No one knew exactly how old they were, the man and the woman who lived near the village but never in it. Their modest little lodge was within sight of the village, and when the people moved to another site, the old couple always took down their lodge and packed their belongings on seven dogs and joined in.
The man’s name was Good Hand, and he was a shield maker. His wife was White Shell and she was a weather woman. She knew about the signs in the sky and on the earth, and those revealed by the plants and animals, that told her what the weather would be in the days and months ahead. Good Hand and White Shell did not have children of their own, and no one could remember why they chose to live outside the village. It seemed to most that this had always been so. Even in the childhood of those people who were 60 years and older, Good Shield and White Shell had been there, just outside the village. They were old then, it was said.
Both had snow-white hair and faces deeply lined and coppery brown, signs of a life spent in the sun. And because they were so elderly, the men in the village gave them fresh meat from their hunts. Though Good Hand had two bows hanging in his lodge, and sometimes displayed outside on a willow tripod, he was not known to hunt. The elderly couple never turned down a gift of fresh meat. In the winter, they always had plenty of firewood piled near their lodge, though no one had ever seen either of them gathering wood.
But Good Hand and White Shell were not needy or dependent on people in the village. They were always glad to have visitors, feeding anyone who came, and were always especially happy to welcome children to their lodge. If a change in the weather was approaching, especially a storm, White Shell always sent word by one child or another. And she was never wrong.
One thing about the old couple was evident to anyone who was invited into their buffalo-hide lodge. There was a calmness and serenity inside their home. It seemed to hang about them like an unseen mist, wherever they went and whatever they did.
Except in the winter, Good Hand was always busy making or preparing to make shields. The strongest and most durable shields were far and away those made of buffalo, and of the kinds of hide available he preferred that from the front shoulders. Good Hand’s shields, it was told, easily repelled arrows and lances. It was not unusual, now and then, for a warrior to bring him a gift because his shield, made by Good Hand, had saved his life. Over the years many warriors came with gifts.
Warriors came also to thank Good Hand for what they had learned from him. Those men often asked him to make a shield for a son. There was always a specific reason for such requests, and Good Hand always complied, asking only that the young man bring the buffalo rawhide and stay to help.
One such young man came from another village early one summer, sent by his father. He was a strong, skilled, and reckless warrior with aspirations to glory. His name was Two Lance. Though he was polite, he was not impressed with the shield maker. Good Hand, however, was not unused to youthful arrogance.
Two Lance brought the required piece of buffalo rawhide and courteously told his hosts he would make his own camp nearby. His first task the following day was to dig a large pit and haul water to fill it. Then he was to soak his rawhide until it was soft. For several days he had to keep the pit full until Good Hand determined the rawhide was ready.
While the rawhide was soaking, Good Hand instructed Two Lance to dig two other pits in the bank of the nearby stream, one at the top of a bank and the other at the base. After the pits were dug the young man’s next task was to gather firewood enough to burn two fires for three days and two nights. Two Lance did as Good Hand requested, mainly because he had promised his father he would be on his best behavior as a guest of the shield maker and his wife.
As it always happened when a young man came or was sent to help make his own shield, he had one question for Good Hand: “Why do you make shields?”
“When we dig up your shield I will tell you,” Good Hand said, and Two Lance saw the sadness in the old man’s eyes.
Several things had to happen before the shield was dug up. First, Good Hand asked the young man to join him by the creek. There the old man filled his black stone pipe with red willow tobacco and offered it to the Sky, the Earth, and the four directions—West, North, East, and South—and then to the Creator. He prayed for good things in order that he could make a strong shield for Two Lance.
Next, Good Hand declared that the rawhide had soaked enough to be soft and pliable. It was as thick as a small child’s finger. Placing it on the flat, bare shoreline of the creek, he marked a perfect circle on it using a sharpened stick, a cord as long as one of Two Lance’s arrows, and a piece of charcoal. Then with his knife he cut along the scribed line. The result was a round piece of rawhide. After that he placed the wet rawhide in the round pit at the top of the creek bank and covered it with a thick layer of dirt, which he compressed by pounding it with a large stone.
Next, Two Lance was instructed to build two fires, one in the pit in the side of the bank and the other atop the compressed dirt above the buried rawhide. He was to post himself beside the bank and keep a bed of red-hot coals in each pit, until the firewood was gone.
The young man discerned that the fires would warm the dirt from above and below the shield, and he guessed the rawhide would shrink.
White Shell brought the young man food and a willow chair so that he would be comfortable as he kept watch over the fires. The first night he nearly let the lower fire go out, but he did not let that happen again. At dawn on the third day Two Lance estimated that there was firewood enough to last until noon. He was right. At midday Good Hand came.
“When the top embers cool, it is time to dig up your shield,” he announced.
“Grandfather,” Two Lance said politely. “You said you would tell me why you make shields.”
“Yes, I did. While we wait for the top embers to cool down, I will tell you why I am a shield maker. However, there is one thing I must ask. This story is for you and you alone. You must not tell anyone else, ever.”
