"You don't believe in this Ghost Dance, do you?" I asked tremulously. "You're not going to Pine Ridge to join in the dancing?"
"No. Once I would have believed," Shadow said, and I caught a note of sadness in his voice, a longing for the old ways. "Now I think this dance will only bring more trouble for the Indians. The whites are getting scared. Some of the Indians are carrying guns when they dance. Wovoka preaches only peace, but Sitting Bull has broken the peace pipe he has kept since the day he surrendered to the whites. He wants to fight. He is old and tired and ready to die. When I was at the reservation, the agent, McLaughlin, told Sitting Bull that the dancing must stop. But Sitting Bull would not listen."
I knew then that Shadow was right.
The Ghost Dance would surely bring the Army down on the Indians.
In the days that followed, Heecha pestered his father for news of Wovoka and the Ghost Dance. The subject got a lot of attention in the newspapers and our neighbors speculated on what would happen if the Indians decided to leave the reservation. Men began to carry their rifles with them wherever they went, and women insisted their little ones stay close to home. Everyone remembered what it had been like when the Indians roamed free. Homesteads had been raided and sometimes burned to the ground. Children had been taken. Men and women had been killed. Were those days about to return?
There were several incidents in the valley that were caused by men with jumpy nerves. The worst happened when Cotton Tanner went hunting and accidentally shot his neighbor, Hugh Sloan, whom he mistook for an Indian. Mr. Sloan lived, but the incident only proved how upset the whites were becoming. There was talk of calling in the Army for protection, of setting up our own militia, just in case the Indians went wild.
Heecha was in a perpetual state of excitement. Though he had never lived with the Cheyenne, he had heard countless tales of the old days when the Indian ruled the land and the buffalo covered the earth.
He longed to be a warrior like his father, to seek a vision, to participate in the Sun Dance. In his mind, he would have a chance to experience all these things if Wovoka's prophecies came true.
I didn't realize how badly my' son wanted to believe in the Ghost Dance until the cold December morning when I woke up and found his bed empty. His knife and his bow were missing. I knew without a doubt that Heecha had gone to find Sitting Bull, that he wanted to be a part of the Ghost Dance.
Numbly, I left my son's room and went to find Shadow.
''He has taken one of the horses," Shadow said, coming back from the barn. "The tracks are about nine hours old."
"He's only twelve," I wailed. "Oh, Shadow, please find him."
"Do not worry, Hannah. I will bring him back."
"I'm going with you." Until this moment, I had no intention of leaving Bear Valley. I had other children to think of, and I knew Shadow could travel faster alone. But suddenly I knew I had to go with him.
Shadow looked deep into my eyes, and then he nodded. We left Mary and Blackie with Pa and Rebecca. An hour later, Shadow and. I rode out of Bear Valley toward the Sioux Reservation.
The Plains were barren, the trees naked beneath a cold winter sun. Once I had seen beauty even in a bleak December landscape; now I saw only death and loneliness.
Heecha knew how to survive in the wilderness alone, he knew how to find food and water and shelter, thanks to his father's teachings. And yet, he was still only a boy of twelve.
When Shadow decided it was time to bed down for the night, I urged him to go just a few more miles, when he paused to rest the horses, I nagged at him to hurry. I could not sleep at night, could only think of my son traveling across the vast prairie alone. There were still outlaws roaming the west, still an occasional Indian on the prowl, wild animals to contend with. My imagination, always fertile, conjured up awful images of my son lying dead on the plains, his body mutilated by scavengers.
When we arrived at the reservation, the place was in turmoil. Agent McLaughlin wanted to arrest Sitting Bull. With the old chief out of the way, it was hoped things would quiet down and the Ghost Dance would die out, at least at Pine Ridge. Eight troops of the Seventh Cavalry had arrived at the reservation. One had only to look at the soldiers to know they had not forgotten what the Sioux had done to Custer at the Little Big Horn fourteen years earlier. But this was now, and three thousand Indians had left the reservation and gone into hiding in the Bad Lands. But Sitting Bull had not run, and the dancing went on.
We made it onto the reservation undetected. Shadow had stripped down to his loincloth and moccasins. A single eagle feather was braided into his hair. I wore my old buckskin dress and kept an Indian blanket over my head to cover my red hair and hide my face.
