At the end of his life, when anyone asked Walks Alone how he had been a wise and caring head man for so many years, he always said it was because of his grandmother. Of course, none of those who asked him that question knew his grandmother, since she had died when he was still a young man. So he would tell them the story of the small, quiet woman who was such a powerful influence on him. It began when he was just a boy, and his name was Slow. His grandmother’s name was Gray Grass.
Every kind of being that lived on the great northern prairie lands had to be strong in order to survive. Summers were extremely hot and winters were harsh and unforgiving. That meant that every kind of plant, tree, and shrub and every kind of creature that flew, swam, crawled, or walked on four legs or two had to know the ways and whims of Grandmother Earth. Two-leggeds—the people—were no different.
The people who lived on the prairie lands made their living by hunting and gathering. They hunted the animals whose flesh provided sustenance, strength, shelter, and comfort, and whose bones gave them weapons and utensils. They also gathered the various fruits and vegetables that grew on the flatlands or along the rivers and streams, such as tubers, berries, wild oats, and peppermint. Life was good for the two-leggeds. But as for all the inhabitants of the land, it was also hard.
When Slow was ten years old, his mother and father were swept away together in a flash flood. They had been on their way to visit her parents in a distant village and had left Slow with his grandparents, so he was taken in by them. But the following winter, tragedy visited the family once again. Slow’s grandfather, a good and wise man, broke his leg while hunting. He was alone and far from help, and so he froze to death. Therefore, for many years, until Slow took a wife at the age of 20, it was only he and his grandmother in their lodge.
At the age of 12 he proved himself to be a persistent and skilled hunter during a very hard winter when game was scarce. He found a small herd of buffalo after walking for many days in the bone-chilling cold and often hip-deep snow. It was a feat that even the adult hunters in the village would not attempt. The animals he found were enough to feed everyone in his village through the winter. Furthermore, it was his grandmother’s advice and planning that had enabled him to travel so far and succeed at his mission.
Gray Grass knew that her grandson was always quiet, hardly talking even in the presence of other children and young people. And she knew why. Life had been hard on him and he had much to contemplate. Some of the other adults worried that he was too quiet. They wondered if the tragedies the boy had suffered might be too much to bear. The old woman, though, was glad for the boy’s silence. She knew he sought solitude for the peace that it brought. After all, they had suffered heartbreak together. Though they had relatives in this village and another, each was really all the other had for support to face each day’s trials and tribulations. So when anyone spoke about the boy’s tendency to be alone and quiet, whether as worry or as criticism, she took such comments with a polite smile. As one who had lived a long life and endured much herself, she knew the healing value of silence. As for Slow, he trusted his grandmother without question.
The difficult circumstances that life had handed the boy and his grandmother made them closer than they would have been otherwise. Three people from the same family lost in such a short span of time left a big hole. Many people would have given up hope or spent the rest of their lives mourning. Yet in addition to the tragic losses, life had also given the old woman a new purpose; more than one, as a matter of fact. She had to become a parent again and take responsibility for being teacher to the boy the way his father and grandfather were to have been.
Like all the women in the village, Gray Grass knew the way of the hunter and the warrior—two roles fulfilled by every man and necessary to the survival of her people. Her husband and her son had honored that path. Therefore, though she had not taken to the hunting trail or the warpath herself, they had been a part of her life. Furthermore, in her grandson’s face she saw her son and her husband, and that helped her to accept the difficult circumstances life had given them and to face whatever lay ahead.
Material wealth was not important among the people of the prairie. They moved often with the seasons, taking everything they owned with them each time. So it was not wise to own anything that was not absolutely necessary. Anything beyond that was a burden on people and dogs. After all, it was the dogs that carried most of the belongings on drag poles whenever the villages relocated. It was understandable, then, that the worth of a person was not measured in the things he or she owned, but in the deeds done on behalf of others.
All these things and more the old woman taught her grandson. But when it came to honing the skills he would need as a hunter and warrior, she asked men she knew and trusted to be good and patient teachers. As the years passed, the people in the village saw the boy grow into a quiet and respectful youth, and they knew it was entirely due to his grandmother. In time Slow came to be known as “his grandmother’s son.” It was a label that caused many to scratch their heads, trying to discern what it meant. But for those who understood, it meant that the old woman and the boy had turned tragedy into a strong bond, the kind of bond that many envied.
However it might have appeared to other people, there was a fear that haunted Slow every day of his life—that his grandmother would die just as his parents and grandfather had. Gray Grass suspected as much and realized that she must help her grandson face the day she knew would come. She decided to teach him to face two great fears that all people seemed to have—darkness and death. In order to do so, she would use another of life’s realities that most people tended to overlook—silence—mostly because her grandson already spent much of his time in that realm.
She also decided to weave those lessons into the small events of everyday life. Of course, everyday life was full of the unexpected as well as the ordinary. There was always danger in one form or another. The weather was one. Though it behaved in certain predictable ways during each season of the year, it could change at any given moment. Animals were another, and the most dangerous among them were the bears and the big tawny cats. Though bears were not known to stalk or hunt people, the big cats did now and then. There were other creatures of lesser stature that could not be overlooked either, such as the rattling-tail snake with its poisonous bite.
All things great and small, dangerous or not, were part of the reality of living on the great prairie lands that stretched as far as the eye could see. Some realities were easy to perceive and understand, and others were not. Gray Grass was determined to teach her grandson about all the realities they lived with, seen or unseen. One of the ways she especially favored was to simply walk on the land, because it had much to teach all who knew how to heed its lessons.
So it was that one fine summer’s day when Slow was 14, Gray Grass suggested they go for a walk. “Grandson,” she said, “let us go for a walk tomorrow. It should be a day without wind or rain. We can leave at dawn.”
Slow liked going for walks with his grandmother, even though he was a stalwart teenage boy on the verge of being a man. Because the people relocated their villages often, especially in the summer and autumn, their walks were not always over the same landscape or along trails they had walked before. Many times they found new trails. Those walks were precious to him, and he sensed that he needed to keep those memories inside of him.