The young man was puzzled, but agreed.
“Good. When the old woman comes with tea and stew, I will tell you my story.”
White Shell came moments later with bowls of stew and large horn cups of mint tea. She said not a word, only gave a motherly smile to the young man and walked away to the lodge.
After a sip of tea, Good Hand cleared his throat. “You remind me of how I was when I was young,” he began. “My name was Stone Arrow then. Our village was along a river that flowed into the big river far to the east of here. I joined other warriors going north to raid against a new people. They were not like us. They did not move their lodges as we do. They kept them in one place along the river, and the lodges were made of logs and earth.”
Late autumn it was after a long, hot, and dry summer. Snowfall had been thin the previous winter, so the great river was low. Eleven men walked most of the way across on the many sandbars showing. They had been following the footprints of intruders that had crossed into their territory, then turned back. A young hunter had seen the footprints coming from and returning to the north, where it was known that strangers lived. Warriors had been north the year before and had seen people living along the rivers, in earthen dwellings. Where those people had come from was not known. Whether they had come south was not known. The 11 men were now farther north than most of them had ever traveled.
Stone Arrow was among them, an experienced warrior. He had turned 21 and his wife of less than a year was expecting a child. In four years he had not ignored a chance to prove himself against any enemy. His ambition was to become a leader of warriors before he was 30, a status never before achieved by any man. Though he had courted and won his bride by following all the rules and rituals of courtship, his burning desire was elsewhere. His young wife was dismayed when he joined the war party going north, but he knew she would understand when—in the years ahead—she would be known as the wife of the most glorious warrior there had ever been.
After two days of watching from across the river, the 11 warriors crossed at night. By dawn they were hidden in the tall grass south of the few earthen lodges on a plateau above the river. The leader chose Stone Arrow and one other to crawl closer to the village.
From the distance of a short arrow cast, the two young warriors watched until dusk. Their main concern was the number of grown men in the village and the weapons they carried. It seemed to be a small village, because there were only six of the earthen lodges. They surmised, however, that more than one family likely occupied one dwelling.
Stone Arrow and his companion were crawling away through the tall grass, intending to rejoin the other warriors and slip away under cover of night, when they heard someone shout. Assuming they had been spotted, they jumped up and ran, expecting pursuit. The shouting continued behind them. Looking back they saw a figure chasing them, wielding a short lance in one hand and a sling in the other.
Stone Arrow tripped and fell, then realized a cord was wrapped around his ankles. Tied to each end were heavy round weights: stones wrapped in rawhide. He recognized the weapon, used to bring down game birds. By the time he untangled himself, the pursuer was only a few paces away.
Stone Arrow stood to face him. Even in the fading light he saw that it was a slender youth. A boy on the verge of manhood, but only a boy nonetheless, a combination of fear and determination on his face. Still, the lance in the boy’s hands was no less dangerous than it would be in the hands of a man. Stone Arrow sidestepped the charge, tore the lance from the boy’s grip, and pushed him down into the grass.
The boy cowered in the grass. Stone Arrow tossed the lance aside and trotted away. A warning shout from his fellow scout made him turn, in time to see the boy running at him again with lance in hand. For a second time, Stone Arrow easily disarmed the inexperienced youth. Once again the boy fell, but this time he scrambled to his feet, stone-bladed knife in hand.
What happened next occurred in less than a heartbeat, but it would haunt Stone Arrow for a lifetime. The boy’s inexperience collided with the warrior’s annoyance bursting into anger. Stone Arrow saw his own hands thrust the lance, and saw the boy fall and twist in pain, the end of the lance broken off in his side.
Stone Arrow’s companion appeared and looked down at the dying youth. “A boy. He is only a boy,” he said.
No one spoke of the boy on the trek home. Stone Arrow feared he might have damaged his chances to become a war leader, but he kept his regrets to himself. He knew his fellow warriors would talk after they were home. Yet he knew he would have the opportunity to tell his side of the story, too. Though he thought about the boy from the earth lodge village, he decided that the unfortunate incident was unavoidable. That was the truth of it, as far as he was concerned.
Stone Arrow described the incident to his father before whispers and rumors ran amok in the village. He assured his wife that he had acted in defense of his own life. Though she was shocked, she accepted his assurances. Four days after the war party was home the elders called Stone Arrow to the council lodge. There once again he told his version of events. The elders listened but expressed no opinions.
Warriors did not cease patrols that winter. Watchfulness was necessary as always. Stone Arrow did his duty and more. On several occasions he went out alone to keep watch along the outer borders. He did not, however, reveal to anyone that the real reason for those lonely forays was to face down the guilt that whirled within him. Stone Arrow did not want his family to see his turmoil. During one such outing his wife gave birth to a daughter, which only affirmed his belief that strong and unyielding warriors were the best defense any people could have. He was determined that his child would grow up safe.
It was once again a winter of little snow. The elders fretted that they might see another spring of sparse rain as well, and the summer and autumn would be dry. If that happened the animals they depended on for food were certain to move nearer to the bigger streams, since those did not dry up as fast.
