Return of Little Big Man

by Thomas Berger

  But when he just frowned and moved away, I realized he didn’t know English that good, and that was the last chance I had, for Sitting Bull was now dressed, and the lieutenant, whose name I should tell you was Bull Head, grabbed him by the right arm, with Sergeants Shave Head and Red Tomahawk respectively on the left and behind the old man, the last-named shoving him along with a pistol into his back.

  The other bluecoated police encircled them against the growing crowd of the Bull’s people, who was shouting defiance, and one of the most evident was Sitting Bull’s son Crow Foot, who usually spent the night with the rest of us in the main cabin. He was the survivor of a pair of twin boys born the night before the fight at Greasy Grass and thus represented big medicine. The Bull had always put great expectations in him, even sent him for a while to the missionary school that female preacher ran at the agency. He was a fine-looking young man fourteen years of age, a time when a boy of any race gets impatient with his elders.

  So while Crow Foot had joined with the others in abusing the policemen, he also yelled at his Pa, “Father, if you are a brave chief, why do you let them take you away?”

  Sitting Bull had been cooperating thus far, though them policemen was pretending otherwise, no doubt to build themselves up both in their own estimation and the eyes of the onlookers, but hearing the voice of his son, he stiffened his old body, in which there was still a lot of contained force, and refused to move further and though his captors was pulling and pushing him with all their might, his strength drawed its source from deep in the ground under him, like a lofty lodgepole pine with roots going down to the center of the earth.

  And he says quietly, “No.”

  Lieutenant Bull Head was fit to be tied, and he took one hand off his captive to straighten his hat, which in the exertions had almost fell off, and he says, with a pleading note, for he was getting real nervous about the unfriendly crowd, “You have to come. I have my orders. I am in charge.”

  One of the other policemen had untied the gray horse and was leading it forward. This animal had been trained to perform in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, and he still, rode or led, had a dainty show step which you noticed right away.

  I had remained in place without nobody’s attention. I didn’t want to get back to Amanda, for I hadn’t been able to do what she wanted, and she weren’t in no danger I could see. I judged the crowd would continue to threaten and bluster, but there wouldn’t be no bloodshed of Sioux against Sioux, and in the end, having made his point, Sitting Bull would relent and mount the gray horse and be taken in to the agency, where the next step would come when McLaughlin confronted him.

  That the Bull would go to jail was unthinkable, but the worst was generally what happened to warriors of such great prowess—they survived all battles to be defeated in peace.

  Now at this moment Sitting Bull looked slowly around him, as if taking stock of them all, the policemen and his own friends and family, so like an eagle in glittering eyes and beak, not cruel but so intense and alert he might seem so to those ignorant of nature. And then he seen me, who was alone and out of place and therefore invisible to the others, Indians never seeing what they didn’t know how to deal with, so long as it wasn’t harming them so’s they could notice: that was why whites called them primitive. And the Bull wouldn’t of seen me either, but that he had a message for me in that glance, sent in silence through the briefest glint of eye: It’s just as Sdosdona predicted.

  And I was thinking, Well, he made too much of it, he was just being arrested by his own people, not killed, so the meadowlark had exaggerated quite a bit, like human fortune-tellers tend to do, claiming they was a hundred percent right when being only ten, and I tell you I was greatly relieved to learn the bird had missed by that much.

  Now through the crowd pushed a man called Catch the Bear, holding a blue blanket around himself in the morning cold. He had been one of Sitting Bull’s closest friends and followers for many years, but in the same degree hated Lieutenant Bull Head’s guts long before this episode, due to a dispute them two had over a matter of beef tongues, which meant it could not of been more serious.

  He goes right to the point now, him and Bull Head glaring at one another. “You’re not going to arrest Tatanka Iyotanka.”

  “You won’t stop me,” Bull Head says, in a voice of disdain.

  “Come on,” Catch the Bear calls to the crowd. “We won’t let them get away with this!”

  People began to shout in support of his sentiments and press against the ring of soldiers.

