Stone Song

by Win Blevins

  “We have a daughter,” she said.

  He took the warm little bundle from her. “Hau!” he said softly. “She will be a great mother of the people.”

  Black Shawl started building up the fire. She knew he was a little disappointed. Every man wanted a son to teach the ways of a warrior, this man especially. But this man had a big spirit—he didn’t know how big—and would love his daughter hugely.

  The flames were bright now. He brought the bundle close to the fire. Black Shawl watched his eyes devouring the tiny face of his daughter. She was profoundly satisfied.

  He handed her back to Black Shawl and walked on his knees toward Grandmother Plum’s robes. After a moment her face materialized out of the darkness. His hand was under her arm. She put her ancient face above the face in the bundle—or did he move her there? The two faces mirrored each other, both wrinkled, both wizened, both looking timeless and wise and ignorant and implacable and blank as rock. Both unseeing, probably. Both silent, inarticulate. Great-grandmother and great-granddaughter.

  Black Shawl was sure she saw a gleam of understanding in Plum’s eye. Well, almost sure.

  He held the old woman. His wife squatted close with the child, her knee against his. They were all together.

  His eyes went from Black Shawl to Grandmother Plum to the child and back, over and over. Finally, he said, “When this child is grown, everyone will stand in wonder at her sacred ways. We will call her by the name They-Are-Afraid-of-Her.”

  Suddenly Plum raised a hand, stuck out a finger, touched the infant cheek.

  Suddenly Crazy Horse heard it. Or did he? Black Shawl swiveled her head toward his immediately. Yes, he heard it.

  Grandmother Plum was humming. Humming an old, old lullaby to the child. He and Black Shawl grinned at each other.

  He let his mind sink into the rocking, wavelike motion of the music. Yes, an old lullaby.

  He laughed silently. It bubbled out of him, soundless as a spring.

  He put one arm around his grandmother and the other around his wife and child.

  The music rocked them gently.

  When they were all asleep, he slipped out. He told himself he wanted to see Morning Star, the one that promises more light to those who desire it, and to offer a prayer of thanksgiving for his new daughter.

  He gave all his attention to Morning Star, sending the words across the dark sky, “My relative.” He did say a prayer of thanksgiving, silently, not wanting to disturb something in himself.

  Then he knew why he wanted to be peaceful, undisturbed. Hawk was stirring inside him. Perhaps not fully alive, but awakening.

  He just sat and noticed Hawk. There, always there. There forever.

  The feeling gushed up in him: Thank you, my daughter.

  PAHA SAPA

  In early summer of the Winter Many Pani Were Killed, the wild Titunwan Lakota gathered for a great council at Bear Butte. The people seldom came together for a big talk. Crazy Horse remembered the last one, sixteen winters earlier, after the Wasp, Harney, hit Little Thunder’s village on the Blue Water and killed women and children.

  Then Crazy Horse had been a youth, and in a private way that council had been one of the turning points of life. When he had seen that the people needed whatever power he had to give, he’d told his father his vision. That was how he had started discovering his powers.

  Now he was a leader. True, he’d been disgraced by the Big Bellies. But they were mostly at the agencies now, and the young men were following Crazy Horse, they and all the families that wanted to stay out and live the old way. He was a leader by default. By choice, however, and according to his custom, he would not speak in council.

  How different things were now. He stopped his pony and looked across the valley at Bear Butte. It never changed. The sacred mountain of the people, the peak most chosen for seeking visions, that would never change. Only Inyan endures.

  The people in the camp were different, though. He was different. He looked sideways at his wife and pictured grandmother and child on the pony drag behind. Yes, he was different, a man with a family.

  The biggest difference in the Lakota was simply numbers. Sixteen winters ago he had seen the lodges stretching in every direction and felt certain that the Lakota would whip the whites if they only stuck together.

  Today his band was the last to come in, and he saw maybe one lodge for every ten back then.