It was as the old ones had feared. By late summer most of the smaller creeks had dried up, forcing the people to move their village north to a river that flowed into the big one. They found that the deer, elk, and buffalo were staying close to the big river. So, late in the autumn the elders sent a large hunting party on the first of two big hunts to lay in meat for the winter.
The previous autumn’s incident in the earthen lodge village to the north had become less and less of a topic for rumor and gossip. Most of the men who had been in that war party could not say with certainty they would not have reacted in the same manner. Many times a warrior had less than a heartbeat to make decisions that carry the weight of life and death, they reasoned. Furthermore, though some men shunned Stone Arrow, it seemed not to affect his dedication as a warrior. As time went on a drought was more of a concern than one warrior’s aberrant behavior.
That incident, however, did not go away for the father of the boy who was killed. It stayed with him day and night, as if it had happened only the day before. He could not forget that his only son had been taken from him. His wife was inconsolable, which turned the father’s anguish into a darkness that would not go away. Soon the grief turned to anger and then a desire to take revenge. As winter slid into the next spring, summer, and then autumn, the man observed all the necessary rituals of grieving to help his son’s journey into the spirit world. Then one morning, just as dawn was graying the sky, he gathered his weapons and left the village on the plateau above the river.
It was known who the men were who had been caught scouting the village. They were the people of the buffalo-hide lodges from the south. Two young men had followed them to make certain they returned to their own country. After a month they returned, having trailed the intruders to their own village. They recognized the one who had killed the boy, and they were able to describe the man’s lodge to his father. He would know it by the yellow lines on either side of the door.
Armed with this knowledge and pushed by a rage that boiled within him, the grieving father traveled south with a determination to exact revenge.
The elders decided that, while the men were hunting, the village would move north to a wide valley through which a river meandered. After two days on the trail a runner from the village caught up to the hunters with a message for Stone Arrow. He was to return to the village immediately. His wife and child were missing.
The village’s move north had been delayed, he was told, after unsuccessful searches in every direction. Stone Arrow could only wonder what might have happened as he stood in front of his empty lodge. Two more days of searching revealed no sign of his wife and daughter. It was not until the third sleepless night in the lodge that he saw the lance. Tied to a lodge pole near the smoke hole was a broken lance with a stone head. It was the lance carried by the boy from the earthen lodge village, and its message could not be mistaken.
Stone Arrow could think of nothing but avenging his family. He gathered his weapons and asked his mother to prepare food. His father did not encourage him.
“I do not know what has happened to my daughter-in-law and granddaughter, your wife and daughter,” he said. “Yet I am certain of one thing. The man who took them has learned that revenge does not change things back to the way they were. It never does and it never will. You may learn that as well.
“Punish this enemy if you think you must, perhaps take his life. But remember it was you who drew first blood, and you may not strike the last blow, and you will never feel at peace.”
Anger prevented Stone Arrow from hearing his father’s words. Bristling with weapons and hate, he departed on his quest—a quest that took him in a direction he never imagined.
At first the power of anger pushed him, giving him the strength to walk and run at an unrelenting pace. He traveled until he was too weary to take another step, found a hiding place to sleep, and then started walking and running again as soon as he awoke. Then, one morning, try as he might, he could not crawl out of the hole he had found to sleep in. Strength had left his legs and arms, and he began to weep.
Faces and images swirled in his eyes—his wife and daughter and the boy he had killed. It did not matter if his eyes were open or closed, he saw them. Summoning every last vestige of will, he crawled out of the hole. It did not seem to matter which way he was going, he was simply driven to move. Down hills, across watercourses, up hills, through brush and meadows he stumbled. At sundown he found himself on a hill and realized he had nothing in his hands. He was lost and unarmed, his clothing torn, his arms and legs scratched. He was hungry and thirsty, and barefoot. Stone Arrow thought to retrieve his food and weapons, but he could not remember how he had gotten to the hill. What happened to me? he wondered.
His only weapon was a knife, still in its sheath on his belt, which was still tied around his waist. The landscape around him did not look familiar and he could not decide what to do. So he found a narrow gully and curled up in it. The next morning, shivering in the cold air, he ignored his hunger and wondered again what he should do.
Around midmorning he stumbled onto a small creek, took a long drink, and tried hard to find a landmark he could recognize. Nothing at all was familiar, only the images that flowed through his mind: a dead boy and his own wife and daughter, over and over again. His father’s words came to him:
… it was you who drew first blood …
He wept, and this time he could not stop. A reality pierced him like a battle lance. Whatever had happened to his wife and daughter, he had caused it. In the back of his mind was the thought that he would never see them again in this world.
Day passed into night, and day came once again. Stone Arrow saw these things, but it was only as a watcher, as though he were not part of it. He wandered aimlessly, sometimes stumbling, sometimes crawling. He fell asleep only when exhaustion overtook him, and he awoke alone and cold. Hunger and thirst had no effect.
