Full Circle

by Rosanne Bittner

  The man’s eyebrows arched in surprise, and she could tell he thought she was quite a foolish woman. “Well, Miss Gibbons, I would still advise you to be cautious. As far as teaching in the Sioux language, it will do no good in advancing the Indians’ education and helping them assimilate if they don’t learn English.”

  “They also can’t learn anything if they don’t understand a word I am saying. I will teach them English, Reverend Evans, but I will also speak to them often in their own language, just to keep them at ease and make sure they are understanding the things I am teaching them.”

  Evans could see she was not a woman who often lost an argument. “Do what you wish. You are certainly qualified, but I would be careful, lest Mission Services looks upon you with disfavor. Don’t forget the government will be paying you only through their approval. And that was acquired because of your education and because your father is a well-respected man, his own work among the Cheyenne most impressive. However, your personal conduct and your teaching methods will be watched.”

  “They will have to trust my judgment in how to teach them,” Evelyn answered, struggling to keep her composure. She noticed Beverly looking at her lap, as if embarrassed by her husband’s rudeness.

  “Well, heaven knows it doesn’t do any good to try to get the Sioux adults to send their children off to outside boarding schools,” Janine put in. “Most of them refuse, afraid they will never see the children again, and they have good reason. So many of the little ones who are sent away die from white man’s diseases, some, plain and simply, from broken hearts. Most go only because they feel they must, to appease the Great Father in Washington; and when the survivors return home, they go right back to their old ways. The ones who try to live like whites are shunned by most of the old ones as traitors. It’s very hard for them.” She fanned herself almost frantically. “I agree with Evelyn. If we can teach them on the reservation, get through to them by whatever means necessary, we will make a lot more headway than by ripping little children out of their mothers’ arms and forcing them to turn away from their heritage. We lose the trust of the parents, and the children end up terribly confused and coming home as outcasts. Too many turn to whiskey as solace, and nothing gets accomplished.”

  Evelyn was glad for the words. Perhaps at least in Janine and her brother, John, she would have some support and cooperation. Janine had already told her that a little log building had been constructed near the church to use as a schoolhouse, so she would be close to people who understood what she was trying to do.

  “There is one Indian you’ll probably never reach,” Janine added. “My brother has tried for nearly two years now, but he’s afraid to stir the man’s anger too much.”

  Evelyn again pressed the hanky to her damp neck. There would be an overnight layover in Omaha, and she hoped she could find a hotel where she could bathe. “Who is that?” she asked.

  Janine stopped her fanning and just stared at the pink paper thoughtfully. “His name is Black Hawk. He was a good friend of Crazy Horse, and he is very stubborn and belligerent. He lives the old way, in a tipi, deep in a canyon on the northwest end of the reservation with his seven-year-old son, Little Fox. He refuses to bring the boy in to listen to any teaching of any kind from any white man, and most of the time he refuses to take government rations. He lives off the land as best he can, using bow and arrow. He isn’t allowed to have a rifle because the agency and soldiers don’t trust him with one.”

  “Can’t they force him to bring the boy to school?” Evans asked.

  “Everyone is afraid it will start some kind of trouble that will mushroom into something they can’t handle. Better to lose one child than risk people’s lives by stirring up trouble. The rest of them look to Black Hawk as a kind of hero, someone who still lives the way of the warrior. Knowing someone is still living that way seems to appease the rest of them. The only one who can go out and talk to him and always knows how to find him is his sister, Many Birds. She and Black Hawk’s mother live on the reservation. Sometimes Many Birds takes food to Black Hawk that she got from government rations, and once in awhile he comes in to the agency for supplies; but other than that, the most any of us see of him is from a distance, when he rides the outskirts of the reservation like some kind of ghost, he and that spotted horse of his painted up as though for battle.”

  Evelyn’s heart tightened. “Spotted horse?”

  “Yes. He rides a gray-and-white Appaloosa. Most of the white is in spots on its rump and chest.”

  Evelyn quickly looked down at her lap, not wanting them to see the shock in her eyes. The man in her dream rode a gray-and-white spotted horse. A shiver moved through her at the irony of how accurately Janine’s description fit her vision.

