Lakota

by G. Clifton Wisler

  "It's not so cold," Cetan Kinyan whispered as he clung to his father's side.

  No, Tacante told himself. No pain was great when shared.

  Spring promised better days. As the snows melted and the cottonwoods and willows greened, game returned. Men set out in threes and fours to shoot deer and elk. Tacante often brought plump geese or fat squirrels for the kettle. Then one morning Itunkala brought grave news.

  "Sunka Sapa will not ride with us to hunt the buffalo," the Mouse explained.

  Tacante felt an icy dart stab his heart. Always the Black Dog had been at his side, whether hunting or fighting bluecoats. Itunkala's contorted face told of grave news.

  "Where?" Tacante asked.

  "On Goose Creek," Itunkala explained. "Sunkawakan Witkotkoke is there now."

  Tacante mounted his horse and rode off at a gallop. It was a half day's riding to Goose Creek, but Tacante crossed the hills and streams in half that time. What he saw there blackened his heart. The remains of Sunka Sapa's lodge lay in ashes. The small charred skeleton of his daughter lay wrapped in a buffalo hide. The Dog lay beside the creek, his body stripped and many bullet wounds attesting to the fight put up. Pehan, whose grace had earned her the name Crane, had been dragged into the underbrush. Her head had been crushed with a rock, and the killers had cut a ring from her hand.

  "I had only a buffalo hide," Sunkawakan Witkotkoke said, pointing to Sunka Sapa. "I would have covered him."

  "It's for me to do," Tacante said, laying his coat over his bloody friend. "Did they leave a trail?"

  "A good one," the Horse said, pointing to muddy tracks in the creek. "Your brother will gather a war party. For this, many will die."

  Tacante drew his knife and began slashing willow limbs to make a scaffold. There were rocks nearby. Sunka Sapa always liked high places. So did the girl he'd named Wanahcazi, Yellow Flower. But as he worked, Tacante found himself slashing not willow bark but wasicun throats. He stumbled to the creek and stared at his wild-eyed face. It might have been Hokala demanding the deaths of the boy miners. Badger wouldn't be the only one to speak for killing now.

  Tacante finished the scaffolds that afternoon. Hehaka and her sisters bathed the bodies and dressed them in the finest garments possessed by the band. Finally Wanbli Cannunpa spoke prayers, and Tacante danced, hoping whatever power he possessed might salve the tortured souls of his slaughtered relatives.

  For three days the Lakotas mourned. On the fourth Sunkawakan Witkotkoke led a dozen warriors along the trail of the killers. The faces and hands of the Lakotas were blackened with ashes. It would be a bad heart raid, and much blood was certain to be shed.

  The Horse was little changed. He sang warrior songs and urged the sharp-eyed boys to watch for sign. Tacante and Hokala rode on relentlessly. They'd seen in Pehan's silent face her sisters, and the burned child might have been their own.

  The wasicuns might have escaped had rain come to Paha Sapa. Many times their trail grew faint, but the rocky ground told its tale, and the Lakotas at last came upon a party of wasicuns gathered around a cook fire.

  "It's a good day to die," Hokala declared as he filled his new rifle's magazine.

  "A bad day to be a wasicun," Itunkala added as he pointed out three children skipping flat rocks across a pond.

  "We kill them all," Hokala growled, angrily turning to Tacante.

  "Even them?" Itunkala asked, pointing to the children.

  "Is Flower forgotten?" Hokala barked. "All!"

  "All," Tacante echoed, hardening his resolve.

  The Horse then screamed out a war cry and led the charge. The dozen Lakotas spilled out of the trees and fell upon the surprised miners like a cyclone. Rifles exploded, and lances struck hard. A woman screamed as Hokala fell upon her. Itunkala raced to cut off the fleeing children, two boys and a girl. They stumbled into the pond, then gazed up silently as Mouse notched an arrow.

  "My face is black with death," Itunkala chanted, but he could not release the arrow. Tacante struggled to free himself from the grasp of a huge, red-bearded wasicun who was wearing the silver ring Sunka Sapa had given Pehan.

  "Billy, run!" the red-beard shouted.

