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Standing on the pinnacle of a rock formation and watching the large herd of buffalo that nervously milled about in the tall prairie grass, Running Elk took a long swig of water from the bladder that hung from the leather strap across his sunburned chest. The water was tepid but refreshing, soothing his parched throat as he swallowed. Though at a distance from where he stood, the anxious snorting of the buffalo and the agitated stomping on the ground with their large hooves resounded across the plain. The herd had been kept on the run for three days and nights, chased by the Sioux, who had finally cornered the remaining herd against the outer boundary of the rock formations that divided the grasslands for several miles. The buffalo appeared too tired to run any further, although Running Elk was certain that the herd wouldn’t give up another attempt to escape the shouts and arrows of the human beings who chased them; they weren’t animals that easily gave up their wakan spirits.
Running Elk threw a piece of wet wood on the small campfire, laid a blanket across it, and then slowly raised and lowered the blanket several times, allowing clouds of white smoke to intermittently rise in the air. From the plains came the whooping of the Sioux buffalo hunters as they descended on the herd, and then came the thundering hooves of the buffalo as they split into two herds, one fleeing north, the other south. The clouds of dust kicked up by the buffalo hung in the air, hiding what much of what was happening from Running Elk’s view, but he knew that the hunters had followed the herd going south, as the smoke signals had instructed them to do. He kicked at the campfire to put it out, rolled up the blanket, slung it over his shoulder, and then began climbing down the steep incline of the formation. At the bottom, he was met by two Sioux hunters who were covered in sweat, mud, and dirt.
Gray Fox, one of the oldest among the hunters, handed Running Elk the reins of his horse. He pointed to the top of the rocks where Running Elk had been located. “From there, did you see all that occurred when the tatonka was driven in the direction of the rocks?” he asked.
Running Elk untied the reins of his horse from the tree branch where he had tied it and looked at the deeply-lined face and twinkling brown eyes of his old friend. Gray Fox enjoyed asking riddles and telling funny Unktomi fables, but the hunter wasn’t grinning as he usually did when he was having fun.
“What more was there to see other than it was a good hunt?” Running Elk replied. “There will be plenty of meat and hides from which the women of the village can make blankets to last the winter.”
“At the river, a white man’s camp was stampeded over,” Gray Fox stated. “They had been hidden from us there like the long-eared mastinca hiding in the grass.”
“Take me there,” Running Elk said as he climbed onto his horse.
The three quickly rode along the border of a broad swath of earth where the vegetation had been crushed into the dirt by the panicked buffalo. At the river, they stopped at the muddy bank on the western side and surveyed the crushed and scattered remains of what had been a covered wagon on the opposite bank. The horses that had pulled it were gone, having broken free and run off before the site was overtaken by the stampeding buffalo.
“Only two bodies were found,” Gray Fox said. “A man and a woman.”
“Then it is done. The Great Spirit decided their fates,” Running Fox said.
Then the wailing of a baby suddenly came from where the remains of the wagon lay.
***
WITH HIS HORSE LADEN with buffalo hides, Running Elk rode into the village. He was followed by the dozens of other Sioux men who also carried piles of hides on their horses or dragged a travois carrying the skinned carcasses of one or more buffalo. The women and children of the village ran out of the teepees and greeted the returning hunters with welcoming whoops and shouts.
Running Elk’s woman, Singing Lark, ran up to his horse as he stopped near the communal fire pit that had been prepared by the women and older men who had remained behind. “It looks like it was a good hunt,” she said, eyeing with glee everything loaded on his horse.
He jumped down from his horse. “In his wisdom, Wakantanka has sent us a gift,” he said sheepishly, uncertain how Singing Lark would react to what he brought back.
“What gift?” she asked.
He tossed aside the deerskin cape he had worn during his ride back to the village and held out the baby who was swaddled in the blanket and teething on a strip of leather. The child’s blonde curls gleamed in the bright sunshine. Its blue eyes locked onto her face.
Her face froze into a mask of horror mixed with uncertainty. “What is that?”
“This child has the same strong wakan as the tatanka that roams the plains,” he answered, puffing out his chest. “I have named him Chikala Tatanka.”
