Bill Dugan_War Chiefs 03

by Sitting Bull

  But the treaty was devastating in its implications. By signing on behalf of the Hunkpapas, Gall had bound them to settle on a reservation and to end all hostilities against the white invaders—or so, at least, was the government’s interpretation. The white officials could not get it through their heads that Lakota democracy was far more comprehensive than their own version of government, and that no Lakota could bind anyone but himself to do anything, or to refrain from doing anything. Although it was doubtful Gall understood the implications of the treaty, since the peace commissioners themselves, in whose language the document had been composed, were not sure of its interpretation, it would eventually be used to justify continuing hostilities against the Hunkpapas for violating its provisions.

  That Sitting Bull neither knew nor cared what the treaty said was made perfectly clear to the white occupiers when, less than two months after the treaty had been signed, he led yet another war party, this time more than one hundred and fifty warriors strong, against the hated Fort Buford. But, as in previous raids, the casualties inflicted on the Long Knives were light, only three soldiers killed. The Hunkpapa had to console themselves with the herd of beef cattle they ran off.

  It was time to address questions of organization within the Hunkpapa councils. Four Horns was still the most influential and respected leader, but he was getting older now, and the younger warriors were beginning to look to someone closer to their own age for guidance. They preferred that their leader be battle-hardened but not battle weary, a man who would be willing to lead them against the forts and wage war as the Hunkpapa had always done, against all invaders, red or white.

  Four Horns knew that he was probably due to step aside, but he worried that the government, which seemed cumbersome and nearly unworkable, had to be redesigned. He knew that peace was going to be the central concern, as Running Antelope and Bear’s Rib continued to draw new adherents. And since Red Cloud was increasingly inclined to make some sort of peace with the white man, Crazy Horse was growing more and more influential among the Oglala.

  What the Hunkpapa needed, as Four Horns saw it, was someone like Crazy Horse, a man who could lead by example, who was not afraid to fight, and who could inspire others by his own conduct. That man, clearly, was Sitting Bull, and Four Horns decided that he would do what he could to persuade the other chiefs to recognize his nephew as the principal leader of all the Hunkpapa.

  Such a thing was almost inconceivable. The idea of a single chief was alien to Lakota thinking, and ran counter to hundreds of years of tradition. Four Horns was contemplating nothing short of a revolution in Lakota governance, and he was not sure he could pull it off. But more and more, he was inclined to believe that it was the only hope the Hunkpapa had.

  Complicating matters further was the fact that of the four Hunkpapa shirt-wearers, only Four Horns himself had not fallen into disrepute. Running Antelope had stolen another man’s wife, Red Horn had outdone him in infamy by stealing two wives, and Loud-Voiced Hawk had stabbed another Hunkpapa to death. Since the institution of the shirt-wearers, they had been the primary source of authority for the tribe, but three of the four had forfeited their right to be shirt-wearers at all. Crazy Horse, an Oglala shirt-wearer, had married another man’s wife without permission, and had thus relinquished his shirt in recognition of the strict code of behavior to which all shirt-wearers were expected to adhere. But among the Hunkpapa, things were so lax that none of the three miscreants had been removed from office, nor had they volunteered to step down.

  That Running Antelope was a peace chief was all the more reason to remove him, because the highest councils of government had to speak with a single voice. If they were fighting among themselves, they would dissipate their authority, leaving the tribe directionless at the most perilous time in its history.

  But his plan, no matter how well conceived, would not work if Sitting Bull would not go along with it. He had to convince his nephew first to accept the mantle with which he proposed to drape him. If Sitting Bull refused, then there was nothing more to be done, because as far as Four Horns could see, there was no one else capable of shouldering the enormous burden. Of all the Lakota, only Crazy Horse was Sitting Bull’s match, but with increasing frequency, Crazy Horse went off into the wilderness by himself. Mystical by inclination, he was also solitary, and Four Horns knew that he would never consent to do what he had in mind. As a consequence, it was Sitting Bull or no one.