One day he awoke in daylight next to a small creek, not knowing how many days had passed or where he was. When he sat up he did not recognize the dirty, gaunt, shadowy face looking back at him in the water, though he knew he was seeing himself. Never in his life had Stone Arrow known such a moment. He felt empty and powerless, a leaf at the mercy of the wind, his only purpose to feel anguish and guilt. Out of that utter helplessness he cried out.
“Help me! I am pitiful! Help me!”
He crawled to a small tree and sat against the trunk. Day passed until long shadows told him sunset was near, and another long, cold night lay ahead. It took a moment for him to realize that something was moving in the grass near him.
“Grief is no place to be lost,” an old voice said.
Stone Arrow was shocked and afraid. When he tried to speak his own voice was nothing more than a croak. “I know this to be true.”
The young man wiped his eyes and looked up to see the thin frame of an old man with long, white hair. He was leaning on a short lance.
“That is good to know,” replied the old man.
Stone Arrow was still wiping his eyes, trying to make out the old man’s face. It was someone he did not know.
“I do not understand, Grandfather,” he said.
“When you are lost, the only way to find your way is to know you are lost.”
Before the young man could reply, the old man sat down. In a moment he opened a bag and held out a piece of dried meat. “First we eat and drink,” he said, “then we talk.”
The old man built a small fire while Stone Arrow ate the dried meat and drank from a water skin. Even small bites of food revived him, and he was starting to think clearly. Yet he had never felt so much despair in his life.
“Grandfather,” he said, “how did you find me?”
“Grandson,” the old man replied, “I am a finder of lost souls. I followed the whirling anguish you left behind. It leaves deep tracks.”
Stone Arrow was thoroughly puzzled. The old man was sitting with his back to the low sun sliding behind the horizon, and therefore his face was in shadow. There was a stillness around him, it seemed.
“I do not understand, Grandfather.”
“You have wandered far across the land, a long way from where you lost your weapons. But you have wandered in a darkness as well. A darkness where the soul of a man can wither. A kind of darkness that can pull you in deeper and deeper, so deep that you can stay lost.”
“My wife and daughter,” Stone Arrow whispered. “They are gone.”
“Yes, and what was the cause of that?”
“Something I did,” the young man admitted.
“Something to start the fire of revenge?” the old man asked.
Stone Arrow could only nod.
“Fires of revenge are usually ignited by injustice or unfairness, or what the aggrieved person perceives as such,” the old man said.
“You are right, Grandfather. I killed a boy not yet a skilled warrior.”
The old man nodded, a grim expression on his weathered face. “Yes. Such a thing would drive a man to retaliate. I think that man knows that your own death means little to you. So he chose to cause the same pain he suffered. The kind of pain that will deny you peace.”
“I wish I could change it, go back to that day, so I could make another choice,” Stone Arrow admitted.
“Yet you know that cannot happen.”
The young man took a deep breath to stifle a sob. “Is this to be my life, Grandfather?”
“If you so choose.”
“Choose? What must I choose?”
The old man added sticks to the fire and glanced at the disheveled young man. “That is for you to decide. Life is making choices. Choices lead to consequences.”
“What is the use of making a choice now? What I have done cannot be undone.”
“True enough,” the old man agreed. “The choice you made to fight that boy has brought you to this day. The choices you make now will take you through the days of your life ahead. It will be so, whether you choose wisely or foolishly.”
Stone Arrow had no memory of falling asleep. He awoke with the sun just over the eastern hills and an elk robe covering him. The old man was near the fire, cooking fresh meat, a whole rabbit carcass.
“Today I will leave you,” the old man announced, “so that you can search your heart and mind.”
“Search my heart and mind? What will I find there, Grandfather?”
“One road, or another. Both will take you on the journey that is your life. One is easy, one is hard.”
The young man was perplexed. Not only did he not know who the old man was or where he had come from, he seemed to talk only in riddles.
“What lies on the easy road or the hard one?” he asked.
“Ah, there is the rub,” chuckled the old man, turning the rabbit on the spit. “The easy road is wide, easy to travel, but on it there is weakness, emptiness, and darkness. The hard road is narrow, much more difficult to travel, but it leads to strength, light, and enlightenment. Therefore, you must search your heart and your mind and choose which road you will travel. If you choose the easy road, be on your way.”
He pointed to a nearby hill. “If you choose the hard road, make a fire on that hill and burn these pine boughs.” So saying, he tossed a bundle of green pine boughs to the young man. “If I see gray smoke, I will return.”
The old man stood to his feet. “The rabbit is nearly done cooking,” he said. “Eat, and think with a clear mind.”
Before Stone Arrow could respond, the old man was gone from his sight and only a strange silence stayed behind. He waited for the rabbit to finish cooking, wondering again who the old man was. A thought seeped into his tired mind. In the old man’s parting words was the answer. If you choose the easy road, be on your way. Without telling him what to do, the old man had revealed the correct choice.
