by Andy Conway
This was the path Custer had taken earlier, riding his forces down the coulee till they came out at the ford, where I’d seen them emerge.
The camp was not as quiet as it had been that moment. There was singing, many celebrating our great victory, but wailing too, others mourning their dead.
A violent hunger growled in my belly and a wave of fatigue swept through me. I had been in battle since the morning. I jumped from my pony and fell into the cool river, scooping up black water, drinking deeply.
All at once, the throbbing in my head and the ringing in my ears cleared, as if the precious water had revived me like it revives a plant you thought had died.
I led my pony and trudged through the camp, to which all the women and children and elders had returned, past great bonfires being lit, kettles cooking fragrant stew, and, swooning with exhaustion, I stumbled into my tipi, barely glancing at Little Star’s body on the travois, still staring at the sky and the stars that were coming out.
The cursed
I MUST HAVE SLEPT NO more than a few hours. It was the sound of drumming and singing that woke me, and the ravenous groan of hunger.
I shoved a few boxes of cartridges into my pouch and stepped out. Trying not to look at Little Star, I walked through the camp. Deep night had fallen and the camp was lit by firelight. Victory dances all around and the shrill mourning chant of the women, loss and celebration all mingled in the night air.
“Bright Star Falling!” a voice called.
A figure ran from the nearest bonfire gathering, silhouetted against the livid orange flames.
“Bright Star Falling! Your wakan is mighty!”
It was Surrounded. He held up the medicine bundle that hung around his neck.
“Your bees protected me during the battle. I counted six coups and received not a single scratch from the guns of the wasichus.”
He hugged me and kissed both cheeks, not as the husband he had longed to be, but as a fellow warrior.
“Is the battle over?” I asked, wanting to grab my rifle and run back to it.
“They are still trapped on the hill,” he laughed. “Our braves still surround them, keeping them awake. We will attack again in the night. Soon. But eat now.”
I smiled as he pulled me towards the fire where braves and women sang and ate. It must have been the first smile to crack my face in a long time, because I felt its ache in my jaw.
“Your face is white again,” said one of the braves there.
I wiped my hand across my cheek. I had washed Little Star’s blood from my face when I had fallen into the river to drink.
Did this mean the battle was over for me? Had Little Star’s blood protected me from their bullets, like my dead bees had protected Surrounded? Was there no more wakan to guard me from these soldiers? My vision had spoken only of that part of the battle that had already finished: Custer’s battle on the hill. Perhaps this other battle, which refused to end so quickly, was a battle from which I might not walk free.
But I would face it. I would stay till not a single blueshirt was alive on that hill. Only then could I be sure I had avenged Little Star.
The stew tasted divine and I cleaned the bowl that was into my hands, burning my tongue and throat. Gazing into the flames, I saw a mouth grinning at me and dropped the bowl, crying out. I thought I must be seeing another vision. The laughter of the others made it clear what was sitting in the fire pit.
A pair of skulls.
“They rode into the camp this morning,” cackled one of the old women. “They were the first to die.”
“Their bodies are in the river.”
“They are stumbling around the Spirit Land, looking for their heads!”
I laughed with them. They had come to kill us. They deserved their fate.
“They desecrated a Lakota grave,” said Surrounded. “Our scouts watched them, days before they arrived here. For this, the spirits delivered this victory to us.”
“It was Long Hair,” I said. “I saw him dead.”
Those around the fire argued over this, and most did not believe me, but I knew he was lying on top of that hill across the river, surrounded by dead, naked soldiers.
“We too have offended the spirits,” said an old woman.
A few laughed at her, but Surrounded looked grim, nodding, staring into the flames.
“Sitting Bull is angry. The spirits gave us this victory but told us to leave the soldiers with their belongings. Because we took everything from their dead soldiers, the wasichus will take everything from us. We shall forever starve on the white man’s doorstep. This has been told.”
They laughed still, some even joking about the plunder they had taken, but I knew it to be true. The things I had taken from my German soldier weighed heavily in my pouch.
“It is a great victory,” I said. “But it is our last stand.”
Several of those round the fire jeered. “Shut up!” said a young brave.
I left them there. If it was the last stand, I might as well fight instead of sit and argue with the cursed.
A warning in water
I RODE OUT OF THE CAMP, crossed the ford, up the deathly still Medicine Tail Coulee, passing only a few shadowy figures along the way, my black pony hurtling through the night. Five miles up the river, hundreds of Indians were still encamped around the hill fort where the remnants of the cavalry were dug in.
It was quiet, and I would happily have charged my horse over that ridge and down the slope and up to their hill fort to throw myself at the mercy of the spirits, if I still believed in my own wakan. But the dead German soldier’s notebook bumped against my ribs in my pouch and I knew the spirits had deserted me.
I didn’t care. Before the wasichus realized they had won the war, I could fight on this night and take as many of them with me as possible.
As if my anger had infected the others around me, rifle fire the shattered the night peace as we began shooting at them again.
