Eight, The Journey of Crazy Horse

Waves of heat would roll through the small, enclosed space each time Crazy Horse poured water over the glowing hot stones in the center pit. There was only the darkness and the heat. Crazy Horse sat to the right of the door inside the low, dome-shaped structure of red willow frames covered with hides. Light Hair sat across from his father.

“All my relations,” said Crazy Horse in a low and respectful voice as he pushed aside the door cover. In came the welcome cool air and light. Light Hair sat quietly, the sweat running off his body as though it was water from a pouring rain. Both he and his father were completely naked.

They had ridden away from the great gathering at Bear Butte, only the two of them and a packhorse. After a few days, they finally made camp below the crest of a grassy butte above a narrow little valley with a little stream, though its flow was only a trickle in this early autumn. The father watched his son and knew that the words and the ways and the lessons of High Back Bone had taken root in the boy. He was still slender but his arms and legs were thicker, his voice deeper, and his movements were those of a man rather than an impulsive boy. His younger brother did not resemble him at all in appearance or in action. Where Light Hair was calm and deliberate and given to long moments of quiet introspection, young Little Cloud was always darting about and busy. He was still far from adolescence, while Light Hair was on the verge of manhood.

Everything happens for a reason, many of the old ones liked to say. The ash stave used to make a bow could be cured and seasoned over five years as it hung below the smoke hole of the lodge—or it could be tempered quickly over a bed of hot coals. In either case, the bow made from it would perform well. Crazy Horse knew that his light-haired son had a purpose beyond fulfilling his roles as a hunter and a warrior. His light hair and skin had made him the object of taunts and teasing, but not once had he seen the boy’s lips tremble in response, nor did he resort to anger. He had taken the teasing in stride as though sensing he was being held over the fire, being tempered by the difficult moments.

Crazy Horse had been expecting something to happen. Then came the offering of tobacco from Light Hair. There was a change in the boy, the kind caused by more than passing time. Reflected in the boy’s eyes was something that the medicine man’s experience and insight told him was prompted by a memory rising out of a dream.

Along the banks of the little stream, they built the low, dome-shaped lodge, working together to cut the red willow poles. Together they dug the outside fire pit and the inside pit for the hot stones. They spent most of day on the crest of the butte, sometimes talking but mostly sitting in silence and watching the land and the sky. Hawks, eagles, butterflies, grasshoppers, ants, antelope, elk, and even a lone buffalo in the distance passed by them in one direction or another. A coyote peered over the edge at them and scurried away. As the sun slid lower toward the western horizon, the boy finally told of his dream.

The dream was not difficult to remember, only to tell. It had been a part of the boy since that late summer night near the sand hill country when old Conquering Bear lay dying in the Sicangu camp after the incident with the soldier Grattan and his men. He was almost embarrassed to describe it.

The dream began at a lake, a small still lake. Bursting upward from the blue calmness, a horse and its rider broke through the surface and rode out across the land. The rider was a man, a slender man who wore his hair loose. A stone was tied behind his left ear, a reddish brown stone. A lightning mark was painted across one side of his face. On his bare chest were blue hailstones. Behind them to the west as they galloped was a dark, rolling cloud rising higher and higher. From it came the deep rumble of thunder and flashes of lightning. The horse was strong and swift and it changed colors: red, yellow, black, white, and blue. Bullets and arrows suddenly filled the air, flying at the horse and rider, but they all passed without touching them. Close above them flew a red-tailed hawk, sending out its shrill cry. People, his own kind, suddenly rose up all around and grabbed the rider, pulling him down from behind. And the dream ended.

There seemed to be a warning in the dream. The glorious warrior in the dream was grown, but still young. The faces of the enemies that had sent bullets and arrows at him were not visible, but the people who had pulled him down were like the rider himself. They were easily seen, as was the horse, the hawk, and the Thunders.

Rarely did anyone dream of the Thunders, and anyone who did had a special calling to be a “sacred clown,” the one who did the opposite of what was expected. Light Hair had described the lightning mark on the dream rider’s face, as well as blue hailstones painted on his chest. Lightning and hail were both strongly associated with the Thunders.

Crazy Horse closed the door and began singing again, another gathering song to call in the spirits. He poured water on the stones, sending steam and new waves of heat rolling inside the tiny enclosure. Light Hair endured the heat even as he held the dream in his mind’s eye, as his father had instructed him to do.

Dying gloriously, making the ultimate sacrifice in defense of the people, was the secret dream of every Lakota fighting man. It was the warrior code, repeated in all the honoring songs. The dream seemed to suggest that the dreamer would gain honor and immortality by living and dying as a warrior. But perhaps there was more to the dream—perhaps there was a warning of a path that could not be avoided.

