by Andy Conway
“He Dog held off the soldiers all alone for a while, which gave us time to flee across the frozen river and up into the hills.”
“Was it Long Hair?” Little Star asked.
Pale Mouse shook his head. “Every Cheyenne thought it was Long Hair, come to slaughter us again, like he did eight winters ago on the Washita River.”
We had all heard those stories of what Custer had done to the Cheyenne at Washita. He’d killed a hundred braves before they had time to pull on their breeches, and captured fifty-three women and children, taking one of them, Monahsetah, as his slave wife. But it was what they’d done to the ponies that truly horrified all who heard the tales. They hadn’t shot them, to save their bullets, but had cut their throats with their knives. The shrieks of the horses had rung out all over the valley, and the snow had turned red with their blood.
“If it was Long Hair this time, no one saw him,” Pale Mouse coughed. “No one heard his band playing that shrieking tuneless devil’s dance they play when they come to slaughter.
“The fighting was brief, but as many as ten soldiers had fallen, and only two Cheyenne, and we were safe in the hills where we watched the soldiers take over the camp. What they did was strange.”
He wept and stared up at the smoke escaping through the hole in the tipi roof where the lodgepoles crossed.
“The soldiers set fire to every tipi, but also to all of the possessions, even the winter’s supply of food. It went up to the sky in great clouds of black smoke. It smelled so sweet. They burned all the ammunition too. It would explode every now and then as the flames took the cartridges and gunpowder.”
Little Star looked to me, wondering if Pale Mouse were hallucinating. Why would soldiers do this when they could take the food and ammunition for themselves?
“These soldiers looked hungry, like they’d been marching a long time. They took only the ponies, driving them out of the village and riding upriver to the south. They left us with nothing.”
Little Star stroked his brow as he wept more. It broke my heart to see this sweet old man so wretched.
“The braves who’d been out scouting returned to find the camp destroyed. They set off after the soldiers and recaptured almost all the ponies. We marched for four days down the river till we found Crazy Horse’s village camped by the Little Powder. They were short of food too, so we travelled another two days to find you. On the way, many froze to death.”
He laughed bitterly.
“You know what is so funny? Our camp had decided to go to the Red Cloud reservation to talk about the sale of the Black Hills, as we promised They Fear Even His Horse. But after this, every one of us is determined to stay on the plains. If the whites come, we will fight.”
He laughed and coughed and sank into sleep, but he did not wake in the morning.
Little Star wept for him, took a lock of his hair and wore it in a medicine bundle round his neck. We took Pale Mouse’s body out of the camp and built a scaffold for him. He had no possessions so we gave him some to take with him to the spirit world.
Grass fever
ROSEBUD RIVER. MARCH, 1876. The snows melted, and before the plains had turned green our camp began to grow.
A great band of Miniconjou, led by Lame Deer, arrived, and more Cheyenne led by Lame White Man. And through March and April, Indians began to come out to us from the reservations too.
They had heard about the Powder River battle, and laughed at the whites who’d proclaimed it a great victory, lying about a hundred Indians being killed, until the truth came out that it was no more than four. Every reservation talked of how the soldiers had left the village, the Cheyenne had walked right back into it, and then stole all their ponies back. If this was the white man’s idea of a great victory, they would be surprised the next time they came and found the largest Indian camp the plains had ever seen.
The Lakota went north every summer, following the buffalo as they roamed westerly up the Yellowstone, crossing the lacework of rivers that flowed north, from one valley to the next.
They called it grass fever. When the plains turned green, the ponies got fat and every Indian soul would grow restless, longing to throw off the winter blanket they had held tight around themselves, to feel the sun on their skin and ride out with the warm breeze on our faces.
This happened every year. But this year — 1876 — was different. More and more joined us from the reservations, till there can have been no Indians left on the white man’s agencies. And hadn’t the Great White Father threatened no beef? So why would they stay, when there were still buffalo to hunt and the plains were calling?
But there was something else happening that summer. It was as if Sitting Bull’s prayers had been caught on the wind and travelled to the ears of Lakota everywhere.
Come out to the plains and hunt the buffalo. Live free. This may be our last summer.
Every Indian heart heard his call, and they came in their thousands, and every morning we opened our tipi and stepped out to find the camp had grown.
We sang a great song of joy that summer. But each day I looked to the horizon, looking for a way out, and expecting the distant thunder of a coming storm.
Monahsetah
ROSEBUD RIVER. APRIL, 1876. A few weeks after the arrival of the beleaguered Cheyenne, I first set eyes on Mo-nah-se-tah, the girl famed as Long Hair’s slave.
Everyone knew Custer killed her father at the massacre of the Washita River and took her prisoner along with many other women and children. Little Star would never stop gossiping about her, telling me every detail of her life, every story that was ever whispered about her. I began to think that he himself was responsible for most of the stories.