She crossed her arms as she began tapping her foot. “What am I to do with it?” she asked, unable to hide her disgust at the sight of a white child, one that looked nothing like a Sioux child.
“You have plenty of milk in you after the death of our newborn, and Chikala Tatanka needs a woman’s care,” he answered. He shoved the child at her. “Do not dishonor Wakantanka or me by refusing it.”
She took the child in her arms and wrinkled her nose. “His name suits him well. He smells like a little buffalo.”
Chikala Tatanka smiled and playfully reached out for Singing Lark’s braided hair. He grabbed the tip of a braid and cooed happily. Singing Lark turned and walked back to her teepee, not allowing Running Elk to see the smile on her face.
***
MANY SEASONS PASSED. Chikala Tatanka’s hair was bleached white, and his skin was turned bronze by the sun during the blazing-hot summers on the plains. His skin was toughened by the harsh winters while the tribe camped in the pine tree-covered mountains to the west of the plains. At six years old, he was strong, healthy, and adventurous, often wandering away from the watchful eyes of his elders. Although he had grown up among them, the other children ostracized him because of the difference in his looks and that he had not been born of human beings, so he spent a great deal of time playing and exploring by himself. Although life on the plains allowed him to become acquainted with the ways of elk, prairie dogs, rabbits, fox, coyotes, and the revered buffalo, it was the time spent in the forest that he felt more at home.
At the onset of winter, as snow flurries blew through the pine branches, he walked along a path that wound through the trees, following the paw prints in the soft ground left by a black bear. Running Elk had taught him that bears hibernated in winter, and although he had seen them from a distance during the late autumn months when the tribe first set up camp in the mountains, he had never encountered one while wandering alone. He carried with him a small bow and one arrow, both made for him by Gray Fox, who told him, “One arrow is as good as two if you shoot straight the first time.” He didn’t fully understand what Gray Fox meant, but there was a lot of what his adopted uncle said that he didn’t comprehend. He stopped to chew on a strip of dried salmon that Singing Lark had given him as a treat and tucked into a pocket in his deerskin jacket. The screeching of a hawk circling above the trees drew his attention, and he looked up as he bit off the end of the strip.
When a loud grunt followed by a long, guttural growl came from behind him, the boy whirled about. Five feet away stood a large black bear, its teeth bared as it raised its snout and sniffed the air.
“Never run from a mato,” Chikala Tatanka remembered Running Elk telling him. He froze in place, not really frightened, but cautious. He kept his eyes on the bear’s, sensing that the bear was equally cautious. He slowly broke off a piece of the salmon and tossed it on the ground in front of the bear. The bear lowered its head, sniffed the fish, curled its tongue around it, and drew it into its mouth.
Chikala Tatanka broke off another piece and threw it to the bear, who caught it in its teeth and quickly swallowed it. The bear took several steps toward the boy and stopped as Chikala Tatanka broke off another piece of salmon and with it grasped between the tips of his fingers, held out his hand. The bear slowly walked up to the boy’s extended hand and took the fish. Over the next several minutes, Chikala Tatanka fed the bear the rest of the fish. When there was none left, the boy sat down and began singing a verse of a lullaby that Singing Lark had sung to him when he was younger.
Ha hiye he yo ye
wa yehe yo iyee
ha hiye he do ye
wa deke doiyee
The bear stepped up to Chikala Tatanka and began sniffing him. It nuzzled his neck and ran its nose through his hair. When Chikala Tatanka giggled with delight, the bear gently pawed the boy’s shoulder.
Standing in the brush and watching, careful not to startle the bear and put the boy at risk, Blue Cloud, the tribe’s wicasa wakan, saw for himself what Running Elk had said from the day that the child was brought into the village. “This one has a very strong wakan spirit.” In all of his years as a medicine man, he had never sensed the wakan in another being as he did when looking at the boy. Now that the boy’s gift had been revealed to him, Blue Cloud decided he would take the boy under his wing. He watched for some time until the bear lost interest in the boy, turned, and walked away.
Blue Cloud stepped out of the brush. “Come, boy,” he said to Chikala Tatanka. “I will smoke the chanupa with Running Elk and ask Wakantanka how to proceed with you.”