  Bull Head glanced nervously from side to side, and pulled his pistol from its holster. “I’m in charge here,” he says to Catch the Bear, who though still staring at him in hatred does back up some. Then Bull Head called to the policeman holding the horse to bring it closer, for he had been detained by the crowd.

  Catch the Bear suddenly gives the Lakota war cry, which no matter how often you heard it would raise the hair on your neck even if you was on the same side. Last time for me had been fourteen years before at the Greasy Grass, and I tell you it struck my soul now, and I might of run if I could, unarmed as I was.

  And then Catch the Bear throws off the blanket and raises the rifle he was carrying underneath, and he fires at Bull Head, who falls, but, still alive, lifts his pistol and shoots Sitting Bull in the heart at that close a range, at which Sergeant Red Tomahawk puts his own pistol to the back of Sitting Bull’s head and blasts the old man’s brains out.

  At which lead begun to fly all over the place: a policeman named Lone Man killed Catch the Bear, while Sitting Bull’s men pumped more rounds into the fallen Bull Head, and then the shooting got so hot and heavy I didn’t watch no more but dropped to the ground and crawled in the opposite direction to the most intense firing, though that changed almost instantly, so I guess I went in circles.

  What I cared about most was reaching Amanda, who I could only hope was sensible enough to take cover. I couldn’t help her much if I was killed myself. At the moment I wasn’t reflecting consciously on the death of Sitting Bull, just saving my own hide, but it had had its effect, and all the more so when I had just decided he was going to be, if not happy, then at least alive. I wasn’t only embracing the earth, which meant slush and mud, but I was also shaking violently. In the years since Tombstone I had got out of the habit of seeing what gunfire does to the person it hits: when that person is someone you know, maybe even dislike, it ain’t never pretty. When it’s somebody you care for and admire, you first feel fear before the least touch of anger.

  In my crawl I kept encountering fallen bodies, all Indian, some in blue coats and others in camp clothes. If I looked up I couldn’t see much except a fog of gunsmoke. Also, since that was the way to get shot in the face, I tried to keep it down, but then at one point I thought I had been hit anyway, for my cheek was smeared with wet and when I rolled my eye at the nearby earth I seen a puddle of red. I waited for the hurt to arrive, which takes a while sometimes when you don’t know you been wounded. I even seen men die without knowing they been touched. But the fact was I hadn’t been hit. The blood come from a dead Hunkpapa who laid nearby, his nose smashed in and one glittering black eye still open.

  Then all of a sudden there was no noise whatever which happens in every battle before it’s really over. If you kept your eyes closed and pinched your nose shut so you couldn’t smell gunpowder and blood, you wouldn’t know it happened, but it might be even worse than when the shooting’s going on, for thinking you was out of danger can be your last mistake, so I just kept crawling, head down, and when I finally raised it enough to take my bearings, I seen, beyond the bodies all over the ground, a bunch of Sitting Bull’s people running for the stand of timber along the Grand River. No one was chasing or even firing at them at this moment, for the policemen was tending to their own fallen.

  I couldn’t see Sitting Bull’s corpse from where I laid, but no doubt it was yonder, beyond where the gray horse was, the show animal give him by Buffalo Bill, and I’ll t
ell you the damnedest thing I ever seen happen in any of the many battles I ever engaged in or witnessed: that horse was prancing and bowing and rearing up on its hind legs, and then doing a little curtsy, right front hoof bent back, taught it maybe for when we met royalty, had not Cody made the present to Sitting Bull. Hearing the guns go off all around it now, the trained animal didn’t know they wasn’t the blanks used in B.B.W.W. and proceeded to perform its part in the show, concluding by sitting down on its hindquarters and raising one hoof.

  While the lull continued I had to take advantage of it, and I got to my feet and dashed for the cabin, where thank heaven Amanda was still unhurt though having stood in that doorway throughout, I reckon being paralyzed by the awful sight she seen.

  She was still gasping now. I grabbed her by the waist and pulled her inside and into the farthest corner of the room. It would of been nice to have some piece of furniture to use as a barrier, but there wasn’t any.

  “They’ll start shooting again directly.”

