XXV XXV “It was a great victory,” the old man said at last. He had been sitting like the embodiment of the brooding stillness outside. Yesterday’s booming warm wind had died late in the night, and it had seemed that the still, soft dawn needed only a meadowlark to be April.
When he had filled and lighted his pipe, he drew a long draft and passed the pipe to me. “Dho,” he said, “that was a great victory; but you see us now. I do not like to think of it. We all went away from there towards the mountains, and there was feasting and dancing, for we had killed many enemies. But my heart did not sing when I danced. High Horse was my brother-friend, and he was waiting for me yonder in the world of spirits.” For a while the old man gazed in silence at the ground. Then he squinted at me with a pucker of suppressed amusement about his eyes, and said, “Maybe he will not know me when I come at last, bent low and walking on three legs.” He chuckled and was still again.
“But what about Tashina, Grandfather?” I asked, and had to wait for an answer.
“I saw her at the sun dance on the Rosebud,” he said. “She looked at me again the way she used to do, and I was glad she was not angry with me any more. But my head was full of war and great deeds to be done. I saw her once again after we had rubbed out Long Hair and his horseback soldiers on the hill. But then my heart was sick because of High Horse. It was the way I told you. There was a road I did not see until I had walked across the world.
“It was a victory, but now I can see that it was the end of the old days. The Wasichus were coming and coming, more and more Wasichus, and the bison would soon be gone. While we were camped near the mountains some of our people began to leave us, one iglaka, two, three iglakas at a time. They were going back to the agencies. We heard of many soldiers getting ready on Goose Creek south of us, many soldiers getting ready on the Yellowstone north of us. They would come together and surround us. So in the Moon of Black Cherries [August] the scattering of the people began. They always scattered in the fall after they had come together for the sun dance. But that time it was different. I did not know then that the hoop was breaking and would never come together again. When we broke camp, most of us started north together. Some were talking of Grandmother’s Land [Canada]. They said if we went there, the soldiers could not chase us any more, and Grandmother England [Queen Victoria] was kind to our relatives who were living in her country. But many said they did not want to die in a strange land far from home.
“The prairie burned behind us, wide as the sky. This made it hard for the soldiers’ horses to follow. We turned east towards Mini Shoshay [the Missouri River]. Then the rain came. Day and night it rained until the mud was deep and our horses could hardly pull the drags. There were still many, many of us, many, many horses; but some people were always leaving us—one iglaka, two, three iglakas, maybe a big party. Some would hunt awhile, but when they had made winter meat, they would go to the agencies.
“My grandfather and grandmother had some relatives in Grandmother’s Land, and when Sitting Bull turned north again with about a hundred lodges, we went along with him and crossed the Yellowstone. Crazy Horse, with many of the people, went on towards where the sun comes up. I never saw him again. The Miniconjous went on with him, and when I saw Tashina again after many moons, everything was different. My step-father, Looks Twice, said if we went visiting in Grandmother’s Land, afterwhile the soldiers might go away and we could come back home.
“Horseback soldiers came after us yonder, and there was a fight. It was not much. We got away in the night with Sitting Bull, and fled north. Then we camped and hunted and dried much meat. Soldiers did not come there. We had good tepees and plenty of papa.
“In the Moon of Dark Red Calves [February] we heard about Crazy Horse and his people. They had gone back through the burned-off land to Tongue River, and they were hungry there when the soldiers came, many soldiers. It was a bad fight in the snow and cold, and Crazy Horse had no powder; so he fled with his people in a snowstorm to Little Powder River, and there they were starving.
“The story was a moon old when it came to our village. Maybe many soldiers would attack us too. So we broke camp when a melting wind blew, as it did yesterday, and went into Grandmother’s Land. There we had relatives to visit and the soldiers could not chase us.
“I thought maybe we would go back home when the new grass came; but when the valleys were green along the creeks, another story came to us. Crazy Horse had led his starving people into the Soldiers’ Town on White River [Fort Robinson] so that they could eat. Then we thought it would be better to wait until it was time for the fall hunt. Maybe Crazy Horse and his people would be hunting, and we could join them, and be happy together again. But bad stories came to us that summer, and just before the winter we heard that the Wasichus had murdered Crazy Horse at the Soldiers’ Town.
“We did not go home.”
The old man ceased and sat with drooped head, his hands on his knees. When I held the pipestem towards him, he did not see it, and I felt alone in the tepee. “What then, Grandfather?” I said at length. He raised his head and seemed to come back slowly from a distant place. His gaze took on the crinkled, quizzical look, and what he said came with a shock of surprise: “I got married.”
