by Andy Conway
The throng gasped and cried out, and he did it again, and again, all up the one arm, till it was covered in red.
Fifty times he did it.
Then he began on the other arm.
I relayed it all to Little Star, every detail of it, and he confessed to feeling ill.
Sitting Bull chanted throughout, his eyes staring directly at the sun, seeing his vision, and the gathered throng chanted their music in a growing frenzy that reached a peak after a hundred flesh sacrifices.
Sitting Bull said what he had seen.
“A great many soldiers are riding into a village. This is not a cloud of dust heading for a village of tipis in the sky. These soldiers are real. Their horses are real. The village is real. But the soldiers and their horses are riding upside down. They are cut down easily by the Indians in the village. And a spirit voice tells me, I give you these because they have no ears.”
A great tremolo went up, everyone screaming and whooping celebration.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why do they have no ears?”
“It means they are dead!” Little Star cried. “Every soldier will be killed! It will be a great victory!”
As they danced and sang and whooped their joy, I forgot my own visions: the last stand at a place called Little Bighorn, and the ants devouring the beehive. I forgot the words that haunted my dreams. Touchstone. Birmingham. Danny. Hudson. Mitch. I forgot my village green, and Katherine, the girl I was. I wanted to feel joy for once, and not be haunted by a sense of doom.
The Battle Where the Girl Saved Her Brother
ASH CREEK, 17 JUNE, 1876. Sitting Bull was still lying in his lodge, weak from his blood sacrifice, when news came that soldiers were only hours away.
Crazy Horse’s uncle, Little Hawk, rushed into camp from a scouting mission reporting that an army of bluecoats were at the Tongue River.
Little Hawk and his scouts were camped in a gulch, but doused their fire when they heard a commotion across the bluffs. Creeping up, they discovered a group of Crow scouts roasting buffalo, and soldiers shouting at them to stop. The Crows paid them no heed and the soldiers gave up. There were hundreds of bluecoats camped nearby.
Little Hawk and his scouting party jumped onto their ponies and rode back forty miles through the night to warn us.
We heard the wild commotion as it broke out across the camp. I rushed out of our tipi to see people already striking tipis, ready to flee. Young braves were crying out with delight that the battle that Sitting Bull’s vision had promised them was here so soon.
They began painting their horses for war, but the chiefs gathered to discuss it, even Sitting Bull, who had to be walked to the council lodge, his eyes still swollen from staring into the sun.
After a while, the camp criers came out to announce there would be no battle. We should leave the soldiers alone unless they attacked.
Many of the braves could not understand it. How could Crazy Horse pass up this opportunity to face the enemy in a battle?
But in Sitting Bull’s vision, the soldiers had been defeated because they had ridden into the camp. To go and look for the soldiers and to fight them in a place far away had not been foretold.
The order was clear.
There would be no battle, and I was relieved.
But that night, I was woken by whispering in the lodge. I opened my eyes to see a brave leaning over Little Star, wrapped naked in his buffalo hide. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, and they whispered for a long time until Little Star got out of his bed and began to dress. His male’s clothes, I noticed, not his more usual winyanpi dress.
He saw me staring and there was a moment when he might have ignored it and left me there, but he came to me and whispered.
“Get dressed quickly. I’m going out to lead the braves in a fight against the soldiers. You should see this.”
I did not understand why Little Star would be involved in a war party, or why they would come in the night and ask him to lead them. “The attack on the soldiers is forbidden.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Remember I told you about the battle of Arrow Creek? This will be the same. The young braves will sneak out to fight, and the chiefs will have no choice but to follow.”
He ducked out of the tipi and I threw on my clothes to find a group of young braves waiting. We crossed the camp silently, more and more braves emerging from their tipis to follow us to the corral.
I was not the only woman. Buffalo Calf Road Woman, a Cheyenne I’d heard about as a fierce warrior, had come along with her brother. She was here to hold the horses once the fighting began, they said, and I would help her.
Leading our ponies out, pinching their noses so they would make no noise, we walked the horses silently for a mile, and then everyone mounted and cantered away.
We rode south, and when we had gone no more than ten miles, and the first fingers of dawn light were waving over the hills, we stopped and corralled the horses and the men prepared for battle. It was not enough to ride straight into the enemy. A brave needed the help of the spirits.
They wore their eagle bone whistles around their necks, which they would blow as they rode into battle to frighten their enemies. From their pouches they brought out paint and amulets and adorned themselves with sacred power: a dragonfly painted across a man’s chest, to give him its swiftness in battle, a lightning streak painted on a horse’s flank, to imbue it with the power of the thunder gods, a necklace of bear claws to give him ferocity in the fight. The ripe smell of paint overpowered the sagebrush. They hung war charms across their naked chests, dangling eagle feathers or buffalo tails, and leather pouches full of sacred earth.
I watched, fascinated, as they prepared themselves and their horse’s with great solemnity, knowing that each of them felt that this might be their last morning on earth and that if they should lie dead on the battlefield they should look their best.
Little Star prepared a medicine bundle for me.
