She covered her face and wept, and he pulled her close. “For you I would go back,” he told her. “I would help you teach the little ones, who are the only hope now for the Cheyenne to live on. I would live in a white woman’s house and would ask only that you allow me to worship my way, as you allowed Zeke to do; that you would understand if sometimes I rode off for a while to be alone. I would comfort you in the night, Abigail, protect you as he protected you. And I would love you as he loved you. It is what he would want. It would not be a betrayal to his memory, for a man could not be loved more than we loved him.” He put a hand under her chin and forced her to look up at him. He studied the beautiful brown eyes of the woman he had always loved and who, in his eyes, had not changed at all from the sixteen-year-old girl Zeke Monroe brought to his village all those years ago. “Tell me, Abigail. Tell me you feel no passion for Swift Arrow.”
He met her lips, and she did not resist as he laid her back on the blanket. The water rushed nearby, while her horse nibbled at fresh grass. And an eagle circled overhead. It cried out once, then winged away. Wagh. It was good. All was well. The great bird headed south, toward the Sangre de Cristo Mountains—to wait. Yes, there was a time to die; but there was also a time to live.
It was the spring of 1887 when Jeremy opened the letter, sitting back in a plush leather chair and puffing on a pipe. He felt nervous, for he had not heard from his mother in years, and he wondered how she had even known where to write him. Would it be some kind of scathing letter, telling him never to return home? He had considered it, after learning his father had died. But he had always been afraid to go, his guilt too strong to allow it. He had finally admitted to his wife years ago that he was part Indian. She had not taken it as badly as he thought she might, and he learned that she really did love him as a person, rather than for his position and money. It actually surprised him, making him wonder if perhaps his own father had also really loved him after all.
He felt a lump in his throat at the sight of his mother’ handwriting.
Dear Jeremy,
For many years I have tried to forget about you, angry that you have ignored us for nearly twenty years. But you are my son, the seed of Zeke Monroe, and I must try once more to influence you to come home, and I must tell you for once and for all that you are loved and missed. I can do no more than this.
I live in Montana now, on a Cheyenne reservation. Your uncle, Swift Arrow, is my new husband, and we are very happy, although no man can mean to me what your father meant. I care little whether you approve of what I have done. I needed a man at my side in my aging years, and I can think of none more honorable than Swift Arrow. I feel in my heart Zeke would approve. And, after all, it is the Cheyenne custom that when a warrior dies, his wife comes under the care of a brother.
The real purpose of my letter is to tell you Wolf’s Blood, who was imprisoned in Florida for a while, is now with us again and remarried to a white woman, a wonderful young woman who makes him very happy. He is going to start a ranch here in Montana, where your youngest brother Jason is a doctor, and where LeeAnn and her husband also live. We are all going down to the old ranch this summer so that Wolf’s Blood can pick out some horses to bring back with him to help him get started. And he must sign over his share of the ranch to Margaret and her husband. We will be spending the month of July there. It will be a real family reunion, with all the children and grandchildren. But it will not be complete if one child is missing. I beg of you to try to come. You will be welcomed, you and your wife, whom we have never had the privilege of meeting. We have all been through so much, Jeremy. It is time, for your father’s sake, to all be together and to forget the pain of the past. And there is so much to tell you that I could not possibly get it all in this letter. I will pray everyday that you will come. If you want to do one thing, just one thing, to make up for hurting Zeke, then come to the ranch in July. He will know you have come, and he will be at peace. If you choose not to come, then I must tell you that I love you and that you have a place in my heart always, for you are my son, first and above all. God bless.
Mother
He folded the letter, feeling a sudden urge to cry. He breathed deeply, setting his pipe in an ashtray and rising to leave the study and go to the kitchen, where his wife was preparing tea.
“Mary, what do you think about … about meeting my family … my mother?”
She looked up at him in surprise. “What should I think? I would be very happy to meet them. Why?”
