“Morning Star’s and Little Wolf’s people have made it there,” Yellow Eagle reported. “They told me they were being treated well.”
Last Bull asked, “They have not been punished?”
“Not yet. The ve-ho-e haven’t come for their guns and ponies yet,” the scout said. “There is a good soldier chief there the Little Star People call White Hat. He knows how to talk to Indians with his hands. And he has seen that the agent has plenty of food and blankets and supplies for those who come in. White Hat says he is very happy the northern Indians came in to surrender to Three Stars.”
When Last Bull asked his people who wanted to stay out and continue their search for buffalo in the old way, and who wanted to start south for the agency—all of those with families said they would go where they knew they could find food for their children.
“But more of our people will come to hunt with us now that spring has come,” Yellow Hair told those ready to surrender. “Just like last summer, when the hunting camps grew crowded and all was good once more!”
“I have been a long time coming to my decision,” Last Bull explained. “I do not think very many Indians will ever come again to this country.”
“Give them time to come, Last Bull,” Yellow Hair chided. “It has been a very wet spring—”
Buffalo Bull Sitting Down has run away to the Land of the Grandmother and he won’t be back with his Hunkpapa,” Last Bull growled. “And now reports tell us that Crazy Horse has started for the agency with his Little Star People. Never again will there be many people in this country, not as long as the white man keeps pouring in to take up all the space, to run off all the game and kill off all the buffalo.”
In the end, many of the young men chose to follow Last Bull to the agency. Only four of the single warriors—Yellow Hair, Meat, Growing Dog, and Medicine Wolf—declared they would continue to hunt.
“Perhaps you will see me again soon,” Wooden Leg said to his brother the morning after he had decided to go south with his chief.
“I will look to the southeast every morning, and again every afternoon,” Yellow Hair replied. “I will watch for you to rejoin us.”
As those four bachelors turned west to start their search for the Lakota village of Lame Deer, reportedly hunting in the valley of the Roseberry, Last Bull started away from the north country with the last of his people.
Days later a few of the older men and women began to recognize some of the country they had reached. One of them announced they were getting close to the agency. Last Bull’s band hadn’t gone much farther when Wooden Leg and the others at the front of their march spotted three horsemen in the distance. The closer they got to the strangers, the more the horsemen looked to be soldiers.
But as the trio approached, it was evident from their long, unbound hair, and the feathers attached, that they were Indian. Last Bull’s warriors grew anxious, frightened of an ambush. Hurrying into a broad line that put the women and children behind them, the men drew the covers from their weapons, cocking the hammers on pistols and rifles.
“Stop and tell us who you are!” Last Bull demanded.
The trio halted immediately and explained in sign that they were scouts from Red Cloud’s agency. They had heard some more Indians were on their way from the north country and the White Hat told them to come out to help the new arrivals find their way. When Last Bull’s warriors finally allowed the three close enough to converse, they discovered that one was a Cheyenne, one a Lakota, and the last a Cheyenne-Lakota named Fire Crow.
“Is it true that no one has been punished at the agency?” Wooden Leg asked Fire Crow that night.
The scout nodded, staring at the fire. “No one is punished.”
“Did you ride with Long Knife’s* scouts last winter?”
“I rode north with him, yes,” the man answered sadly.
Wooden Leg growled, “You must have helped Three Finger Kenzie attack Morning Star’s village!”
Fire Crow finally responded, “I did not shoot my rifle in anger and I did not kill any of my people, if that is what you are asking. But you must know that I helped Long Knife and the soldiers talk to the chiefs. We tried to get Morning Star, Little Wolf, and the others to stop fighting so the women and children could surrender.”
For a long time Wooden Leg gazed into the flames. Then he eventually said, “I am sorry I became angry with you, Fire Crow. Nothing is served by making old wounds bleed.”
The army scout replied, “We did what we thought best for our people.”