He took the pipe and smoked awhile. “Dho,” he continued, “we did not go home. Our relatives were kind to us. There were bison in plenty. There were no soldiers to chase us. There were valleys and streams like ours at home; but when I rode along a valley, something was not there; and when I looked at a hill, it was a stranger. There were no great deeds to be done and no great honors to win. When I was a boy, and the sun would come up, something wonderful might happen that day. It was not so any more. Stories came from the agencies, and they were about hunger and sickness and the forked tongues of the Wasichus. The soldiers even took away the people’s horses. Pa Sapa was full of crazy Wasichus digging up the yellow metal.
“Grasses came forth and died, and the snow fell. Again the grass was new and died and there was snow. Maybe next grass everything would be better, and we would go home. We did not go home. The stories that came to us were not good. Afterwhile we got used to the strange land. Then I got married.
“She was a Hunkpapa girl and her right name was Plenty White Cows. People called her Woman Who Died, and they told about a strange power she had. She made charms for her two brothers, so that what they tried to do, they could do it; and with these charms they had won great honors in war. Also she could see things that were going to happen.
“She was older than I was, but she was a girl yet. I think maybe young men were a little afraid of her because of the stories people told, and she was not very strong—maybe because she had died once and gone to the world of spirits. I will tell you how it was, the way people told it; for it had been made into a story for anybody to tell.
“When Plenty White Cows was just a little girl, maybe five or six winters old, a strange sickness came upon her. The wichasha wakon could do nothing, and so she died. At that time her father and mother were camping with some other Hunkpapas at Slim Buttes, north of Pa Sapa. And when their girl was dead, they prepared her for the other world and put her on a scaffold, the way I have told you. Then the band broke camp and moved on towards Mini Shoshay, and the father and mother and brothers went wandering and mourning. This was when the Moon of Black Cherries [August] was young, and it was a time of no storms.
“There was a man whose name was Against the Clouds. He and his woman were Sans Arcs. They had been visiting with relatives in Grandmother’s Land, and they were on their way back to Bear Butte near Pa Sapa, where the Sans Arcs would be camping. They were traveling alone with two horses to ride and one to pull the drag. It was not very far between sleeps, for they were getting to be old people and they would be tired when there was yet much day. Also, they were having a good time together, because the weather was so pleasant. They were not in a hurry to be at home, because their children were dead and they had no family.
“So Against the Clouds and his woman were riding along slowly where the trail left the creek and began to climb towards a pass in the sharp buttes. These buttes stand tall in a row that is bent like a great bow with the arrow aimed at the sunset; and that is the way the two were going. The man was ahead of the drag-horse and the woman came last. When they were not far from the pass, the woman said, ‘Look! Look over there! Somebody has died here since we came through with the young grass.’ So Against the Clouds stopped his horse and looked. ‘It is so,’ he said; for yonder high up on the side of the butte, not very far away, was a new scaffold. And the woman said, ‘I wonder if it is somebody we know.’ The man looked hard awhile, then he said, ‘Do you see how the crows are doing? They fly around but do not come close. Something is scaring them.’ And the woman said, ‘There is something sitting on the scaffold. Maybe it is a buzzard.’ And when the man had looked hard for a while longer, he said, ‘That does not look like any buzzard I ever saw sitting. Let us go and see.’
“So they left the drag-horse grazing by the trail and rode over a little way to see what was sitting yonder on the scaffold. All at once the woman cried out and stopped her horse. It surely was not a buzzard up there; ‘Let us get away from here!’ she said, and she could hardly make the words, she was so frightened. But Against the Clouds just sat still on his horse, looking and listening, with his woman behind him, looking and listening. It was the bundle that was sitting up there with its face turned the other way—a little bundle! And as they stared with their mouths open, hardly breathing, there came a thin sound like a sick child crying and whimpering. Then the man said, ‘Nobody is dead here. I think they put somebody up there too soon. I will go and see.’ So he did, while the woman waited, for she was still frightened. And when the man had looked, he called to his woman. ‘Come here quick and do not be afraid! It is a sick child, and it may die if we do not hurry to help it.’ Then the woman was not afraid any more, and she went in a hurry to help.
“So that is how the little girl who died came back to this world again. And when the two old people had unwrapped her, they made a camp by a spring that ran cool among pines just beyond the pass. And there they washed the little girl very carefully with warm water. Also they made some broth and put it in her mouth a few drops at a time, for she was still more in the spirit world than here.
“Against the Clouds and his woman did not sleep much all night. They sat beside the sick little girl and gave her drops of broth once in a while, for they were afraid she would die again and they wanted to keep her for their own. They had no children for their old age, and the woman was already too old to have any more. While the little girl was sleeping, they talked together and made a plan. If the girl lived, they would take her home with them and say they adopted her in Grandmother’s Land. They were very good old people and always spoke straight words; but they wanted a daughter so much that they made this story to tell so that they could keep her. They prayed hard too; and when it was morning, they could see that the girl would live. And the woman said, ‘Let us give our daughter a good name. I think it would be well to call her Plenty White Cows. It is a sacred name, and surely Wakon Tonka has sent her to us from the spirit land. Also, it is a pretty name. I always liked it.’ And the man said, ‘Let it be so. We will call her Plenty White Cows.’ So they did.