For this particular outing the old woman had a plan. She packed plenty of food, filled the water skins, and quietly suggested that Slow take his lance and bow and arrows. At the next dawn, as the village was only starting to awaken, Gray Grass, her grandson, and their best dog crossed the nearby creek and headed north. Her plan was to walk a wide circle around the village. That route would take them through a variety of landscapes and would not tax her old bones too much.
Straight north of the village they climbed a gradual slope that led to the top of a hill, the highest hill above the little valley. They met the young sentinels who had spent the night there on watch. Gray Grass visited briefly with the two young men and shared some of her food with them. The view from the hill made it easy to understand why the warrior leaders had placed sentinels there. Not only was the whole village visible, but anyone approaching from any direction could be seen.
Yet it was not the breathtaking view that Gray Grass wanted her grandson to see. She told him to listen, so together they did. Somewhere to the east someone was pounding small drums, or so it seemed to Slow. After a moment he realized it was the male grouse doing their dances of courtship. Along the creek, birds were singing and calling out to the new day. Two voices were easiest to hear: that of the meadowlark, with its lilting warble, and the redwing blackbird with its bright, ringing call. From beyond the many hills to the west came the bellow of a buffalo bull, diminished by the distance but still strong. And from the sky above them the red-tail hawk, one of the great hunters of the sky, sent its shrill cry. The calls and the voices were not loud, they were just there, carried on the breeze that gave itself voice from moving the grasses and leaves it caressed in its passing.
Gray Grass took them down off the hill and to the east, picking her way carefully with her chokecherry walking stick and waving to the young sentinels watching them go. As the morning wore on they stopped to rest in the shade of a buffalo-berry tree, one among many in a thicket. The berries were plentiful, but Gray Grass knew they were not yet sweet, because even the birds left them alone. “Two new moons from now those berries will be ready,” she said. “Then the birds will take their pick before anyone else.”
By the middle of the day they were straightaway east of the village, though it was too far away to see, hidden by intervening rises. Again they stopped, this time in the shade of a tall, thick cottonwood tree. It was not the only cottonwood along the creek, but it was the largest, with the widest trunk and many branches thick with leaves. Yet it was not only the size of the tree that mattered to Gray Grass. She wanted her grandson to hear its voice.
The voice of the cottonwood tree was a soft, shimmering rattle. Very soothing to most people, as it certainly was to the old woman. It was a quiet voice; perhaps that was why the song it sang was so soothing, especially to the old ones.
“A tree like this comforted me,” she told the boy. “It was the summer after your grandfather died. I went to visit his burial scaffold, and I wept until I could weep no more. Walking back to the village I stopped beneath a tree like this. The breeze was blowing softly, just enough to make the leaves sing, like they are now. It seemed as though the tree was crying with me, in sharing my grief. So when I hear its song, like now, I think of your grandfather.”
They sat, saying no more for many long moments, letting the tree sing to them. Slow had heard the song of the cottonwood many times, but now it had a meaning for him. He would always like cottonwood trees for what they meant to his grandmother.
After a small meal they gathered their things and turned their steps to the southwest. The dog, a strong and sturdy male, part coyote and part wolf, stayed close, as he always did. Gray Grass had in mind to reach another grove of trees that stood on either side of the same creek that flowed by their village, curving and meandering from far to the southwest. By the time they reached the grove, the sun was in the middle of the western sky, heading down to its meeting with the horizon.
More than a few times Gray Grass had picked berries in this grove. Chokecherry thickets and buffalo-berry trees were numerous here, growing profusely on the bottomland watered by the creek. But there was more to this place than the berry trees and thickets.
Gray Grass pointed to the many small rings of stones arranged all along the creek bottom—old fire pits nearly hidden by the tall grass. Near just about every one of the fire pits lay large bones. The boy’s curiosity rose immediately, while the dog was busy sniffing at the bones.
“What kind of bones are those?” Slow wanted to know.
“Buffalo,” his grandmother replied, and pointed to a high cut bank behind them. “See that bank? It is as high as six men. Beyond it, to the south, is a long meadow between two long ridges. Buffalo were chased by hunters along that meadow to that cut bank and over the edge. Other hunters waited here, on the bottom. When the buffalo fell, the waiting hunters ran forward with their knives. They butchered and washed the meat in the creek, and they probably stayed for several days to feast and clean the hides.”
“We do not hunt that way now,” the boy pointed out.
“Some people did. People who lived on this land long before we came. Your grandfather brought me to this place. He liked to come here because he said it was a way to go back to the past.”
“How old are those bones?” Slow asked.
“No one knows how many years they have been there, but I think it is far back beyond the memories we have of our people,” she told him.
“That is a long time.”
“Your grandfather said that if someone stayed here long enough, perhaps over a few nights, that it was possible to hear their voices. The voices of those people who hunted buffalo here.”
Slow gazed around at the fire pits and the bones scattered about. He could tell rib bones from the leg bones, and the ridge bones that made the buffalo’s hump stand high. “Someday I will come back here,” he said. “Maybe I will hear those voices.”
After they had rested for a while, Gray Grass soaked her tired feet in the cool waters of the creek. With the sun dropping ever lower, they continued their walk, but not before the old woman left an offering of food for the spirits of those hunters from the days so long past.
Just before sundown, as she had hoped, they came to a small meadow guarded on three sides by low hills. The place resembled a bowl broken on one side, the opening to the east.
The ridge tops to the south, west, and north of it were covered with short grass and bristly soap weeds. There were no trees or shrubs. They paused to rest in the shade extending from the west slope.
Suddenly, it seemed as though they were the only three beings on the earth. They could not see the village, though it was not far. If dogs were barking or children laughing and shouting as they played, they could not hear. Everything was still and silent. Not a blade of grass moved, because there was not the slightest breeze. Such moments were rare, for on the prairie lands something was always on the move.
Slow found he liked this spot inside the shadowy bowl. Even the dog sat quietly.