After he ate some of the rabbit, Stone Arrow huddled beneath the elk robe and fell asleep again. He awoke to a late afternoon. Looking around, he saw the mostly uneaten rabbit still on the spit above cold ashes. At the creek he washed, and then on unsteady legs he gathered kindling and wood for the fire. When it was burning he grabbed more kindling and a burning twig and climbed the hill, carrying the green pine boughs.
Thick, gray smoke rose and floated like a banner after he dropped the boughs on the second fire. Stone Arrow worried that enemies might see it as well as any old man could. Back at the meager camp along the creek he ate more of the rabbit meat and waited. Just before the sun went down he heard a rustling in the grass. It was the old man, and over his shoulder was a large bag.
“You have made a good choice,” he said.
In the morning Stone Arrow awoke to find a small, half-round lodge nearby, covered with buffalo hides and its door to the west. It was the kind of lodge used for the renewal ceremony. Stone Arrow could only assume that the old man had built it during the night. The old man sent him to the creek. “Gather stones, as many as you can carry in your arms.”
Next they dug a pit several paces to the west of the lodge. After that they gathered firewood and arranged the stones and the firewood in the bottom of the pit. The old man ignited the kindling and soon the fire was burning high. They sat and waited for the stones to heat until they glowed red.
When the fire had burned down to glowing embers, the old man deftly retrieved the hot stones among them with the forked tips of elk antlers. Then he carried them into the lodge, placing them in a small round pit in the middle of the floor. Next to the door was a large skin of water.
They entered the lodge naked and covered the door. Stone Arrow knew the ritual well, since he had participated in many. Water poured over the hot stones heated the interior of the lodge, causing the men to sweat profusely. It was a ceremony of purification, of cleansing, and of rebirth. The old man sang sacred songs and prayed on behalf of Stone Arrow. This he did four times. After the fourth time they emerged from the lodge, drenched with sweat, and immersed themselves in the creek.
After they smoked the old man’s black stone pipe, he invited Stone Arrow to sit near the pit with the still-glowing embers. There, he gave him water to drink.
“The spirits have offered you a new purpose,” the old man said. “It lies on the hard road, the road you have chosen. You are to be a maker of shields. It will be your way to find peace.”
“Shields?” Stone Arrow asked. “I do not know how to make shields.”
“I will teach you,” replied the old man.
“Why am I to make shields?”
The old man cleared his throat. “In wars between people, animals go to the place between the territories of the warring tribes. In that place there is no conflict. There they find peace. We all search for that place, for that moment, where there is no conflict. You are beginning that search.
“You ask, ‘Why am I to make shields?’ Let me ask you this: what is the purpose of the lance you carry in your hand as a warrior?”
“To fight an enemy.”
“True. Therefore the lance is not an instrument of peace, it is an instrument of war, of conflict. Whether you use it to defend or attack, its purpose is to injure or kill. This is not true of a shield.”
“Warriors carry shields,” Stone Arrow asserted.
“Yes, you do. But what is the purpose of a shield?”
“To protect against the enemy’s weapons,” the young man replied.
“True. A shield is not a weapon; it is used by the warrior to defend. It absorbs the blows of lances, arrows, and war clubs because it is made to do so. It defuses conflict without retaliation. A shield is a haven between life and death, much like that moment between dusk and darkness.”
Stone Arrow had never heard anyone speak of shields in this manner. “Then, Grandfather, is the shield an instrument of war or of peace?”
“That is determined by him who carries it.”
“I do not understand.”
“It is necessary to be a warrior,” the old man said patiently. “But we are not at war every moment we are awake. We are also hunters, husbands, and fathers. There are enemies, war does come, but so does peace. Which should you live for? Should you be a man who lives for war, or a man of peace who is willing to face war?”
“I think it is wiser to be a man of peace who is willing to face war.”
“Then tell me this, Grandson. Which kind of man killed that boy?”
Stone Arrow took a deep breath and exhaled. “It was the man of war, Grandfather.”
From a small bag the old man removed a small, round, reddish stone and handed it to Stone Arrow. “Carry this always, to remind you that on this day you have placed your feet on the road of peace.”
In the days that followed the old man taught Stone Arrow the art of making shields, and the young man learned well. In return the old man asked one thing.
“War may be the path to glory and status,” he said, “but peace is the way to strength. When you find a young man who is troubled about which path to take, you must make him a shield and tell him your story.”
“I never saw my wife and daughter again,” Good Hand told Two Lance. “In the days and months after I left the old man, I did search for them now and then. As each day passed I reminded myself that anger or regret was not the way to peace. Still, peace did not come all at once. It came a little each day. In time I met White Shell and we have been together since.”
“Do you still think of your first wife and daughter?” asked Two Lance.
“Yes, I do, as well as the boy I killed.”
“Is it not better to forget?”
“Perhaps someone with a heart of stone can forget,” reasoned Good Hand. “I have not yet met such a person. I could not bring back my wife and daughter, nor that boy. So I honor them by remembering them.” He opened a small bag hanging around his neck on a cord, opened it and showed the young man a small reddish stone. “This reminds me that I chose the path of peace, and to think of them. Now, it is time to dig up your shield.”
