Lakota

by G. Clifton Wisler

  Tacante read his frowning father's thoughts. This was how the wasicuns would paint the Big Horn country! Only there, along Powder River and in the mountains beyond, could the Lakota hunt in the old ways. Once the game was gone, as on Platte River, the people would have to go to the white man's reservations—or starve. Either way, it promised to be a slow death.

  Such a vision of the future spurred on Hinhan Hota's small band. They swept across the arid flats beyond the Platte and swung north into the rocky hills which led to Powder River. The young men rode ahead, locating small herds of buffalo or antelope to hunt. It wasn't long, though, before they saw evidence of the passage of wasicuns. Wagon ruts muddied streams, and half-devoured carcasses of elk often spoiled the land.

  Yes, Tacante thought. The wasicun is a crazy man. He sets his feet upon a path, and he continues to walk blindly onward, taking what he wants and killing as he feels the urge. He cut the buffalo valleys with his roads, killed off the game, brought on the spotted sickness to kill the people. Still he wasn't content. He now set his hungry eyes on Powder River, on the hecinskayapi country. It must stop!

  Tacante wasn't the only one to view the rutted intrusion with angry eyes. All his people silently shared that rage. And when Hokala discovered a party of wasicuns camped beside the trail, a dozen voices rose in a call for war.

  "This is no time to let the blood talk," He Hopa scolded. "We have long been at peace in this country. I have touched the pen to a paper saying the Lakotas will hold this country always, with no roads to chase away the game or bring forts. These greedy wasicuns are like children. They must be showed the way back, not struck down like a crazed dog."

  "The treaty says they will not come here," Cehupa Maza complained. "But the wasicuns don't care. They killed my mother and my sister at Blue Creek, when we were also at peace. They speak of peace, but they make war anyway."

  There were many who howled their agreement with young Iron Jaw. Hinhan Hota was not among them.

  "We'll meet with these wasicuns," the Owl said. "We'll tell them to go home, that they're not welcome here. If they go, then we won't hinder them. If they continue, we'll punish them."

  "Han," the warriors all agreed. Yes, it was a good plan.

  And so, after smoking the pipe and invoking Wakan Tanka's aid, Hinhan Hota led Tacante and some of the young men to the camp of the wasicuns.

  It wasn't much of a camp. Many times Tacante had seen wagon camps on Platte River with a hundred people. This wasicun band had only two wagons, and most of the men rode mules. Two women were with them, and seven children.

  "He Hopa was right," Hinhan Hota declared, pointing at the camp. Here, after all, were men so foolish as to leave their animals to graze unhobbled, without guards. Yes, they were children, needing to be taught.

  The Owl spread out his companions so as to encircle the camp. Then he called to the wasicuns.

  Instantly the camp came alive. The women collected their little ones and huddled beside the wagons. The men formed a line beside the river. Tacante counted seven, although two of them were no more than boys. All held rifles.

  Hinhan Hota called again, but the wasicuns knew nothing of the Lakota words the Owl hurled at them. Hinhan Hota then waved Tacante to his side, and the young warrior translated his father's challenge.

  "You shouldn't be here!" Tacante cried. "This is Lakota land by treaty. Go back to Platte River."

  "I been this way before!" a tall, hairy-faced wasicun called. "John Bozeman made himself a road through here to the Montana goldfields. You know gold, eh, Injun? We ain't goin' no place 'cept on."

  Tacante translated the words for his father and the others. The chief scowled, and Hokala offered to lead the first charge.

  "They have many guns," Hinhan Hota pointed out. "They are ready now. We will talk some more. Come, Tacante, we will meet with them."

  Tacante trembled slightly as he watched Hinhan Hota dismount. The chief left behind his rifle and bow. Tacante also left his weapons behind. The two of them walked slowly, grimly, toward the wasicuns. Now it was possible to read the fear in the pale faces of the trespassers. Clearly, fighting wasn't in their hearts.

  "You must go back now," Tacante translated after his father shouted his demands. "We are many, and you are few. We don't wish to wear your scalps, to kill children and women because they have foolishly gone where they shouldn't."

  Hinhan Hota had finished, and he sat before the wasicuns with folded arms. Tacante paused a moment, then added words of his own.