The Indians were dancing when we arrived. We stood far back in the shadows, watching, as the Indians circled slowly from right to left, their hands joined as their bodies swayed back and forth, hardly lifting their feet from the ground. I had expected to see frenzied posturing and shouting, but the dancers were quite subdued. There were no drums echoing in the night, only the sound of many voices lifted in song.
I felt Shadow's hand tighten around mine and then I saw Sitting Bull. Here was Tatanka Iyotanke, the great Sioux medicine man, the Indian who had offered one hundred pieces of his flesh to the Great Spirit during the Sun Dance and was granted a vision prophesying Custer's defeat. Sitting Bull carried an eagle feather in his hand and he watched the dancers as they circled from right to left. I saw him stare intently into one man's face while he twirled the feather, grunting, "Hu! Hu! Hu!" until the man's eyes glazed over and he fell to the ground. When the man awoke, he stood in the center of the dancers to tell the others what he had seen while his spirit went into the After World. He said he had seen great herds of shaggy buffalo feeding on a grassy plain. A woman proclaimed that she had seen her dead son. Another man shouted that he had seen his parents.
I listened in awe as the Indians came out of their trances to speak of what they had seen. Was it possible that they had actually gone to the Spirit World, as they claimed, or did they believe such fantastic things had occurred because they so desperately needed something to believe in, something positive to cling to?
The Indians danced through the night and into the next morning, dancing for hours and hours without food or water or rest.
It was shortly after dark when Shadow spied Heecha talking to Sitting Bull. My son's eyes were bright, filled with awe and adulation as he listened to the old chief speak. Moments later, the two of them entered Sitting Bull's cabin.
I started to go to Heecha, but Shadow grabbed my arm. "No, Hannah. We will wait until dawn. If we are discovered, there could be trouble. The Indians will be angry if they know a white woman has seen the dance."
I slept fitfully that night. I was hungry and worried and my dreams were filled with nightmares, but none of my dreams was as bad as the very real nightmare that erupted at daybreak as forty-three Indian police and one hundred cavalrymen rode into the reservation to arrest Sitting Bull.
The old chief began to dress while a hundred Indians or more milled around outside the cabin. The door opened and he stood there, flanked by two Indian police. Another stood behind him. A low roar rose from the Indians assembled at Sitting Bull's cabin. It was an angry sound, filled with menace. One of the Indian police was leading a horse to the cabin.
Abruptly, Sitting Bull decided he would not go with the Indian police, he would not mount the horse, and he called for help. Panic ensued. A shot was fired. There was a moment of utter silence and then all was pandemonium. Voices were raised in fear and anger. Horses snorted and whinnied nervously as people scrambled about. Soldiers fouled the air with their profanity, while the Indian voices were raised in the age-old cry of war.
I watched in horror as bullets riddled Sitting Bull's cabin. My son was inside that cabin, and only Shadow's iron-like grip on my arm kept me from bursting out of my hiding place and running into the midst of the battle. Blinded by my own tears, I did not notice the moisture in my husband's
eyes.
The battle was quickly over. Sitting Bull was dead, along with his son, Crow Foot, and twelve other Indians.
"Hannah, stay here," Shadow said, his voice harsh. "Do not move."
I nodded dumbly and he gave me a quick kiss and a hug and then he walked boldly into the middle of the crowd gathered around the old chief's cabin.
"Hey, redskin, where do you think you're going?" The words belonged to a ruddy-faced cavalryman. He jabbed his rifle barrel into Shadow's stomach as he spoke.
"My son is inside," Shadow answered calmly. "He is just a boy."
The cavalryman ruminated for a moment and then gave a quick nod of his head as he lowered his rifle. There had been enough killing for one day.
I held my breath as Shadow entered the cabin. Time stopped and stood still as I waited for him to reappear, and all the while I sent urgent prayers to God and Maheo, begging them to let my son be alive. Over and over again I whispered the words, "please let him be alive, please let him be alive."
Fresh tears welled in my eyes as Shadow appeared in the doorway of the cabin, our son in his arms. There was blood splattered across the front of Heecha's shirt, and his eyes were closed. I could not tell if he was breathing.