Under the old man’s guidance, Two Lance scraped away the cold embers and the layer of dirt beneath. It was as he had surmised. The round piece of rawhide had shrunk to about the width of the young man’s chest from side to side. It was also thicker, the size of a man’s finger. It was the most amazing transformation the young man had ever seen.
Good Hand leaned the rawhide against the creek bank and asked Two Lance to pierce the shield with his lance. The young man was not surprised when the stone point of his lance broke. So did the stone head of the arrow he shot at it.
The shield maker next covered the shield with tanned deer hide, laced on the back side, and there he added loops to fit over the young man’s forearm and wrist. On one side of the front of the hide, Good Hand painted a spiral that symbolized the whirlwind. On the other side he painted four circles, each inside the other. The whirlwind was red and the four circles blue.
“Whirlwinds are the storm of war,” he explained. “Circles mean life, balance, and peace. Red is the color of honor, and blue the color of victory,” he said to the young man. “As a warrior, you must strive for honor because it gives meaning to victory. But you must also know that even in war, honor must come first. And that the greatest victory is peace.”
The next morning, as Two Lance was about to leave, he had one last question for the shield maker. “Grandfather,” he said, “who was the old man who taught you to make shields?”
“He never told me his name,” Good Hand said. “I never saw him again. He was a spirit, a being who came from the other side.”
Several mornings later it was another cool, quiet dawn in the middle of autumn. The early risers from the village were starting outside fires. Birds were already calling and singing and bull elk were whistling when someone noticed that the lodge of Good Hand and White Shell had been taken down. The elderly couple, it could only be assumed, had moved their lodge nearby.
An old man walked to the edge of the meadow where the lodge had stood and others joined him. The site looked as if no lodge had ever stood there. The outside fire pit was gone, as was the circle of stones that had ringed it. For that matter, there was no hole in the ground to mark where the inside fire pit should have been. The meadow grass was tall; nothing had disturbed it.
Word went back to the village swiftly, as it does in such moments. Soon nearly everyone approached the small meadow where a lodge had stood only the day before. There was nothing to indicate that the old couple had been there. No dogs, no piles of firewood, and no moccasin tracks in the dirt. The war leader sent four young men to search a wide circle around the village, on the chance that Good Hand and White Shell had simply moved elsewhere. In a while, however, the young men returned to report they had seen nothing.
Wing, the old man leader of the village, was not surprised by the news that Good Hand and White Shell were gone. He was sad as well. When someone asked him why the old couple had gone away so suddenly, he invited anyone who was curious to sit by his fire. There he told the story of the shield maker.
“Where did they go?” someone asked, after the old man had finished.
“To a place of peace,” said Wing, “because they fulfilled the purpose they were given.”
Wowahwa
(woh-wah-hwah)
Peace, a quieting
THE POWER THAT IS PEACE
On the north wall of the Visitors Center at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument at Crow Agency, Montana, are words displayed in Lakota and English:
Wohwahwa tawowashake kin slolyayo, or “Know the power that is peace.”
There is nothing like conflict—or, as in the case of that famous battle of 1876, unfettered violence—to teach us the value of peace. Indeed, in one sense peace is simply the opposite of war; many definitions of the word refer to the “absence of war or hostilities between nations” or “a state of harmony between peoples.” Only further down the list of definitions do we see words like silence, stillness, tranquil, or untroubled. Yet the absence of war or hostilities between nations does not necessarily mean that there is true peace within a nation or society, much less that individual human beings are at peace in their own lives.
For each and every one of us in our daily lives (as it often is between nations), peace is elusive. There is always uncertainty, stress, or some form of trouble lurking somewhere. Some of us reach the end of the day and look forward to rest and sleep that will, at least for a few hours, give us some respite. Some of us, on the other hand, spend sleepless nights because our troubles are overwhelming enough to hold peace at bay.
There are, of course, many reasons for us to be troubled or bothered at any given time in our lives. Depending on political or social circumstances and where we live in the world, the absence of peace in our lives can range from merely bothersome to absolutely terrifying. We may face illness, separation, no job, no money, guilt, lack of answers, or the reality of loved ones serving in a combat zone half a world away.
Peace and war between nations occur for reasons that individual citizens will never know. The real reasons are rarely revealed, even in circumstances that seem transparent or obvious. Deals are made, convenient situations are exploited, and in some cases obvious lies are told. Our collective welfare as nations and societies is determined by people who hold power and influence that we ordinary individuals can never imagine, people who do not care about our daily lives. People who are as out of touch with our below-the-headlines social and economic situations as we are ignorant of their hold on power. Consequently, peace between nations is illusionary, war is always a probability, and the lives of ordinary people are pawns in the game.