  "I know your words," the young warrior explained. "Many days I have spent with wasicuns, with white people. My own brother lives among the traders at Fort Laramie. You know this place? I tell you we don't hunger to close your eyes upon the light. But you can't go on killing the game so that my people will starve. If you turn back and go to Platte River, we won't harm you. If you go on . . ."

  Tacante grimly touched the handle of the knife tied to his calf. The wasicuns exchanged worried looks. They could see there were mounted warriors amid the trees on the far ridge and blocking the trail beside the river.

  "We wouldn't hurt anybody," the hairy-faced wasicun insisted. "Just mean to go north's all, to the Yellowstone."

  "You kill elk that would fill my brother's belly and make him strong," Tacante answered. "You must go back. Or paint your faces for war."

  "We'd kill some o' you," a second wasicun argued.

  Hinhan Hota asked what the wasicuns spoke, and Tacante explained. The Owl replied angrily, and Tacante translated.

  "Maybe, he says," Tacante explained. "But we would kill all of you."

  The wasicuns walked back to where the women and children remained. They discussed Hinhan Hota's words. The hairy-faced one returned alone.

  "It's a fool leads married men to a gold camp," he said to Tacante. "We're goin' back."

  Tacante shared the news with his father, and Hinhan Hota rose to his feet. The Owl then led the way to the horses. Once mounted, he waved his companions along. He left Hokala to watch, though.

  "See that all of them go back," Hinhan Hota charged the Badger. "All. If any remain, come for us. Then there will be punishment."

  Tacante witnessed the departure of the wagons himself. They struggled along the rock-strewn road, pursued by a small band of little ones. But there were no riders atop mules with them. Hokala soon appeared to confirm the news.

  "They think we're fools not to notice," Hinhan Hota growled angrily when Badger explained how the party had separated. "We'll punish them now!"

  He Hopa set about making medicine while the warriors dressed themselves for battle. Tacante smiled as he felt the three feathers woven into his long black hair. Hinhan Hota helped him paint face and chest. Together father and son tied up the tails of their best ponies, and brought along spares as well. Finally the warriors gathered to smoke the pipe.

  "Wakan Tanka, look down upon us. Give us a good fight, for we ride to protect Uncle Buffalo and all his brother creatures. You make the earth rich and good, but these wasicuns would eat it all. Give us strong hearts."

  "Hau!" the warriors shouted.

  It didn't prove to be much of a batde. The Lakotas rode down on the wasicuns at a bend of the river and knocked them from their horses in the first charge. Quickly the startled white men were disarmed and led back to the wagons in triumph.

  The wagons had gone but a short way before turning away from the river. Perhaps it was the hairy-faced wasicun's notion that such a trick would deceive the Lakotas. It only made them angry. Hinhan Hota led a charge which sent the little ones fleeing into the brush, screaming in terror. He counted coup on the hairy-faced one before dragging him from the seat of the wagon. The two women driving the second wagon abandoned it immediately. Then, in dismay, they watched the Lakotas tear off the canvas cover and take everything of value within. Hinhan Hota cut the oxen loose before setting the wagons ablaze.

  The Owl then ordered the wasicuns herded between the blazing wagons. Tacante and Hokala had qui
te a challenge chasing down the younger children, for they scurried about the rocks like lizards. Finally they heeded their mothers' calls.

  Hinhan Hota then addressed the captives with an angry voice, scolding them for their lies, warning that swift death would follow should they return to Powder River again.

  "What's he goin' to do with us?" the hairy-faced leader asked Tacante. "Son, there are children no older'n seven years among us. Women, too."

  "He knows this!" Tacante barked, motioning at his father.

  Hinhan Hota then instructed the warriors to strip the captives. The men struggled a bit at first, but the sharp edge of a knife or the barrel of a gun persuaded them defiance was wasted. Tacante couldn't help laughing at the funny-looking wasicuns. Their arms and faces were tanned from the summer sun, but legs and chests and trunks were pale as moonlight. They were strangely hairy, with brownish curls on their chests as on their faces. Two even grew hair on their backs.

  Hokala pulled some of this hair out by its roots, and a wasicun howled in pain. The Badger had thought it a medicine rite, decorating the body with hair like that.