***
DURING THE NEXT SIX years that Chikala Tatanka lived in Blue Cloud’s teepee, he watched as the medicine man treated illnesses and injuries using herbs, flower petals, animal parts, mud, and different sizes and colors of stones and agates, accompanied by chanting and prayers. Blue Cloud was the oldest member of the tribe, even older than Chief Red Sky, who frequently called on Blue Cloud to treat his gout and arthritis. Chikala Tatanka wasn’t permitted to enter the chief’s teepee, but he stood outside the tepee and listened to the prayers that Blue Cloud offered up to Wakantanka on the chief’s behalf.
In those years, unlike the other children in the village, he frequently sat with the men of the tribe and listened to their tales of hunting and their fear and anger about the increasing numbers of white men who were crossing the plains, headed west. The settlement that the white men and their soldiers had established along the rapidly-flowing creek at the base of the mountain cut off access to their winter hunting grounds and created agitation that often erupted into shouts of wanting to go to war.
Blue Cloud taught Chikala the Sioux legends, of White Buffalo Calf Woman, who brought the sacred pipe to the Sioux people; of Rabbit Boy, who was born from a clot of blood and raised by rabbits; of Unkheti, the great horned serpent; and much more.
Chikala Tatanka yearned to practice the medicine and magic that Blue Cloud had taught him but was allowed to do no more than gather the items needed to administer the cures or perform the rituals.
“When do I get to use all that I’ve learned?” the boy would ask.
“Not until you have gone on your vision quest,” Blue Cloud told him. “Then you will sit in the sweat lodge, as all human beings who practice the ways of Wakantanka do.”
***
THE MORNING FOLLOWING the completion of the cycle of the moon, while the early morning mist hung a few feet from the ground, Chikala Tatanka turned to look back at his adopted parents along with Blue Cloud and Gray Wolf, who stood on the outskirts of the village. He had a bladder of water hanging from his shoulder, a leather pouch sewn together by Singing Lark hanging from a strap around his neck, and a knife given to him by Running Elk in its deerskin sheath tucked into his belt.
Gray Wolf had in his hands the new bow and a quiver of arrows he had made for him, to be given to him when he returned. Gray Wolf was aging and sickly, and Blue Cloud had warned the boy not to expect his adopted uncle to still be alive when the new full moon appeared in the sky. Gray Wolf’s mischievous grin and the twinkle in his eyes had not diminished as he told one last riddle just before Chikala Tatanka departed. The boy had heard Gray Wolf tell it often to the children of the village and had figured it out long ago.
“There are two human beings, a big one and a little one. The little one is the big one’s son, but the big one is not the little one’s father. How is this possible?”
Chikala Tatanka gave a brief wave, turned, and trodded off through the tall, late summer prairie grass. He headed for the rock formations several days’ walk from where the village stood.
“From there, the great Wakantanka will guide your footsteps on your quest,” Blue Cloud had told him.
During the next two days, Chikala Tatanka killed a rattlesnake with his knife and chanted a prayer to Wakantanka to honor the snake’s spirit as he sat on a dirt mound and fashioned a headband from the snake’s skin, replacing the deerskin one he had left home wearing; stood in the midst of a prairie dog village and practiced mimicking their barking until he sounded exactly like them; snared a rabbit with a trap from twigs and his knife that he had been taught by Running Elk how to make, and skinned and ate the rabbit over a small campfire; and gathered wildflowers that were medicinal and stuffed them into his leather pouch. On the first night, he lay in the grass and stared up at the stars and recited the incantations he learned from Blue Cloud to ward off the evil spirits and keep away Hestovatohkeo’o, the monster with two faces, and the malevolent trickster, Unktomi.
In the twilight of the third day, he arrived at the limestone formations that were shades of pink and purple in the pastel light of fading sunset. He climbed to the top of a formation, sat down and crossed his legs, and sang the “Lakota Calling Song,” an expression of praise to Wakantanka.
Wiohpeyata etunwan yo
Nitunkasila ahitunwan yankelo
Cekiya yo, cekiya yo!
Ahitunwan yankelo!
From where he sat, he could see the vastness of the plains and decided that it was a suitable place to complete his vision quest.