One of the sad consequences is that governments send young people to engage in combat, after investing thousands of dollars in each one to train them to defeat the enemy by attrition and giving them state-of-the-art equipment and weapons to do just that. And when they do their duty, the first wound they suffer, the one that never really heals, is to the spirit. Because of those wounds, former combatants find themselves in an often lonely struggle to find peace, and in a tragic irony, the same government that sent them into the situation does not invest anywhere near the same amount of money or effort to help them out of it. In this case the peace they seek is the cessation of horrific memories and dreams, the dissolution of survivor guilt and self-recrimination, and a stop to the parade of sad, perplexing, and grisly images. They seek the kind of peace that they hope will restore their souls.
Among the pre-reservation Lakota there was a ceremony, now long forgotten, that was a first step in helping warriors—combatants—find that peace and forgive themselves for things they had seen and done. Warriors who had seen combat lined up beyond the outermost circle of lodges in the village. They wore the habiliments of war and carried their weapons, even painted their faces for war. Then at a signal from the elders, the men turned to face away from the village and walked backwards until they reached the very edge of the line of lodges. There they divested themselves of all the things of war, leaving their weapons on the ground, and washed the war paint from their faces and bodies. These acts meant they were symbolically leaving outside the village the “shadow man,” that part of the individual that had to emerge from the psyche in order for the man to fight as a warrior. Another way to describe it was “putting the war back in the bag,” some said, because they were putting their face paints into their “war bag.”
After those symbolic acts the warriors continued walking into the village, backwards, until they reached its center. There, children sprinkled their faces and bodies, and sometimes actually washed them, with water—a symbolic cleansing of the spirit. Then the men were taken into the Inipi; that term, for what is now known as the “sweat lodge” ceremony, actually meant “rebirth” or “renewal.” After the sweat ceremonies, the warriors were asked to sit in a circle in the center of the village, and they were fed to strengthen their bodies as well as their spirits.
Every man, woman, and child participated in this ceremony for their warriors because they—the warriors—had put themselves in harm’s way for everyone. Thus everyone assisted in the healing process. The ceremony was not meant to glorify the warrior or war itself. It was an acknowledgment that peace had just as much of a place in life as war did. It was intended to heal the spirit by forgiving the “shadow man,” which Lakota society considered a necessary first step for the warrior to forgive himself and be at peace.
A movie from the 1980s addressed this issue from a different angle. The film was Uncommon Valor and the lead character, played by Gene Hackman, was a Korean War veteran searching for his son who was missing in Vietnam.
In the film, Hackman explains to a Vietnam veteran how he dealt with an incident during his tour in Korea, when the frozen bodies of dead soldiers were piled on tanks and trunks like so much cordwood. He could not ever shake the image of those soldiers from his memory, but he did finally find a way to come to terms with it. “I made friends with them,” he says.
In the real Korean War there was a retreat by American troops during an extremely harsh winter. Many of those killed in action were recovered and transported on tanks and in trucks. Frozen dead bodies were a jarring sight, even for hardened combat veterans. But they were part of the reality of the circumstances, and for Hackman’s character in Uncommon Valor, it was more sensible to accept the situation than to deny it. Acceptance enabled him to be at peace.
When I was growing up, I heard one axiom many, many times: Hecetuwelo (heh-cheh-doo-weh-loh) from a male speaker, Hecetuye (heh-cheh-doo-yeh) from a female speaker. It meant “That is the way it is.” It meant that, good or bad, it was smarter to accept the reality of any given circumstance or moment. I recall my grandparents having to turn back at a flooded creek one early spring, and retrace our path to go around it, even though it meant going at least two miles out of our way. My grandfather simply said, “Hecetuwelo,” it is the way it is. In no way did he like the situation, but neither he nor my grandmother allowed their emotional reaction to interfere with the necessity of dealing with the problem at hand. In that way they met a difficult moment with peace.
Over the decades there have been countless conversations inside and outside the Lakota culture about the difficult (to say the least) transition our ancestors had to make when Euro-Americans came on the scene. To put it in a nutshell, a nomadic society had to give in to a life lived within definite boundaries, and a society of hunters had to learn how to farm. Our social norms and spiritual beliefs had made us a strong people for countless generations; now forcible measures were taken to wrest those cultural strengths from us.
The obvious changes were environmental and tangible. No more buffalo-hide lodges, no more wandering over the prairies in tune and time with the land and the buffalo. Now lodges were made of canvas and people donned Euro-American clothing. Their new style of square houses were heated with iron stoves and lit with candles and kerosene lamps. Food came from the “annuities” provided by the U.S. government: beef, beans, rice, flour, and sugar. Some Lakota espoused the necessity of giving up the old ways and adopting, more or less wholesale, the ways of the society that had overwhelmed them. Many chose to adopt Christianity, and some disdained and even ridiculed their friends and relatives who did not. Others wanted to hang on to their values, traditions, customs, and language, all the factors that made them who they were.
In 2012 there is still a Lakota culture and a Lakota nation. We are scattered across the northern plains on various reservations, though many of us live off reservation in just about every state in the country. We are part of American society and now the global community in this age of instant communication. But how we evolved from our great-great-grandparents’ time is a story of the way a people confronted change.