  When all the men were stripped, Hinhan Hota ordered the warriors to start on the women and children. Now there was great fighting. The women were determined to keep clothes, or some of them. One woman had so many layers it was thought a great mystery must lay beneath. Tacante wrestled with one of them long and hard before baring her back. She then bit his hand, causing him to yelp with pain.

  The men were growing excited, too. No doubt the wasicuns imagined a terrifying fate lay ahead. In the end, one woman kept her undergarment, for it seemed painted to her hide and resisted every effort at removal. The other woman was allowed a dress, as she fought most bravely.

  The little ones, once assured by Tacante they would not be taken from their mothers, reluctantly undressed. They resembled plucked prairie chickens, with skin so pale as to appear sickly. Tacante thought Wakan Tanka showed great wisdom painting wasicun bodies with hair, for they were too humorous a sight naked. Some covering was surely needed.

  The final indignity befell the hairy-faced leader. Hinhan Hota ordered his hair cut so it no longer covered his ears. The wasicun remained stiff as a pine while knives clipped his hair.

  Hinhan Hota shouted loudly, and Tacante again translated.

  "He says now there is nothing to keep you from hearing!"

  The Lakotas raised a great howl as they tossed the garments they didn't want onto the fiery wagon shells. Then Hinhan Hota pointed the way toward Platte River and left the naked wasicuns to find their way there.

  It was a celebrated fight, for many mules and two horses were taken. The oxen were killed, and their meat cooked to make a feasting. All of the warriors had counted coups, and many stories were recounted around the fires of the hairy wasicuns. Itunkala sat beside Tacante and listened again and again to the tale of the woman with many dresses.

  "Soon he will be ready to hunt," Hinhan Hota said when Tacante carried the Mouse inside the lodge and set him in his blankets. "He'll need a bow, a small one, for hunting rabbits. It should be made by a brother."

  "I will do it, Ate," Tacante promised.

  "You did well today, my son," the Owl praised. "Before, I worried you passed too much time with Hinkpila, speaking the wasicun words, learning of the strange ways. Now I see there is great worth to it. Soon we may all need such knowledge."

  "These words are only needed to keep the wasicuns out," Tacante replied.

  "Can a man stop a flood with only his two hands? I send these back to warn the others, but not all will see. I've watched the wagon trains beside Platte River. The wasicuns are many, and we are few."

  "Wakan Tanka will give us brave hearts," Tacante declared.

  "Ah, my brother had a brave heart," Hinhan Hota reminded Tacante. "He walked the sacred path all his days, but he is dead. I make prayers, but who can say what road Wakan Tanka sets before our feet?"

  Tacante frowned as he lay upon his buffalo robes that night. Tasiyagnunpa spoke softly with the Owl, but Tacante couldn't hear the words. Wicatankala had gone to the women's lodge for the first time, and perhaps they spoke of this. Or maybe they wondered when Tacante would cut willow limbs and spread bunches of grass over them to make a wickiup as a young man did when he thought himself too old to remain in his father's lodge.

  That time is coming, Tacante told himself. Even now Hokala dwelled in such a lodge. Cehupa Maza remained with his mother and surviving brothers, for there was no man to look to their needs. Tacante told himself there was Itunkala to look after, but in truth he found comfort trusting Hinhan Hota to choose the direction.

  Often a man finds his direction chosen by others, though. So it was with Hinhan Hota's Sicangus. Waawanyanka, Watcher, arrived as the ripening moon of late summer began to wane.

  "I bring word from Wapaha Luta," the young warrior explained gravely. "He makes war on the wasicuns soon."

  "Han?" Hinhan Hota asked. Yes?

  "Two times the sun has crossed the heavens since his daughter, Unkcekiha, was stolen from our camp. We rode to get her back, but there were many wasicun wagons. The Lance was wounded, and the warriors despaired. Come and help us make the good fight. We will rub out all of them!"

  "All of them?" Tacante asked.

  "There are forty, maybe more. Many are small and won't fight much," Watcher explained.

  Hinhan Hota frowned. Tacante knew it wasn't in the Owl's heart to kill the helpless ones. There could be no refusing, though. Unkcekiha was He Hopa's granddaughter and a cousin to many of the young men. Hokala spoke of courting her if the bands reassembled to make their winter camp.