After a final prayer and a song of thanksgiving, Crazy Horse threw open the door flap for the final time and ended their ceremony. The cool evening air rushed in, bringing instant relief from the heat. They sat unmoving, both reluctant to leave the comforting confines of the sweat lodge. The man motioned to his son and they emerged and walked into the stream. It was only ankle deep so they sat, splashing themselves with its icy water without feeling the bite of its deep coldness. And when they finally did they stood and stepped to the graveled bank and back to the stone altar in front of the lodge door. Crazy Horse offered his pipe to the Sky, the Earth, to the West, North, East, and South, and finally to Grandfather. He lit it and they smoked.

They passed the evening talking and eating in the orange glow of a low fire. The next day they would find the reddish brown stone that Light Hair must wear, and the father would show his son the plants he would need to prepare to make the colors for the blue hailstones and the yellow lightning mark. They would trap a hawk while the weather was still warm and dry out its body. And in the days and seasons to come they would talk about the dream and all its meanings. But for now, for this evening, they would enjoy the solitude.

High Back Bone was one of the first visitors to the lodge of Crazy Horse after the father and son returned. He brought a seasoned ash stave as a gift. The final worth of the gift was in the hands of the boy, he was gently reminded. It would be the first bow he would make entirely on his own.

The time spent with High Back Bone was now even more important. Light Hair had all the requisite skills to be more than an adequate hunter, and experience would mold him even more. Likewise, he had all the skills to ride into battle, because they were the same used by the hunter. But combat was different. Going into battle was not the pursuit of life by taking life; rather, it was the defense of the life of the people by putting one’s own life on the line. Those who saw only the glory of being a warrior without seeing the reality of the commitment it required rode behind those who did. High Back Bone, like Crazy Horse, sensed that there was something about Light Hair that would set him apart, something that had to do with the quiet nature and the shyness. Still waters were almost always deep. So the influence of the older warrior went from the hand more to the heart and the mind—for, as every good warrior knows, the deadliest weapons a man carries into battle are not in his hands. Rather, the boldness in the heart and the willingness of the mind are always the difference between winning and losing.

High Back Bone saw something else in the boy. Crossing the threshold from boy to man came with its burdens. Now and then there was hardness in the boy’s eyes that hid something behind it. Every warrior remembered that part of his own life, the last vestiges of boyhood burdened with doubts and so many questions. But then, he had not dreamed of the Thunders. In truth, all of the various parts of the boy’s dream were a sobering burden. The hidden implications in it would cause any mature man much concern and turn anyone’s eyes into a hard façade. Given the boy’s already established habit of spending time alone, High Back Bone guessed that he would think about the dream almost constantly now. He expected that the boy would be even more introspective.

Even in the company of He Dog and Lone Bear, Light Hair laughed and smiled less often and didn’t participate in their banter as much as he usually did. His friends knew that Crazy Horse had taken Light Hair off somewhere for several days, and that since returning, their light-haired friend was less communicative. But they also knew that he always tried harder to win the games the boys played to emulate warriors. In fact, he rarely lost. He was not always the fastest or the quickest or the best shot, but he simply kept trying. And though he didn’t tell them what to do, they still followed him because he didn’t hesitate to take the lead. He seemed to know instinctively the best trail to follow or the best way to do something.

Strangely enough, however, He Dog was the first to taste the experience of going on a raid against their ancient enemies. He joined a group that attacked a small Crow camp and took a horse or two and a gun that was left behind. But there were no stories to tell from this little raid, only that it happened and no scalps were taken. In any case, Light Hair’s rescue of the Sahiyela Yellow Woman was something any full-fledged warrior would not have found easy to do. So he smiled as He Dog excitedly told of his part in the raid. But He Dog and Lone Bear got the better of him again.

Word of Light Hair’s dream had quietly spread among the fighting men. Sooner or later, some said, the boy would have to put his medicine to the test. There was only one way to see if the enemy’s bullets and arrows would not strike him, so preparations were made for a raid north into Crow lands. Crazy Horse and Little Hawk had found a reddish-brown stone for Light Hair to wear behind his left ear, and taught him how to paint the lightning and hailstone marks from his dream. Then, a bullet gone astray while someone was practicing grazed Light Hair’s knee. Though Crazy Horse carefully treated the wound, to him it was a sign—a worrisome sign directly related to the people in the dream pulling the rider down. For the dreamer there would be danger, or harm, from his own kind.

To Light Hair, it was more than a wound. It was like the teasing he endured as a younger boy. The raiding party went without him, and although they neither failed nor succeeded, he still had to stay behind. But he still envied them their little adventure and listened eagerly as He Dog and Lone Bear described it to him.