  Tacante managed to turn his knife and cut into the big-bellied thief. The wasicun screamed in agony as the blade penetrated deeper, opening him up like a gutted deer. Tacante pulled back as the dying giant rolled away.

  "Papa!" one of the boys shouted as he raced from the pond.

  Tacante turned toward the frightened child, but three quick shots from a revolver downed the boy. The Heart didn't glance toward the shooter. He didn't want to know who had spared him the task.

  Hokala took charge of the other two little ones. The Badger grimly covered their faces with his big hands and stopped their breathing.

  "It was for me to do that," Itunkala said when Tacante reached the pond. "But they were so small."

  "It's good you couldn't blacken your heart to them," Tacante declared. "Soon I fear we'll all have bad faces, and there will be no softness left."

  As the brothers gazed back at their companions angrily slashing the corpses, they shared a muffled moan.

  It wasn't possible, as Hinhan Hota had warned, to stem the flood of wasicuns pouring into Paha Sapa. More and more of them came. Mutilated bodies only made them quicker to fire at the first sign of a bronze-skinned rider.

  Word came that the wasicuns were sending chiefs to Mahpiya Luta's agency to make peace. Sunkawakan Witkotkoke and Wanbli Cannunpa agreed such peace talk should be heard, and the camp was packed up.

  Red Cloud spoke for most of the Lakotas when the peace commissioners offered to buy Paha Sapa.

  "Why buy what you are already stealing?" he asked.

  Others declared the land was already lost and suggested asking a high price.

  But when the warriors gathered, angry voices rose,

  "What of the treaty?" some cried.

  "You steal our land again and again, kill the buffalo, and now you speak of peace when we fight back?"

  Sinte Gleska, Spotted Tail, rode forward to urge calm. His was a voice to be heard, for he, too, had fought as a brave heart youth. Now he had seen too many things to dream of winning a war against the wasicuns.

  "Ah, we can never sell the heart of the earth!" Hokala shouted.

  "Hau!" the Oglala Little Big Man cried. "It's a good time to begin a war!"

  Begin? Tacante asked himself. When did the fighting stop? He'd been born in a time of trial, and it had never ceased.

  Blue-coated soldiers now lined up to protect the peace speakers, and it seemed more blood would stain the earth. But again Sinte Gleska spoke, and peace prevailed at Red Cloud Agency.

  Chapter Seventeen

  As was proper before all great undertakings, Tacante built a sweat lodge and underwent Inipi. As the heat burned away his sadness and restored him to the sacred way, he tried not to think of the stolen heart of the country, the hungry-eyed Long Hair, or the peace speakers who couldn't understand there were things which a man didn't sell.

  Half a moon later Tacante rode slowly along Platte River toward where the sprawling buildings of Fort Laramie rose from the grassy plain. Itunkala was at his side, babbling a hundred thoughts at once. Soon, Tacante thought, / must find another name for this brother who is growing to be a man. His dark, bare shoulders were now broad and powerful, and if his voice still cracked and grunted, well, Tacante remembered his own had done the same.

  A few paces behind, young Tahca Wanbli rode. A boy of seven snows should ride his own pony, and Tacante had cut out a fine pinto for his firstborn. Hehaka followed the pony drag that carried the younger boys. Hokala and his family came next. Then a few young agency men trailed their elders.

  A party of soldiers rode alongside. These were recruits, and their young, worried faces betrayed the dread tales of Lakota butchery shared by the veterans.

  "Them's Sioux!" a three-stripe had shouted.

  Fear had instantly flashed across the young soldiers' faces. It w
as clear testimony to the bad heart tales kindled among the wasicuns. Even as the thieves stole Paha Sapa, they spoke of the murdering Indians who killed women and children. These same people shot Lakotas without thinking—killed people on their own land. The wasicuns truly dwelled in a crazed place. Their world had no circle, no heart.

  The Lakotas were met at the approaches to the fort by a silver-bar chief who shouted angrily that here was a band of hostiles to be herded back to the reservation.

  "Where's that fool interpreter, Jenkins?" the chief howled at a two-stripe. Hinkpila then appeared.

  "Lieutenant?" Louis asked.

  "Ask 'em why they've come!" the soldier chief shouted. "Tell 'em we've got to take their guns and get 'em along home."

