by Andy Conway
“This is an historic moment!” he railed. “The white man and the red man, united, will take our story — the story of American history — to the kings and queens and crown princes of Europe. To Queen Victoria herself!
“In just fourteen days’ time, we will cross the ocean and reach London, whereupon one of the greatest feats of showmanship the world has ever seen will commence!
“One hundred-and-twenty Americans! One hundred Native Americans!”
It was ninety-seven, but this was the least of his exaggerations.
“One hundred and eighty horses! Eighteen buffalo! Ten elk! Five Texan steers, four donkeys, and two deer in the greatest show the world has ever seen!”
We applauded politely.
“At this very moment, show manager Major John Burke has gone ahead and plastered all of London with posters, to the point that one London newspaper has written the following ditty.”
He laughed to himself, unfurling a newspaper.
“I may walk it, or bus it, or hansom it: still
“I am faced by the features of Buffalo Bill.
“Every hoarding is plastered, from East-end to West,
“With his hat, coat, and countenance, lovelocks and vest!”
He read it in a pompous English accent, and I dutifully translated along with Bronco Bill for the benefit of the Indians.
“After we dock at Gravesend, the British government has given express permission for our troupe to board three steam trains that will head immediately to the twenty-three-acre arena that will be our home for the season!”
I had heard Colonel Cody and Nate Salsbury cackling together, letting slip that even though there had been an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease, the British government had agreed to turn a blind eye to their own quarantine regulations.
Nothing could stop Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.
Not even the Prime Minister of Great Britain.
In two weeks we would be in London for Queen Victoria’s jubilee and a three-month stay, performing every day, sometimes twice a day — were there really enough people in London to fill the stadium that many times? — then on to the next biggest town in England: Birmingham.
Home?
Was it? Could it be that I’d find out who I was? Could it be that Bright Star Falling would find Katherine Bright?
Buffalo Bill finished his speech and we applauded, then all stood huddled on deck while a photographer took a picture to mark the occasion.
The ship left the harbour and pulled into the Hudson River.
Hudson. A dream word I’d scribbled in my note-book. Had I seen the river that would take me home?
Red Shirt came to my side and watched the throng waving to us from the shore, a brass band playing, tugboats all around us blaring out their sirens.
“I think once more of the first time I saw you,” he said. “By the banks of the White River, twelve winters ago.”
I was thinking of the same moment. The handsome young brave with the piercing eyes who’d crossed the river with the delegation.
“You were standing with the twin-soul,” he said.
“His name was Little Star. A great brave, who fell at the Battle of the Greasy Grass. I wear his white ghost still.” I clutched the amulet at my breast.
We neither of us mentioned our second meeting. Lodgepole. His party trailing us north as we fled for Canada. Sitting Bull showing his grandfather’s medals.
It occurred to me only now: the irony that it would be Red Shirt, not Sitting Bull, who would meet Grandmother England.
I thought of the morning after, when he’d come to talk to me and I’d looked him bravely in the face, as I did now, not averting my eyes. Watching him ride away and my heart breaking in two.
I knew now that my heart did not break for him, because I felt it breaking in two right this moment, and I was going with him.
My heart was breaking at leaving America.
As the ship eased out, and the great grey wash of sky and sea took us, I watched the ships pulling in, crammed with more whites to settle. The Hudson was crowded with ships, steamers and boats bringing more people from Europe. This was where the wasichus of the world flooded into this land, and they were going to spill out all over the continent. The Indians were in the way and needed to be swept aside. This was why every treaty the whites made was broken. They had promised the Black Hills to the Lakota forever, but every day those white senators saw this stream of people coming and knew that a promise to an Indian would not last the life of a mayfly.
Other chiefs had come here before. They had seen it all. They had known the whites were too many to fight.
We sailed under the giant hulk of the Liberty statue, holding her torch aloft, and everyone looked up in awe till their necks ached.
Long before they had turned their eyes from her, waving us on our way, I was gazing at the ocean and imagining what answers lay out there on the other side.
I saw myself suddenly as a stone skimmed across time’s river. But I did not know by which hand.