“There are moments and places when everything becomes silent,” his grandmother said, almost whispering. “Silence is a place,” she went on. “A good place. We should not be afraid of it, or afraid to be silent.”
“What is in that place?” Slow asked.
“Whatever you want, whoever you want,” she told him. “It is a place where you can make things happen. You can bring people in. Many times I wake in the middle of the night and everything is quiet. Everyone is asleep, even the dogs. Everything is silent. At those times some people feel alone and do not like the feeling. Not me—I like it, because it is when your grandfather comes to me, and we talk. Your father, too.”
“I have done that,” the boy admitted. “I have been in the silence.”
“I know you have,” she said. “That is good. This place,” she said, gesturing at the meadow and the hills around them, “it is one kind of quiet. The silence here is of the outside, of the world. Sometimes, if we are in the right place, the whole earth falls quiet. All the animals, the birds, even the insects still their voices. The breeze stops. Grandmother Earth pauses, and there is peace.”
The old woman paused and put a finger to her lips, and it seemed to be a sign for everything to be silent. Even a cricket that had been softly chirping nearby stopped.
Many times in his adult life, Slow would know such moments—a profound silence and the sense of peace it created. But this moment, sitting in that meadow with his grandmother, would be the one he would always remember first and most.
“Grandmother Earth has a heartbeat, you know,” Gray Grass went on in a soft, gentle voice. “A moment like this happens in between her heartbeats. If you know where to be when that happens, you will find the silence.”
Somewhere, many hills and meadows from where they sat, the muffled whistle of an elk floated on the breeze that rose gently. The moment was gone, but not forgotten.
“There is another kind of silence you can create anytime,” the old woman told her grandson. “I think you already know how.”
The boy nodded. “I think I do,” he said.
“It is the place of inner silence, a place that is within each of us, or can be,” she said. “We can go there anytime, and stay as long as we like.”
Slow let out a small sigh of relief. He had thought he was the only one who ever went to that place. As if knowing his thoughts, Gray Grass waved her hand.
“That place is not where we live,” she cautioned. “Look around, this is where we live, where our life’s journey happens. But that inner silence can help us on that journey. Do you know how?”
Slow was not certain. “I do not think so.”
“I have found that many people are afraid of three things most of all—death, darkness, and silence. I think we are born that way. But we can understand them if we truly search for their truth. Silence is the way to understand the other two; it is connected to death and darkness. There is something unknown about silence, like there is about death. There is something hidden about silence, the way darkness seems to hide things.”
She reached out her small, gnarled hand and gently touched her grandson’s chest. “In here,” she said, “is that silent place. It is part of each of us, but not all of us go there. Many times it is a refuge, a place to hide from bad things or hard times. I want you to learn that it is more than that, something more than a sanctuary. It can be a place of strength, because there you can face grief and heartache, anger or loneliness the way you want to—because it is your place. A place that belongs only to you. You can hide there, yes, but it can also be like that high hill where the sentinels guard the village. You can stand guard on that hill and fight off anything that comes at you, like fear, self-doubt, or ridicule—anything.
“For me it has been a place to open my mind and find understanding. First, I had to find that utter silence, and in order to do that you must push all things out of your mind. That opens your mind up to thoughts, and to the spirits that are also part of our life’s journey. Most of all to the Creator, the power that made everything. But nothing can come to you if you are afraid or do not open the way for it. That silence within each of us is one way these things can come to us. In that way you will begin to understand as much as you can what your life’s journey is all about. You might come to understand that death is the ultimate reality because there is no turning aside from it. You might come to understand that darkness is a place for bad things to hide, but knowing that strengthens you.
“That silence is also where I go to send my thoughts and my wishes out, and to pray. Thoughts and wishes and prayers are strengthened by that silence, like you shooting an arrow on a calm day. The wind is not there to turn it aside. Anything that goes from your place of silence goes with unalterable purpose.
“There are two things you must always remember: your inner silence is not a place to hide from the reality of life, and it is a place where you must face yourself honestly. If you remember these things, then you will be given knowledge and your spirit will get stronger and stronger.”
The old woman sighed. “I know this is much to think of for someone who has lived only fourteen years. Remember what I said, and remember these words—to those who calm the storms of life by using the silence to make peace, life will give good things now and then.”
By the time dusk gave in to darkness, Slow and his grandmother and their dog were back in the village. The boy heeded his grandmother’s advice and thought often of that day and the words she had spoken.
In the autumn and winter of that year, Slow began to take his turn as a sentinel to guard the village from enemies and danger. By the next year, he was accompanying warriors as they went out on patrol. All this happened because it was time for him to honor the path of the warrior, to take his place as a protector of the people. He was already a skilled hunter. He made certain his grandmother and the other elders were never hungry. Gray Grass, of course, saw all of this and was proud of her grandson.
In the summer of his 16th year, Slow faced an enemy in battle for the first time. Gray Grass had been waiting for just such a time, and she was especially pleased that he did not boast. In that way he was like his father and grandfather. After talking to other elders, Gray Grass put on a feast for the entire village, and she asked the oldest man to announce that her grandson would have his grandfather’s name: Walks Alone.
The years passed and Walks Alone fulfilled his responsibility as one of the providers and protectors of his village. But the rigors of a long life began to show more and more on his grandmother. For the first time in his life the young man saw her struggle with simple things. Rising out of bed or from her chair was no longer easy. Her steps were slower and the amount of firewood she could carry was less and less. She held objects closer in order to see them clearly. Her hair turned white, strand by strand, it seemed, until her braids were like two snowy trails. But just as noticeable were the lines in her face—deep lines that symbolized the many trails she had walked.
As his grandmother grew older, Walks Alone’s character emerged. He would gather and haul firewood after she had gone to bed, so she would not have to work as hard. From time to time he would cook for her, especially after he brought home fresh meat. He made certain her walking stick was always at hand, and he would walk beside her, patiently slowing his own pace to match hers. He asked other women to help take down his grandmother’s lodge and pack their things whenever the village moved. When he was away on a hunt he arranged for someone to keep an eye on her.