  "Talk to them yourself," Louis answered sharply. "This is Buffalo Heart, my Brule Sioux brother. I suspect he's come to hunt buffalo. The treaty gives him that right, Lieutenant. He's wintered here often, and he speaks good English. He's entitled, by the way, to wear a bonnet of thirty feathers to mark the coups he's counted. Most of 'em's been on white soldiers."

  "We come peacefully," Tacante then announced. "I would share the buffalo hunt with Hinkpila, my brother. Here is Badger, Mouse, my wife, Deer Woman, and there are the others."

  "We've heard of much killing in the Black Hills," the officer said, staring with cold eyes at his visitors. "You take up such nonsense here, I'll see you punished."

  "You would punish me, wasicun?" Itunkala cried. "It's not me who's broken the treaty and stolen Paha Sapa."

  Tacante silenced his brother, then turned to Louis.

  "There will be no trouble from my people," Tacante said, folding his arms. "We are going to hunt soon. I would show my brother how the little ones are growing, and I would see my sister."

  Louis insisted Tacante spoke straight.

  "The whole bunch looks like they'd as soon slit my throat as chew a carrot," the soldier retorted.

  "He'd kill you on the battlefield, sure enough," Louis agreed. "But not here. He's my guest, and you can be certain he is welcome."

  The soldiers then went about their labors, and Tacante followed Hinkpila to the trading post his father had built. Ren6 Le Doux was gone now, headed to California with his wife and the younger children. Louis and Philip, the spectacled one, remained to operate the store.

  After helping the Lakotas erect their lodges behind a horse corral, Louis led the way inside the small house he'd built behind the store. Tacante greeted Wicatankala, his sister, and held the small son and daughter called Tom and Grace.

  "They grow strong," Tacante observed when little Grace gripped his finger tightly with her small hand.

  "Ah, it's the children keep our hearts young, you know."

  "I pray our sons will share the buffalo hunt as we have."

  "Yes," Louis agreed as he led the way to a back room.

  "But it's a bad time to come here now, eh?"

  "The soldiers are angry," Louis explained. "There was almost a fight at Red Cloud's agency this spring, and reinforcements have been sent out to Fort Fetterman."

  Tacante frowned. He knew, of course, of the bad feelings exchanged at Red Cloud. As for the new fort built where the stolen road met Platte River, Tacante had been told of how it was named for the boastful eagle chief killed on the hill of the hundred slain. Strange that the sodiers should make heroes out of foolish chiefs!

  "Crazy Horse's in the Big Horn country, I hear," Louis said, trying to break the silence. "You've ridden with him often."

  "I will again," Tacante answered.

  "Be a hard fight this time, Misun."

  Tacante stared at Hinkpila. When had even Mastincala been a little brother? There was a fond, almost fatherly glow in Louis's eyes, and Tacante let the word stand.

  "I wish to be a man of peace," Tacante said, "but everywhere the wasicuns steal our land, slaughter Tatanka, our uncle. I starve myself for visions, but none come. There's nothing left but to seek the high country where Thunderbird flaps his wings."

  "Tacante, my brother, there can be no more fighting. Look around you. Listen as the iron horse thunders past Platte River. Look at the towns rising from the prairie. Our father, Hinhan Hota, knows it's hopeless. He's set aside his lance. Can't you?"

  "My medicine comes from the heart of the people," Tacante explained. "I can never be a man to look to myself. If Wakan Tanka says I must take up the warrior trail, then I will go."

  "Won't be a Powder River fight this time," Louis warned. "Not with these new rifles. The soldiers have Catling guns that shoot hundreds of bullets in an instant. No Lakota charge can survive that. Winter will find you alone on the plains. Who will feed the little ones? Don't ride to your death, Misun."

  "I only go to hunt," Tacante said, gripping Hinkpila's hands. "And if I die, perhaps Itunkala will bring my sons to be raised by you in the old way."

  "The old way's dead," Louis said, sighing.

  "Then I am dead, too," Tacante replied mournfully.

  "It's a sad world without brave heart hunts, Tacante."

  "Full of blind, heartless people."

  "Philip can manage the store a bit. I can spare some time to hunt our uncle Tatanka."

  "It will be a remembered hunt."

  "One of the last," Louis said sorrowfully.

