Golden Buffalo dreamed things that were true but of which he had no understanding. This would be his way in life, holding visions in his mind until he found their meaning in the world, fitting them together like the broken shards of a pot.
The hunting had been bad for many years, the tribe growing poorer and weaker with each passing season. He decided to take himself off to the top of a ridge and seek guidance. The only way to enter the spirit world was to break the body, so he slashed his chest until it ran red. Although it was the height of summer, he brought no water, no food. He simply laid himself out on the rocky ground and stared at the sun until it blinded him. Inside and out.
After three days a vision came to him. He saw white people in numbers far greater than the largest Indian camp he’d ever known. So many people that he walked through them for days and did not come to their end. He understood that his experience of the world was too small to understand what he saw. They crowded in narrow canyons created by more buildings than he’d ever imagined possible. He guessed that this was only one among hundreds of such villages of the white man, all of which could be emptied out to fight against the Indian.
He saw his people’s futility in fighting such numbers, such rapaciousness. It was as useless as killing off coyotes. More would always come. They trailed out of their villages like ants looking for food, in their wagons and trains, because like the ant they were always busy with hunger. What did they want with the empty land? he wondered. Why did they enjoy shooting the buffalo when they had no use for its meat? Then he knew.
Long valleys covered with the lifeless bodies of buffalo, almost as many buffalo dead as there were white people, but these would not be replaced. The great bodies looked sorrowful—naked of skin or tongue or horn. The buffalo soul was shamed by this treatment and would disappear from the earth. The prophecy had started. The white man would destroy the Creator of All. The long valley had snakes crossing it, snakes that turned out to be railroads and fences of wire, heralding the end of the great migration of both buffalo and Indians. It would be as if the sun in the sky was stuck in place and could not move the day forward. Fences of wire would impale the bodies of buffalo and men.
A mother buffalo and her calf ran through the great hilly fields, she smashing through the barbed-wire fence as if it were grass, trailing strands behind her even as the barbs embedded themselves in her flesh, partly tearing it away, red muscle showing, great ropes of blood flying off her as she ran. The calf by her side was drenched in his mother’s blood, his eyes white-rimmed in fear. Then to Golden Buffalo’s astonishment the mother ran over a cliff, her calf following behind.
The shock woke him from his dream, and he lay there bathed in sweat even though it was still early morning and the sun had not risen. His heart was fit to bursting. He sorrowed for the unborn future. It was a dream from which he would never entirely awake, that would haunt his daily life. The only thing he could do was to go to the heart of the enemy, learn his ways, and try to use that knowledge to save what was left.