In his 19th summer he courted and won the daughter of a good family from another village. By the next spring he took her as his wife. Then, instead of following the common practice, he did not live in her village. Redwing Woman saw her new husband’s devotion to his grandmother and did not object. So their new lodge was pitched next to that of Gray Grass. As for Gray Grass, her grandson’s new wife became the daughter she never had.
Over the winter the weight of her many years became too much for Gray Grass to bear. She grew frail with each passing day, and in the spring she was not strong enough to make the trek to the new village site. Walks Alone and Redwing stayed behind with her, along with two of Walks Alone’s friends who were reluctant to leave the family unprotected. They relocated their lodges to a valley guarded by thick groves of trees. There Walks Alone and his wife devoted themselves to their grandmother’s comfort.
They passed the time listening to her stories, which she told with a voice that grew weaker and softer each day. Struggling to keep their grief from bursting, they watched the light in her eyes growing dim. On a bright afternoon as the breezes helped the cottonwood trees sing a soft song, the old woman took her last breath.
Walks Alone chose a secluded gully halfway up a slope, ringed by a grove of ash trees. There they laid her to rest on a four-post scaffold, her thin body wrapped in a fine elk robe.
True to the custom of his people, Walks Alone cut his hair short to signify that he was mourning his grandmother’s passing. The following year, just into the Moon of Black Calves, he and his wife put on a feast and invited the entire village to eat with them, in honor of his grandmother. It was known as the Releasing of the Spirit, and thereafter the name Gray Grass was not spoken out loud, so as not to impede her journey to the spirit world.
Soon after the passing of Gray Grass, news came from people who spoke a different language and lived far to the south. They brought news of a strange animal, a large one with single round hooves unlike the split hooves of the buffalo, elk, and deer. It was said to be nearly as tall as a buffalo at the shoulder, with a large head without horns or antlers. Neither did it have fangs or claws, and its eyes were not those of a hunter. Such an animal was not known to the people and it was difficult to believe that such a thing could exist.
For a few years there were more rumors. A few travelers who said they had actually seen it scratched pictures in the dirt. The strange new animal was like a dog in that it learned to live with people and it could carry loads. Some of the people called it the Greater Dog.
Walks Alone’s people continued to live their generations-old lifestyle, wandering over the prairies, moving their villages at least once each season. In the summer several villages joined and became one large town. In the autumn they pitched their conical hide lodges near the trails used by the buffalo. The autumn hunts were important and success meant sufficient stores of meat to last through the long, cold prairie winter.
Walks Alone was a stalwart and quiet man, one who always deliberated. He was a more than proficient hunter, and his knowledge of animal habits and game trails was second to none. Accordingly, the elders asked him to be the village’s hunt leader. It was said that in the prime of his life his village did not once go hungry in the winter. It was Walks Alone who taught the young men to hunt buffalo in the winter. Walking on snowshoes made of hardwood was the way. It enabled hunters to find buffalo in deep snow, or drive them into snow-filled creeks or gullies. In deep snow the buffalo were vulnerable because they could not use their great speed to outrun the hunters, and their great strength was useless. Hunters, on the other hand, could maneuver atop the snow on their snowshoes.
A friend asked him how Walks Alone had been able to come up with the idea of hunting on snowshoes in deep snow. The reply was somewhat puzzling.
“It was there, in the silence,” he said.
Two daughters were born to Walks Alone and Redwing Woman. A few of his friends were secretly disappointed for Walks Alone, because every man wanted sons to carry on his line. But he told no one he had prayed for daughters. He believed that the world needed more women like his wife and his mother and grandmother. So much so that his first daughter became Gray Grass Woman and his second daughter was Blue Stem Woman, which was his mother’s name.
Walks Alone was known for his quiet ways almost as much as for his hunting prowess. It was not unusual for him to scout for game alone. It was a way for him to find solace in the silence of his inner being, just as his grandmother had. With his favorite dog as his only companion, he would find a secluded place and spend a day or more in quiet solitude to slip into that inner silence where he could contemplate life. There, as his grandmother had taught him, was the place to find strength, common sense, and enlightenment. It was on one of those solitary journeys that he found himself on the fringes of his people’s territory. He came to a river that more or less marked the southern border and there along its banks his dog caught the scent of a stranger.
Standing among river willows was a large animal. One that Walks Alone had never seen in the flesh, though he had seen crude drawings of it. The animal that some people called the greater dog.
The hackles on his big black-and-gray dog stood up straight and a low growl rumbled from its throat. As far as he knew, in all the far-flung villages of Walks Alone’s people there was not a single greater dog. Ever the cautious hunter-warrior, he blended into a thicket with his dog. For the better part of an afternoon they barely moved as they kept watch on the animal, which did nothing more than stand with its head down. Only occasionally it moved to switch its long tail to drive away flies. Finally, deciding to risk a closer look, Walks Alone took his dog and silently moved through the underbrush.
He knew nothing about the thing called the greater dog, except that it was rumored to be strong and was not a hunter. As they came closer, he did see that it was thick-bodied and tall—as tall as an elk. It nibbled at the grass around its feet now and then, and so Walks Alone surmised it was a grass eater like the elk, buffalo, deer, and antelope. When they were within a stone’s throw it saw them, and hobbled away clumsily, as if injured. It was then that Walks Alone saw the cord tied around one of its front ankles.
The cord had been made by someone, of that there was no doubt. Walks Alone prepared his bow. When his dog growled, he was certain that an enemy was nearby. There was an enemy, but a lifeless one. Around his arm was tied the other end of the cord, thus revealing why the animal was not moving. It did not take long for Walks Alone to determine that the man lying under a tree had been bitten by a rattling-tail snake. Other signs indicated that the man had put a poultice on his leg. He had tried to draw out the poison.
From the man’s clothing Walks Alone knew he was from a people who lived far to the south. A people with whom they had clashed, but not often. He buried the man, placing the weapons he found nearby with him in the shallow grave. The man was certainly someone’s son, perhaps someone’s husband and father. He was courageous enough to travel alone into an enemy’s territory. For all those reasons Walks Alone gave him the courtesy and respect of a burial.