  She was more sure than ever now that she was doing the right thing. She would miss her father, who was the only family she had left. There were no brothers and sisters, and other relatives lived back in Massachusetts. She would miss Waupun, her friends there, Steven; but this was where she belonged for now. Perhaps her mother was guiding her to the Dakotas… maybe even to this man called Black Hawk.

  Evelyn grabbed hold of the bale of hay on which she sat, finding it difficult to keep her balance. She had hoped her trip to the reservation could be made in a buggy, but there were not enough funds in Mission Services for anything fancy. The wagon in which she rode with Janine was nothing more than an old buckboard, owned and driven by an ageing Sioux Indian man called Two Trees. He was accompanied by his daughter, Dancing Eagle, who had taken the white name of Maggie.

  “Maggie attended the Genoa Indian School with Anita Wolf, the young woman who will be your teaching assistant,” Janine had explained in introductions. “Some of Maggie’s own people shun her because of her white man’s education, so she and Dancing Eagle live near the church and help with chores and such.”

  Evelyn already liked Maggie. Nineteen, quiet, and friendly, she was a chubby young woman who seemed round all over, her body, her face, her puffy hands. She had seemed impressed at learning that Evelyn had a respectable knowledge of the Lakota language, especially the Hunkpapa dialect, the band to which Maggie belonged. Evelyn could already see that even though the woman had accepted the fact that she must learn a new way, there was still a deep pride in her soul at being Sioux. It was too bad the others could not see that learning the new ways did not mean they had to completely give up the old.

  Because of the continued heat, Evelyn had been forced to pin her hair into a bun today, although pieces of it kept falling against her damp face. A light breeze helped cool her, but it came from the south, forcing dust stirred up by the wagon wheels right back onto them. The country through which they rode seemed so barren, but Janine had promised that there were more hills and grassland and trees where they were headed. The Little Eagle Station on the Grand River, the center of the Standing Rock Reservation, would be home for some time to come. They had left Beverly and Greggory Evans at the Oahe Mission on the Missouri River, a desolate, treeless place where the heat seemed worse because of the barren landscape. Still, it was at least near the river, and a chapel and school had already been built there by missionary Thomas Riggs fifteen years earlier. Riggs was the son of Stephen Riggs, a missionary from Ohio who had come to the Dakotas back in 1835 to minister to the Indians.

  Evelyn could not help feeling sorry for Beverly, who did not seem at all happy with having to follow her husband here; but she was at the same time glad that Evans would not be coming to the Little Eagle Station. He was a pompous man who liked to think he was always right. She had a feeling she would have enough trouble with Indian Agent James McLaughlin, whom she knew from things she had read and heard, ran the Standing Rock Agency with a firm hand. Maggie had said that McLaughlin would not want her teaching in the Sioux tongue. Then she had covered her mouth and giggled, her dark eyes dancing, and said he didn’t need to know that.

  Already Evelyn could see many challenges facing her, from the way she preferred to
teach, to finding the answer to her visionary dreams… to learning more about the elusive and mysterious Black Hawk. There was the additional challenge of growing accustomed to this new life, with its lack of modern conveniences. This South Dakota reservation appeared even more desolate and lacking in modern conveniences than even Oklahoma had been. It was obvious the government had done little to provide decent housing here, and there was no plumbing or electricity, just as Janine had warned. Their only connection to the outside world would be by telegraph and mail delivery, which was done through pickup by steamboats along the Missouri River.

  The wagon jolted her again, and she brushed at dust and hay that scattered across her lap. She noticed a sagging, two-story frame house just ahead, its grounds obviously sorely neglected. The wood siding on the house was dark and weathered, some of it bowed from drying out in the sun. As they came closer, she noticed a skinny young white girl hacking at the front lawn with a scythe to try to cut down some of the grass, which grew nearly as high as she was tall. The girl wore a plain brown dress that was too big for her, and even from the distance Evelyn could tell she was sweating profusely from her hard work in the hot sun. Her long dark hair was pasted to her head, and she kept wiping her face with the hem of her dress.