“Our leaders always do what they think best for our people,” Wooden Leg agreed quietly. “And tomorrow … our warriors will bring in their women and children—to surrender.”
* * *
Like Last Bull of the Kit Fox Society, White Hawk decided he wasn’t ready to surrender north or south.
When the great Ohmeseheso village began to break up on the Powder, this little chief of the Elkhorn Scraper warrior society announced that he would wander west, looking for the hold-out bands of Lakota reportedly in the valley of the Roseberry River. Fifteen warriors swore their allegiance to White Hawk, seven of whom brought wives and children with them as the band set off on their own to hunt. They left during those wet days of early spring, while lacy collars of snow still clung to the slopes, back in the shady places, gathering round the trunks of aromatic cedar and juniper and stunted pine.
White Hawk remembered the words some Little Star friends of his told him the winter before when the Red Fork survivors joined the Crazy Horse village. They said Buffalo Bull Sitting Down had claimed he was the last real Indian. When they heard that, White Hawk and his warriors all had a good laugh. Buffalo Bull Sitting Down the last real Indian? By now the man was probably already far to the north in the Grandmother’s Land—country that wasn’t even Lakota hunting ground.
“No, he is not the last,” White Hawk was quick to say. “There are still a few real Indians left in this country. Indians who haven’t gone in to the ve-ho-es’ agencies. Indians who haven’t surrendered and become scouts for the soldiers like those in so many tribes, like our own people who came to fight us on the Red Fork, like White Bull and the others who have disgraced the Shahiyela.
“There are still a few real Indians left,” he told those loyal to him. “And we will join together with them to fight the soldiers when they come for us.”
What made a people give up, decide to become either prisoners or servant dogs of the ve-ho-e, decide to remain captive on their reservations summer after summer? Even Crazy Horse was said to be slowly limping south with the last of his stalwarts. What had happened to their hearts? White Hawk wondered. Was it the cold of winter? The desperate hunger?
“An end comes to every winter,” White Hawk sermonized to his small clan. “And if there is no longer enough buffalo to feed all the northern bands, then there are enough buffalo to feed the last few real Indians who will be hunting the beasts in the old way. There will always be plenty of meat to fill our bellies for generations of hunters to come.”
In the days to come, when it finally suited him, White Hawk declared they would search for the camp of Lame Deer, the Mnikowoju who had vowed never to go in to an agency.
“Like this Lakota chief,” White Hawk said as his people moved into the valley of the Roseberry River where it was reported Lame Deer’s people were hunting, “I will die before the ve-ho-e drives me to a reservation.”
Some distance to the south, he and his warriors spotted the smudge of smoke. Enough to indicate a village. Not a small camp but a sizeable village.
“That can only be Lame Deer’s people,” one of the men said.
Another agreed, “Everyone else in this country has already headed south by now.”
“Come,” White Hawk instructed. “Let us go join these Lakota who would rather live free and die like warriors … than be scrap-eating dogs for the ve-ho-e on the reservation!”
Chapter 28
Spring Moon
1877
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br /> Not long after they left the Powder with the greater part of the village, the two Old Man Chiefs agreed they should divide their people for this journey to the White Rock Agency. Little Wolf announced his party would hurry ahead on the best of what ponies the People still possessed. Morning Star’s larger group would follow along at a slower pace, with those seriously wounded in the Red Fork Fight and the battle at Belly Butte last winter. There were still many travois dragged by the horses.
Although he found his own body much slower to heal after all these winters of life, Little Wolf had miraculously survived the six wounds he took in the battle with Three Fingers Kenzie. All the Ohmeseheso agreed this was proof certain that their Sweet Medicine Chief was blessed by Ma-heo-o!
Perhaps it was so, Little Wolf thought. And if he was truly blessed by the Creator, then he prayed the Spirits would let the blessings flow through him to his people.
