Return of Little Big Man

by Thomas Berger

  He did not condemn white people for having beliefs that to him seemed lunatic, for obviously they derived great power from them, though he did observe that the whites who enjoyed the most power was those who acted as if they believed in nothing but force, which is to say, against the religious teachings he had heard, and this made even less sense and could not be explained by the missionaries except by the idea that this present life wasn’t the important one, but just preparation for a better one to come for them what was the losers now, and torment for those who at present was the winners. But it seemed to Sitting Bull that to believe in such an arrangement you had to hate the life at hand, the one you could see and hear and touch and taste, in favor of another that seemed real vague, and it was strange that the very people who controlled the world would have a religion that despised it.

  But he admitted there was much here he never understood, and maybe many white people didn’t either, for it was on its face a lot simpler than it was underneath, and that’s why he was interested in studying the Ghost Dance, to see if it had the profitable complication for Indians that Christianity had for the Americans. For example, the magic shirt might not repel a lead bullet in the simple sense, but give the wearer so much spiritual strength that he would be harder to hit. As was proved in every battle, the bravest warriors was least likely to be wounded or killed. And the predicted great flow of earth that would cover white people while Indians rose above the surface might happen not in a literal fashion but rather be a visionary way of seeing the red man elevate himself over the whites by some means yet to be developed.

  I tell you, Sitting Bull would of come to the top of any race he belonged to. I’m sorry he never met Queen Victoria, for I bet they would of admired each other as wise leaders, the best of their kind. I’m not saying he didn’t have no weaknesses, of which the main one was vanity, and he did not go without the “envyings” my foster father the Reverend Pendrake used to mention. The Bull believed himself principal chief of all the Sioux, and since the tribe didn’t have elections or hereditary titles, that position had to be self-bestowed, which never endeared him to the other claimants, who he then accused of selling out to the white man. I never heard him praise any other chiefs but Crazy Horse, who of course was safely dead. He was least fond of Gall, one of the main combat leaders at the Greasy Grass, where Sitting Bull never took the field. That the Bull was represented as the killer of Custer when he appeared with the Wild West was embarrassing to him on the one hand but probably gratifying as well, putting him one up on the lesser-known Gall, who got revenge by doing better in the complex politics amongst Sioux factions on the reservations.

  Which brings us up to date on Sitting Bull’s predicament. He had finally gotten on bad terms with every bunch, red or white, and except for the family and friends at his camp, everybody was plotting for his ruination, including some Sioux visitors to the place, hospitably received as guests, who was actually spying for the Indian police.

  But before I go on with this, I should say I had been giving Amanda them lessons in Lakota she wanted, but with the chores she had took upon herself she didn’t have a lot of time and so had not learned much except a number of names of things she thought it most practical to know first, like “beef,” tado; “stick,” can; “pot,” cega; and so on, mostly pertaining to domestic affairs, along with a few simple phrases, like “he comes,” which is just u; “we eat,” unyutapi; “you drink,” datkan.

  I had to try to explain to Sitting Bull why I had not gotten her to leave, but this turned out easier than I thought, for when I brought up the subject he smiled and said, “It’s no surprise to me. White men can never control their women.”

  Well sir, I was stung by this, and I says she was not “my” woman but just somebody I knowed, a friend, almost a kind of sister.

  “But you would like to make her your woman,” says he. “Anybody can see that from the way you look at her. My wives and daughters giggle about this and wonder why you don’t make her yours. But unlike me, they don’t know the ways of the whites.” That was another of his vanities, that he was an authority on the Americans. I expect he might of been so, in comparison with the others, but he was also not shy about representing himself as such to a white man.

  “If you’re saying what I think, it’s against the law,” I pointed out.

  “American law, perhaps,” says he. “But this is Hunkpapa land.”

  Now to dispute him on that would be nasty, so I swallowed my pride and just mumbled something about how it wasn’t really the way he thought, about me and Amanda; it was just difficult to explain in Sioux.