“You know that at the time of the Washita massacre she was only seventeen years old, and because she was the daughter of the chief Black Kettle, this makes her a princess to the white men. Well, only a year after the massacre, she bore a child, and everyone knows it is Long Hair’s. The officers shared out the girls they took as slaves that day – and they were all raped. It’s their custom. They even say Long Hair wanted to keep Monahsetah as his second wife, but his jealous white wife made him cast her out.”
She had found her way back to her people, with her son, Yellow Bird.
Custer’s son.
That summer there was an Oglala brave with us called White Cow Bull, and he courted Monahsetah every day, so desperate was he to be her husband. But there was some Cheyenne law that forbade anyone to marry her, because she had this boy out of wedlock.
“I don’t think there is such a law,” said Little Star. “Pale Mouse never knew of it. Monahsetah just made it up so White Cow Bull would stop following her like a stray dog.”
White Cow Bull didn’t care, and followed her all the time, trying to get her alone, but the boy was always there. Monahsetah wouldn’t even speak to him, nor take up his invitation to walk with him under a courting blanket. She would only talk to him through her tipi cover and never come outside when he asked.
It was a joke among us, how he chased her, but I never laughed at him. He seemed in love and it didn’t matter how many Oglala laughed, or how many Cheyenne said it was forbidden: he wanted to marry her and he never took another wife.
I came face to face with her carrying firewood from the river one morning. Her son was by her side. I noticed the yellow streaks in his hair and Little Star nudged me.
“This is her! This is Monahsetah,” he whispered.
I wanted to see if she was as beautiful as they all said.
When her eyes met mine, I gasped.
She looked right into my soul and I felt she knew all the secrets of my past that I did not even know myself. I wanted to ask her who I was, where I’d come from, and how I might return to my home. I felt she knew all of this merely by looking into my eyes.
But I couldn’t speak, my tongue frozen.
She shifted her gaze away from me and I felt bereft, I so much wanted to stay in the light from her eyes, the way you want t
o stay in the warm sun and feel cold and naked when a cloud comes between you and its rays.
Monahsetah passed us with her son, and walked on. I stared after her.
Little Star giggled and said, “Oh, I think someone else has fallen in love with the Cheyenne princess!”
He laughed so hard I pushed him into the river.
I was not in love with her, but I knew now why White Cow Bull had been so beguiled.
And Custer too.
The coming storm
TONGUE RIVER. MAY, 1876. Those that joined us from the reservations told us there had been no beef deliveries and they wondered how the white man could urge them to stay on the reservations and starve, when they could take the north road and follow the buffalo to feed themselves?
It was a simple choice to make.
They told us also that the whites now called us the ‘hostiles’, and we wondered why was it so hostile to go where we wanted and live as we always had.
They murdered their own language as freely as they murdered the Indians.
My ladybird vision still haunted me. We were heading for a great battle at a place called Little Bighorn, this I knew. It would be a great victory for us and Custer would be defeated. This also I knew. But there was no sign of any place called Little Bighorn, and I never heard any Indian mention it.
There was the Powder river, the Tongue, the Rosebud, the Yellowstone, the Greasy Grass, all of them part of the network of rivers across which the buffalo roamed. But no Little Bighorn.
Until we were there, I thought, the great battle would not take place. Until we were there, I could still escape.
And yet another thing troubled me. My ladybird vision on Wolf Mountain did not match up with the earlier vision of the ants overrunning the beehive, unless we were the ants and the whites were the bees. But no matter how much it made sense, when placed alongside my ladybird vision, I felt it was not the truth, and that the whites would overrun us. And it was coming soon.
Which it was to be, I did not know. A great victory or a catastrophic defeat.
I could not see how it might be both at the same time.
I told it to no one. Not even Little Star. I wanted no more talk of me being different from the other women, even though I was a white woman sharing the lodge of a winkte.
In my pouch I stored as much wasne as I could. Dried buffalo meat would keep me for the days of crossing the plains. I planned my escape, reading the stars and storing every bit of information about the location of the nearest forts I overheard. Those who came to join us from the Red Cloud Reservation said they had travelled two hundred miles, and they had come from the east, so I set my eyes on it every morning as the sun rose.
Two hundred miles.
Perhaps I could persuade Little Star to come with me.
But I knew he never would. He wanted to be around The Men who are Talked About.
One night, as Little Star and some other winyanpi ate buffalo by the pleasant roar of a fire, I decided I would take my chances and leave in the morning.
But I knew Long Hair was coming and there would be a great battle. I knew that Long Hair would be defeated. I knew I should warn Sitting Bull.
If I didn’t, would it change the future? Had this knowledge been passed to me for this moment — so that I could make this warning? Was this the sole reason I was here?
I threw down my bowl and ran to Sitting Bull’s lodge.
His personal guards barred my way, and laughed when I said I had a vision to report to Sitting Bull.
“A vision?” they scoffed. “What vision could a white woman winkte have that would interest a great medicine man like Sitting Bull?”
“I don’t care. Let me see him!”
They shoved me away and turned their backs on me.
One of them, though, picked me up from the dirt.
“It is no use,” he said. “Sitting Bull is not in his lodge. He has gone up to the butte to pray.”