  Much else had changed for the worse. Fifteen or twenty winters ago the buffalo seemed few sometimes, but all the Lakota lived where they wanted, following the herds. Now most of them lived on agencies. That was the real result of the war they’d fought for Shifting Sands River country and the peace paper signed by Red Cloud, who was no chief at all, and Spotted Tail, who was the whites’ creature. But even Man-Whose-Enemies-Are-Afraid-of-His-Horses, head of Crazy Horse’s band and a man respected by everyone, had signed the peace paper. And now his son, Young Man-Whose-Enemies, was a peace chief.

  However it had happened, only a few Oglala and Sicangu still roamed free, plus some of the Muddy Water River people, like Sitting Bull’s, come west. They lived near their Oglala relatives now because the buffalo were completely gone from the land of the Muddy Water River.

  Crazy Horse remembered the song.

  In the half of the sky

  where the sun lives

  clouds are gathering.

  In the half of the sky

  where the sun lives

  dark clouds are gathering.

  In the half of the sky

  where the sun lives

  dark clouds are gathering,

  and white people storm upon us.

  He resisted looking at his family. He wondered whether he would be able to feed them this winter. He was one of the most admired hunters and warriors of his people. He should have abundance, so that he could help the poor of his people. If the most able wondered about feeding their families, what was it like for others?

  White people storm upon us.

  He told himself for the thousandth time to spend his life on matters of the spirit, living forth the power of his medicine in war, listening for whatever Inyan might say, following the guidance of Hawk. Then Maka, Earth, and the Powers would take care of him.

  That was getting hard to believe. He thought maybe something was changing, something fundamental and permanent. He thought of the four ages of life on this earth, which are also the four ages of the life of a single man—rock, bow, fire, and canupa. He remembered the buffalo that stands at the west, holding back the waters that will flood the world and end this age of mortal life on earth. Even when he was a youth, the grandfathers of the tribe had taught that the buffalo was almost bald now and stood on only one leg, holding back the waters of the final destruction. He wondered.

  Often now he sat alone and sang to Inyan. Often he sweated for half a night, preparing himself for communication. Sometimes he sought a vision again, enacted the great rite hanbleceyapi, asking the Powers to give him insight.

  Nothing yet from Inyan except the pulse of the earth. Horn Chips had told Crazy Horse that they seldom talked, only when a man was ready, perhaps beyond his warring years. Crazy Horse felt that he would never be beyond those years. When he was fighting, he felt himself, and he felt Hawk with him. Maybe the beat of the earth was the single wisdom of Inyan. Yet he needed their wisdom. He didn’t see how he or his family or his people could live much longer.

  In council at this place, at least, no one spoke aloud for moving to the agencies. Little Big Man said they had gone in to see how the agency people were doing and maybe get some food for themselves. The good part was that the agent gave out rations every five days. The bad part was not just the dependence—the flour was wormy and the salt pork moldy, unfit for anyone but white people to eat.

  Worse, there was never enough to go around. Each chief competed with the others to act most like a white’s lackey, so his people would get the most food. The people knew that everyone was stealing their rations
, not only the agents but the freighters and the first sellers and every other handler along the way. Some of the whites said that if you could get to be an Indian agent for four or five winters, you could make yourself rich.

  So everyone had the same thought: Out here we go hungry sometimes. There we would beg, humiliate ourselves, get robbed, and then starve.

  Now the leading men fell into disagreement. Some said the buffalo had disappeared because they were killed or driven off by the white men. Others said the people had abandoned the power that brought the buffalo to them. “If we go back to doing as White Buffalo Cow Woman taught us,” some said, “the buffalo will come back.”

  Crazy Horse didn’t know who was right. He agreed with the man who said, “We cannot know everything or control everything. Let us do what is right, stay on the side of the spirits, and see what happens.”

  Drum-on-His-Back told a story that was funny and poignant and bitter all at once. The newspapers he read were always talking about the white people’s great man, Abraham Lincoln. The people had heard of this man. The whites were so foolish they split in half and killed each other by the thousands for four winters, a-i-i-i, split worse than any Indians ever were. At the end they killed their own leader, this Lincoln. Well, one of the newspapers said that Lincoln had defined an Indian reservation as “where Indians live surrounded by thieves.”