Their bugles sounded and all the blueshirts on the hill stirred to action, rushing to their barricades and trenches.
Let them not sleep, I thought. Let them not sleep another moment till they were all despatched to the longest sleep of all.
I lay on the ridge and fired down into the darkness.
Across the black plain to my left, I saw a wave of men on horseback approaching their hill. Soldiers emerging from the blackness.
“But how?” I cried.
A great cheer went up around the hill of blueshirts. They were being rescued!
The line of cavalry trudged towards the lowest rise of the hill and the cheering mass of blueshirts. Some threw their hats into the air.
I looked around in panic. Why were we not killing them, all?
The braves around me only smiled.
The cavalry suddenly held up their rifles and shot at their comrades.
A great volley of gunfire echoed all around the valley. These were not their own come to the rescue, but our braves, wearing the blue shirts of the ones we’d killed.
The trick did not work. We did not storm the hill and rout them. Our cavalry of Indians in dead men’s shirts retreated. Laughter all around. They hadn’t intended to storm them and end the battle. It had been enough to raise the spectre of hope, and then cruelly batter its brains out.
We raised our rifles and shot at them for what seemed like hours, and the sun rose to an unending roar of gunfire.
Down to my right, warriors crawled up the ravine from the river, and these too almost overran them, close enough now to throw earth at them, singing war songs.
Surely now it was only a matter of moments before we swarmed them, like we had with Custer?
But the soldiers jumped over their barricades and charged over and down the ravine, scattering all the braves down there.
These were not as easy to wipe out as Custer’s men. He had lasted only a half hour on his hill, but these men had kept the same force of warriors at bay for twelve hours now, and the hours lengthened,
with sporadic bouts of gunfire and then peace, as a new day dawned and the heat rose.
I caught a flash of a soldier ducking down the ravine towards the river. His head bobbed into sight but not for long enough to shoot a hole through it. Another did the same.
Were they, even now, trying to attack the village, as they had yesterday morning?
No.
Water.
They were fetching water.
I began a long, slow climb down to the river, trying to find a vantage point where I could see them, but they were screened by bush, rock, and tinder. Then the hill fell away in a great cliff face and I had to scout north and find a gentler slope to the riverbank.
Our scouts patrolled the banks, making sure no soldiers came again for the village. I crossed the river, skirting the bodies of dead soldiers tangled up in reeds.
I had gone a mile or more in a great arc till I could push through the tinder and get a sight of the soldiers scooting down the ravine to fill up their canteens. The thirst was driving them to desperation. Surrounded on that exposed hill for a whole day, they would risk their lives for a mouthful of precious water.
I waited in silence till one of them ran to the bank in a crouch. I raised my rifle and shot. He jumped back behind a rock. A bullet zinged by my ear and splintered the cottonwood tree that guarded me.
I peeped out and shot again. He would get no more water while I was alive.
I saw him peering over the rock at me.
“Come down here!” I shouted in English. “Come on, you son of a bitch! I’ll cut your heart out and drink your blood!”
I don’t know where the words came from. Perhaps from my black heart that had died along with Little Star. But I really do think I would have cut his heart out and drank his blood.
He called back, but with no words, just the bleating of a sheep.
Perhaps they’d all gone crazy up there.
Rocks skittered in the gulley and I knew he was running back up to the hill. Crouching and ducking, I scooted out in to the open and crossed the river. I would chase him, right back up that hill and shoot him dead before he got to the top.
It was slow going up the ravine. As I climbed, I became aware of the calls and whistles of braves on both sides of the gulley signalling to each other. The hill was alive with warriors creeping back up the slopes to attack.
Jumping over a rock to the side, I came upon a band of startled Miniconjou who jerked their rifles toward me but held their fire when they saw I was one of them. None seemed surprised to see a white woman dressed as an Indian brave. Perhaps they had seen me already, either in the camp or fighting alongside them.
No one talked. We conversed in sign language and agreed to continue creeping up the hill by slow degrees.
It was hot. The sun was high in the sky, after noon, and I began to wish I could go back to the river for some of that precious water.
And then the guns began again.
We ran up the hill and I became aware of braves all around me, all of us rushing up, till the rocks sang with bullets raining on us, but we did not cower. We stood and fired and every Indian that surrounded them, perhaps as many as two thousand braves, fired on the soldiers as if determined to use up every bullet we possessed. There could not have been a pocket of space in the air for a bird to fly.
An hour later, my ears ringing, I was aware of the gunfire fading. Looking to my side I saw that men were falling back, retreating down the slopes.
“Where are you going?” I cried.
“We’re leaving,” shouted a brave.
“We haven’t finished!”
“The chiefs have met. The criers have announced. The camp is disbanding.”
“No!” I screamed. “We have to kill them! Kill them all!”
They shook their heads and left me. It was now a stream of men falling from the hill.
I stood in plain sight and fired up at the hilltop, emptying my rifle till it could only mock me with an empty click.