***
LYING FLAT ON HIS STOMACH in the grass, Chikala Tatanka watched the long wagon train heading west cross the prairie. The train had crept up on him while he had been busy the entire morning following the trail of a red-tailed sunglia over the rolling hills on the western side of the formations. The fox had escaped him for several days in a row. He had in mind to take its fur back to Singing Lark to make gloves for herself. When he first saw the white canvas tops of the wagons and the teams of mules pulling them, it took him several minutes to realize what he was seeing. He had heard of the white man’s wagons but had never seen one. The wagon train was still a good distance away, but he knew that if he could see it, he could also be seen by them if he wasn’t careful.
Startled by the sound of a horse’s neighing behind him, he rolled over and saw a man in a blue uniform sitting on a horse with what he thought was a long stick aimed at him. He jumped up and began to run.
“Stop, Injun,” the man yelled.
Chikala Tatanka knew nothing of the white’s man language, and what the man shouted was no more than gibberish. He continued to run until the discharge of the man’s rifle being fired echoed across the landscape. Chikala Tatanka fell unconscious to the ground, struck in the back of the head by a bullet. In the deepest part of his consciousness, he was sitting beside Gray Wolf, who lay in his teepee on several buffalo hides. The spirit of sunkmanitu tanka, Gray Wolf’s namesake, arose from the old man’s body like a ghostly specter, howled, and then disappeared into thin air.
Hours later, when Chikala Tatanka opened his eyes, he saw he was inside a wagon, and he felt the wagon bumping up and down as the wheels rolled over the dry earth.
“I think he’s waking up,” a woman’s voice said from nearby.
He turned his head to see where the voice was coming from. Although he had been told as soon as he could understand what was being said to him that he wasn’t born a human being, for the first time, he realized how much his skin, eye, and hair color was like that of a white person. Struggling to sit up, he also realized that he had been tied down.
***
THE GRAY WOLF HOVERED in the air, silently keeping Chikala Tatanka company until the door to the room he was sitting in opened and two soldiers and two women entered. The wolf vanished, leaving the boy fearing for his safety. The white men in uniforms had taken his knife, leather pouch, and mocassins, and sitting on an Army cot with just a blanket and pillow, he felt vulnerable and defenseless. He had heard many stories of the cruelty of the white man toward human beings and feared Wakantanka had deserted him for forgetting to honor the spirit of the rabbit he had slain. The white cloth that had been wrapped around his head and the patch that had been placed where the bullet grazed his scalp lay on the floor, ripped to shreds in an act of defiance. Even a medicine man’s young apprentice was expected to be a brave. He recoiled when one of the women who had the same color hair as his walked up to him and stared intently at his face.
She put a handkerchief to her nose, and as tears began to stream down her face, she said, “He’s the spitting image of my brother when he was that age.”
Chikala Tatanka tried unsuccessfully to discern the meaning of her words, but it was her tears that alarmed him. The women of the tribe only shed tears when a child died. It didn’t stop him from trying to bite her gloved hand when she tried to touch his face. It was then that he also learned and understood his first English word. He took to heart what she called him—a “savage.”
Over the next couple of weeks, that woman, who he learned was named Aunt Matilda, came and went, always accompanied by another woman or a man she called Preacher Smith, and a soldier everyone called Sergeant who stood at the door with his hand on his holstered pistol. Aunt Matilda and whoever she brought with her would sit in chairs while he sat cross-legged on the floor with his arms crossed, refusing to sit on the cot while they were in the room. They brought him clothes and shoes that he refused to wear. He put up such a fight when they tried to cut his hair that they gave up, sweating, bruised, and swearing under their breaths.
During this time, Chikala Tatanka learned dozens of other English words, mostly nouns, including horse, man, woman, soldier, and gun. Whenever Preacher Smith began speaking at length while pointing heavenward, the boy looked up at the ceiling, wondering what the stout, bearded man was pointing at.
When alone, he stood on his cot and watched the pedestrians, horses, soldiers, and wagons through the bars on the window as they passed by on the muddy street. Preferring to sleep on the floor, he lay awake until the middle of the night, reciting “The Great Spirit Prayer.”
“Oh, Great Spirit, whose voice I hear in the wind, whose breath gives life to all the world.
Hear me; I need your strength and wisdom.
Let me walk in beauty, and make my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset.
Make my hands respect the things you have made and my ears sharp to hear your voice.