  When they drew closer, the girl stopped working and watched them, a forlorn, pitiful aura about her that Evelyn could feel even from a distance. A white man with gray hair wearing only coveralls and no shirt came out the front door then. He stared at them for a moment. It seemed to Evelyn that the proper thing to do would be to nod and wave to him, but she noticed Janine and Maggie looked straight ahead and did not even acknowledge him. He turned and yelled something to the young girl, and she wielded the scythe with even more energy, as though afraid the man might think she was not working hard enough.

  “Who is that man?” she asked Janine.

  The woman removed her spectacles and dabbed at the perspiration around her eyes. “Seth Bridges. He is a most reprehensible person, who I don’t think should be allowed to live here. He farms government land and is permitted to stay because he sells his produce to the agency and to the Army at Fort Yates. John and I personally suspect he deals with whiskey traders who manage to sneak onto the reservation, but no one can prove it. God forgive me, but I cannot bear to be near the man. He is filthy, seldom shaves, and he has a foul mouth. He took in two orphan girls sent out from the East. Word is he gave the orphanage a story about his own wife being ill and needing help, but his wife ran off on him years ago, taking two children with her. I fear the man abuses his adopted daughters, at least the older one. We hardly ever see the girls except when he brings them to the agency to shop for supplies. Even then, they are quiet and overly reticent. We have tried a time or two to go to the house and see what their situation is, try to get him to let the girls have some schooling, but he threatens us with a shotgun and orders us to mind our own business.”

  “Dear Lord!” Evelyn looked back at the house, noticing the young girl had stopped working for a moment to watch them. “How old are his daughters?”

  “I’m not sure. The oldest, Lucille, looks to be about sixteen. The younger one is eleven or twelve, I’m told, although she’s built so small she seems younger. Her name is Katy. That’s about all we know about them, except that we are sure they are sisters by blood. It is a sad situation.”

  The wagon rattled up a hill and down the other side so that Evelyn could no longer see the sorry-looking house and farm. She had come here to teach Indians, but she already knew that the memory of how the young white girl looked at her would haunt her. She decided that she would try to see the girls and talk some sense into Mr. Seth Bridges, whether he liked it or not.

  Three

  The old wagon in which Evelyn rode rolled into agency headquarters on the northern section of the Standing Rock Reservation, dust billowing from under its rickety wheels.

  “We are not far from North Dakota now,” Janine explained. “Fort Yates is only about thirty miles farther north on the Missouri River, a good day’s ride. Several soldiers are stationed right here at the agency to help keep order. The commanding officer is Colonel Alfred Gere, and he is often here. Second in command is Lieutenant Teller, the man I told you about.” She blushed at the mere mention of the man’s name. “Gere is quite stern and unbending, but Lieutenant Teller seems to have a little more compassion for the Indians.”

  “You like him very much, don’t you?”

  Janine smiled. “I think he is quite handsome. You will get to meet him the next time he comes to services, unless we happen to see him today.” She sighed. “I don’t know for certain if he feels anything special for me, but I know my own heart flutters something awful whenever he is near. I am hoping he asks me to the annual dance at the fort in August. Pretty as you are, I am sure there are any number of men here who would like to ask you, but as I said, a lot of them are not worth getting to know. John says that men who join the western army often are just criminals fleeing something back East. A lot of them are foreigners who join up just to see America and make a little money.”

  Evelyn retied her slat bonnet, already realizing how important it would be to always wear something on her head with a wide brim in front to protect her face from the sun. The contrast of this land to Wisconsin was almost overwhelming. She supposed it was no wonder the Sioux were not happy with what had been left to them—a flat, treeless, barren land they were expected to farm. It was miserably hot in summer, and, according to Janine, bitterly cold in winter, with nothing to break the howling winds and blowing snows. In Wisconsin, hills and trees and lakes helped keep things a little warmer in winter and cooler in summer. Already she missed the green of home, the big trees, but she refused to let the desolation here discourage her. She had promised the mission to come here and teach for at least a year, and she would keep that promise, but Janine’s talk about Lieutenant Teller made her miss Steven.