The greater dog was another thing, however. Not knowing what else to do, he cautiously untied the cord from around its ankle, though he was uncertain what the animal might do. Surprisingly, neither the dog nor the greater dog showed any animosity toward the other, only curiosity.
Walks Alone intended simply to set the animal free, so he was surprised when it followed them. At first he thought it would eventually go its own way, but it did not. She—from all indications it was a female—followed closely on their heels. And it somehow seemed appropriate that she and the black-and-gray dog showed no fear of each other. Furthermore, there was a gentleness in the greater dog’s large brown eyes, and she responded to his voice.
As far as Walks Alone could determine, the greater dog had been well treated by her owner. That was the reason for her lack of fear, he surmised. Since he had kept the long cord, he tied it around her ankle when they camped for the night. As he had guessed, it was something she was familiar with and she grazed peacefully within the limits of the cord.
There was another cord tied loosely around her neck, just behind her jaws, at her throat. He could not imagine its purpose, but when he approached carefully and pulled at the neck cord, she responded to its pull. Clearly, she had been taught things he did not know about. But he did decide that the neck cord might be a way to lead her, the way a dog could be led by a rope around its neck. He decided to try the next morning. Tying the long cord to the one around her neck, he cautiously pulled it and was pleasantly surprised when she responded and followed him.
At first Walks Alone did not consider what it would mean to have a greater dog become part of his life, or of his village. Information on them and how the southern peoples used them was limited at best. But it was natural to assume that whatever a dog could do, the greater dog could do many times over. He surmised that this animal could carry several rolled-up lodge covers, while a dog carried or dragged only one.
Encouraged by the gentle nature of the animal, Walks Alone boldly decided to lay his hands on her. So he carefully rubbed her neck and touched her ears. She tolerated it and even seemed to respond to it. Next he rubbed her shoulders, her back, and lastly her front legs. All of this the greater dog accepted without any apparent apprehension. More importantly, Walks Alone’s own apprehensions about such a large and powerful animal dissipated. Trust, it was obvious to Walks Alone, had to be the basis of their interaction, as it was with dogs.
She was dark brown in color, with a black mane and tail, both long. Her hooves were black as well and very hard. Her demeanor was quiet—a kindred spirit, Walks Alone realized.
Thus in a curious procession they made their way back to the village, the black-and-gray dog in the lead, just ahead of Walks Alone, and the greater dog walking calmly behind him. As they came near the camp, he tried to anticipate what might happen. He considered leaving the greater dog hidden somewhere, but worried she might run away if left alone. Wherever she had come from and whatever people she had lived with, Walks Alone assumed she was familiar with dogs. He fervently hoped this was so, because he knew the village’s dogs would be apprehensive of her. They had never encountered such an animal.
So the strange little procession entered the village and a new age entered the lives of the people of the prairies. Word spread faster than a wind-driven grass fire. Children and dogs were the first to gather. Most of the village’s dogs barked at the appearance of a strange new creature. Walks Alone’s dog, interestingly, took a defensive posture and prevented any of his fellows from approaching too closely. Among the people, curiosity outweighed apprehension. Throughout it all, though nervous, the greater dog stood calmly. Walks Alone stroked her neck and spoke to her soothingly.
Eventually most of the dogs realized that the large animal was not a threat and turned their attention elsewhere. But Walks Alone and his new companion and his dog were surrounded by a circle of curious people of all ages and sizes. Most of the adults in the crowd knew what he had brought home. The rumors and stories had been true.
An elder quieted the crowd and asked Walks Alone to tell his story. When he had finished, the elders gathered to talk about this auspicious and unexpected event. Walks Alone selected six young men he knew would do what he asked them without question. This was to form a large circle and sit around the greater dog, mainly to keep the onlookers from getting too close. Meanwhile, he and the elders sat nearby and talked.
The elders decided that the greater dog belonged to Walks Alone, since he had found it. He told them what he had been able to do with the animal and everyone agreed that to proceed with patience and caution was the sensible approach.
A large stake was pounded into the ground at Walks Alone’s lodge. That night, and each night thereafter, the greater dog was tied to it by her ankle rope. During the day she was taken to nearby meadows to graze and to the creek for water. The animal formed an immediate attachment to Walks Alone’s daughters. She seemed happy to see them every morning.
Even as the initial excitement diminished, most of the people knew that something important had happened. The elders discussed the possibility of sending young men to the south country, beyond the river where Walks Alone had found the greater dog. It was assumed that people who lived there might have greater dogs and know how to use them. Such a journey would be dangerous, but it was also necessary. Especially since more greater dogs might be obtained somehow.
Meanwhile the newcomer adapted well to her new home. Everyone doted on her. She was not uncomfortable when Walks Alone placed bundles on her back. Finally one day he jumped up and draped himself across her back. Though the people watching expected something to happen, the greater dog stood quietly, not the least bit alarmed.
As the days passed, the new arrival became part of the life of the village. The flames of excitement were fanned anew, though, when the village relocated to a new site. Walks Alone constructed longer and bigger drag poles for the greater dog to pull and fashioned the same kind of harness used for dogs. Much to everyone’s surprise, she accepted the drag pole frame and harness and pulled the load. On the frame Walks Alone loaded not only his family’s lodge and belongings, but those of two more families as well. The greater dog dutifully pulled the load. Now the elders began making plans in earnest to send young men to the south country, to find or trade for more like her.
In time, all of that happened, and by the time Walks Alone and Redwing Woman’s daughters had children of their own, the village had 60 of the wonderful greater dogs. Not only did they pull great loads, they also carried people.
Over the years people talked about the summer when the greater dog came to the people. What they remembered most often was the quiet demeanor of Walks Alone. He had brought change to his people, yet he did not once boast of what he had done. Whenever he talked about finding the greater dog he would say that it was his unexpected good fortune, not anything that he set out to do.