Acknowledgements
BRIGHT STAR FALLING is a work of fiction that weaves its way around historical fact, much of it disputed. But I have made great efforts to be as true to the facts of the Great Plains War as possible.
Several historical sources have been invaluable in giving me a vivid picture of Lakota life and of the intricacies of the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
The main sources I have used are as follows:
Nathaniel Philbrick’s The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull and the Battle of the Little Big Horn (2010).
Thomas Powers’ The Killing of Crazy Horse (2010).
Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (1991).
Bruce Brown’s Who Killed Custer? The Eye-witness Answer (2015).
Bill Smith’s fascinating and thorough YouTube video series The Little Bighorn Documentary (2010) and Little Bighorn Map Battle (2013) at the CusterApollo channel.
An amazing, diligent team of editors – Lorna Rose, David Wake, Jack Turner and Nicky Tate Tate – and my launch team – David Cline, Paul Gray, Marie McCraney, Brian Richards and Lee Sharp – who all made sure the book was a much more satisfying read, made sense and was free of errors, although I would stress that any remaining errors, especially historical errors, are all my own doing..
Historical Notes
LAKOTA. More commonly known as ‘Sioux’, although that is a pejorative term (meaning snakes) given to them by their enemies, the Ojibwe. “Who are those people you fight with?” asked the whites. “Oh, they’re the snakes,” said the Ojibwe. That we still hear these people called the ‘Sioux’ is rather like hearing a newsreader refer to the ‘Frog premier’ or the ‘Bosch chancellor’, I’ve always thought, but the name has stuck and might even be said to have been co-opted and re-appropriated by the Lakota.
The Lakota nation is formed of seven bands, or council fires: Hunkpapa, Oglala, Miniconjou, Sans Arc, Black Feet, Brule and Two Kettles. Each band is further split into several distinct groups, for instance the Oglala have thirteen recognized sub-groups, including the Wagluhe, who feature significantly in this story.
Winkte. There are numerous accounts of Native American winktes, or two-souled people, which describe variously gay and transvestite Indians. While some modern native commentators view them with suspicion, almost too ready to deny the existence of homosexuality in their culture, there are plenty of historical accounts that both mention the existence of the winkte and depict the place of the winkte in Indian culture as having a special status. I have leaned heavily on these in the depiction of Little Star.
There is also a fascinating account by Pretty Shield, the wife of Crow scout Goes Ahead (therefore an enemy of the Lakota, working with the US Army), who points to the Crow winkte who fought in the Rosebud battle. “Yes, a Crow woman fought... on the Rosebud... She looked like a man, and yet she wore woman’s clothing; and she had the heart of a woman. Besides, she did a woman’s wo
rk. Her name was Finds Them And Kills Them. She was not a man, and yet not a woman. She was not as strong as a man, and yet she was wiser than a woman ... Finds Them And Kills Them, afraid to have the Lakota find her dead with woman-clothing on her, changed them to a man’s before the fighting commenced, so that if killed the Lakota would not laugh at her, lying there with a woman’s clothes on her. She did not want the Lakota to believe that she was a Crow man hiding in a woman’s dress, you see.”
Little Star. This name is borrowed from the 1970 film Little Big Man and the character Little Horse; the most famous portrayal of a Native American winkte, or two-souled person. As I have been unable to trace any known historical records of Lakota winkte names, I chose to honour the actor who played Little Horse in the film: Robert Little Star.
Tate. Pronounced Tah-tay, a Lakota wind god.
Winyanpi. [New Lakota Dictionary Online.] Women.
Wakan. [New Lakota Dictionary Online.] Magic.
The rude names they give the children. It was a Lakota custom, on the birth of a child, to seek out a winkte and pay him handsomely to give the child a secret name, for good luck. It was a winkte custom to give the child the rudest name they could think of.
Hunkpapa. One of the seven bands that form the Lakota nation. Hunkpapa literally means ‘the head of the circle’ or ‘the camp at the end’. It was tradition for the Hunkpapa band to make their camp at the head of a council fire gathering. They were therefore the first to be attacked at the Little Bighorn when Major Reno’s forces opened fire on the camp.
Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ. According to Powers, this is a common Oglala saying: ‘We are all related’.
Sitting Bull. At this point in his life, the year 1874, Sitting Bull was 43 and no longer the young warrior of legend. He had become the wise old medicine man, tactician, politician and spiritual leader of his own band, the Hunkpapa, and had also been elected as war leader of the entire Lakota nation at a ceremony several years earlier.
Tiyáta. [New Lakota Dictionary Online] home.
Wówaši. [New Lakota Dictionary Online] work, job, labor; duty.
Arikara. A tribe of Native Americans in North Dakota, also known as Sahnish, Arikaree or Ree. The meaning of the name is disputed, with ‘horns’, “elk people’ and ‘corn eaters’ as variants. At this point in history they were employed as some of the most faithful and effective Indian scouts for the US Army in the Plains War.
Wagluhe. One of the many sub-groups of the Oglala, and the first to assimilate with white settlers. Their name means ‘Loafer’ and they were also contemptuously referred to as the ‘Hangs Around the Fort’ band.
The Red Cloud reservation was established for the Oglala Lakota in 1871 on the North Platte River in Wyoming Territory. In 1873 it was moved to the northwestern corner of Nebraska, near the present town of Crawford. The agency was moved yet again to the White River in October 1877, and finally in 1878, the Red Cloud Agency was relocated to southern South Dakota and renamed the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
George Armstrong Custer. Also known by his nicknames Long Hair and Son of the Morning Star. When he appears in my story, Colonel Custer is 34 years of age and engaged in his fateful expedition to the Black Hills, which created the Gold Rush and led to his death at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Crazy Horse. Oglala chief and warrior. At this point in the story he, like Custer, is 34 and the undisputed war leader of the Lakota. His name, Thashunke Witko, literally means ‘His Horse Is Crazy’, but the word witko, as Powers points out, is ‘as rich with meaning as the English word “swoon.” It might be variously translated as “head in a whirl,” delirious, thinking in all directions at once, possessed by a vision, in a trance’.
Surrounded by the Enemy. This is a fictional character, whose name is chosen purely for its symbolic properties. Surrounded should not be confused with a native by the same name who was a member of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West tour to Europe and died from a lung infection at the age of 22 on the third stage of the British tour, in Salford.
Young Man Afraid of His Horses. [Thashunke Khokiphapi] whose name is more accurately translated as They Fear Even His Horses, was a chief of the Hunkpatila band of Oglalas until the great split over the creation of the Great Sioux Reservation, from whence they became known as the Payabya band.
Kangi Yuha. This account of the Crow Owners Society and Crazy Horse’s failure to keep to their solemn oaths is entirely based on the testament of He Dog, his lifelong brother in arms and frequent interpreter.
Cattle make you bald. This argument is a summation of that first posited by the Sans Arc chief, High Bear, who when he first encountered the ‘spotted buffalo’ that the white men ate, was so disgusted by their smell that he could only surmise that this was what caused the baldness of the white men he encountered. (from Richard Nines, Notes on the Dakota Indians, Pine Ridge, South Dakota, American Museum of Natural History).
Spotted buffalo. This story about the smell of cows was told by Ota Kte (Kills Plenty), son of Standing Bear, but as he was only a ten-year-old at the time of this chapter, I have given his words to Gall.
Wágli. [New Lakota Dictionary Online.] Coming back successfully from a hunt, bringing game or meat from a hunt.
Gall, or Phizí (Lakota for gall bladder), was a famous Hunkpapa battle leader, now considered one of the key commanders in the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Black Elk. This is Black Elk senior, and not the more famous son of the same name. The younger Black Elk was only a boy of ten years at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, but was a Show Indian in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West tour to Britain in 1887.
Red Shirt (Ógle Lúta) was an Oglala leader and statesman, from the Wagluhe band (or ‘Loafers’). He came to prominence on the European leg of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West tour, where he was billed, erroneously, as the ‘Chief of the Sioux nation’, and impressed Queen Victoria greatly. There is no evidence that he was part of this delegation led by They Fear Even His Horses. I’ve put him there entirely to suit my fictional narrative.