I stared up at the dark hill above the camp, framed by deep blue starlight, and wondered at him sitting up there alone.
Little Star shook me awake in the morning, and I cursed my sleepiness. I should have left the camp before anyone was awake.
“Wake up, sister,” he smiled. “Sitting Bull has had a vision.”
I thumbed sleep from my eyes and sat up, my head spinning.
“He returned from the butte this morning and spoke to a gathering of the men. It’s all over the camp. A new vision.”
I wondered for a wild moment if his vision would be the same as mine.
I ran out, my blanket wrapped around me, and followed the crowd rushing to hear news of the great man’s vision. My heart was thumping in my throat.
The chiefs were seated around Sitting Bull in the council lodge, its sides open to the crowd that swarmed. Criers were relaying the vision to everyone.
“Up there alone on the butte, I prayed,” said Sitting Bull. “I prayed to the spirits. I prayed for a sign that would help my people. I fell into a deep slumber, and in my dreams I saw a great cloud of dust that headed for a village of tipis in the clouds. The thunder beings made a great crash of noise when the dust cloud hit the village in the sky.”
I clutched my throat, remembering the tornado that had snatched me from the earth.
“A big fight is near,” said Sitting Bull. “If we watch for them coming, we will win a great victory.”
Everyone talked about the vision for the rest of the day. About the fight that was coming.
Little Star gripped my arm. “Your vision must relate to this,” he said. “The ants that attacked the beehive. You must tell it.”
I shook my head. “No one wants to hear my dreams.”
I wouldn’t tell him about the cloud of dust I had seen. We were near no place called Little Bighorn. There was no such place.
That day, a Cheyenne party returned from a scouting mission. They reported their findings and I read their sign language, the graceful ballet of hand gestures.
A giant camp of blueshirts on the Tongue River to the south. The Cheyenne had fired on them and were chased away. The blueshirt camp was slow moving, but only three days away.
To the south. I could avoid them on my journey east.
But still I tarried. I couldn’t find the right moment to leave.
The next day a party came to join us from one of the reservations. “Many soldiers,” they said. “Coming along the Yellowstone River from the West.”
Still, I was fine. I would head out east as soon as Little Star was asleep. If I set out at night with my pony, I would be fifty miles away before the sun was up.
But later that day, scouts returned to camp and talked of a train of blueshirts winding its way towards us, close to the Powder River.
From the east.
Little Star asked why I was so furious.
“Don’t you see what’s happening?” I yelled. “They won’t bargain over any price for the Black Hills now. The Great White Father is sending his soldiers out to circle us. They’re coming to wipe us off the face of the earth!”
He laughed. “Then we shall meet them and kill them all.”
He didn’t know why I was crying with rage. I couldn’t tell him I had planned to run.
But there was no way out now.
I had tarried too long.
Sun Dance
ROSEBUD RIVER, JUNE, 1876. It was the Hunkpapa who performed the Sun Dance every year, but all the bands came to watch and some even partook. And this year the camp was so large that it seemed all the Indians of the plains had gathered to dance.
Good Weasel, an Oglala who was close to Crazy Horse, went out to choose the cottonwood tree that would form the centre pole on the fourth day of celebration. The day Sitting Bull would perform the blood sacrifice.
They were all so taken up in the spirit of celebration and excitement, they forgot the threat of the soldiers.
What did they care of the blueshirts when none of them in living memory had seen so many Indian
s gathered together?
They felt strong. Invincible.
I felt nothing but dread.
There were dances every night, some of them courting dances between the men and the winyanpi, others ceremonial dances performed by the different societies, which were solemn rituals, praying for strength from the bear, deer and elk spirits.
It all led up to Sitting Bull’s climactic Sun Dance, from which they hoped for another vision.
Little Star mocked me, saying I shouldn’t watch. “Sitting Bull always dances tied to the sun pole by skewers in his flesh. They hook the wooden skewers under his skin and tie him to the pole with rawhide straps. So much blood! And we know how much the sight of blood makes you run away.”
“I’m not afraid of blood,” I said.
I was determined to show him I would not be scared of a blood sacrifice. But when the dance began, with thousands of us gathered to watch and chant, I couldn’t see through the throng. Those of us at the rear of the crowd, who could not climb onto the surrounding rocks, relied on those at the front calling back a commentary.
“Sit on my shoulders,” Little Star said.
He knelt and let me straddle his head, and I was surprised at his strength as he hoisted me up into the air. Perhaps he would make a warrior after all.
In the centre of the circle, Sitting Bull stood, topless, leaning back against the sun pole.
“You’re wrong,” I told Little Star. “He’s not tied to the pole with skewers at all.”
Sitting Bull’s son, Stays Back, paced around him, circling, as the old man chanted, eyes up to the sky, staring directly at the sun.
Then Stays Back took out a sewing awl – the kind that all the women carried with them – and pierced the chief’s arm, pulling up the skin till it stretched from his arm like a brown mountain. He took out his knife and cut the tip off. The skin snapped back, leaving a red spot, weeping blood.