“This sack is made with otter skin. I decorated it with quills myself. Very pretty.”
It was just like the one we had filled with bees for Surrounded. He placed it over my head and then reached down and tore up a frond of sweetgrass, took a bear’s claw from his own bag, and put them in my hands. He took out his knife and I jerked back as he went for my face.
“Shhhh, sister. I only want a lock of your beautiful red hair.”
He cut it off and threaded it to a neat band.
“Hold out your hands.”
I held up the sweetgrass and bear’s claw. He jabbed my fingertips with his knife before I could protest.
“Blood,” he said. “Make sure your blood is on each object.”
I held them tight in my fists while he said a prayer for me, asking the gods to give me aid when I needed it.
He placed the sweetgrass, my lock of hair and the bear’s claw in the bag and bound it with sinew.
“Nothing can harm you now,” he smiled.
When we were all adorned, we rode on.
For another ten miles we went south, till we came to where Little Hawk’s party had spotted the Crow scouts and the column of soldiers. They were not there at the banks of the Tongue River at all, but we found their trail and followed it straight east for another hour till we came in sight of the Rosebud River.
We stopped and the braves discussed heatedly with Little Star, things I could only half follow, something about counting for them, and the word hand was said a great many times.
Little Star smiled to me and said, “This is what you are here to see, sister,” and then he kicked his horse on and headed for the camp on the horizon alone, an eagle bone whistle in his mouth giving out a scream.
“What is he doing?” I cried.
Was this some sort of suicide mission, to sacrifice himself before the battle commenced? Would I see him alive again?
But the others only smiled and did not answer.
He rode to the ridge ahead, his horse kicking up dust, and t
hen when he was nothing but the size of a fly in the distance and his eagle bone whistle could not be heard, he seemed to halt and rear up and come riding back.
Was he being chased back to us by the enemy?
The braves did not stir, but watched him quietly.
His horse thundered to a stop and he held up one hand, shouting, “I have ten men in this hand! Which brave of you wants them?”
The braves all shook their heads. One of them called back, “This is not enough. We want more.”
Little Star wheeled his horse around and rode off out to the distance again, blowing that same tuneless eagle scream.
This time when he came back, he held up two hands and cried, “I have twenty men! Ten in each hand! Which brave of you wants them? Answer me!”
Again the braves shook their heads.
“This is not enough. Bring us more!”
Little Star put his eagle bone whistle to his mouth, turned his horse, and rode out again.
I watched him ride further this time, till I almost lost him. And then we all looked from him to the sound of horses approaching behind us.
A great party sent up a cloud of dust, and the braves panicked, thinking we’d been surrounded by the army’s Crow scouts. They drew their rifles and readied themselves to charge.
“Wait!” one of them cried. “It is our own.”
Sure enough, Crazy Horse was at the head of the approaching war party, and as they came closer we saw all the chiefs and braves of the village.
The braves by my side exchanged guilty glances, as if caught out in a great crime. Suddenly they looked like little boys, not warriors.
The party surrounded us. There was anger in Crazy Horse’s eyes. The young braves who’d rebelled, looked at the dirt and would not meet that anger.
Crazy Horse was about to speak when all turned at the scream of Little Star’s whistle. They parted and let him ride back to us.
He showed no surprise that Crazy Horse and all the chiefs had come, and barely acknowledged them, so wrapped up in his mission was he.
“Answer me quickly!” he cried. “I have a hundred men! Fifty in each hand! Which braves among you will have them?”
The young braves stared at the ground and did not answer.
Crazy Horse sneered at them and rode his horse around Little Star, looking him up and down.
My winkte sister stared ahead and did not cower, still holding up his two fists.
“One hundred!” he cried again.
All were silent.
Crazy Horse rounded him full circle and opened his mouth, “This is not enough. Bring us more.”
Everyone whooped in triumph, even the young braves who had been so frightened, and Little Star rode out again.
Crazy Horse held up a hand and they all ceased their whooping to listen.
“We told everyone to leave the soldiers alone unless they attacked. You have defied this order and will be punished by the akicita, if you are still alive after this day.”
A cheer went up anyway. There would be a battle. It was a good day to die.
“The soldiers have come to attack us,” said Crazy Horse. “They have come to slaughter our women and children. We will let them fire on us first. Then we will show them what it means to fight.”
He dismounted and began to prepare for battle in the manner that the young braves had at dawn when we had stopped half way.
His medicine man prepared his charms, and this was the man who had instructed him to only ever wear a single eagle feather, which he now placed upside down along the back of his head, instead of sticking up as he usually wore it.
He placed his eagle’s wing bone whistle over his head, and a small rock, which he hung from a leather thong under his left arm. Another spirit rock he hung behind his left ear.
Crazy Horse walked over to a molehill and took a handful of its dirt and patted it between the ears of his horse, and on its hips, and threw it over its head, and then over its tail, as if protecting it from each end. He rubbed it over himself too.
Little Star returned, holding up his two fists. He looked exhausted by now with the riding to and fro but cried out, “I have two hundred men! Answer me quickly! Who will take them?”
