XXIX XXIX When I returned from the woodpile, the old man sat with closed eyes, listening to the random plaintive sounds he was making with his eagle-bone whistle. I fed the stove against the snow-chill that had begun to creep into the tepee. The wind had ceased and the listening world outside was filled with whispering flakes that clad the hills in gauze.
“You walked across the world,” I said, “and then you found the road at last?”
Emerging slowly from his meditation and ignoring my question, he began.
“Looks Twice and my mother had come from Grandmother’s Land. My grandfather and grandmother wanted to come home to their people, for they were very old and they did not want to die up there. So my step-father brought them back. They were all living in a little gray house of logs yonder on White Horse Creek, and I went to live with them. Winter was coming, and people were talking about the Wanekia [Messiah]. Some believed, and some said it was all foolishness. Looks Twice and my mother did not believe yet and I did not believe either; but my grandfather and grandmother said maybe it was true.
“I heard that Kicking Bear had gone with Good Thunder and some others to see the Wanekia far away where the sun sets and a people they called the Paiutes lived. They would come back with the young grass, and then, some said, we would know that it was all true. But others said it was a long way yonder, and stories that traveled far always got bigger. I did not care much about the Wanekia; but I wanted to see Kicking Bear again and talk about the things we used to do together before the hoop was broken. We could remember the time we got all those Crow horses, and we could talk about High Horse and Charging Cat; and maybe we would laugh about the way the fat old woman bounced on her pony-drag.
“It was a hard winter with much snow, and there was not much to eat. There was nothing to hunt, and the Great White Father did not send all the cattle he promised. Sometimes I could kill a jack rabbit. The people grew angry and many were sick. I thought about the dream that came to me across the great water. Maybe this was why Plenty White Cows did not look at me in the dream and Tashina was crying. I remembered what Plenty White Cows told me before she went to her parents in the spirit world. I would go across a great water, and when I came back I would find the little girl she heard crying far away. I was back from across the great water, and there was only hunger and sickness.
“Afterwhile the snow melted and the young grasses appeared. Then Kicking Bear and the others came back. There was a big meeting at No Water’s camp on White Clay Creek, and we went there to hear. Before the talking began I saw Kicking Bear, and it made my heart sing to see him again. He was older, but I knew him. So I went to him, and I think he did not know me. He looked hard at me and his eyes looked angry. I said, ‘Cousin, I am Eagle Voice. Do you remember High Horse and Charging Cat and all those Crow horses we got that time? And do you remember the fat old woman, how she bounced when her pony ran away?’ I made a laugh, for I thought he would remember and laugh too. He just looked hard at me like a stranger. His eyes were cold, his face was sharp. Then he cried out, ‘Believe! Believe! For those who do not believe shall be lost!’ And he went away.
“My heart was sick, for nothing was the same any more. I heard all they said at the meeting, and many, many were there to hear. The Wanekia would come like a whirlwind. Then all the Wasichus would disappear like a smoke. The earth would be made new and green forever and all the spirits would come from the other world and be alive here again. And with these the bison would return and the people would be happy together under a blue, blue sky; and there would be no crying any more, no hunger or sickness, no growing old or dying. A long while ago this same Wanekia came to the Wasichus, and they killed him. This time he would come to us, and we would know him. This is what we heard.
“The man they saw yonder where the sun sets was a Paiute and his name was Wovoka. He had died and gone to the other world a little while. There he had seen the Wanekia and talked to him; and when this Wovoka came back to our world here, he had to tell all the people everywhere, so that they would be ready. The Wanekia had given a sacred dance and sacred songs for the people to learn, and these would bring the new heaven and the new earth. This would happen after one more winter when the young grasses came again.
“I think most of those who heard, believed. Red Cloud was there, and he believed too. My step-father and my mother and my grandparents believed, but I was not sure. Maybe I was thinking how Kicking Bear looked at me. Also, I had gone across the world and back. It was so big and there were so many, many Wasichus. I wondered how one Wanekia could rub them all out and make the world new.
“After the big meeting, the people began dancing the sacred dance and singing the sacred songs. They held hands and made a hoop as they danced and sang, and at the center of the hoop there stood the chun wakon [sacred tree]. It was like the sacred hoop that Blue Spotted Horse told me about when I was a boy going on vision quest, and the tree at the center should fill with leaves and blooms and singing birds. But the tree was dead and the few leaves on top were dry.
“People danced and danced, singing to the Father who would come. And afterwhile some of them would fall down and lie dead a long while. And when these came alive again, they would tell of the spirit world where they had been and of the dear ones they saw yonder. My grandmother saw my father and he was young and happy and they talked together. And when she told us, her face was all bright and she was so glad that she cried and cried.
“Many saw people I used to know, and what they told seemed true. Afterwhile I began to think maybe this was the way the sacred hoop would be mended; and my grandmother told me I ought to help the people. So I danced, and sang the sacred songs to the Father who should come. But while I danced I would think about the sun dance in the good days before the hoop was broken, and how the people feasted together then and were happy and there was no crying. Now there was little to eat and much crying, and only the spirit world was happy. I did not see anything, and my heart was sick.
“The Agent told the people to stop dancing, but they would not; and in the Moon of Falling Leaves [November] we heard that the soldiers were coming to stop us. So the people fled north to the Top of the Badlands [Cuny Table], and I went with them. It would be hard for the soldiers to come to us there, and we did not want to fight them. The people said we could dance there until the Wanekia came, and then there would be no soldiers any more. The young men found some Wasichu cattle and these they took so that the people could eat.
“Kicking Bear was there and he was the big man in the teaching of the people; but he was a stranger. Sometimes I thought only his body was in this world, and sometimes I wondered if he was witko. Afterwhile he left us and went to Sitting Bull’s camp on Grand River to start the dancing there.
