Cy showed up last summer for the sun dance and we talked about the old days and the Knee. Cy’s daughter, Janet, and her boyfriend, Bob Young, had stayed for more than a year at the Paradise, together with Cy’s youngest daughter, ten-year-old Tracy. In time, Grandma Crow Dog looked upon Janet as her granddaughter. Bob joined the Native American Church, ate huge amounts of “medicine” during the meetings, and became a good singer of peyote songs. One time Bob and Janet wanted to go from New York to the Paradise. They had no car so they went to the George Washington Bridge to thumb a ride. A guy stopped and said: “Hop in.” He asked them where they were going. When they told him they were going to the home of a Sioux medicine man, he got so excited that he took them all sixteen hundred miles to Rosebud and stayed there with them for a while. That was a hitchhiking record for sure.
Another longtime visitor at the Paradise, and sometime travel companion, was Roque Duanes. He was mostly Chicano and originally from Central America, but before he showed up at our place he had lived in the Northwest. Roque stayed with us for a few years. Leonard accepted everybody who came, no matter for how long, and somehow provided a tent, bedroll, and food for them. Roque made himself useful. He helped putting up the addition to the transitional house before it was stolen. He always helped prepare peyote meetings, helped with the wood, and became a real good peyote singer. He picked up the songs real quick. I still have him on some of our peyote tapes. He joined our caravan and went along to the peyote gardens, picking sacred medicine. Roque was unusual because he didn’t drink. Never touched a drop. He didn’t smoke grass either, but he did not condemn people who did. He said that was between them and the Grear Spirit. He was always at the Paradise during sun dance time. He worked real hard during the vigil we had in D.C. for Leonard Peltier. If anyone ever deserved another trial because of a growing mountain of new evidence, it is Peltier. But he’s still in jail, slowly going blind.
Well, Roque worked real hard during the vigil. He was always running around, doing paperwork, hustling food, finding places to stay. He became heavily involved in Peltier’s case. When Peltier broke out of Lompoc Prison, in California, Roque was outside in his car waiting for him. He left Peltier at a place where a white woman was supposed to pick him up with a van and get him to Canada. But before the woman could get Peltier, an Indian showed up and told her: “No, You are white. I’m Indian. It’s my job.” He took the van and the eight hundred dollars she had on her for the trip, took off, and was never seen again. When the van did not come, Peltier wandered around for a day or two until he was picked up by the police. Curiously enough, Roque never did time for the part he played in Peltier’s escape. As far as I can remember he was not even indicted. On another occasion, when people needed guns he supplied the stuff. But when some brothers got suspicious and went through his billfold and found a list of the serial numbers of the guns, word went out that Roque was working for the Man, that he was an informer. We had a hard time with him, because many people said that he was a rat. Some thought that he might have had something to do with Leonard going to jail. He left Rosebud and the Paradise to set himself up as a fisherman on the Northwest Coast. One day he set out in his boat and did not come back. He vanished without a trace. His body was never found. Some said that he drowned in a storm. Others thought that the government had killed him. Maybe it was his own people. We will never know. Before he disappeared he sent some tobacco and a sack of medicine to the Navajo elders at Big Mountain to hold a meeting for Leonard Peltier. They heard what had happened to Roque, but held the meeting anyway, to honor Grandfather Peyote and the smoke he had given them.
Another outsider who came to the Paradise to stay was Brad Zais. His chief achievement was getting my sister Sandra pregnant and cooperating in the making of a pretty baby girl. Brad lived at the Paradise off and on for a few years. He became a veritable slave for Leonard, a real gofer. He brought and fetched, made phone calls, wrote letters for us, drove to town for groceries, and traveled with us. He took good care of Grandpa and Grandma Crow Dog. Brad chopped wood and helped put up the arbor for the sun dance. He always said that Henry and Gertrude were the best people he ever met. Grandma Crow Dog soon started to call him “son.” He would spend hours sitting by her side, sipping “black medicine,” listening to her stories of the olden days. Often she would speak for a long time in Indian, and then suddenly stop herself, saying: “Oh, I forgot, you can’t understand.” Then she would go on with her story in English, but soon slip into Lakota again. She taught Brad how to make fry bread for her.