  Four Horns waited for the right moment. He did not want to risk alienating Sitting Bull, because he might not be given another chance. When the two of them were off alone on a hunting trip, Four Horns saw his opportunity. They had been tracking a deer for nearly an hour, but the animal had gotten away, and Four Horns suggested they rest by the bank of a creek and let the horses graze a bit.

  While they sat in the grass, Four Horns opened the discussion indirectly. “You know that all the Lakota people are divided on whether or not to honor the treaty with the white man,” he began.

  Sitting Bull pulled a fistful of grass and tapped it against his open palm. “I am not divided. The best thing for the Lakota would be for the white man to go away and never come back.”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “We can make it happen.”

  “Not the way we are now. Not when we are fighting among ourselves. There is no one to unite us, to speak with one voice for all the Lakota. Red Cloud wanted to do that, but Red Cloud is already beginning to make his peace.”

  “Crazy Horse will never make peace. Crazy Horse thinks as I do, that the best way is the old way, our way. All he wants, and all that I want, is to be left alone. There would be no war if there was no one to make war against. If the white man were to leave tomorrow, then there would be peace.”

  “But the white man knows that we cannot agree among ourselves. He sees this and he makes use of it.”

  “It is our way.”

  “Maybe it is not the best way. Maybe we should try another way. You know that there is a Bear’s Rib in every camp. He is ours, but the Oglala and the Blackfeet have theirs. So do the Sans Arcs and the Miniconjou, the Two Kettles and the Brule. As long as there is no one to stand opposed to them all, there cannot be one voice for the Lakota.”

  “What would you have us do, pick one man to speak for us all, the way the white man tried to make us do at Fort Laramie so long ago?”

  Four Horns could not resist the opening. “Yes. That is what I would have us do.”

  Sitting Bull laughed. “You are dreaming, uncle. No one can do that.”

  “He could if he started with one group. The others who think as he did would follow, and those from the other camps would join him. Among the Hunkpapa, most of the people do not want to make peace with the white man. They just want him to leave them alone. So I think that the man to speak for all Lakota should be a Hunkpapa.”

  Sitting Bull leaned back in the grass, holding the torn blades overhead and letting them rain down over his chest. He liked the scent of the crushed grass. It smelled sweet and clean. “I don’t think I would ever let any man speak for me as long as I can speak for myself. I don’t see why another Lakota would feel any different.”

  “That would be true if things were different. But already some let others speak for them. Some let Running Antelope speak for them. Some let Bear’s Rib speak for them. Many Oglala let Red Cloud speak for them. Why can’t someone speak for the others?”

  “Who would you have be so bold as to try?”

  “You.”

  Sitting Bull sat up as if he’d been stung by a scorpion. “Me?” He laughed then, certain that Four Horns was joking.

  But Four Horns immediately made it clear that he had meant exactly what he said. “Yes, you. It is the natural thing. Already, you are the most respected war chief among the Hunkpapa. The warriors listen to you. They follow you into battle. They would follow you anywhere. You are the one to lead them. Why not make it plain? Why not invite all those who think as you do—Oglalas, Minico
njous, all of them—to follow you?”

  “I think it would be a dangerous thing. I think it would divide us, instead of uniting us. It would turn father against son, brother against brother.”

  “It has already come to that, Sitting Bull. You know that as well as I do. Maybe the only way to heal the division is to admit that it is there and let people choose for themselves.”

  “The shirt-wearers would not permit it.”

  “The shirt-wearers are a joke. Running Antelope is a shirt-wearer, and those who disagree with him do not respect him. Even some of those who agree with him think he is a fool and a bad man.”

  “Why not you for leader, then?”

  “I am too old. I cannot ride into battle at the head of a war party like I used to. But you are young enough to lead anywhere, including the warpath, if that is what it takes.”