The wound healed well and the months passed into winter. Hunting was good in the Powder River country and the Hunkpatilas laid in plenty of meat. But word came from the Hunkpapa and Mniconju to the north and from the Sicangu camps near the sand hill country to the east that the buffalo were hard to find. Such news was received with somber nods because - everyone knew the reason the buffalo were finding new trails. The whites. How can anyone so thoroughly contaminate a strip of land just by passing through? many wondered. The Holy Road was still filled with wagons from spring to late summer and newcomers didn’t have to be guided along it. All they had to do was follow the grave markers and the decaying carcasses of mules and oxen and the discarded household goods. The buffalo were wise to avoid such a trail and the Lakota couldn’t blame them. But when word came that some Lakota camps had to resort to eating horses to make it through the winter, anger rose like a flame pushed by a wind.

Light Hair, Lone Bear, and He Dog listened to the older men talk and heard them say that though the whites were not honorable enemies like the Crow or the Snakes, they were still a threat that had to be faced. Some Lakota were encouraged that one of the new agents at the Horse Creek fort was a man who had married a Lakota woman and who was, therefore, more inclined to understand his wife’s people. Others said that Iktomi, the Trickster, was twisting the minds of those who thought that an agent with a Lakota wife was a good thing, because the best thing would be that the whites were not around at all.

Winter passed for the Hunkpatilas and spring came as it always did, with its promise of renewal. The ash stave given to Light Hair by High Back Bone was now a new, stout bow. Under his uncle Little Hawk’s careful tutelage, he had glued strips of antelope leg sinew onto the back of it, giving it a strength that unbacked bows didn’t have. It sent its arrows with a low, resonant twang and drove them deep into a sand bank or the decaying wood of an old stump. A sinew-backed bow was more powerful than ordinary bows, in the same way some men had abilities that set them apart from others.

Crazy Horse gave his son the gift of a weapon, an old muzzle-loading rifle that had been given to him years before. It was a good shooter but a heavy thing to carry, not to mention its round lead bullets. There was also the added need to keep the black powder dry and in good supply. Powder and shot were hard to come by, but the rifle was a necessary weapon. More and more Lakota warriors had one. To add to Light Hair’s arsenal, Little Hawk gave him a cap and ball six-shot pistol he had found on the body of a dead white man during the previous winter. Overall, it was a spring unlike any other in Light Hair’s life.

Spring gave way to summer and the people moved to find good grazing for the horses. Light Hair rode on a long scout with High Back Bone toward the southwest near the eastern reaches of Snake territories. Through the days spent watching the distant smoke from several camps, the older man was not inclined to do any more than watch the normal comings and goings of their ancient enemies.

Red Cloud was an impressive figure of a man and had a reputation as an orator. He was the head of a large family and some said he would be an important man for years to come. So it was only natural that the people were excited that his niece, Black Buffalo Woman, was to be honored. As a tiny doe-eyed girl, she had crossed Light Hair’s path now and then. Now she was a beautiful, willowy girl with long, glistening black hair.

The day of the ceremony came, and Light Hair joined his friends as they stayed on the outside of the large crowd gathered at the front of the girl’s family’s lodge. An old man spoke to the gathering, reminding them that all women were meant to be mothers, like the mother of them all, the Earth—that all Lakota women must follow the Earth Mother, to be like her in all ways, to feed, clothe and shelter her children, and to give them a place to rest.

Black Buffalo Woman sat in her mother’s lodge keeping her eyes appropriately down as the old man spoke. Beside her were piled fine things to be given away and outside the lodge were a string of horses also to be given away. When the old man finished talking, the girl’s father presented him with one of the horses and the feasting began. Light Hair hung back as the crowd moved away and managed to catch a glimpse of her dressed in a finely beaded dress, her hair in two long braids hanging down over her breasts signifying that she was now a woman.

That evening, Light Hair stayed in the back of the crowd during the dancing. Black Buffalo Woman’s brothers, her father, and her uncles stayed close to her as a reminder that any would-be suitor could count on having to prove his worth in order to become part of that family. (In the Lakota way, a new husband became part of the woman’s family.)

Light Hair made his way back to his own lodge and was given a message from High Back Bone. On the next dawn the man was leading a raid to the southwest. The message instructed him to gather his weapons and his medicine things.

Light Hair made his preparations before he turned in for the night. As any man does on the eve of battle, he saw to his weapons. Outside were the sounds of the drums and laughter as the people celebrated the coming out of a new woman among them, a new woman who would be the mother of warriors.