Redwing Woman was proud of her husband. He was a good provider and he took to the war trail when it was necessary to defend the people. Both of which he did better than most men. The time came when both their daughters married and pitched new lodges next to their parents. And it was with love and pride that Walks Alone and Redwing welcomed grandchildren. One moment, on a cool autumn evening, as they sat at their outside fire sipping peppermint tea, Redwing Woman asked her husband what he thought of their life together. After a long, quiet moment of thought he replied gently.
“I have never forgotten what my grandmother told me when I was a boy,” he said to his wife. “To those who calm the storms of life by using the silence to make peace, life will give good things now and then.”
Woinila
(woh-ee-nee-lah)
Silence
CALMING THE STORMS
Anyone who knows the history of the native tribes and nations of the northern Great Plains is aware that the horse was a significant part of the story. Almost all the pre-European people of the northern plains were known for their horses and horsemanship. By the time Europeans reached the northern plains, the great “horse cultures” were in full bloom. However, exactly when and how the horse came to the northern plains is not known. Perhaps most of us assume that its arrival was a grand and notable event of some kind. We all want to believe that such a life-changing thing could not have happened without some noise.
Most enormous consequences, though, have innocuous beginnings. I recall my grandfather pointing out a gully running down the slope from the top of a grassy ridge to the river bottom. He said that some coyote, bear, badger, or wolf might have dug a hole just below the crest of the ridge, probably while digging for food, hundreds if not thousands of years before. Eventually the rains came, and water running down the slope slowly eroded and enlarged the cut until after eons of steady erosion it was long, wide, and deep.
I prefer to believe that the horse arrived like this, quietly, on the northern plains. It emphasizes the reality that there was a quiet side to life then. Many circumstances and moments epitomize quiet and silence to me, such as a cold winter night in the early 1950s on the prairie. The snow was a soft, hazy blanket on the land and the only sound was the very faint howl of a coyote. But people can be images of quiet and silence as well. First and foremost in that category was my maternal grandfather.
He was a soft-spoken man not given to large gestures. He never raised his voice to me and I never heard him do so to my grandmother. Just about everything he did was low-key and quiet. Once I saw him sear the palm of his hand with a thin, red-hot wire he was using to burn a hole through a piece of ash wood for a pipe stem. His reaction was a low grunt of surprise, even though the pain was excruciating. And I was constantly amazed as I watched him walk up to our horses and handle them practically at will. It was his quiet nature that reassured them. And these ways of his validated the stories he told about another man who was an image of quiet—Crazy Horse.
Indeed, every one of the old Lakota men in my childhood who spoke of Crazy Horse admired his ability to remain utterly calm in the midst of violence and chaos. To them that made him the very ideal of a fighting man. In today’s vernacular Crazy Horse would be described as good at “keeping his cool.” But my grandfather respected and admired Crazy Horse for his quiet ways off the battlefield at least as much as for his exploits as a fighting man. The way my grandfather described it, Crazy Horse almost unobtrusively saw to his duties and responsibilities as a man and as a leader looking after the welfare of others. During the winter he made certain that everyone, especially the elders and the widows, had enough food and firewood. He did not direct or order others to do these things; he hunted and gathered wood himself. He did those things quietly, without needing or expecting even a word of thanks.
There is a quiet side to life in the modern era as well. In 20th-century history, one person who is an example of quiet strength for me is Rosa Parks. Her contribution to the civil rights movement of the 1960s has been lauded, analyzed, discussed, debated, and written of from many perspectives, because everyone and every group espouses the point of view that most affects them. My perspective is that the prevailing racial attitudes of the time encountered a formidable force that lives in each person who is part of a beleaguered or oppressed group: quiet determination. A force that can be an immovable object under the right circumstances. Perhaps there was rage inside Rosa Parks at the injustice heaped on her people; nevertheless, her reaction at a critical moment in her life was almost understated. But the consequence was, in my estimation, more inspiring than the moon landing. That was a fear-driven technological accomplishment of one nation, afraid that their avowed enemy would do it first. Rosa Parks’s quiet resistance to injustice was an example of the power of the human spirit shared by each and every one of us.
By and large, though, silence is not a virtue or a valued commodity in our fast-paced world. For us modern humans, especially those of us needful of, or immersed in technology, silence is virtually not an option. We have swapped the natural sounds that have been part of human existence over eons of time—breezes, wind, thunder, crackling fires, the rumble of landslides and avalanches, waves washing ashore, birdsongs, the laughter of children, animal growls, barks, bellows, whistles, yelps—for artificially generated noises. Our days now are filled with beeps, buzzes, clicks, radio, television, sirens, vehicular noises, and an unlimited variety of cellular telephone ringtones, all of which we accept as normal. Most Western households have at least 14 different kinds of appliances or electronic or mechanical devices that make noise. The list includes refrigerators, stoves, CD players, radios, televisions, electronic games, computers, telephones, doorbells, blenders, mixers, coffeepots, power tools, scanners, and printers. Several items we often have more than one of, such as telephones, computers, and televisions. This does not include the four or five devices we take with us when we leave our homes.
More alarming than constant noise is that apparent sense of normalcy and perhaps the possibility that we need constant noise. The fact of the matter is that we have adapted so well to the steady influx of noise, generation after generation since the advent of the industrial age, that it has evolved into a need. If that is true, then the absence of noise is no longer normal for us; it’s something that causes nervousness, apprehension, and even fear.
Sound is part of our world and the particular environment that each of us lives in. Memories of my childhood are filled with my grandparents’ voices, crackling fires, the ringing of axes, neighing of horses, the clunk of wagon wheels rolling, and so on. Like everything else in our environment, our existence, and our lives, sound and noise serve a purpose. Loud noise can signal confusion or impending chaos, just as other sounds can convey information, satisfaction, clarification, and pleasure. But there is a point when necessity gives way to excess. At that point, I believe the persistent presence of noise interferes with what we are as human beings.
