds because Red Cloud brought me White Hat’s promise for my own agency,” Crazy Horse reminded them. “Now I must first go see the white man’s grandfather before Three Stars will talk about our own agency in our own country. They dangle their empty words in front of my face. Telling me we can go on our hunt, then ripping that promise from us when it does not suit them. What can I believe when all around me the white man and my fellow Lakota are lying to me … lying about me?”
The night fell hushed, tree frogs softly cheeping by the river.
For some time Crazy Horse stared down at his hands, empty now when once they had carried on the fight for his people. Now they were idle, with nothing to do. “What is a man to do when he no longer has a clear enemy to fight? Now I am set upon by my own people, by all the old friends who once stood around me—like snapping wolves leaping in from all sides to slash at my hamstring?”
He Dog warned, “Watch who is at your back. Remember your vision. After all, death will take you from behind.”
“Yes, old friend,” agreed the impassioned Little Big Man. “All you can do is watch who is at your back.”
* * *
These days He Dog did not know which Crazy Horse he would run into, which Crazy Horse he would end up talking to. Sometimes he would sit and smoke, recalling the old days they had spent as Shirt Wearers with his long-time warrior friend. And then there were the days when Crazy Horse’s eyes seemed vacant, oft-times hollow, as if He Dog had never truly known the man behind them. So it was that He Dog watched with disappointment ea
ch time his old friend rode off alone for Crow Butte. There he might stay for the afternoon, or not return until the following day. Taking only his little pipe and a blanket, leaving Black Shawl and the trader’s daughter behind so he could be by himself among the rocks.
The more Crazy Horse heard of the whispers people were making behind their hands, the more despondent He Dog’s friend became. Red Cloud’s cowardly whisperers had won too, because the Northern People had learned two days ago that their hunt had been taken away from them.
“No surprise,” He Dog had told a despondent Crazy Horse. “We knew Red Cloud and his friends would steal the hunt from us.”2
Angry, He Dog and Little Big Man had gone with Little Hawk to see the agency trader called Dear. As if he had been waiting there of a purpose, the half-blood Billy Garnett helped translate the exasperated white man’s words.
“He wants to sell you weapons and bullets,” Garnett spoke in Lakota, then pointed to a paper the trader held in his hands. “But this tells him he will get into trouble with the soldiers. There won’t be a hunt, so now he can’t sell you any guns or bullets.”
Little Big Man had snatched the paper away from the white man, roaring at Garnett, “Tell this wasicu I am an Indian policeman! I am not his enemy! I am a metalbreast and he cannot treat us this way!” But as long as Little Big Man stared at the paper, he still could not read the marks made upon it. Finally the akicita begrudgingly turned the paper back over to the trader.
“No hunt. No trip to visit the east,” He Dog later reported to Crazy Horse. “And surely no reservation of our own. Winter will be hard living here, camped with all these people.”
“Already there isn’t enough to eat,” Crazy Horse murmured gravely. “How will the wasicus feed our old and the very small when the snows come?”
The day after they were told the hunt had been taken away from them, Billy Garnett came with two other interpreters to tell the Hunkpatila that they had to move their camp right beside Red Cloud’s.
“Move our village?” He Dog asked, “Why, when we are comfortable right here opposite the mouth of White Clay Creek?”
Garnett shrugged, his face a little sheepish with apology to his mother’s people. “The white men want you to be closer to the agency. And they have made plans to hold another council with all the chiefs.”
“So Three Stars is making another visit to us?” Little Big Man asked, his tone provocative. “Is that why we are going to hold another council?”
“The wasicus come to take something else from us?” demanded Little Hawk.
“After you move your lodges next to those of Red Cloud’s people,” Garnett explained, “there will be a big council to talk about what the white man will do for the Oglala people.”
“They can let us have our hunt,” He Dog grumbled as he stared at the interpreter’s back when the half-blood had turned and started away.
“They can give me my own agency,” Crazy Horse said. “I will not go sit in a council with the bad-faced one who sends his messengers to talk against me to the agent, convincing the white man not to hold the feast in my honor. No, I will not go. Nor will I move my camp where they tell me I have to go.”
As the stars twinkled over them that night, the headmen sat and discussed the White Hat’s sudden demand that the Hunkpatila move their lodges beside Red Cloud’s camp. Crazy Horse quietly declared his opposition, then fell more subdued than ever, and for the longest time too, listening to the speeches of the others.
“What you do is up to you,” he said to them with undisguised disgust. “I am not moving so I can live closer to the bad-faced one who sent his messengers to talk against me to the agent. Why should I sit in a council to honor the man who lied about me so the agent would decide against a feast in my honor?”
“All the headmen are coming,” advised Young Man Afraid, peacemaker among the three Oglala bands.