Crazy Horse raised his rifle and cried out, “Hoka hey!” and every brave yelled their battle cry.
We rode on across the flatland towards the bluffs to the south, whooping and screaming war cries. Guns began to fire from the hills, but the wave of men on painted horses rode right up to engulf them.
It was as Little Hawk had said. Over the hill was a giant army of blueshirts, camped by the river.
But between us was a band of Crow and Shoshone scouts who had fired on us. They fought hard and held us for a while, or we might have poured down that bluff and wiped out the soldiers.
Soon enough they were outnumbered. They fell back to the camp of soldiers and with greater numbers now, longknives and scouts attacked us.
We fell back, but we did not run away, as they expected. We kept on attacking, retreating, attacking, retreating, bands of Lakota splitting and attacking in small forces, harrying the soldiers from all directions.
I watched from a safe distance, holding horses with the Cheyenne woman, Buffalo Calf Road Woman. She chattered away, as if telling me all that was happening, but I didn’t understand a word of it. I could see she was eager to join the fight.
Little Star came and joined us, his work done.
“You see how Crazy Horse directs it all, like a spirit who controls the wind and the waves?” he cried.
Like a conductor with an orchestra, I thought. I didn’t know how I knew what that was, but I knew it. That little girl on the village green knew it. Katherine knew it. This was Crazy Horse’s symphony, and he was in full command of it, delighting in the music of dust and blood and death and the piercing cacophony of the war whistles.
Sometimes, the men would make a brave run, riding within firing range of the soldiers then turning and slapping their backsides, inviting them to chase us. And when they did chase us, we fell back and they thought they had won, only for us to probe again from another angle.
The soldiers grew furious and frustrated. Were they shocked that we kept attacking them and did not run away?
On one of those brave runs, we saw a Cheyenne warrior shot down. Buffalo Calf Road Woman cried out and dropped the reins she held.
“It’s her brother!” Little Star cried.
He wasn’t dead. He rolled away from his horse and sat up, bewildered, still alive, trapped between the two fighting forces. He staggered to his feet, like a man who’d been punched, stepped back to his dead horse and took up the bridle in one hand, as was the custom of all braves — to show that he would stay rooted to the spot until death, or a friend, took him.
Buffalo Calf Road Woman tried to jump onto a horse, failed and fell back. She shouted something to me.
I lunged for her and cupped my hands. Her moccasined foot kicked my palms and she was riding onto the battlefield.
Shots rung all around her. She sped across the open ground, a trail of dust in her wake as from a steam train. I watched in horror as her brother stood, singing, one hand holding his dead horse’s bridle, with no fear that a shot might kill him before she reached him. He saw her thundering towards him, heard her cry out, and almost as she looked to ride right over him and crush him under her horse, he let go of the bridle, grabbed her arm and swung onto her horse, embracing her from behind.
The ground pinged up dirt all around them as bullets fell like angry rain. But none found them and she rode right off the field of battle with her brother, as every Indian hollered their triumph.
The wasichu call it The Battle of the Rosebud, but from that moment every Indian called it The Battle Where the Girl Saved Her Brother.
The fighting was not over. It continued for hours more, spread out over three miles, and did not cease till the afternoon sun began to make our shadows long again.
I watched with Little S
tar, appalled and delighted. It was like a dream lit by lightning, and at times I felt I was floating above the field of battle, watching it like an eagle. And I was also there among them, choking on the clouds of dust, the bullets dancing around my head. And I could see the shape of the battle as if I were drawing it in the sand at my feet with a stick, and yet I was the sand.
Hoka hey! How those braves rode their horses. Men hanging off the side of their mounts and shooting their rifles from under the horse’s neck, so the soldiers could not hit them.
They rode among the soldiers at the centre of the plain where the fighting was fiercest, knocking them from their horses, hunting them like buffalo, riding up close alongside them. I saw a blueshirt’s arm chopped off and carried away by a brave.
Yards from us, a conference of elders discussed the tactics of the battle, with Crazy Horse and his messengers frequently reporting to them. Little Star and I listened to the unfolding battle plans with fascination.
The braves would not give in. The longknives did not know the numbers they were up against and seemed surprised that we did not run away. Instead, our braves shifted this way and that, attacking from all directions at the same time. The blueshirts seemed astonished that we did not stay in a line, as was their custom in war, and simply shoot at them till we all ran out of bullets and those with the most bodies still able to stand would be declared the victors.
Late in the afternoon, we became aware that the chiefs had been plotting a great trap. Skirting the plain, embracing it like a giant protective arm, was a long ravine down which the river flowed. Crazy Horse had figured that the soldiers would send a force along the ravine to surround us, so he ordered that a trap be set at the end of the canyon, where it tapered to its narrowest point. A reserve force went off and chopped down many trees and piled them into the canyon to stop them escaping through that route.
A line of cavalry went up the ravine, we heard. Their absence on the plain swung the battle in our favour and we would have destroyed them all, but they turned back before they encountered the trap. When they rejoined the field, Crazy Horse signalled the retreat.