  Everybody laughed at that.

  That evening Crazy Horse smoked his short canupa in front of his lodge with Little Big Man. Crazy Horse liked to be with this Bad Face, who was impetuous and lively and reckless and passionate, all like his brother, whose name Crazy Horse would never speak again. In the relaxation of friendship, Crazy Horse often said what he didn’t want to say in council. When the younger warrior spoke in council, people knew that he was often giving voice to the thoughts of their Strange Man.

  “It’s not just that we’re hungry either way, here in our hunting grounds or there at the agency,” said Crazy Horse. “It’s not even mostly the whiskey. Here we’re alive. There they’re dead. Here we will remember our power, and it will be enough or not. Here we’ll struggle, and we’ll thrive or not. We will feel pain, and happiness, too, and we’ll live or not.”

  He puffed and watched the smoke rise toward the sky. “There they are living death, not just death from whiskey or boredom or sitting around. Spiritual death. They die from losing connections to the spirits.” He actually raised his voice a little. “Worse than dead—numb.”

  The cold moons were another hungry time, for the wild tribes and the agency bands. Part of the whites’ story was that the freighters couldn’t get their wagons through to the agencies from the railroad—the snow was too deep. “Funny,” said the Lakota, “they’re getting wagons through to the Montana gold camps. Maybe they just need a good reason.”

  Red Cloud got so angry about it that he was muttering about another big Lakota war when the grass turned green. Some of his warriors said, “Hoye!” Others said he was just bargaining, using the threat to negotiate more rewards for his band. The only way he could be a big man now, they said, was by outmaneuvering Young Man-Whose-Enemies, Spotted Tail, and the other peace chiefs for a bigger share of the scraps the white man threw out.

  The people of Crazy Horse—everyone now called that village Crazy Horse’s band—were hungry, like everyone else. Something worse was worrying the Strange Man. They-Are-Afraid-of-Her had the coughing sickness. Sometimes she seemed all right, but sometimes she coughed all night in her robes and seemed weak and pale. Watching her cough gave him still, silent, black rages.

  One night in the dead of winter, a Mniconjou climbed the wall at the White Earth River agency and killed the agent’s nephew. No one knew what was between them, but the peace chiefs saw this would mean big trouble. Sure enough, the whites used it as an excuse to do what they had promised never to do—send soldiers to the agency.

  When they heard the news, Crazy Horse, He Dog, and Little Big Man just sucked on their canupa regretfully. Now soldiers were stationed right at the foot of Paha Sapa. Those hills were the first hunting grounds of the people and where many, many Lakota went to see beyond and to raise their dead on scaffolds.

  Worse, this had divided the people again. United, the agency warriors could have driven the soldiers off. Instead the peace Indians and wild Indians fought each other, and the wild bands ran back to the northern hunting grounds.

  Now the soldiers were in the middle of Lakota country. Once they got there, or anywhere, when had they ever left?

  Crazy Horse rode out alone to Medicine Lake, where the leaders of his people had often received visions. He purified himself in the sweat lodge. He fasted and thirsted and cried to see beyond.

  Drum-on-His-Back had told Crazy Horse a funny story about the whites and the powers. They were always talking the One Big Spirit, and you never knew exactly what they meant. They had a strange attitude about this Spirit—they thought they knew all about Him, and no one else knew anything. As if no man who wasn’t white had ever put himself in harmony with Power and lived from the center of that harmony. Anyway, the whites prayed to this Spirit to be on their side. If they had a fight, for instance, they would pray to the Spirit to help them win, to align Himself with them.

  Drum-on-His-Back and Crazy Horse had never heard anything like it. Instead of putting themselves on the side of the great powers, the whites asked the powers to be on their side. Odd people, you could never understand them.

  Crazy Horse listened to the beat of life upon the earth. He watched the doings of all his relatives, from the rooted and four-legged people to the star people. He sat at the center of the circle of the universe and felt its power within himself. And at the end of three days, he saw nothing new. Yes, he must act as a human being should act. Yes, the people must walk the good, red road, letting Power flow through them. No, it would not save any lives.