Make me wise so that I may understand the things you have taught my people.
Help me to remain calm and strong in the face of all that comes toward me.
Let me learn the lessons you have hidden in every leaf and rock.
Help me seek pure thoughts and act with the intention of helping others.
Help me find compassion without empathy overwhelming me.
I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy, Myself.
Make me always ready to come to you with clean hands and straight eyes.
So when life fades, as the fading sunset, my spirit may come to you without shame.”
***
IN THE LAST DAYS OF summer, he watched the night sky through the window, seeing the full moon slowly take shape. More than ever, he longed for home, to be back among his family and the tribe, and to experience for the first time sitting in the sweat lodge with Blue Cloud and to be on the path to being a medicine man. He was at the window when the door to his room opened. He turned to see the sergeant, who had expressed his displeasure on several occasions with being ordered to keep a “filthy redskin” in the soldier’s quarters. The sergeant muttered several insults aimed at Chikala Tatanka. The boy didn’t understand the meanings, but he understood the malice in the soldier’s voice and expression. The sergeant leaned unsteadily against the doorframe. The aroma of whiskey wafted from him. He slowly removed his black leather belt and smacked it against his leg, menacingly.
“I’m gonna whip the Injun right out of your hide,” he grunted.
Seeing the gray wolf appear behind the sergeant, Chikala Tatanka jumped down from the cot, and, catching the solider off-guard, ran past him, out into the hallway, and then out the front door. In the darkness, he made his way through the settlement and into the woods at the base of the mountain. He hid in the brush under the shadow of a large pine tree and offered prayers to Wakantanka, seeking guidance and protection. When at sunrise, the gray wolf appeared, he followed it up the mountain until he arrived at the site where the tribe once camped for the winter. There he dug among the piles of fallen pine needles and found arrowheads, rocks shaped into tools, strips of leather, and wooden needles that had been used by the women of the tribe. He dug a hole in the dirt, and, using two twigs that he rubbed together, he built a small campfire.
In the following days and weeks, it got colder, so he built a lean-to, and with traps he learned how to make from Running Elk, caught several wiciteglega with their black-ringed eyes. He thanked Wakantanka for their meat and gray fur, which he fashioned into mocassins and a jacket. He made a fishing pole from an aspen branch, a strip of leather, and a needle, and caught salmon and trout from the same stream he got water from and bathed in. Having been taught by Gray Wolf how to make a bow and arrows, he assembled those also and killed squirrels, birds, and rabbits for food, always mindful of the wakan spirit of each creature that gave up its life so that he could live. At night inside the lean-to, he buried himself under leaves and pine needles in the pit he had dug in the ground and slept warmly, with the watchful gray wolf always nearby, protecting him.
As the weather worsened and snow began to fall, he sat in the lean-to and recalled the Lakota Sioux legends told to him by Blue Cloud. Having a very active imagination, he made up tales of his own from those legends, imagining he had made friends with the Bigfoot-like woodland spirit Chiye-Tanka, and rode on the back of the wakinyan as it flew through the sky, its wings making the sound of thunder and its eyes shooting bolts of lightning. As snow gathered around him, he yearned for the warmth and comfort of a teepee and the companionship of Blue Cloud or his adopted parents.
He offered up prayers to Wakantanka, and, following the gray wolf’s lead, he descended the mountain and skirted the edge of the settlement. Battling the harsh winds that battered his young body, he ran across the open plains and all the way to the village without stopping once.
A week later, he staggered into the village and fell into the arms of Singing Lark, who told him she had just said a prayer to Wakantanka for his safe return.
***
SITTING BESIDE CHIEF Red Sky and surrounded by the entire tribe, Chikala Tatanka told them everything he had seen, heard, and learned. As he spoke, and the chanupa was passed around, he was keenly aware that Gray Wolf wasn’t there. He had died a few days after the boy had left on his vision quest, leaving the bow and arrows for his adopted nephew.
When he finished speaking, Chikala Tatanka was led to an awaiting, prepared sweat lodge where he stripped down and walked in and sat down. He was followed by Blue Cloud, Running Elk, and several of the other male human beings who offered thanks to Wakantanka for sending them the white child who became a human being and would become the tribe’s medicine man.