“I danced hard because I was sorry for my people, and maybe I could help; I did not know. Once while I was dancing I was thinking about the sun dance the way it used to be in the good days. And all at once I was there again, and I could feel the power go through me; but it did not stay. And when I could not dance any more and lay down to sleep, there was no vision.
“In the Moon of Popping Trees [December] we heard that Sitting Bull was dead. The metal breasts [Indian police] killed him in his camp on Grand River, and they were his own people. It was cold, and we were beginning to starve, so we came back here and camped around the Agency [Pine Ridge], and they gave us some cattle to butcher. Soldiers were camped there too, but they did not bother us because we did not dance. Some of the people did not believe any more, and many were not sure that the Wanekia would come with the young grass; but many still believed.”
The old man ceased, and it was some time before he shared with me the pictured past that flowed behind his closed eyelids.
“Dho, Grandson,” he said, regarding me with a gentle look, “I found the road.
“The Moon of Popping Trees was old and dying when we heard about Sitanka [Big Foot] and his band. They were fleeing towards us from Grand River where Sitting Bull was killed. They were starving and many of them were sick, and it was cold. There were about two hundred of them and some were Hunkpapas. We heard that they had crossed White River and were coming up the Porcupine. Then we heard that the horseback soldiers surrounded them over yonder by Porcupine Butte and took them down to Wounded Knee Creek. That is where they camped that night with the soldiers all around them.
“Next morning the wind was still and it was warmer. There were thousands of us camped around the Agency, and all at once we heard shooting over there across the hills. Much shooting—wagon-guns shooting very fast! Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom! Very fast! And many other guns too, like tearing a blanket! They did not stop. They kept on shooting fast. Somebody shouted, ‘Aah-hey! Aah-hey! They are butchering over there!’
“The people were cooking and eating when they heard the guns and they went crazy. Everybody was crying, ‘They are butchering them! Aah-hey! The soldiers are butchering them yonder!’ Young men were running for their horses. Many started riding fast towards the shooting over across the hills, and I rode with them. The soldiers did not try to stop us, for our men back there were getting ready to-attack. There was a fight, but I did not see it. We rode fast, and when I looked back from the top of the hill, I could see others riding fast after us, and the people running.
“The shooting ahead yonder was louder when I was over the first hills. I was riding my step-father’s horse that he brought from Grandmother’s Land, and it was a strong horse; so I was up with the fronters. My heart sang again. Maybe I would die on the prairie after all, and High Horse would be waiting and he would see me far off and come running to meet me.
“Then all at once the wagon-guns stopped shooting. It was still over there.
“When we came to the top of the last hill, we saw the butchering. There is a long crooked ravine and it runs down to a flat valley beside the Wounded Knee. Along the ravine horseback soldiers were galloping this way and that way, all mixed up. They were hunting down the women and children who were still alive. The men were dead down yonder in the valley where the butchering began.
“There were not many of us on the hilltop yet, but we could see others coming behind us, and we charged down along the ravine. Hokay-hey! Hoka-hey! But our horses were worn out and could hardly gallop. I think the soldiers did not know that we were few; and when they saw others coming over the hill, they did not wait to fight us there. They ran away towards the valley where there were more soldiers, and they were getting off their horses to dig and fight lying down.
“When we charged down beside the ravine, there were dead women and children scattered in it where the wagon-guns-that-shoot-twice [Hotchkiss guns] caught them running away. Up on the hillside above the ravine, there were some women and children huddled together in a gully, and they screamed to us as we passed.
“It was not much of a fight. There were too many soldiers and we were few, and the wagon-guns shot at those coming over the hill behind us.
“We circled back up along the hillside to where a few women and children were still living.”
The old man paused and sat for a while with closed eyes. When he looked at me again his face was aglow with a pervasive smile. “That is where I found the road, Grandson,” he said. His voice was low and gentle, with a quaver of age in it. “That is where I found the road.
“I did not know her at first. The last time I saw her she was a girl yet; but that was when I went to Grandmother’s Land after the Rubbing Out of Long Hair. She was older and heavier, and she was holding a child under her blanket. I did not know her until she looked up at me, crying hard, and said, ‘O Shonka ’kan! Shonka ’kan! They have killed him! They have killed him!’ Then I knew Tashina’s eyes with the tears in them.”
The light went out of the old man’s face, and again he sat silent.
“It was not very far from there across the hills to the little gray log house on White Horse Creek,” he continued at length. “I put her on my horse and led him, walking, and all the while she held the child close under her blanket, crying hard. It was a little boy and he was dead.
“That night the snow came and a great wind blew, and we were alone in the little gray house. When the storm died, and it was very cold, some people came and we heard that her man was dead in the valley where the butchering began.
“Looks Twice and my mother came back with my grandfather and grandmother. We lived together there until the young grass came. And then one day when she did not cry any more, and we were talking about the good days, I said, ‘I want to be your horse again. Do I have to go and eat grass?’”
The old man chuckled over the memory for a while, and then he said, the warm glow spreading from his smile: “That is when we made this little gray house here where my daughter lives, and now she is getting old too.
“It was a good road that we walked together, Grandson. Sometimes we were hungry, but it was a good road. Our children came to us, and when we were old, we saw our grandchildren too. It was a good road.”
At this point it seemed that I had suddenly dropped out of the old man’s world, and a great distance lay between us. He sat with closed eyes, making low, plaintive sounds on his eagle-bone whistle. When he had sat thus over long, I said, “Grandfather, you still have your eagle-bone whistle; but what became of the sacred quirt?”
Slowly he returned to awareness of my presence, the smile and glow warm upon his time-carved face.
“When she died—” he said in a low, gentle voice that quavered a bit—“when she died, I just put it down beneath her dress, between her breasts. I would not need it any more.”