Shadow's face was wiped clean of emotion as he walked past the soldiers and the Indian police. A look of sympathy crossed the face of the ruddy-faced cavalryman. No one spoke to Shadow or tried to stop him as he walked away from the scene of death.
When Shadow reached my hiding place, he did not speak, but kept on walking until he came to the place where we had left our horses. Fearing the worst, I trailed after him, not ready to face the fact that my oldest child was dead.
I watched as Shadow spread a blanket on the ground and gently placed Heecha upon it.
"Nehyo." Heecha called for his father, his voice weak and filled with pain.
"I am here, naha," Shadow replied.
With a cry, I fell to my knees, too weak with relief to stand. He was alive. Thank God, my son was alive.
"I want to go home," Heecha said.
"Soon," Shadow promised. "But first we must clean and bandage your wound. You must be very brave and not cry out."
"A Cheyenne does not show pain," Heecha said, smiling bravely at his father.
Shadow nodded, and then he turned to me. "Hannah, I will need your help."
Wiping the tears from my eyes, I went to kneel beside my son. Heecha smiled at me. "I will be a brave warrior," he said, gritting his teeth against the pain. "Sitting Bull himself has told me so."
"You're already a brave warrior," I said, taking his hands in mine. "You must lie still now and not talk."
Heecha nodded, his eyes full of trust as he looked at his father.
"The bullet is still inside," Shadow said. "It must come out."
"I am not afraid, nehyo."
"I know," Shadow said, his voice thick with unshed tears. Rising, he went to his war bag and withdrew a thin-bladed knife. His eyes met mine, and I shook my head. I could not dig the bullet out of Heecha's side. Shadow understood, and no words were spoken.
I leaned across Heecha, my hands on his shoulders, my body blocking his view of the ugly wound in his right side. I heard Shadow murmur a quiet prayer to Maheo, felt my son's body go rigid with pain as Shadow began to probe the wound for the bullet. I choked back my tears as my son struggled not to cry.
It took only a few minutes for Shadow to remove the slug from our son's flesh, but it seemed like hours. We had nothing but water to clean the wound, and Shadow washed it several times before packing the wound with moss. He bandaged Heecha's middle with strips of cloth torn from his shirt.
I held Heecha's hand until he fell asleep, and then I began to cry, the flood of tears releasing the strain and worry of the past two days. As my sobs tapered off, I offered a prayer of thanks to the gods, both red and white, for preserving my son's life.
"He might have been killed and it is all my fault," Shadow said, his voice bitter with remorse. "I filled his head with stories of the old days because I wanted him to know who he was. I wanted him to be proud of his Indian blood. I did not want him to feel inferior to the whites because of his mixed heritage."
The anguish in Shadow's voice tore at my heart. Rising to my feet, I went to stand beside him. "It is no one's fault," I said. "He has always been more Cheyenne than white. It would not have mattered what any of us said or did, Heecha's heart would still have reached out for the Cheyenne. Now he has known Sitting Bull. It is something he will remember for as long as he lives."
If he lives. The words sounded in the back of my mind and I bit down on my lower lip to keep from crying. Heecha looked so young, so helpless. His face was pale, his breathing shallow and uneven.
Shadow and I stayed close to Heecha's side the whole night. Our son slept fitfully, moaning softly in his sleep, tossing restlessly when his dreams grew troubled. I gladly would have suffered in his place.
Slowly, the night turned to day. The eastern sky began to grow light as the sun peered over the horizon. Broad slashes of gold and crimson streaked the sky like paint splashed by a careless hand.
As the sun cleared the hills, Shadow moved away a few paces. Then, head and arms raised toward heaven, he began to pray. What a rare and wonderful sight he made standing there with the prairie stretching endlessly behind him and the first bright rays of the sun shining down on his copper-hued flesh. Naked save for his loincloth and moccasins, he looked like a statue carved from bronze as he lifted his voice to Maheo, pleading with the Great Spirit of the Cheyenne to heal our child.