  “I hope you are teaching her to speak good Lakota,” he says, grinning, “even though you don’t speak it correctly yourself.” And he adds that he heard her ask a question using hwo instead of he, which was to say the male form instead of the female. She might of done so, for I admit I was not always as careful as I should of been—and look at my English—but he also might of been kidding, for he was given to that, as I like to give reminders of due to his reputation, like that of most Indians, for being humorless.

  As for Amanda, I told the Bull she stayed on not to be annoying but to study him and write a book in which he would be celebrated (though I didn’t know it was true she would admire him without condition especially when it come to the woman question, but I expect he was safe, for if he survived the current trouble, he couldn’t read anyhow).

  If I thought he would seem flattered by this news, I was wrong. His opinion of himself was so high that he naturally assumed everybody else shared it unless they was naturally wicked or crazy, especially women, and being he was illiterate, a book didn’t mean to him what it would to someone who could make out what the marks on its pages said. He preferred the paintings of that earlier white woman whose name, according to Amanda, was Catherine Weldon, which he could understand, and he was also a pretty good artist himself, in the Sioux way, having sometime before made a long pictorial account of his exploits in battle as a young warrior. He give that to his adopted son Jumping Bull, originally captured as a boy from the Assiniboine and now grown up, who I got to show them to Amanda, which he wouldn’t of done otherwise, being like most of the others, real shy of her.

  Me and her slept under the same roof, in the main cabin, though not together. Not real far apart, though, either, for you couldn’t be in a place of that size, given all the others who also spent the night there: a couple of Sitting Bull’s kids, his nephew’s wife, and often enough a man or two from the Ghost Dance, as well as the Bull himself and his wife Seen by the Nation. Being square, the house wasn’t as suited to purposes of lodging as a tepee would of been, where the sleepers was arranged neatly like the spokes of a wheel without the problem of corners, but everybody found a place for his or her blankets. Amanda usually bedded down not far from me though could not of been touched unless she extended her own arm towards mine, and there wouldn’t of been any call for that.

  Naturally I never told her what the Indians had been saying about us—and not out of concern for her feelings so much as my own: I was afraid she too would find it amusing from her own angle.

  So that was the state of affairs down on the Grand as of a couple weeks after Cody left Fort Yates. No authorities of any kind showed up at Sitting Bull’s settlement, and far from waiting around for the axe to fall, he was going about his life as if he had no enemies in the world. Not only had he been studying the local Ghost Dance at close hand, but now a man come from the Sioux reservation at Pine Ridge inviting him to go down there and visit their own dance, for they expected it was close to the time for victorious results of the kind predicted.

  Sitting Bull decided to accept the invite, but to do so, since he was still in effect a prisoner of war, he had to ask McLaughlin, the agent, for a permit.

  “I’m going to do this properly,” he told me, “by writing a letter that will make my reasons clear for wanting to visit Pine Ridge.”

  I thought this was a good idea for a chan
ge, and I says if he told me what he wanted to say, I would be glad to translate it for Amanda, who would then write it down in perfect English.

  Sitting Bull thanked us for the offer, but said with all honor to us, he nevertheless had to turn it down. As the matter was a Lakota thing concerning religion, it would not be proper for him to speak through white people however friendly, so he had decided to have his son-in-law Andrew Fox do the translating and writing.

  Now it was all I could do not to groan out loud, for Fox had learned what he thought was English in reservation schools, the same place he got first-named Andrew, probably by somebody like the Major, but was actually near-gibberish, but I couldn’t tell that to Sitting Bull, who put great store in the young man, whose wife, the Bull’s daughter, had took sick and died only a few years earlier.

  Here’s what Sitting Bull told Andrew Fox in Lakota, near as I can remember, though I have cut back on some of the rhetoric, which the Bull would of been wise to do himself.