  When the warm wind came and took the snow off the plains, word came from the Muddy Water River agencies that Custer, the yellow-haired killer of women and children at the Washita, was coming to the sacred Paha Sapa. He was coming with a thousand soldiers, big wagons like travelers used on the Holy Road, and plenty of wagon guns.

  Little Big Man told Crazy Horse this story in a tone of outrage. “They call us friendlies and hostiles,” he said, “the Lakota who live at the agencies and the ones who follow the old way. Now maybe they will find out that we are all hostiles.”

  Crazy Horse smiled a bitter smile, thinking maybe for once his fiery young friend was right. Even the agency chiefs …

  At a big council of the headmen of the wild camps, the whole story came out. It seemed that the whites were hungry, too, back in all their towns. They needed money, lots of money. So Custer was going to look for gold in Paha Sapa and tell everyone, and then the whites would come to the Lakota and beg to buy the Hills. The peace paper said that Paha Sapa belonged to the Lakota as long as the grass grew and water flowed. Or until three out of every four grown Lakota men signed a selling paper.

  “Even the cowards on the agencies won’t give them three out of four,” said He Dog.

  “So they will steal what they want,” said Little Big Man. Then, with a sardonic laugh, “Or they will kill the three and let the fourth sign.”

  The Strange Man sat quiet and let his friend speak for him.

  Could they keep Custer out?

  The headmen shook their heads. Everyone was willing, but the men had only one or two shells each. Every soldier would be carrying dozens of shells, with more in the wagons, plus the wagon guns. Against that many bullets you needed more than a big heart.

  Maybe they could get enough shells from their relatives at the agencies, they said. Maybe the agency warriors would come to fight against this killer of women and children. Maybe even Red Cloud would stop maneuvering for more pay and say no.

  No one knew. Right now they could do nothing against Custer.

  The wolves had a worse story to tell. Ahead of Custer lots of white men with
pans and shovels were already on the way. Hundreds of them, in small groups, moving fast and going wherever they wanted, not caring a bit that the land was promised to the Lakota.

  These miners were the real problem, everyone knew. What did it matter if the Lakota refused to sell the Hills and the white government relented? If thousands of miners streamed in, what could you do? A man can’t catch every drop of rain in a cup. Soon the miners would be cutting big holes in the ground and the deer and elk would be gone from the Hills. Someone said a man seeking a vision would have to find a place to stand among the white people’s droppings.

  The two friends laughed with their eyes and bit their tongues. Crazy Horse jerked his head sideways, and they left the council. When friends understand each other, they don’t have to say much. Little Big Man could have said the words for Crazy Horse: “This council isn’t going to lead to anything. Councils usually don’t. Besides, a warrior does not sit and calculate the odds, or figure how to make a show and dishearten the enemy. A warrior fights. That is his honor.”

  What Crazy Horse actually said was, “Let’s go discourage some miners.”

  In the Moon When All Things Ripen, messengers came from the white men or from Red Cloud, which some of the people said was the same thing.

  Some of the young Mniconjou went out to meet the messengers ahead of Crazy Horse, and he heard them egging each other on. “Let’s count coup on them,” one young man said, and two or three yelled, “Hoye!”

  “Lash them with bowstrings,” said someone, and Crazy Horse hurried to the front. Some wild young Lakota had deliberately insulted some Sahiyela leaders by acting like this, treating them like enemies.

  Crazy Horse was glad to see Big Road and Touch-the-Sky hurrying out, too. His uncle Touch-the-Sky had brought his Mniconjou to the Crazy Horse camp recently, wanting to live free. They greeted their agency relatives and led them to the big council lodge. The three headmen understood that whatever happened, Lakota must not fight Lakota.

  Crazy Horse was pleased with his people. The loaf-around-the-forts laid presents out on the ground. No one except the headmen touched them, and the headmen took only cansasa—they called it “tobacco” now—to show a willingness to talk.