  Still, it was not enough to make her go back. Besides, she already felt a deep compassion for the once-proud Indians who lived here. Many of them just hung around the agency begging, or sitting quietly, doing nothing, for they literally had nothing to do now that their freedom was gone. Here and there naked children played, smelly chickens pecked at sparse feed, and dogs ran everywhere. In the distance a few soldiers drilled, and several of the uniformed men who were stationed at the agency stopped to stare and point or smile. Evelyn was embarrassed at how they gawked at her. She could hear the words “new teacher” and “too pretty for these parts.” A couple of men just let out soft whistles, and she pulled her slat bonnet lower down over her face, irritated by their rude stares.

  When first arriving at Standing Rock, they had stopped at the Little Eagle Station on the Grand River to see the one-room cabin she would share with Janine until another cabin was built for her private use. Reverend John Phillips lived nearby in a small room behind an equally small, white frame church. He had not been there when they first arrived, and they had been told he had gone to the agency to complain to Agent McLaughlin, as he had done several times before, about the free flow of whiskey on the reservation. White whiskey traders remained a continuing problem that the soldiers could not seem to stop.

  After a day of rest and a bath at the cabin, Evelyn felt somewhat refreshed, although the weather was still dreadfully hot. She was self-conscious about her dusty appearance, which made her even more nervous about meeting both John Phillips and Agent McLaughlin, who she had heard ruled the reservation with an iron hand, although word had it he did try to be fair with the Sioux. Janine had told her she felt it was McLaughlin’s fault that Sitting Bull was blamed for bringing the Ghost Dance religion to the Sioux, a religion that had stirred the Indians into dancing and wild chanting and singing. That in turn had frightened surrounding settlers and soldiers alike. Blaming Sitting Bull had led to an order for the man’s arrest, which ended in the murder of both the great Indian leader and his seventeen-year-old son, Louis. The death o
f their once-great leader frightened the rest of the Sioux at Standing Rock and had ultimately led to the Wounded Knee Massacre in December 1890, where many innocent women and children and old people had died.

  “Where is Sitting Bull buried?” Evelyn asked.

  A look of disgust came over Janine’s face. “Way in a back corner at Fort Yates, with just a little wooden cross marking the place. The day he was killed, several Indian police also died. Some of their relatives beat Sitting Bull’s dead body so badly that his face was no longer even recognizable. That is another way the white man has of keeping the Indians weak: He knows how to divide their loyalties and keep them arguing among themselves.” She sighed. “Sitting Bull was taken to the fort and buried in a pine box, and Agent McLaughlin showed no remorse whatsoever. He felt Sitting Bull’s death was the best thing that could have happened to break the back of the Sioux and their old ways. It’s his fault Sitting Bull got blamed for inciting his people to join the Ghost Dance religion in an effort to regain his leadership. In truth, Sitting Bull had nothing to do with the new religion. He even denounced it as being bad for his people, but McLaughlin continued to insist he was behind it all.”

  Evelyn was still weary from their nearly three-week trip by wagon from Fort Kearny north into the Dakotas, from the nights spent sleeping on the ground or in the wagon. She would begin teaching soon, but first there were many people for her to meet, including the Sioux woman, Anita Wolf, who would be her assistant.

  “Actually, the Ghost Dance religion was a joyous faith that taught the Sioux not to make war,” Janine continued. “They only danced and sang because they thought their dead relatives were going to come back to life and the land would become as it used to be—full of buffalo, unplowed, covered with sweet grass. That, of course, never happened. Others thought the Indians were preparing for war, and McLaughlin tried to get General Miles to arrest Sitting Bull, but Miles refused, saying it was a matter for civilians. Miles talked Buffalo Bill Cody into going for Sitting Bull, but I have a feeling Cody didn’t know he was being used by the government to capture the man. You know, of course, that Sitting Bull was part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows for a couple of years. They were good friends. At any rate, when James McLaughlin discovered the plan, he was furious that Miles had refused to have the Army do it. He sent Indian police to intercept Cody, and Cody left without ever even seeing Sitting Bull. McLaughlin finally had Indian police arrest Sitting Bull. Feeling betrayed by his own people, Sitting Bull put up a fuss. One thing led to another. There was a scuffle. I suppose no one will know for sure how it all took place, but by the time it was over, six Indian police were dead, Sitting Bull and eight of his followers also dead.” The woman shook her head. “It was all such a waste.”