He stood there for a long time, and I let my eyes feast upon the sight. His arms and legs were long, the muscles well-defined. His flanks were lean, his shoulders broad, his stomach hard and flat. Thick black hair hung to his waist, shining like polished onyx in the sunlight.
After perhaps ten minutes, Shadow lowered his head and arms and returned to Heecha's side. We spent the day nursing our son, offering him drinks of cool water when he was awake, bathing his body with cold cloths when the fever came.
At sundown, Shadow again went off to pray and I added my own prayers to his. Kneeling beside my son, I was filled with a sense of peace and I knew that Heecha would be all right.
Heecha's fever was gone in the morning and I wept tears of joy and gratitude as I thanked God for my son's life. By midafternoon, he was much improved, and the following morning, Shadow made a travois to carry Heecha and we started the long journey home.
Our cabin had never looked more inviting. Mary and Blackie ran out to meet us, chattering excitedly when they saw the bloody bandage wrapped around Heecha's middle. Later that day, the family listened as Heecha related his story, telling how he had found Sitting Bull's camp on the Grand River, and how the old medicine man had taken him into his house as though he were a member of the family. Heecha wept softly when he told how the soldiers had come and killed Sitting Bull. Mary looked at her older brother with admiration and respect as Shadow related how brave Heecha had been when the bullet was removed from his side.
I felt my heart thrill with love when Shadow took the eagle feather from his hair and placed it in Heecha's hand.
''Today you are a man," he said proudly. "From this day forth you shall be known as True Hawk, for your heart is as brave as the eagle and as strong as the hawk."
Hawk recovered quickly and I thanked God daily that he had spared my son's life. I felt a keener appreciation for all my children, a deeper gratitude for the good husband I had been blessed with.
In late December, the last chapter of the Ghost Dance was written. The Indians who had fled into the Badlands were hunted down by the Seventh Cavalry and herded toward Wounded Knee Creek. There were four hundred and seventy soldiers armed with four Hotchkiss guns against one hundred and one warriors and a number of women and children.
Two weeks after Sitting Bull's death, the Indians were ordered to surrender their weapons. A few of the warriors surrendered their old guns. Dissatisfied t
roopers searched the Indian lodges for more weapons and ammunition, looking into packs and parfleches, scaring the women and children as they stormed through their tepees. The tension grew thicker. The warriors, most of them wearing the forbidden Ghost shirts, grew more and more angry and disgruntled. A medicine man named Yellow Bird walked through the camp promising the warriors that the soldiers could not hurt them. He had made medicine, he said. The soldiers were weak. Their bullets could not penetrate the sacred Ghost shirts.
When one of the soldiers tried to take a blanket from an Indian, Yellow Bird gave the signal to fight. An Indian fired at the soldiers, and then the massacre began as the soldiers opened fire with the four Hotchkiss guns. Three hundred Indians were slaughtered as two-pound shells rained terror on helpless women and children. Bodies were found two miles away from the field of battle. Thirty-one soldiers were killed. The Seventh Cavalry's defeat at the Little Big Horn had been avenged at last.
It was a horrible story and I wept bitter tears as I read it. I had seen death on the battlefield; I knew how awful it was. I remembered Little Big Horn, and yet even that was not so awful as the battle at Wounded Knee Creek. Helpless women and children had not been cut down at the Little Big Horn.
Shadow said little of the massacre, but his eyes held a lingering sadness for the loss of Sitting Bull and his people. Truly the day of the Indian was over.
And yet, in our cabin, the spirit of the red man burned strong and bright in our son, True Hawk. He was determined to seek a vision and in the fall of 1892 he set out to commune with the spirits.
It was hard for me to let him go. He was only fourteen, and though he was tall and strong and wise in the ways of the Cheyenne, he was still only fourteen years old. As his father before him, Hawk took nothing to sustain him in his quest, only a small pouch filled with tobacco. He would be gone for four days and during that time he would fast and pray, beseeching the gods for a vision to guide his steps through the hills and valleys of life.
It was a very long four days. I tried not to let my concern for Heecha show. I did not want Mary and Blackie to worry. I did not want Shadow to think I was weak, but it was hard for me to concentrate on tasks at hand when all I could think about was Hawk, hungry and alone in the hills.
Reckless Love Page 21