And then there was Junji, half Japanese and half Ainu, the indigenous, bear-worshiping people from Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island. We had met him at the Longest Walk, and then again at Big Mountain. Junji came to America in 1980. At first he was a kind of Japanese hippie, but once he joined a group of Buddhist monks on the Longest Walk he became one of them. He showed up at Big Mountain in a saffron-colored robe with his head shaved. He is now celibate and can no longer fool around with women. He is very saintly now. He pierced and sun danced at the Paradise for four years running. At sun dance time he is always up before everyone else, when it is still dark. He then wakes the camp by beating his monk’s drum.
Many people came to the Paradise from Latin America, particularly Mexico. One came with a bunch of large condor feathers. Another man, half Huichol and half Nahuatl, came to participate in the ghost dance at the Paradise in 1974. He said his Indian name was Warm Southwind, so we dubbed him “Mild Disturbance.” One Yaqui, whose name was Nacho, was some sort of a revolutionary who called himself general-in-chief of Aztlan. Another sun dancer from Mexico named himself Tlacael after a famous fifteenth-century Aztec leader. One Indian from Central America walked for three months on foot to participate in last summer’s sun dance.
A young law student, Eric Biggs, stayed at the Paradise for over a year doing Leonard’s law work and letter writing. Later he worked for the Navajo Tribe. He is now a big-shot lawyer in Santa Fe and no longer interested in Crow Dog or the movement, but that takes away nothing from the help he gave us years ago.
We even had some devil worshipers coming to the place who boasted of having sacrificed cats and chickens to the Prince of Darkness. We got rid of them fast. And, of course, there were the Germans--Hanz, Fritz, and Stephan. It is impossible to remember all the people who made their pilgrimages to the Paradise and lingered on for weeks, months, or years.
There was also the problem of always being spied on. Our greatest shock came about five years ago. Richard Erdoes had flown to Custer, South Dakota, to testify for Dennis Banks. Dennis was being sentenced there in connection with the great riot at Custer, in February of 1973, when many Sioux people protested in front of the Court House, because the white man who had killed Wesley Bad Heart Bull went unpunished. The morning after the trial, Richard was having breakfast at the Alex Johnson Hotel in Rapid City. He was sitting at a table together with Bill Kunstler and Bruce Ellison, Dennis’s defense lawyers. Crow Dog and a few of his friends came in. He, too, had wanted to testify for Dennis, but, as so often happened, his car had broken down and he had arrived during the night, after the trial was over. Kunstler called out to him: “Leonard, come over here. Do you know that your brother-in-law is an FBI informer?” As Richard told me, Crow Dog stood there openmouthed, in shock. All he could say was: “NO!” “It’s true,” Kunstler went on. “Before I came here for Dennis, I was up in Fargo, North Dakota, for a rehearing of the Peltier case. When the prosecution ran out of believable witnesses, they blew his cover and he testified for them, saying he had worked for the FBI for years. He ratted on you, sending out a whole stream of lying reports. Your own brother-in-law, your sister’s husband.” Crow Dog did not know what to say. He kept standing there openmouthed, shaking his head, his appetite for breakfast gone. So we had to deal with such things at the Paradise. We found out that after the Pine Ridge incident he had told his bosses that Peltier was staying at our place and they had believed it. That’s why we were
raided by 185 marshals and agents with helicopters in September 1975, and why Leonard was arrested on a trumped-up charge and went to jail.
As a matter of fact, Peltier had been staying at the Paradise, but that was before the shoot-out. He was a big flirt with the girls on our place but they didn’t care for him too much until later on. Such was life at the Paradise.