“Stop!” someone called. “The order has been given. We go!”
I fell to my knees, tears falling from my face, and my feet were suddenly rushing down the hillside along with everyone else’s.
Shots still echoed up on the hill but, by the time I got down to the river, there was no more gunfire, just the steady trudge of braves streaming back to the camp.
The great fire
I FOLLOWED THE ROUTE I’d taken yesterday, when that first wave of blueshirts had attacked the Hunkpapa camp.
Here was where we had chased the soldiers through the timber.
Here was where I’d killed my first man.
Here was where Gall’s wives and children had been slaughtered.
Here was where I’d stood frozen as the soldiers had galloped towards me.
Here was where Little Star had fallen.
As I came into the camp, it was a frenzy of activity, tipis being taken down, horsed packed, families gathering their possessions, criers shouting out instructions.
From the snatches of calls I could piece together, it was clear that a large force of soldiers was approaching from the north. It was no longer possible to continue the battle. It was best to strike the camp and all move off together.
I struck my tipi as quickly as I could, packed my few possessions and hitched it to the three horses I now owned, pulling the travois that carried Little Star.
I would not leave him here to be butchered by soldiers. I would give him a proper burial tomorrow, far away from here. Many others had vowed to do the same with their own dead.
A large part of the camp was already abandoned, with nothing but the debris that every camp left behind: kettles, tipi poles, rubbish, even a few lonely tipis still standing, their owners, whoever they had been, obviously dead.
I joined the stream of life that was pouring out of the camp, a giant river of humanity rolling alongside the Little Bighorn, in the opposite direction. As we rode across the flatland I saw that our nation was half a mile wide and almost three miles long.
The sun was sinking through the clouds of smoke and dust, and I glanced back at a thin sound crackling from across the river.
The soldiers on the hill were cheering.
I wanted to run back and shoot them, even if I was the only Indian on the plains to fight them I would die happily. But they had held out and fought hard, and a part of me respected them for that. If anyone told the story of Custer’s death, then surely this was the real last stand. Those men on that hill had fought for a night and a day. The braves who’d wiped out Custer’s men in the time it takes a hungry man to eat his dinner, couldn’t defeat them.
So I rode on, dragging Little Star behind me on the travois. The women keened their death chants and I joined in, singing my song of mourning for my sister, and for the death of us all.
As we pulled away, a rearguard of braves set fire to the grass behind us. It had obviously been agreed by the camp elders that this would create a great smoke screen, and would deny the soldiers’ horses anything to feed on when they gave chase.
That great army coming from the north would find their dead Custer and then come looking for us.
The cavalry would come in greater numbers than ever before, wanting revenge, and there would be no more hiding place for the Indian nations.
I looked back at the valley one last time but there was nothing to see but a great wall of fire and smoke that touched the sky, the smoke taking the souls of our dead to the thunder beings.
We rode on, singing our death songs, heading for the Bighorn Mountains.
It was clear now, and almost everyone knew it.
This had been our last stand.
The white ghost
BIGHORN MOUNTAINS, JUNE 28TH, 1876. We rode for a day till we came to the foot of the Bighorn mountains and there we stopped to bury our dead.
Many erected scaffolds for dead warriors, some placed the dead in the branches of nearby trees, some, I noticed, chose to bury their fallen under rocks. We were m
any bands, with different customs, united by grief.
For many hours, we stayed and sang our songs of mourning and did not care if the soldiers caught us.
I took Little Star’s body from the travois, still wondering if he might blink, look around him, smile and ask what had happened since he’d fallen asleep. But he would wake no more.
His eyes gazed at the sky and I tried to close them but they stayed open, a grey film clouding them.
Death had taken him, as it takes all living things.
But Death had taken him to a better world. A world where there was no more pain, where blueshirts came only to be killed in battle and never to kill. In the Spirit Land, he would already be respected as a great warrior, and The Men who are Talked About would come worship at his feet and admire his good looks and great feats of bravery.
I took the travois poles and built him a scaffold to encourage his journey into the sky.
He would go to the Spirit Land like a warrior.
He wore the dress in which he’d set out to battle, but I changed into my own dress and gave him back his man’s clothes, so he might go to the Spirit Land as both a man and a woman. Then I wrapped his best blanket tight around him so he might never feel the cold.
Unable to lift him onto the scaffold on my own, I went looking for Surrounded, and he was happy to come to my aid, fussing around me and puffing out his chest in that way White Cow Bull did around Monahsetah — a man helping a woman and thinking it meant she was his wife. I brushed aside his manner, keening and crying my death song, till he wandered off and left me alone to my grief.
I noticed him go help another grieving woman, Red Flea, whose husband was dead. I could see, even through my tears, that she was flashing him sad eyes to lure him, to claim a new husband, and shooting a poisonous glance at me, thinking I was her rival. She could have him. I wanted no man.
I placed Little Star’s best moccasins on the scaffold beside him, along with his knife, his pipe, his medicine bundle, and every other thing he possessed.