So much had been lost in this war with the ve-ho-e: every family had lost relations and friends, not to mention the decades of their cultural history. All of it had disappeared in an oily, black smoke that slammed against those low-hung snow clouds to make a profane, dirty smudge across the heavens as the soldiers put a torch to everything that had once been a way of life for the Northern People.
Finally, with winter’s end in sight, after running and hiding, after fighting only to run again, Little Wolf reluctantly decided the time had come to take his people in to the agency. There they would have enough to eat. There they would be among their old friends, the Little Star People. There the Ohmeseheso had lived before … and could live again.
Historically, the Sweet Medicine Chief always put the good of his people before his own. Their lives sprang from his, and he protected them with his life. Now he was taking his people where they would have nothing to fear from the soldiers, where they would have enough to eat and blankets to stay warm.
Day after day this journey had been one of the great struggles of the Shahiyelas’ experience. An ordeal filled with despair and physical misery that tested every last one of them as they battled Cold Maker’s final onslaught. Steadfastly they trudged on into the first of spring’s gloom. When they began this journey south, Little Wolf’s people had battled deep snow that formed huge, crusty ice sculptures across the land. They clawed their way up one snowy slope, slipped down the next—yet they persevered.
Then as the air warmed a little more each day, a new misery confronted the Ohmeseheso. What had once been snow and ice now turned to a cold, soppy slush that soaked their torn and tattered clothing. Tendrils of icy mud plastered to the ragged bottoms of their leggings, to their moccasins, caked on their bare feet like clumps of buffalo glue.
This past winter there had been little chance to cut new poles for their lodges, to replace those burned by the soldiers. Instead for several moons now these Northern People had dragged with them the half-burnt stubs they had salvaged from the Red Fork fires, along with what tree branches and limbs they could trim and put into service. Over these they draped what scorched and ratty hides they still owned, patched now with burlap bags found abandoned at soldier camps, or a few canvas flour sacks brought in from the agencies.
Little Wolf looked upon the widows and orphans with great sadness gripping at his heart. Once these proud women wore their hair tied neatly in braids. But now the hair of so many hung in rough-shorn clumps crusted with the mud and ashes of mourning. Wild tangles of it whipped this way and that, with the cruel, capricious winds slashing at their tear-streaked, sooty faces. Exposed arms and legs showed the wounds: long, blood-clotted slashes that rendered mute testimony of their profound grief.
As Sweet Medicine Chief, he had sworn to protect these widows, their orphans, and those old ones who had no one to provide, feed, and shelter them from want and winter and white men.
For far too long game had been scarce. To many of the hunters returned to the evening camps with empty hands. Once again his people were being tested. Once again only the strong would survive this surrender march. Only those who could endure under these destitute conditions would reach the agency. Only those who—
“Little Wolf! Little Wolf!”
He blinked and realized he had been dreaming; his spirit had flown away to that world between this and the next, neither seeing nor hearing, nor sensing much of this world as they plodded toward that band of striated bluffs topped by pines which signalled they were nearing the agency.
A pair of riders came hollering, whipping their ponies back toward the head of the march. Even as the young men brought the snorting animals to a halt, Little Wolf could see how the two smiled.
“You have seen it?”
“The log lodges!” one of the riders gasped, then gulped, almost as breathless as his winded pony.
The other nodded and blurted, “We saw them from that ridge!”
“So we are close,” Little Wolf sighed, feeling the flutter of apprehension fire his veins.
Never in battle had he been as concerned as he was at this moment. To fight as a leader of the People, to die in battle if he was to give up his life—that caused him no real, tangible fear. But this—to face this unknown future?
Turning on the bare back of his pony, the Sweet Medicine Chief called the other leaders forward, “Old Bear! American Horse! Turkey Leg! Black Wolf!”
And he called forward all the rest of the chiefs, summoning them from the ranks of those who had hurried away from Morning Star who would follow with the wounded and the rest of the village. Without a murmur, those chiefs spread themselves out, flowing to either side of Little Wolf where they waited quietly. There could be no mistake why their Old Man Chief had called them forward at this point in their march.