In the story of Walks Alone and his grandmother Gray Grass, introspection is a part of their lives. It is, as far as I am concerned, another one of our senses as human beings, just like our five physical senses of touch, taste, sight, smell, and hearing. Of all our human abilities, introspection can be the foundation for the greatest emotional, mental, and spiritual strength—but it cannot make itself heard in a din. To be able to utilize this sense, we need to learn what silence is.
When I was a child, I lived with my maternal grandparents on a plateau above the Little White River in what was then the northern part of the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation, in South Dakota. Our home was a one-room log house my grandfather built. Our food came from the garden we planted and harvested, a few groceries we purchased or traded for in town, sometimes a hindquarter of beef (in lieu of cash payment for lease of my grandmother’s land), and wild game. Our mode of transportation was primarily a wagon pulled by draft horses, or our feet if our destination was not that far—within three miles or so. Sometimes it was my parents’ car, when they stopped by or stayed for a while. To say that the pace of our life was unhurried would be the understatement of my life.
My grandfather hunted deer in the fall after the garden was harvested. On the days he went out to hunt, my grandmother reminded me that we needed to be quiet. Everything we did in and around the house was done with as little noise as possible, even though my grandfather was miles away. Before I was able to hunt with him or on my own, that was my contribution to the hunt: to be quiet. This behavior was not something my grandparents concocted to trick me into staying quiet. It was rooted in an age-old belief that quiet begets quiet. (Probably in the same way that one yawn instigates another.)
In the past, quiet and silence were necessary for survival. Not only did hunters have to learn the skill to move over and through many kinds of obstacles and landscapes silently so as not to alarm the prey, silence was also critically necessary for detecting and avoiding enemies. Hence, for example, anyone who snored at night was gently but quickly prodded so that the noise stopped. The entire village was expected to refrain from making noise; babies and young children were kept close and their every need was attended to before they cried out too loudly.
Likewise, warriors who were sent out to scout for enemies used an ancient strategy. Old warriors believed that eyes had the power to “draw the eyes.” In other words, if you stared at an enemy too intently for too long, sooner or later your stare would be felt, and you yourself would be seen. Therefore, young warriors were taught to interrupt their gaze once an enemy was spotted and put themselves into a state of absolute silence; a silence that emanated from deep within the spirit.
A favorite practice among northern plains tribes was to raid and steal horses from enemy tribes. There are stories of Lakota men who were able to infiltrate an enemy village in the dead of night. The objective was the horses tied at the very lodge doors, because those were the highly trained buffalo runners and war horses—the most prized of all—and in order to reach the objective, warriors had to be utterly silent both without and within. It was one thing to be able to move silently, but to remain virtually undetectable required the art of inner silence. That is, a man had to push all thoughts of anything but the mission at hand, including fear of failure, out of his mind. The physical skill and spiritual strength of silence was the only way to achieve success in this situation. Those men who did were able to calm the storms of doubt and fear that swirl when life itself is on the line and death hovers near.
Neither of my grandparents was given to doing or saying anything in a brash or loud manner. There was a look my grandmother sent in my direction when I was being a little too noisy. She was able to dissipate noise silently in that way. My grandfather, on the other hand, would simply pause whatever he was doing and wait for me to realize that I was being overly loud. And even as a child preoccupied with my own immediate needs and whims, I did notice that both of my grandparents were frequently deep in thought. At least that was my assumption when they were silent for extended periods of time; a correct one, as it turned out. As a teenager I asked each of them why they liked to be quiet. “To think,” they told me.
During those moments of silence I, again even as a child, noticed something else. Their outward demeanor was different. There was a stillness about them, though not a trance. Sometimes they would be doing something, but it was easy to see that their focus was not entirely on the task. At other times they would be absolutely motionless and simply gazing in some direction. During those moments the stillness around them was like the proverbial thick fog one could cut with a knife. Though it certainly was not visible to the eye it was perceptible in every other way. So palpable that I did not want to disturb it.
Introspection wears two faces. One is light and one is dark, and the dark side scares people. But I also know for a fact that some of us can face that dark side, be it bad memories, grief, guilt, or anything else that we would turn and run from in the physical world. I know this to be true because my grandparents did just that.
I remember the day in the summer of 1959 when I found my grandmother at the kitchen table in the midst of some task, with a grief-stricken expression on her face that even a teenage boy could not mistake. She tearfully admitted that she had been thinking of her younger sister, who had died in 1919 during a reservation-wide Spanish influenza outbreak when she was 17 and my grandmother was 19. My grandmother said she could never think of her without remembering watching her waste away so rapidly before she finally died. Forty years later the memory was still vivid, and obviously still painful. Several years after that, I listened to my grandmother tell stories of her sister and punctuate them with soft sobs and a few tears.
She told me that certain memories had a way of presenting themselves, as it were. If we are lucky most of our memories are positive and pleasant. But the reality is there are the difficult memories that invoke grief, anger, regret, guilt, or denial. My grandmother was not afraid of facing bad, even ugly, memories, or her own mistakes. She would have understood an interesting but brief encounter my wife Connie and I had with a fellow restaurant patron in Santa Fe several years ago.
The restaurant, El Faro, was full one summer evening, situated as it was along a street saturated with art galleries. A band was playing loudly in the front room, which had a low ceiling, so normal conversation was impossible. A young woman asked to join us at our table, since we had the last empty chair in the room. After a few minutes she leaned across the table and shouted above the din: “Wherever you go, there you are.”
That was the extent of the conversation with our table guest, whose name we do not know. But what she said is a reality. No matter who and what we are, or who and what we think we are or are not, there is no way to outrun ourselves. My grandmother’s advice was to accept yourself as you are, and sometimes that meant confronting yourself. To do that we need to be introspective, to go to that place inside of ourselves where there is no room for anything but honesty.
When I think of this sort of introspection I am reminded of a morality tale, one of our Lakota Iktomi stories, that my grandmother often told me. Iktomi is the Trickster in many of our cultural stories—a ne’er-do-well who tries to slide by doing as little as possible and live by his wits, and consequently does not have much of a life except to serve as an example of how not to live it.