Grandpa Henry always used to get up early in the morning. Grandma had arthritis and could hardly move around. She was also in pain all the time because of a broken hip. When they were living, they’d hold hands when they walked, and he’d cook for her and feed her. He was spry for his age, and real loving to her. And they’d talk, like after peyote meetings. She had been really sick, and gotten well from using the peyote, so she continued to use it,
One winter we went to Kilgore to get some beer, and were drinking and partying, and he got a little high. We all did. Leonard went to bed and fell asleep. When I went to check on the old man, I didn’t see him anywhere. I thought maybe he’d gone to the other house. About an hour later, Bern, Richard, Ina, and some of the grandchildren came up and asked where he was. I said: “I thought he was down there.” But he wasn’t. The snow was high and it was cold. We looked all over for him. He never came in.
Apparently he had fallen into a ditch full of snow somewhere. Early the next morning Wilson White Hawk came knocking at the door: “Leonard! Your dad’s at Diane’s doorstep!” Diane, his daughter, lived next door and he was always going over there, but it happened that this week Diane had gone and locked up her house. We rushed over and he was lying there. We got him in the house but we knew he was already gone. We called an ambulance and they tried for three hours to revive him but he had frozen to death. He was eighty-six, I think. No one was really sure of his age.
They decided to bury him up at Ironwood Cemetery by his mother. It was a big funeral--people came from all over the country, and there was big media coverage. They had Christian and traditional Indian services.
Henry was always making something--a tomahawk or a shield--always doing crafts. In the morning they’d always have cornmeal and coffee. Sometimes we’d eat over there and sometimes they’d eat at our house. With Old Henry passed a piece of history and a way of life. He was the last of his kind. There isn’t anybody like him left now. We were in Phoenix when Leonard’s mother died soon after. Leonard didn’t want to go back because; he knew she was dying. I guess he just couldn’t handle seeing her die. My mother went to her wake, and they had Henry and Gertrude’s marriage certificate there for all to see. They had been married in church, in the Christian way. That surprised some people. They held a mass for her and buried her next to Henry.
Year after year, things at the Paradise went from bad to worse. All the troubles of the world landed at our doorstep. There was a total lack of privacy. The house was always frill and the grounds resembled a permanent camp. People came to borrow money and never paid it back, not even once. They took from the house whatever they needed, even the pots and pans. Leonard would give his last dollar away to help someone. We never got on our feet. We never had a home. For years he told me he was going to build me a home, but there was always something more important--a ceremony here, a sun dance there, a political meeting, tribal affairs. We ended up with nothing. We never knew what the next day would bring. And Leonard will live that way all his life, because that’s all he knows. I am not materialistic at all. I have the sharing spirit of our people, but the life at the Paradise simply wore me out. It got to Leonard, too, even though he had grown up this way. We got short-tempered with each other. We exploded emotionally. Simply because of the maddening condition of our existence. He strayed. I strayed. In the end we no longer shared the same bed, Finally, two years ago, things became unbearable, and I left him. The life we led took its physical and emotional toll on me. I had become scrawny and you could see the bones under my skin. I couldn’t sleep. I had nightmares. I was so tired that I stumbled around like an old woman. We were both stressed out.
The last time I lived with Leonard, we didn’t even have a house. We just camped out. We had a propane gas stove outside. That’s how I aged so much, from cooking out in the sun. The elements got to me. It was okay, except when it rained. Then everything got wet, no matter how much I tried to tie down the tent. I always ended up having to do laundry, washing everything. You get a lot of fresh air but it’s hard. You get up in the morning and try to beat the flies to the toilet. I don’t like camping out, especially with a lot of kids, because they’re hungry, and then when you do cook, they’re not around to eat. They’d rather munch cereal, anyway. Sometimes we’d cook over a big fire, like if we needed a lot of coffee, or soup or something. That was my home for the whole summer. I wanted a house. And I told Leonard: “I’m not camping out here forever.” Water was from a pump pretty far away from camp. You would have to bribe somebody to carry it for you. All there was were those big five-gallon buckets. You’d have to keep the cleaning water separate from the drinking water. And after cooking, you’d have to clean everything in the whole camp, and then after everybody left spray and clean it again for the bugs, because there’s literally millions of flies. You could be twenty yards from the outhouse and hear them already. It was pretty bad. Then there was poison ivy. And last year they tested the water table and found arsenic in it. I guess they were treating it, but I don’t know if our well was being treated, because Leonard would never let the public health people come in and test the water. Anwah and Jenny got sick from the water, and June Bug, too.