Buffalo Calf Road Woman (Cheyenne). Not to be confused with the mythical figure White Buffalo Calf Woman, Buffalo Calf Road Woman was the sister of Chief Comes in Sight and famously rescued him when he was wounded in the Battle of the Rosebud. Such was her feat of bravery, the battle was called by the Cheyenne The Battle Where the Girl Saved Her Brother. She also fought alongside him at the Little Bighorn. In 2005, Cheyenne storytellers broke more than 100 years of silence about the battle, crediting Buffalo Calf Road Woman with killing Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
The horse thief. This account of a Crow horse thief killed at Hanging Woman Creek in January, 1876 is from the detailed account in chapter 10 of Powers, the sources for which include The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk’s Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt by Raymond J. DeMallie (Bison Books, 1985), and A Pictographic History of the Oglala Sioux, by Amos Bad Heart Bull and Helen H. Blish (University of Nebraska Press, 1968). “The killing of any enemy justifies four coups — one for the killer, the others for those who strike the body. Crow Nose had called for his son-in-law to count first coup on the Crow, and others followed. Soon the whole village was striking the dead man’s body with sticks and leaving them in a pile on the ground. A fire was built; people began a kill dance right there and kept it up for the rest of the night.”
Ladybird vision. This is, of course, a flashback to Katherine as a young girl buying a remarkable book in the Ladybird children’s history series: Battle of the Little Big Horn: Custer’s Last Stand (General Interest, Series 707) by Frank Humphris (Ladybird Books Ltd, 1976). The book is remarkable because it departs from the Hollywood version of the Battle of Little Bighorn and presents an admirably progressive view of Lakota culture and their fight for survival. I bought it with my pocket money in 1976 and never played Custer in our street battle re-enactments again.
The Battle of the Powder River. An unprovoked attack on a Cheyenne Indian encampment by Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, March 17t
h, 1876, in Montana Territory, United States. The attack is thought to be the first shot in the Black Hills War of 1876.
Monahsetah. Often described as a ‘Cheyenne princess’, she was the daughter of the Cheyenne chief Little Rock. When Custer attacked a Cheyenne camp at the Washita River in 1868, her father was killed and she was taken captive. There are many accounts that testify to Custer having a sexual relationship with the captured 17-year-old princess: Captain Frederick Benteen, chief of scouts Ben Clark, and Cheyenne oral history all attest to this. See also Princess Monahsetah: The Concealed Wife of Custer, by Gail Kelly-Custer (Trafford Publishing, 2008). Monahsetah gave birth to a child, allegedly Custer’s, in late 1869. Some historians dispute this, pointing to Custer having become sterile after contracting venereal disease, and there is much speculation that Monahsetah’s son was sired by Custer’s brother Thomas, also killed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
White Cow Bull. Joseph White Cow Bull, an Oglala Sioux warrior aged 28 in 1876, joins our story at three points: 1, his unrequited love for and courting of Monahsetah, 2, his defending of the ford when troops under George A. Custer charged down Medicine Tail Coulee to attack the Indian village, and 3, his witnessing of Monahsetah next to Custer’s dead body. He is also one of the claimants to the killing of Custer (see Bruce Brown). He was interviewed by David Humphreys Miller in 1937, giving a detailed account of the Little Bighorn battle. He died in 1942, aged 94.
The coming storm. Sitting Bull’s first vision on the butte and his second during the famed sun dance of 1876 were related by his nephew One Bull to Walter Campbell in 1930. I have followed details as related in Powers, who references the accounts in Sitting Bull: Champion of the Sioux by Stanley Vestal (University of Oklahoma Press, 1989) and The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull by Robert M. Utley (Henry Holt & Company Inc, 1993).
The Battle where the Girl Saved Her Brother. More commonly known as The Battle of the Rosebud, this battle took place on June 17th, 1876, one week before the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The Cheyenne called it the Battle Where the Girl Saved Her Brother due to the bravery of Buffalo Calf Road Woman.