They were about to enter the reservation. They were about to surrender to the ve-ho-e. They were about to turn their lives over to the soldiers at the White Rock Agency.
None of them knew anything of tomorrow, or the day after, or the coming seasons. But together they would look the future in the eye.
In anticipation of this crucial event, each chief and warrior took those precious few minutes to don what few articles of good clothing he might still own after the soldier fires in the Red Fork Valley. Quietly the rituals began, chants softly emerging from the throats of a few of the older men as they altered themselves into young warriors once more with these battle raiments. Proud people were these who had followed Little Wolf here to surrender. Yet what these older men sang were not war songs, nor those of battle. Instead they sang their pipe songs, the songs of peace.
“Elkhorn Scrapers!” Little Wolf now called to those warrior society headmen, waving his right arm and pointing behind the wide line formed by the chiefs.
“Crazy Dogs!” Little Wolf cried next, pointing with his left arm behind the chiefs.
When these headmen were in place both left and right behind the old chiefs, he announced in a bold voice, “All you fighting men—protect the flanks of our march! Ride now to protect the lives of our women and children with your own lives!”
He waited while the young men stripped covers from their shields and pulled leather cases from their rifles, spreading up and down both sides of the procession, then Little Wolf rode to the rear of the column where he raised his commanding voice again.
“Tangle Hair!”
“I am here, Sweet Medicine Chief!” the war leader responded, raising an old lance.
“Your men will guard our back as always, Tangle Hair!”
“No enemy will dare slip around to attack us from behind!” the chief bellowed proudly as the handful of his men stretched themselves left and right at the back of the wide column. “We offer our lives to save the helpless ones!”
It has always been that way, Little Wolf thought to himself. As far back as any of them could remember, the Dog Men always brought up the rear of any march, always protected the village in retreat, always were the last to leave a field of battle, these men who pulled the bodies of relations and friends away from the enemy …
and gave of their own blood to protect those who could not defend themselves.
There weren’t many Dog Men left these days.
Little Wolf’s eyes quickly counted the six who separated themselves into thin lines on either side of Tangle Hair. Thin but as strong as a rawhide bowstring.
At that very moment an old man and woman emerged on foot from that mass of nervous, snorting ponies and quiet, restive people anxious for this march to resume. Some dogs snarled as the peace songs continued, and a pony whinnied close by. But for the singing, the People were respectfully quiet as Little Wolf waited for that old man and woman to reach the horsemen arrayed at the front of the column.
Coal Bear and his wife, Sacred Hat Woman.
She limped painfully a few paces ahead of the old man. By tradition the woman was allowed to ride a horse only in the event of an emergency. All but crippled after this horrendous wilderness ordeal, the footsore Sacred Hat Woman had walked every step of the three-hundred-mile journey. Across her back she carried the bundle. Inside rested Esevone, the Sacred Buffalo Hat.
As he trudged past Little Wolf, Coal Bear glanced up and nodded. To symbolize his respect for the old priest, the Sweet Medicine Chief removed the pipebowl from the satchel at his waist, fitted it onto the long stem of his pipe, and rested this sacred object across his left elbow while the couple limped by. Moments before both of these old people had painted their faces and hands with the sacred red ocher. That flesh they exposed to the Creator.
When the holy couple were well ahead of the procession on the jagged prairie, leading them toward those distant, pine-covered ridges, Little Wolf finally spoke, his words carried on the spring breeze.
“Come, Northern People! Be proud! We ride into the future!”
Somehow they kept their nervous ponies at a slow walk, allowing the old couple to set their own pace as Little Wolf’s band crossed this last distance between the Ohmeseheso and the unknown. They were not surrendering as the ve-ho-e understood surrender. No, these were a proud people who simply found themselves unable to maintain any more resistance against the winter, against the hunger, against the overwhelming white tide.
Ashes of Heaven (The Plainsmen Series) Page 26