For some time I slept in a little U-Haul trailer. The boys slept with Leonard in the tipi. I’ve had enough of that. When you’re young, you’re gung ho, and it’s all right. But not when you get older. I want a push-button washing machine now, and running water. Leonard would tell me: “This is my grandfather’s ways. I live in a tipi. But you’ve lost the spiritual side of it.”
One day our friend Rod Skenandore brought us a buffalo pipe for Pedro because he was born at the Knee. It had a bowl in the shape of a buffalo. The stem had beautiful quiliwork on it. He also gave me a beautifully beaded pipe bag. One day pipe, stem, and bag disappeared. Another time my medicine bundle given to me at the Knee was gone. Up to this day I don’t know what happened to these things. When I told Leonard that these sacred things had been stolen, he said: “Yeah, the spirit told me that you were drunk in a bar and maybe you dropped them in a ditch somewhere.”
I said: “No, they were just plain ripped off like all our other things. I don’t go drinking when I have a medicine bundle on. I don’t dishonor sacred things that way.” We were rubbing against each other. We rubbed ourselves raw. It wasn’t his fault and it wasn’t my fault. The conditions were at fault. I left.
Leonard and I still care for each other. He taught me so much about ceremonies and how to prepare for them. He took me on walks and taught me how to recognize the different healing herbs. He had a good influence on me. He opened the door to me, a door that led me back into being Indian and not merely a half-breed. He was always there for the people. He brought me back to the pipe, and shared with me his dreams of spirituality. And to suffer at the sun dance was good far me. And now, even though I am no longer with him, I have it in me to go to the sweat lodge, or a peyote meeting, or a sun dance, or to be around when people are praying in the good old Lakota way, to share dreams and goals for the future and our children. And I feel sorry for him that I’m not there anymore to help him, because it will be hard for him without me. He told me how hard it would be to teach someone else all those things that I learned over the years, and that brought tears to my eyes.
There’s not much left of Crow Dog’s Paradise as I found it when I joined Leonard there in 1973. The houses are gone and so are many of the people who had once spent their lives there. Now there’s only last year’s sun dance pole left, and the ruins of the tar-papered cookshack, and the skeleton of a sweat lodge. But, come August at sun dance time, there returns that old feeling, the excitement, the ela
tion, the trance, the ecstasy, when the drums are pounding, and the songs reverberate, and the sound of eagle-bone whistles fills the air, and the sun dancers circle around the sacred tree with their red kilts and circles of sage around their heads. It is during these short days that I wish I’d never left.
* * *
*Cedaring and fanning off are terms you will encounter often in this book. Cedaring means burning as incense dry cedar, sage, or sweet grass. Fanning off means using an eagle wing to fan the cedar smoke toward a person who is being cured or purified.
CHAPTER FIVE
Womb Power
I had one child, Pedro, before I came to Crow Dog’s Paradise. I had three more children during the years I stayed there. Recently, I had my fifth, a girl, with my new husband. I have already described Pedro’s birth at Wounded Knee in my first book. I had gone to the Knee for the purpose of giving birth to my first child there. He came into this world during the siege, with bullets going through the wall and the drums beating before the window greeting the arrival of a new life. Pedro’s birth was looked upon as a symbol of renewal, a tiny symbol, a tiny victory in our people’s struggle for survival. But my other birth-givings were likewise symbolic, or at least different from most women having a child in a hospital.
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