  I met with my people today, and I send you this message. Wakantanka made all of us, white and red, and the whites have been more powerful, but now the Father of us all has decided to help the red man. Therefore we are praying to find the right road, and do not want anyone to come with a gun or a knife to disturb those prayers. Praying does not make me a fool. You think that if I were not here, my people would be civilized, but because I am here they too are fools. You did not always think that way. When you came to visit me, you said my praying was good, but now you have changed. Be that as it may, this letter is to inform you I must go to Pine Ridge to look into what they are doing with their own Ghost Dance. I hear you want to take away our horses and guns. Is that true? I will thank you for answering promptly.

  Now here’s what Andrew Fox come up with for an English version, and he was right proud of it when he showed the laboriously penciled text to me and Amanda. I would say his handwriting was awful hard to read in the first place, but then I never myself been noted for penmanship so ain’t criticizing that, just pointing out that we might of misread some of the scribble. Once again I give only the gist and not the entire message, which was even more of the same.

  I meeting with my Indians today and writing to you this order. God made you all the white race and also the red race, but white high then the Indians, but today our Father is help us Indians. So we all the Indians knowing. I wish no one to come in to my pray with they gun or knife. You think I am fool. If I did not here, then the Indians will be civilization. But because I am here, all the Indians fool. When you was here in my camp you was give me good word about my pray, and today you take all back from me. I will let you know some thing. I got to go Pine Ridge and to know this pray. A police man told me you going to take all our ponies, guns also, so want you let me know that. I want answer back too.

  Sitting Bull

  After Amanda read this and then me, both in silence, Sitting Bull beamed proudly on Andrew Fox and says, “You can now see why I wanted my son-in-law to write this letter. It is no reflection on you. He not only knows English so well, but also how to speak to the Americans in a voice that gets their respect.”

  I was worried Amanda might not of been so diplomatic as me, and spoke up quick so as to forestall any expression of dubiousness from her.

  I didn’t see no choice but to tell Sitting Bull, “I understand what you mean. Let’s just hope McLaughlin does the right thing.” Though I for one didn’t know what the right thing would of been. I was real fond of Sitting Bull, but I wasn’t sure he should be allowed to visit Pine Ridge. He would be taking a chance: with him away from the Grand River, his settlement would be at the mercy of his enemies.

  Well, only one of the requests made in the letter was answered in the affirmative: McLaughlin was prompt in responding. Next day he sent back a quick refusal to the main point. No, the Bull was definitely not allowed to go to Pine Ridge or anyplace else. Instead he was supposed to cease and desist from engaging in any more Ghost Dance activities of his own, and to send away all Indians presently engaged in them at the Grand River.

  What McLaughlin did not say was him and Colonel Drum had finally set in motion the plans to make the arrest. At daybreak next day, without warning, the entire contingent of Indian police, led by Lieutenant Bull Head and Sergeants Red Tomahawk and Shave Head, was to invade the settlement and take Sitting Bull into custody living or dead.

  Bull Head had been at the Greasy Grass fight fourteen years earlier—I guess I should specify, on the Indian side.

  20. Death on the Grand

  GIVEN THE KIND OF early life I had had, I was generally a real light sleeper, but on this morning, maybe having a premonition that what- and whenever anything happened concerning Sitting Bull, I wouldn’t be able to stop it, I was not woke up by what must of been the considerable noise outside of arriving horses and dismounting men, and was not brought fully awake even by the pounding at the cabin door and then somebody yelling, “Tatanka Iyotanka!” in a voice full of bad feeling, though I heard it as the trailing off of an unpleasant dream, from which I’d open my eyes to the crowded but real homey room full of people on good terms with one another and whose combined body-heats warmed the place against the outside cold, for it had snowed some lately and ice had begun to form on the Grand, and anyway whoever was yelling was Indian, using the Bull’s Lakota name, so it wasn’t the U.S. Army attacking like they done when I lived in Black Kettle’s village on the Washita and the Seventh Cavalry rode down on us.