  "Yes, I fear," Tacante replied.

  Louis rode along on the buffalo hunt, but they had poor success. Tacante had no spirit dreams, and Tatanka proved elusive. Finally the brother-friends settled for hunting elk in the hills.

  "The good hunting days are behind us," Louis said finally as he saddled his horse and prepared to return to the fort. "Be careful, Misun," he added, passing into Tacante's hands two boxes of precious shells for the Winchester.

  As Louis vanished behind the far horizon, Tacante felt a chill in spite of the blazing summer sun. Again he built the sweat lodge, and as the steam choked the bitterness from his heart, Tacante prayed for Wakan Tanka's help.

  "I'm nothing," he cried. "I'm dust on the hillside."

  He then climbed the nearby mountain and fasted three days. As he cut the flesh on his chest and danced, singing brave heart songs, he prayed for a vision.

  Tatanka came at last to his dreams. Bull Buffalo limped across a plain littered with the bleaching bones of his thousand brothers. A woeful cry filled the air.

  "Gone are sacred buffalo," the words called. "No more do my thunder hoofs shake the plains. The two-legged creatures have struck me down. Now comes the starving."

  The words echoed through Tacante's dream, shaking him awake. He rose, light-headed, feeling as though a wall of gloom was falling upon him.

  He spoke only to Hokala of the dreaming.

  "Yes, Brother, it's a sad day for the Lakotas," Badger remarked grimly. "Long have I carried the lance of the Tokalas. Soon I will stake it in the ground and fight my last battle."

  But there was good hunting still in the Big Horn country. The stolen road was quiet, and many elk and antelope grew fat on the good grass. The drying racks were full, and many fine robes waited to stave off the chills of winter.

  Tacante soon merged his small band with the Oglala camps of his old friend, Sunkawakan Witkotkoke. The Big Horn country was full of Lakotas, and there were many Dakotas and Sahiyelas, as well. In spite of the deep snows and the frigid winds that came that winter, warmth flooded the lodges of the people. Old friends shared brave heart tales, and the young men boasted of their fine ponies and sure aim. Winter, too, passed.

  Snow still clung to the earth when Crazy Horse moved his camp to Powder River. Other bands were nearby, and for once the people felt safe. They were far from Platte River and the wasicun forts. There was good food to eat. Fires warmed the lodges and cast off winter's gloom.

  Tacante was enjoying a rare contentment when the camp crier announced the arrival of visitors. The Heart rushed out to see who had come. His face lit with a smile when he beheld Hinkpila clumsily dismount from an overburdened mule. With Louis was the spectacled brother Phi
lip.

  "Have you heard?" Louis called. "The army's orders?"

  "We've heard nothing," Tacante answered. "Come inside. You are frozen and sure to need a warm drink."

  Louis entered the lodge, but even as Hehaka worked to remove his frozen boots, the trader hurried to explain.

  "It's General Crook," he said. "He's come to drive the hostiles back to the reservation."

  "Back?" Tacante asked. "Reservation?"

  "Was bound to happen, I suppose," Louis grumbled. "The peace commissioners couldn't make a new treaty, so they've reread the old one. Now, they say, all these lands beyond the Black Hills are needed for white settlers. It's time the Sioux take up farming on their reservation in Dakota. Those not at the agencies by January are considered hostile."

  "January," Tacante said, recalling the strange wasicun names for the winter moons.

  "Yes, it's past that now," Louis replied. "There's an army on the march. You have to hurry."

  "Hurry where?" Itunkala asked, offering Louis a cup of hot bark tea. "This is our home."

  "No, they've stolen Powder River and the Big Horns, too," Louis declared. "Too many to fight, Misun. Far too many."

  "You say we must go back," Tacante said, considering the words. "Back to an agency that has never been home? What of Sunkawakan Witkotkoke? He's never lived there. This is the place where my sons will grow tall in the old knowledge. You say there are soldiers coming. Wouldn't they kill us anyway? They did at Blue Creek."

  "I'd ride ahead and tell them you were coming in peace."

  "Hinkpila, my brother, who would have ears for your words? It's not possible. The horses are hungry from winter starving, and the little ones are weak. I can't go. Better to fight than to watch the children freeze in their pony drags."