In this story he sees his reflection in a calm pond and admires himself. It is windy the next time he visits the pond and his reflection is misshapen, so he is certain he is not seeing himself. The next time it is raining and his reflection is dark and obscured, and again he is certain it is not him in the pond. A friend explains to him that each reflection, no matter how pretty or ugly, is him. The choice we have, my grandmother would say, is whether or not to accept the reality of who and what we are. And if we cannot face the reality of who and what we are in the deep silence of introspection, not to mention what we have done or not done, then we are like Iktomi. As my grandmother would also point out, if we cannot honestly accept ourselves as we are in the privacy of our own thoughts, than we will not be honest on the outside.
Both of my grandparents regarded that place of silence in our innermost being as a place of power. One reason to go there was to face and examine ourselves honestly. The other reason was to connect with everything around us. In traditional Lakota culture the simplest prayer we can say is Mitakuye Oyasin (mee-tah-koo-yeh oh-yah-sin), which means “All my relatives.” With that short but profound prayer we invoke a connection with everything that is of the earth, including the earth. And what better way than to do that from a place of power? In meditating this way we are not only acknowledging the power of silence, but we are also using it as a way—as my grandparents would say—“to put our thoughts on the wind.”
People approach meditation with a variety of rituals. My approach is simple and my time to meditate is in the very early morning when no one else in the household is awake (except for two cats). I usually burn sage or sweetgrass or bear root, then sit motionless. My first objective is to take myself to that place of profound silence. It is not a matter of descending or ascending; as a matter of fact, it has nothing to do with movement or space. It is simply an attainment, to achieve that dimension of silence where nothing of the physical world can intrude. Once there I say a prayer to ask for balance for the whole world. Then I open myself to allow whatever force, influence, or power chooses to come in. After that I may have something specific to ponder, or I may simply sit in that profound silence, in respect for all that was, and is, and will be in the world. Lastly, I pray for my family and relatives, especially those facing a significant life situation or difficulty of any kind. As I visualize my thoughts and my prayers lifted by the winds, my final thought is Mitakuye Oyasin.
As the old woman Gray Grass told her grandson, we humans are born with inherent fears. Fear of falling and of loud noises are obvious, but there is also the fear of darkness and death. Then there are the myriad fears depending on our individual circumstances: loneliness, poverty, powerlessness, bias, racism, hunger, pain, illness, obscurity, flying, and so on and so on. Strangely, compared to all of these there is less to fear in silence, yet we fear it as well. Like Gray Grass, I believe, however, that in silence is the way or the key to understanding everything else we may fear.
Most of us grow accustomed to loud noises and understand that they can be useful as alerts to conditions around us. Likewise we probably realize that fear of falling is an inherent and significant survival instinct that serves us throughout life, especially as we grow older and more fragile. Fear of darkness is as old as our race, originating in our atavistic past when we realized every day and night that we were not the fastest or strongest physical being in our environment. Even as the predators we were then, we were nonetheless prey for bigger and faster predators, and many of those predators came for us out of the darkness.
Silence is a different matter. Even if we do not actively fear it, most of us, I believe, do not see it as useful in any way. Yet it can be a powerful ally against the trials and tribulations of our daily lives. If nothing else it can be a port in a storm, the calm eye of the hurricane, and otherwise a temporary respite from stress and care. For me starting a morning in quiet contemplation reminds me there is peace in the world.
Furthermore, silence enables me to delve into issues and questions that too often are sidelined or obfuscated by the noise of daily routine—such as death. It is in silence that I can contemplate, examine, and analyze any issue or question without fear of unreasonable response or ridicule, and where I can listen again to the voices of wisdom from the elders who live in my memories. It is in silence that I can reach my own conclusions.
It is in that silence that I have thought of death, and I have realized that all of my grandparents (and their generation of Lakota people) were right. Death is the ultimate truth. It says it will come one day and it does not waver from that truth. Once we accept that truth, it is then possible to truly live life without an unreasonable fear of it.
All of my grandparents died as they had lived. When their time came, they slipped into the next world with quiet dignity. Part of their ability to make that final transition from life to death was due, I firmly believe, to the fact that none of them were ever strangers to silence. In that silence they contemplated, examined, and relived the situations, issues, and events in their lives, not to mention people—especially family. They also took the opportunity to affirm or alter the basic values, realities, and beliefs they were taught and learned along the way. When used in this way, silence is a strength and an enabler.
It is entirely possible that silence is unexplored territory for some of us; perhaps many of us. Perhaps it is the undiscovered country for the generations who were born and grew up in the age of ever-changing technology. There is the very real possibility that silence—or the luxury of knowing it—will be their greatest loss, and perhaps their downfall.
I am not declaring that I grew up in a world devoid of noise, not at all. On the prairies of the northern part of the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation, there was an endless variety of sounds—wind, breezes, birds, animals, insects, thunder. And the noise level ranged from the soft buzz of a hummingbird to the thunder’s earth-shaking boom. But there was also the absence of sound, the prolonged and profound periods of silence. In that world it is logical to me that we all have a voice, at least to announce that we are here, that we exist and are part of it all. In the technological and artificial realm, that logic does not work for me. Everything in the technological realm makes some kind of noise, from coffee pressers and pots to jumbo jets. In the constant cacophony, silence, it seems, does not have a snowball’s chance in hell of making its presence known.
Yet silence is here. It is measurable in those milliseconds between the beeps, blasts, whistles, and blares our technology generates. And the amazing fact is that we humans have the power to push the off switch. Or we can separate ourselves from the noise by going within. Whether or not we choose to do either is the issue.
Growing up, it was not that I found all sounds offensive or intrusive; I understood that they were part of my environment. It was, rather, that I found silence to be comforting and peaceful. These days, it is that sense of comfort and that feeling of peace that I seek often. To find it, it is necessary to hit the off switch and remind myself that as wonderful and helpful as technology is, I can still control it within the confines of my home and office.
In other words, I have the power to enable silence.