“Why should I do anything good for the whites who have lied to me?” Crazy Horse countered. “Why should I go live beside the Oglala who continue to lie about me?”
“The white man wants us to be more like Red Cloud’s lazy lapdogs,” Little Hawk said.
He Dog thought and thought on this as the discussion dragged on. And for the first time in his life, he found himself dismayed that he was considering putting his feet on a path different from the one Crazy Horse was taking. Perhaps, he thought, since they had surrendered, giving up their weapons and their horses, talking was indeed better than fighting. If their women and children were surrounded by soldiers and agency Lakota, maybe it was better to talk, negotiate, hammer out the best bargain they could with the wasicus.
“When the White Hat sends the interpreter to tell me I have my own agency in the North Country,” Crazy Horse explained steadfastly, “then I will move my camp. But until the white man gives me what he has promised … I see no reason for me to take my people anywhere just to please the wasicus.”
“Even to take them across the river to camp closer to Red Cloud’s village?” He Dog dared ask his old friend.
“Those of you who want to raise your lodges next to Red Cloud’s people,” Crazy Horse said, his eyes steady on He Dog, “are free to move across the river. And those who think there has been enough of this empty talk and these worthless promises … can stay here with me.”
Wagging his head, He Dog said, “This is not the time to make a stand, my old friend. We have no weapons, no way to defend our women and little ones when the soldiers come to punish us for not doing as they say and moving close to Red Cloud.”
For a moment, Crazy Horse seemed to study him. “Y-you are saying you will go?”
“Yes,” He Dog replied sadly. “And everyone who doesn’t want your wives and children cut down by soldier guns should move across with me.”
“You seem most troubled by your decision, my friend,” Crazy Horse said.
“Something bad is coming,” He Dog warned, sensing the presence of something he could not put his finger on. He was a fighting man, not a mystic or a seer. Just a simple man who admitted, “I don’t know what will happen. But in recent days there are too many signs that point to trouble already coming this way.”
Crazy Horse asked, “Is this because of the news that the Nez Perce are bringing a war to our old hunting ground?”
“No,” and He Dog wagged his head. “Not that.”
“Perhaps you are worried because rumors say that Sitting Bull will strike across the Medicine Line and cause troubles for us down here?”
“No, what I feel does not have to do with someone else … nothing to do with somewhere else,” He Dog attempted to explain the unexplainable. “Trouble is … very, very close.”
“Trouble will come this winter because the agent doesn’t have enough flour for us,” Crazy Horse said. “Trouble will come because we are not allowed to hunt the buffalo for our winter meat. Yes, He Dog … trouble will come because the starvation that is coming will drive a wedge between old friends.”
He Dog understood immediately. For the first time in their many winters of friendship, Crazy Horse was telling him that he could not think for himself. Drawing himself up with a long sigh, He Dog decided he must speak to all that they had been as friends for many, many summers.
“If we cannot be friends because I choose to move where the white man tells me to go,” He Dog said quietly, but with firm resolve, “then so be it. We will no longer be friends—”
“I am no white man!” Crazy Horse interrupted, taken aback as if his old friend had just insulted him. “No man loses my friendship simply because he decides he wants to live in a different place. There is plenty of room for all of us. Camp wherever you wish to raise your lodge.”
“Even if I choose to cross the river?” He Dog asked.
“Yes. I won’t be like the white man drawing a line in the dirt, saying to you, ‘Those on this side of the line are my friends. Those on that side are my enemies.’ No, He Dog—only the white man can cause us to disagree like this
,” he said very sadly as the listeners around that council circle fell silent. “Only the white man has ever caused the Lakota to go against Lakota. To pit the Oglala against … his fellow Oglala.”
In that council, the headmen were hushed, considering his words, but before anyone else could speak, Crazy Horse said something that shocked many at that gathering: “I am not a leader anymore. Better that Little Hawk lead you. I don’t want to have others depend upon me anymore. Those days are past, long ago now. For the rest of my time, I want to live quietly. So the rest of you can choose to live where you want. As for me, perhaps I could find another place to finish my days. Maybe out there … somewhere in the hills among the rocks and the trees.”
He Dog understood. Crazy Horse was saying he no longer thought he should live among people. Maybe it really was better for him to live among his sacred rocks, inyan. Up close to the sky. Only the rocks and the sky last forever, he thought. And the days when he and his old friend Crazy Horse were free men were behind them now. On the face of Crazy Horse, in the way Crazy Horse held himself, there was such a profound gloom. It tore at He Dog’s heart so.
As he watched Crazy Horse get up slowly and leave without any word of parting, He Dog felt an immense melancholy wash through him with cold waves of yearning for the old days of the hunt and the chase, the fight and the fierce camaraderie.
Turn the Stars Upside Down: The Last Days and Tragic Death of Crazy Horse Page 20