  I didn’t know what was going on till after the door was throwed open and a lot of people come in in the dark, walking over us on the floor, kicking me in the ribs and stepping on my stomach in the process, and somebody lit a match and then a candle and when I had rolled off that foot in my gut and looked across, I seen in the candle glare the recumbent figure of Sitting Bull and staring down on him the profile of a big Sioux nose under the brim of a police hat.

  “We came for you,” said the latter in a voice without special feeling, but then he stepped aside and several others grabbed the old Bull and pulled him roughly out from under the blanket though he never seemed to be resisting, and got him to his feet, stark naked, his barrel chest covered with the scars of old wounds, and they wrestled him across the room, not stepping on no one this time, for most of the other occupants of the cabin was running outside now, but I hadn’t done so on account of my concern for Amanda, who wanted it explained before she moved an inch.

  Let me say that unlike Sitting Bull, she slept fully clothed, as did I, in my case owing to the cold.

  “For God’s sake, Amanda, let’s go!”

  “Can’t you talk to them, Jack?”

  “What could I say?” I pressed her to the wall, myself between her and them pushing past. This was the closest me and her had ever been, and even at this hectic moment I was concerned she might misinterpret my motives.

  Now there was a lot of yelling, most of it so far on the part of the police, near as I could tell, so she had to shout when speaking to me. “Remind them that they’re all Indians!” she cried.

  “I think they know that!” I hollered back, near as she was. Amanda’s belief in doing good had always been part of what attracted me to her, maybe just because I was myself sceptical in such matters, based on my experience of violence, but allowed for the possibility that such experience might not provide all that could be said regarding human affairs, especially by a merciful woman. “People of the same kind can be enemies,” I yells. “Remember the Civil War!”

  “You can at least try,” she says in a reproachful tone, at a lower volume now because the commotion had moved outside, leaving us alone.

  Well, you know the soft spot I had for her, so out I went, where the dawn was getting brighter by the moment, and a crowd of Sioux was milling about in the patches of snow and breathing steam into the otherwise crystal-clear cold air, with the nearby animals doing likewise, the horses of the police as well as the big gray stallion Buffalo Bill had give Sitting Bull, which was tied
nearby, ready for the Bull’s trip to Pine Ridge reservation, his asking permission for which visit was the immediate cause of this raid.

  Except for me the people was all Lakota, forty or fifty of the police and maybe half that many on Sitting Bull’s side, relatives and people there for the Ghost Dance, coming out of the other residential cabin and the outbuildings, the women and little children behind them.

  Sitting Bull’s wife Seen by the Nation had brung out a handful of clothes, but the policemen was still manhandling him so he couldn’t put them on.

  “Why won’t you let me get dressed?” he asked, in a mouthful of steam. “It’s cold.”

  “We will dress you,” one of the blue uniforms says, and grabbed the clothing from Seen by the Nation, shoving her roughly aside, and a couple of them begun to put the garments on the old man’s body each by each, telling him by turns to lift his foot or raise an arm, and so on, like he was a little kid.

  And to give you an idea of how great he was, he chose not to show bitterness here but rather, displaying one last time that wit of his, told them ironically, “You need not do me this much honor,” with reference, as every Sioux would know, to their practice of helping a chief attire himself on occasions of high ceremony.

  Now I had promised Amanda, who was watching from the doorway of the cabin, that I would try to do something, so I addressed the sharp-faced Indian wearing a lieutenant’s gold bar on his tunic, the highest rank I could see.

  “Why are you acting so disrespectfully to this great chief?”

  He looked down his nose at me. “This ain’t your affair,” says he, in English, in the very flat way Indians speak that language, surprising me.

  He was putting me in my place, and though he might of been right, I got real burned up at some redskin “officer” trying to high-hat me—as always I’m trying to tell God’s honest truth: I was helping an Indian against others of his race, and the first thing that occurred to me when stopped was being myself white—but to my credit I right away felt embarrassed, and in words that was supposed to sound official, I says, “Yes, sir, Lieutenant, I am aware of that fact, but what I was thinking was maybe you could use more restraint when taking him into custody.”