“I … uh … I got a letter from my mother, asking me to come to the old ranch this summer. She’s planning some kind of family reunion of sorts.”
She set down a cup. “I think we should go. You haven’t seen your mother in nearly twenty years, and I have never met her at all. And she must be getting on in years. We both know how you suffered when you learned your father was dead, when you finally admitted to me your real heritage.” She stepped closer, touching his arm. “Don’t let your mother pass away without seeing her again, Jeremy. You could never live with that. This thing over your father was bad enough. I don’t want to go through that with you again.”
He sighed and blinked back tears, putting on a smile. “I have my brother to consider—the wild one. I think he’d like to pound me into the ground, and I wouldn’t blame him if he tried it.”
She smiled. “After all this time, and with your mother there? I doubt he’d try it, Jeremy, not if you have a good talk.” She squeezed his arm. “It will all work out.”
He met her eyes. “Yes. Maybe it would. I’d like to go, Mary.”
She nodded. “Then it’s settled. And if we are going to go, I want to know all about your family, at least what you know up to twenty years ago. It will help me when I meet them.” She sat down to her tea. “Tell me again about your parents—your mother.”
He smiled, pouring himself some tea. “My mother.” He shook his head, his eyes tearing. “My mother’s maiden name was Abigail Trent, and she came out here from Tennessee when she was only fifteen. My father was the scout for her wagon train. We all laugh secretly when she tells us, for the thousandth time, how they met, when he walked into the light of her father’s campfire, and she handed him a cup of coffee, and their fingers touched.…”
“Don’t make me leave you, for I want to go wherever you go, and to live wherever you live; your people shall be my people, and your God shall be my God; I want to die where you die, and be buried there. May the Lord do terrible things to me if I allow anything but death to separate us.”
—Ruth 1:16-17
Epilogue
It was over for the Cheyenne and other native Americans; at least the old ways were over. Geronimo was to eventually die at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, over twenty years after being taken prisoner and sent to Florida, never again to see the beloved mountains and deserts of his homeland. Most tribes lived in places far removed from what they once called home. And in the Black Hills in 1890, just four days after Christmas, one of the bloodiest skirmishes between Indian and soldier took place—a last battle that started through misunderstanding and panic, as many such battles were instigated. It happened at a place called Wounded Knee, where a handful of defenseless, half-starved Sioux were massacred by soldiers using not only rifles, but bigger Hotchkiss guns that sent flying shrapnel into men, women, and children. When it was over, an estimated three hundred Sioux lay dead, mostly women and children. Others who were only wounded crawled off to die. When the bodies were picked up, some live babies were found beneath the bodies of their dead mothers.
Perhaps the sentiment of many whites at that time is best described in the words of journalist Samuel Bowles (The Springfield Republican), who after attending the Fort Laramie Council in 1851 wrote the following words that summed up what was to happen to the Indians over the next forty years:
“We want your hunting grounds to dig gold from; to raise grain on—and you must ‘move on.’ Here is a home for you; you must not leave this home we have assigned you. When the march
of our empire demands this reservation of yours, we will assign you another—using force, if necessary—but so long as we choose, this is your home, your prison, your playground.… Let the Indian die, as die he is doing and die he must, under his changed life. This is the best and all we can do. His game flies before the white man; we cannot restore it to him if we would; we would not if we could; his destiny is to die.”
The white man nearly accomplished all that was uttered in that statement, and after the Wounded Knee massacre the following words were spoken by Black Elk, one who was present at that fatal event:
“I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and it was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream … the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.”
Wounded Knee became a symbol of “the end of the end.” For many years thereafter the white man did everything in his power to mold the Indian into his own form, to educate him, dress him, give him land, break up the family unit, destroy the culture, wipe out all Indian identity. But to this day his efforts have failed. No race has held more tightly to remaining separate than the American Indian.
And so the fight goes on, and perhaps the true destiny of the American Indian is not yet known. Otaha! The song is not yet finished.
Meet the New Dawn Page 48