  Word of Red Lance's trouble spread swiftly through the lodges of Gray Owl's camp, and the warriors made ready to ride. The Owl insisted some remain to guard the women and the horse herd. He chose Tacante, Hokala, and three others to go with him on the raid.

  He Hopa would have gone if the Owl hadn't forbidden it.

  "She's my blood," the medicine man argued.

  "Ah, but your heart will be with us, just as your medicine charms will be," Hinhan Hota replied. "This is a young man's hunt, Leksi. See how I take only the swiftest riders?"

  He Hopa grumbled some, but he accepted the decision. He did make prayers and assemble charms for the young warriors.

  "Carry your shield high," the old man warned Hokala. "The wasicun rifles will seek your heart."

  "Leave that pale horse behind," He Hopa told Tacante. "You must always wear dark paint and ride a black horse to battle, Tonska. Ah, four feathers are now in your hair."

  He Hopa then did a strange thing. He drew a knife and cut Tacante's shoulder.

  "Old man, leave my death to the wasicuns," Tacante barked.

  "Ah, I have seen your blood in my dream," the medicine man explained. "Only one wound will you receive in this fight, and I have given it to you. No bullet will find you, Heart of the People. Ride with a brave heart, Tonska."

  "I will do as you say, Leksi," Tacante said, referring to Four Horns as Uncle in the way Hinhan Hota and the elder Tacante before him had done.

  He Hopa built a fire and made medicine. The warriors smoked the pipe and pledged their courage. Then they tied up the tails of their horses and set out after the wasicuns.

  Two days Hinhan Hota kept them riding. They paused hardly long enough to eat, and certainly not long enough to sleep much. Often Tacante and the other young men dozed while their horses trotted onward. Each of the riders brought along a spare pony, and they shifted from one to the other so as to give the animals a rest. Gray Owl and Watcher had none.

  The wasicun wagons had passed up the trail northward, but Wapaha Luta, wounded hip and all, kept up his pursuit. One wasicun had been captured while guarding the horse herd. Tacante saw what remained of him resting in a fire pit a half day's ride from the wagons.

  "It was a boy," Tacante remarked as he stared at the blackened flesh.

  "So, now there can be no talking," Hinhan Hota added. "Only fight
ing.

  Often Tacante had imagined his first big fight. All boys do, he supposed. But he never envisioned charging wagons and battling wasicuns. The Crows, perhaps, or the Pawnees. He had little chance to consider it, though, for Hinhan Hota wasted no time in picking up the wasicun trail. Soon after midday they spotted the wagons. Red Lance arrived then, and a brief plan was made.

  Warfare for the Lakotas was simple. Whenever a warrior felt the brave heart, he started a charge. If his medicine was strong, or he was respected, others would follow. The battle continued so long as there were brave hearts present, or until the enemy was driven off. Warriors preferred to count a coup, touch their bows to the enemy's shoulder, or slap him with the hand. White men who fired rifles were more often greeted with a deadly arrow fired from close range.

  Most wagon trains formed squares or circles to defend themselves, thus blunting the charges and offering little chance for a horseman to close the range. But that day the wagons rumbled along their way in ignorance of the menace at hand, and there would be few opportunities to resist. Wapaha Luta, in spite of his broken hip and much loss of blood, led the first charge. He raced toward the middle of the wagon train, followed by Watcher and Black Dog. The three warriors swept past a startled outrider, who was promptly unhorsed by the Dog, and turned three wagons aside. A terrified young girl ran in front of a second wagon and was trampled by oxen. A boy no older than Itunkala stared up in surprise as a lance struck him down.

  Wapaha Luta shouted a war cry, and the rest of the Lakotas charged. The wasicuns at the end of the wagon train had no chance to defend their wagons. Most abandoned everything and fled as fast as their feet would carry them. One man managed to load his rifle and fire at young Hokala, but while the blast gashed the tough hump hide of the shield, it left the warrior unharmed. Hinhan Hota struck the rifleman across the head, and he fell.

  Unkcekiha, the Magpie, was found in the back of a wagon. Frightened and bewildered, but unhurt, she rejoiced at the sight of her people.