“Against the Clouds and his woman stayed in camp there until the girl was well enough to talk, but she could not remember much. She would just look and look at the two old people, and sometimes she would cry a little. They asked what her father’s name was, and she could not tell. She did not know her own name either, so they told her the new name, and she would say it again and again.
“Afterwhile she could remember that she was sleeping and that a man came singing. He touched her and told her to ‘waken, for some people were coming to take her back. So she awoke and tried to get up. It must have been hard to crawl out of the bundle, but somehow she did part way. And when she sat up, there was no man, but only a crow flying off. Then she was frightened and began crying, and right away the people that the singing crow-man told about were there. Then she did not remember any more until she was tasting broth.
“The old people were so good to her that in a little while she loved them very much and learned to call them father and mother. And when she was well enough to walk a little, they broke camp and started for Bear Butte with Plenty White Cows riding on the drag.
“When Against the Clouds and his woman came back home with their new daughter, their friends would come to see and bring gifts. But the little girl would hide behind her foster-mother and peek around at the faces. For a long while she seemed to be looking for somebody she knew, but when anyone spoke to her, she would hide behind her foster-mother and cry. Maybe she was looking for her own father and mother like people she had seen in a dream. Her foster-parents said she was very bashful; but people talked about it and said she was queer.
“So Against the Clouds and his woman had Plenty White Cows all for themselves, and they were so fond of her that people said they were foolish about her. Also, she loved them very much and was always helping her foster-mother. It was not long before the foster-parents noticed that she knew things she could not know unless a spirit told her. Sometimes she would talk to people they could not see and learn something that was true but that she could not know by herself. That is the way she found her foster-father’s horse when it was lost and no one could find it.
“I think it was two snows after this, and the Sans Arcs were traveling. It was in the Moon of Black Cherries again. The people with their pony-drags were crossing a deep creek and Hunkpapas were camped on the other side. Some Hunkpapa men were at the crossing to help if any should have trouble with the drags in the mud. One of these Hunkpapas was the brother of the girl’s father, and when Against the Clouds and his woman and Plenty White Cows came riding with their drag, this man looked very hard at the girl; and when they had crossed, he wondered and wondered. Then he went and told his brother, who was camping there, that he had seen a girl who looked just like the one who died, only maybe a little older. So when the Sans Arcs had camped not far from the Hunkpapas, the real father and his brother went over to see.
“When they had walked part way around the village circle, they saw Plenty White Cows helping her foster-mother at the fire in front of the tepee. And when the real father saw her, he just stood with his mouth open, looking, until the girl cried out and ran to hide behind her foster-mother. Just then Against the Clouds came from staking out his horses, and the real father said to him, ‘Kola, you have a little daughter here who looks just like the little daughter I had, but she died two snows ago just about this time. It was at Slim Buttes. My woman still cries hard whenever we talk about our daughter.’ But Against the Clouds and his woman looked down their noses and said nothing. Then the real father and his brother went away.
“In a little while, the real father came back with the girl’s real mother. And when the mother saw the girl, she screamed and hid her face with her hands. Then she looked again, with tears running through her fingers, and she wailed, ‘What do I see, O what do I see? My little girl is dead! My little girl is dead! What do I see?’ This time the girl did not run and hide. She looked with big scared eyes at the woman who was crying so hard, and then she ran to the woman and the woman seized her and held her, crying very hard.
“By now Against the Clouds and his woman were just standing there with tears running down their faces, and the real father was crying too. And Against the Clouds said at last, ‘Friends, it is true. This is your little girl. We saved her from the scaffold and made a story so that we might keep her.’ And the foster-mother said, ‘Yes, it is true, but we love her so much, and we are getting old and she is all we have.’
“Then the real father said to Against the Clouds, ‘Kola, we are men, and we can smoke a pipe and talk this over.’ So that is what they did, and this is how they agreed. The girl was born and had died. Then she was born again. So she had two mothers and two fathers, and the first parents would own her as much as the second parents, the second as much as the first. The girl would keep her second name because the first name died with her. She was born first in the Moon of Dark Red Calves [February], so in that moon she would go to live with her first parents. Then in the Moon of Black Cherries [August] she would go to live with her second parents, because it was then that she came back from the spirit land.
“And when this was agreed, the first father and mother and the second father and mother and their little girl were happy.”