As I have written elsewhere, my grandparents’ parents were born in the 1860s and 1870s. That generation of Lakota was on the cusp of change. The wise men and women among them realized that survival among the whites was the sensible path. They accepted the reality of the circumstance, no matter how galling it was. They made peace with how things were, and relied on the strength of their cultural values—still embedded in each man and woman and child—to enable them to confront change in the hope that they would emerge on the other side of it mostly intact. Mostly intact was preferable to losing all semblance of being Lakota.
One of the stories I heard as a child was how my mother’s and grandparents’ band of the Lakota, one of seven, came to be known as Sicangu (see-chan-ghoo), which means “burnt thigh.” It originated in the time before horses, when our nomadic ancestors traveled on foot and their belongings were transported by dogs.
A group of them were moving camp one late summer day. As frequently happened in that season, clouds formed in the west, thunder rumbled, and lightning struck the prairies and ignited a grass fire. Pushed by a wind from the west, the flames soon grew and rolled east toward the travelers. The people hurried to outrun the fire, at least to find a sizeable creek or river, which would be a barrier between them and the oncoming flames. But they were too far from any kind of water and the flames raced toward them.
The people realized that they could not outrun the flames, and panic made many of them flee blindly. Soon the elderly could not keep up the pace and had to stop to rest. Many of the younger people stayed with them. Then an old woman made a suggestion that seemed to be born of desperation or senility. She said it would be best to run back through the flames to the other side, because the fire would certainly catch them in any case. Many of the people disagreed, and some fled. But others saw the wisdom in the old woman’s idea. So they doused themselves with what water they carried, turned loose their dogs, prayed, and waited. When the flames came close, they ran into them.
Understandably, some perished, mostly the old and the very young whose lungs were not strong enough to withstand the intense heat. But some did survive the flames, though their clothes were burned off and they suffered horrible wounds. Because of the height of the flames, most of the burns were to their legs and thighs. So the name Burnt Thigh is, to me, a name that speaks of courage. It reminds me of how an old woman’s wisdom and courage compelled her people to make peace with a devastating decision, then act on it.
My grandparents, in my childhood during the 1950s, did not like the fact that their generation of Lakota were not in control of their own lives. But they accepted how things were, instead of bemoaning at every turn and resisting everything that came down the road. They were happy and grounded people because of this. They were at peace, and that sense of peace enabled them to thrive. It was not because they liked the circumstances, but because they had the ability to find peace within themselves, no matter what was happening around them. Though both of my maternal grandparents spoke often of “how things were” and tried to explain the realities to me, never did I hear them rant and rave in anger, though I know they were angry and sad over certain realities, such as the tragedy of Wounded Knee.
We modern Lakota are different from our ancestors, because of the changes and circumstances each generation has had to confront and adapt to. Our history has been passed down by each generation to the next, and much of it has not been easy to hear and learn. Some of us are angry over that past, and rightfully so. But no matter how righteous our anger is, we cannot allow it to prevent us from accepting the realities that were, and are. This does not mean accepting harsh realities as good or justified in any sense, or forgetting them or brushing them aside. Making peace with harsh realities means, to me, accepting that they did occur and no amount of grief or anger will change them. Once we do this, we may even derive strength from them, because no matter how horrific those events were, we are still here. We are still here because generations before us accepted how things were and made peace with the circumstances they found themselves in. If our ancestors did it, so can we.
Peace is elusive, but it is also empowering. To be at peace with circumstances, especially those over which we have no control, does not mean we should not strive to deal with them. It means that we deal with them with the strength of clarity, reason, and deliberation, because that is what peace enables. That kind of peace means that we individually are sure of who we are, what we are, what we want, and where we are going. If that is not strength through peace, than I am at a loss as to what is.
Our world is noisy and loud, it moves fast, and if we let it, the noise can constantly invade our awareness. There are still places in the world, of course, where we can go to separate ourselves from it all and find quiet and solitude, that outward peace that can calm troubled spirits. Not all of us have the ability to go to those places, but the truth is that peace is not just a place, it is a state of being. And all of us can go there.
We can keep the world at bay, as it were, to recover, rejuvenate, to recharge. There are several roads to that state of being; meditation and simple quiet time are two that work best for most of us. It takes a bit of practice to focus and concentrate on something, someone, a place, or an event that is calming and empowering. I often think about the plateau above the Little White River where I lived for a few years with my grandparents. Our log house stood on a rise above a gully, and we had a panoramic view of the prairies and hills around. My childhood there was happy and carefree, and the image of it in my memory always chases away the cares and worries of the moment. It always strengthens me, drives away stress, and lets me pause to reflect, renew, and find peace.
In such moments, when I go back to that place, I feel the presence of my grandparents, and I am reminded that peace is not so much the absence of conflict and chaos as the ability to be centered, calm, quiet—for one moment or many—in the midst of chaos.
I wish you peace.