  The idea was intriguing, and Sitting Bull did not dismiss it out of hand. Four Horns was hopeful. If he hadn’t said no, then there was the chance that he might yet say yes. But Four Horns would not open the discussion with anyone until he had a commitment from his nephew. If he started trying to convince others, then Sitting Bull said no, the last chance was gone, for years if not forever.

  “Will you think about it?” Four Horns asked.

  Sitting Bull nodded. “I will think about it.”

  “There is no time to waste. Every day, things get worse. The sooner you make up your mind, the better.”

  “This is not an easy thing you are asking. I will have to be sure I want to do it. And sure that I think it is the best thing for the people.”

  “It is.”

  But Sitting Bull wasn’t sure. It was a week before he made up his mind. He spent most of that time by himself, examining the proposal from every angle. He could find many reasons to reject the idea. But just as he knew the Lakota had to find a new way to fight against an enemy that did not fight as other enemies did, he understood that it might be necessary to change the way they governed themselves.

  He thought that Four Horns might be overestimating the numbers of Lakota who were opposed to the peace treaty. There were times when he felt as if he were alone in that, or at the very best, one of a handful. Among the Oglala, it was much the same. The people were uncertain. They did not know what the future held for them, and they did not know what to do to give themselves a future they could live with. But while they waited, trying to make up their minds, the white government brought more Long Knives into Lakota land, the railroad went deeper, and the miners and settlers continued to flood across the land.

  Already, the buffalo herds had been effectively divided by the railroad. The animals shied away from the railroad tracks, perhaps frightened by the smoke-belching monsters that traveled along the rails, perhaps having learned that they were too easily shot from the moving railroad cars. For whatever reason, the herds had split completely in two. Those south of the railroad never crossed to the north, and those to the north never went south. And the gap in the middle continued to widen as the numbers of buffalo continued to decline.

  There were even rumors among the Lakota and Cheyenne that the white men planned to kill all the buffalo as a way to defeat the Indian resistance. It was difficult for a Lakota—even Sitting Bull—to imagine such a harsh extreme. The buffalo meant everything, and the possibility of exterminating them down to the last bull and cow seemed unthinkable. It is likely that the Lakota did not even believe it possible, because the numbers of the great beasts had been so huge and compared to the numbers of Lakota were still unimaginably large.

  For a week, he continued to ponder the proposal Four Horns had made to him. He went off to a hilltop one night and spent all the next day there, too, praying, hoping for a vision, for some sign of what he should do. But it never came. It seemed as if he was going to have to make this decision without any help from anyone, even Wakantanka.

  He talked it over with Her Holy Door, and she thought it would be a good thing. “You are the only man who can do this thing that Four Horns thinks should be done,” she told him.

  “Are you saying so because I’m your son?” he asked, smiling at her.

  But she did not smile back. “Of course,” she said. Then, after waiting a beat or two, she added, “And because it is true.”

  He walked out to look at the stars on the last night before he made his decision. Each one of them looked like a brilliant glass bead. Some of them seemed so close he wanted to reach out and take them in his palm, but some seemed so far away he thought he could never hope to touch them at all.

  That was the way his problem seemed to him. If you looked at it one way, it was a simple thing, a thing that any fool could understand. But when you looked at it another way, it seemed more complicated than anyone could understand, even the wisest of the holy men. Maybe, he thought, even Wakantanka doesn’t understand it. But I will have to try.

  It was like trying to unravel the mysteries of a spider’s web. Each strand is connected to every other. Touch one and they all move. And no matter which one the fly touches, the spider knows and comes out of his hole. But with this web, the fly can’t see all the strands, and he doesn’t know where the spider is. Once he touches a strand, it will be too late to turn back.

  Then, after a week of wondering, a week of sleepless nights and tortured self-doubt, Sitting Bull made up his mind. He would do as Four Horns asked. And he prayed to Wakantanka, hoping that he had not made a mistake. Because if he had, as with the fly and the spider’s web, there would be no turning back.