  “Oh, Jack,” she says and hugs me tight, but that was only because she was not afraid but horrified. I never saw Amanda show fear at any time, come to think about it, and I don’t say that with unqualified admiration, for it can be foolish not to be scared at the right time. “Jack,” she gasps, talking against the side of my head, “how could they do that?”

  “They’re human,” I says.

  And just then the door which I had closed was shoved open and in come a bunch of Indian police, carrying their four or five wounded, among which was Lieutenant Bull Head, who though shot many times was still living.

  I quick moved in front of Amanda, but Sergeant Red Tomahawk and his men disregarded us as they found places to put the casualties down, and in the course of gathering the bedclothes of them who spent the night there, they come to where Sitting Bull slept next to Seen by the Nation and pulled the blankets off, and there was young Crow Foot, cowering on the floor.

  Having seen his Pa murdered right before his eyes, he weren’t the cocky young warrior no longer, but rather a scared young boy.

  “Uncles,” he says, “please don’t kill me.”

  “Get up,” says Lone Man, kicking the lad in the ribs, and then asks Bull Head, who was laying nearby, “What should we do with him?”

  “Whatever you want,” says the lieutenant, in not the strongest voice, for he was still leaking blood from multitudinous wounds. “He’s as bad as the others.”

  Lone Man hit the boy in the head with the butt of his rifle, and Crow Foot lurched through the open door.

  Amanda hadn’t understood the Lakota words, but when she saw the young man get struck, she pushed me aside and dashed after Lone Man and the rest, who had followed Crow Foot outdoors.

  “No,” I yells. “Keep out of it, Amanda!”

  But she never stopped and was yelling herself at the policemen, in English of course and in a woman’s voice, and she got maybe one foot out of the cabin, with me just behind, when Lone Man lifted his rifle and shot Crow Foot in the back, spinning him around, and then a number of the other policemen emptied their guns into the boy as he was falling and even after he was on the ground. By now they had worked themselves up to a state of fury I hadn’t seen since the Greasy Grass.

  Amanda was still screaming, but luckily none of the policemen still paid her any heed, and now the shooting started up again, with Sitting Bull’s people firing from the trees along the river, and the Sioux police from cover behind the cabins and barn, and then come another sound of anguish: Sitting Bull’s womenfolk, wives and daughters, had gathered in the smaller cabin and their Lakota wails of grief would tear your heart out.

  With the gunfire coming our way from the trees it wasn’t advisable to stay in the open, so I tried to pull Amanda down to join me in at least a crouch while I looked around for cover, but she wanted to remain standing and denounce them responsible for the carnage, so we had a bit of a struggle, and being fit and young, she put up quite a resistance till I recalled an old Cheyenne wrestling trick of tripping up an opponent, and she went down, fortunately on a patch of ground not yet touched by the blood flowing from Crow Foot’s crumpled body. But it soon would be. Therefore, still grappling, I had to roll us away.

  “Goddammit, Amanda!” I finally had to yell. “Stop fighting me! We got to save ourselves!”

  I guess she had been in shock, which can happen to a person in the middle of a fight, especially if they ain’t themselves a part of it except by accident, but she all of a sudden stopped resisting and says in a reasonable tone, “All right.”

  And immediately I was embarrassed to be wrapped around her, so to speak, in a recumbent position, though it wasn’t personal, and I disengaged and stuck my head up enough to see over the dead Crow Foot, but every structure in sight was being used as cover from behind which the policemen was shooting at them in the timber. We couldn’t go back to the main cabin, lest Amanda begin to light into them there for the murders of Sitting Bull and his young son, and though sympathizing, I couldn’t of stood listening to the Indian women in the other building mourning for what might be hours, if we was stuck there.

  So we just continued to lay on the ground, where it was so cold that Crow Foot’s blood soon begun to skim over with ice, and we was only wearing indoor clothes, that same wool dress of Amanda’s and in my case a shirt and pants and the boots I fortunately had kept on all night, not being able to sleep when my feet was chilly. When I seen Amanda had been in her stocking feet all along, I rolled over and took off Crow Foot’s moccasins, which he wouldn’t need any more, and give them to her. He wasn’t wearing anything else that wasn’t soaked with blood.

  I thought it was her who started shivering so strenuously that she looked blurry, so begging her pardon, I says we had to hug or freeze to death, and it wasn’t until I had been embracing her for a while and warmed up some that I realized I was the one who had been doing most of the shivering. But she hugged me back without protest, so I guess it was okay.

  I don’t know how long we laid there in one of the strangest situations I had ever been in in a life characterized by many—it was awful in the obvious way while being also personally remarkable—but it might of been an hour or so, the gunfire tapering off to the point where you thought it was all finished only to start up again, until all of a sudden, in the distance, somebody shot a cannon our way, the ball hitting just alongside the barn. Looking between the buildings I seen a puff of smoke rising from the high ground above the river valley, and there come another, followed by a second boom. I heard the thud of that ball when it hit, back of the main cabin.

  “How do you like that?” I says to Amanda, hugging her even closer. “Now the Army’s shooting at us.”

  A couple of the Indian police come running out of the cabin, with a piece of white cloth tied around the front sight of a rifle, and waved it frantically at the hills.

  There weren’t no more cannonfire, and after a little while here come a troop of U.S. Cavalry riding down into the bottomland. We stood up at that point, for the firing from the trees had stopped, and in fact I could see Sitting Bull’s men slipping away upstream. In the immediate sense, this hadn’t been a fight with the Americans.

  Now soon as the soldiers rode into the settlement, Amanda marches up to the captain in charge even before he dismounted and starts in on the crimes of the Indian police.

  I guess he had heard she was living with Sitting Bull and therefore thought her at best crazy and at worst a harlot so low she would cohabit with an Indian, but to his credit he was civil enough while not taking her too seriously.

  “Missus,” he said, “I’m just a soldier following my orders. You want to take your charges to my C.O. at Fort Yates, Lieutenant Colonel Drum. Now excuse me please, so I can attend to my duties.”

  He strides away with Sergeant Red Tomahawk, who is talking in an excited rush of Lakota, which I doubt the captain could understand a word of but kept nodding.

  The other soldiers dismounted and was starin
g at Amanda, for though far from her best at the moment, having been rolling in dirt and blood, she was still something to see.

  I was worried they might say something fresh, which I would have to respond to, though being so worn of mind and heart I could hardly stand straight, so once again I found myself trying to divert her from what came natural to that girl: sticking her nose into the affairs of others to serve the cause of right, which, don’t get me wrong, I admired, but which often tended to get complicated. Here you had Sioux killing Sioux to serve white policy, but the whites who dreamed up this policy believed they was trying to help the Indians in a place and era in which many other whites would of liked all redskins exterminated.

  “Amanda,” I says, “that captain’s right. What we ought to do is go back to the agency and report on what happened. We can’t do no good here.”

  “I hate to think that’s true,” said she, but she did stop and think about it. I don’t want to ever give the impression that Amanda though opinionated was unreasonable. “Maybe there’s something we can do for the poor women.” She started off for the other cabin, where the mourning wails had continued so long that it would of been noticeable now only if they stopped.

  When Amanda went I had to follow, and we got to the cabin, where the wives and grownup daughters was sitting in a line on top of a long deep pile of blankets, producing that chorus of grief. Amanda walked along touching each on the shoulder, but what I noticed was the total absence of young kids, for there was always otherwise some nearby.

  In glancing around to look for them, I seen hanging on one log wall that portrait of himself Sitting Bull had told me about, a full-length view of him in full feather headdress and best beaded and fringed deerskin clothes, a stark contrast to the bloody body which lay outside now on the cold ground. As he had told me, the picture was signed by the white woman who made it, “C. Weldon,” the name he claimed was so hard to pronounce he forgot it. The Indianness of that statement was such that I could of shed a few tears if I thought about it, but I didn’t have no time for that, for now a white Army officer come in, accompanied by some Sioux policemen, and the lieutenant, holding his ears, hollered at the women to stop that howling, and Amanda screeched at him.