  Chapter 22

  Missouri River Valley

  1872

  SITTING BULL SLOWLY CLIMBED the hill. On its top, Crazy Horse sat cross-legged, waiting for him. Sitting Bull stopped every so often to turn and look at the thick grass rolling away like huge bolts of the white man’s green velvet cloth. His lame foot still bothered him, and walking uphill was the worst. He could still run when he had to, but he was no longer like the wind. He kept looking around him, his gaze flitting like a butterfly, never staying long in one place, as if he wanted to see everything there was to see, the way a man might look at the world as he stepped onto a scaffold and waited for the hangman’s hood to shut it out forever.

  It seemed to Crazy Horse that Sitting Bull was not just looking at the world, he was absorbing it, taking it into him and making it a part of himself. The great medicine man was so intimately connected to the world around him that there was no

  way to tell where one left off and the other began. That was what had drawn Crazy Horse to him in the first place. And the more time they spent together, the greater became the younger man’s respect.

  Sitting Bull knew that Crazy Horse admired him, and he respected the younger man, too, because like him, Crazy Horse understood the old ways. He knew them inside out, but more than that, he respected them. He saw why they were best. The relationship between the Sioux and the world in which they lived was more than a simple dependency. The way Sitting Bull saw it, the world needed the Lakota people as much as the Lakota needed the world and all that was in it. Each needed the other. The Lakota needed the plains, the open sky, the cold rushing waters of the rivers, and the buffalo. But all those things had special meaning in relation to the Lakota. It was the Lakota people who gave them their value. That was what made the Lakota so different from the white man. The white man looked at the world and saw only something to be taken. He had no respect for the earth. It was just something he stabbed and slashed and tore apart, ripping things from its insides the way a thief ripped things from a torn pocket.

  Sitting Bull treasured his friendship with the young Oglala the way he valued no other human connection. Not even the love he’d had for Jumping Bull or Four Horns could come close. They were, in some way that Sitting Bull understood but could not quite articulate, the only two Lakota who saw things as they truly were. At night, lying in his

  lodge, worrying about the future, it was comforting to know that he was not alone. Crazy Horse didn’t talk mu
ch, but Sitting Bull believed that the younger man felt the same way.

  Sitting Bull was a brave man and a great warrior. He saw that Crazy Horse shared those qualities with him, and felt the same devotion to the old ways. It sometimes seemed to him that he and Crazy Horse were like two parts of the same organism, heart and brain of the same beast. Without either, the beast would die. And without either man, the Lakota themselves were doomed. What Sitting Bull feared, and what he had tried so hard to explain to Crazy Horse, was that the Lakota might be lost in any event. But Crazy Horse was fiercely determined, perhaps even more than Sitting Bull himself, to preserve what mattered. He would not accept the notion that the white man could not be defeated.

  As he drew closer, Sitting Bull stopped once more, raising a hand to acknowledge the younger man, then turned again to look out over the valley, the blue-white curl of the river like a strip of the white man’s shiny ribbon winding off to the southeast. A hawk cried high above the hill, and Sitting Bull looked up to watch it glide, its wings motionless as it rode the warm air rising from the valley floor. The great bird cried once more as Sitting Bull waved toward the sky. When he returned his gaze earthward, he saw that Crazy Horse was smiling at him. He knew that Crazy Horse was wondering whether man and bird were communicating, or if the wave was just a random movement that had nothing to do with the hawk. But if Crazy Horse asked, he would not know the true answer.

  Sitting Bull climbed the last two hundred feet and sat on the grass beside Crazy Horse before saying anything. At forty-one, he was only a few years older than the great young warrior, but he seemed almost ancient by comparison. It was not that his physical powers had begun to desert him. Far from it—they were at their peak. He was still vigorous, his broad shoulders and solid trunk almost like a slab of granite. In some ways, he seemed so much more powerful than his young friend. But on some days he felt older than the ground he walked on. And this was one of those days.