Black Hills (82 page)
Authors: Dan Simmons
Somehow the legend grew that this old man had carried the ghost of Long Hair Custer with him for sixty years.
More and more young Lakota men—and then young Lakota women—came to visit Paha Sapa, traveling first from the nearby Pine Ridge Reservation, then from the Rosebud, then Lower Brule, Crow Creek, Yankton, Cheyenne River, and Standing Rock reservations. Then, almost shockingly, young and old Cheyenne and Crows and even Blackfoot from their reservations way over in the northwestern corner of
Wyoming and Montana. When members of tribes from California and Washington state began visiting the old man—tribes Paha Sapa had never even heard of—he laughed and laughed.
Paha Sapa did turn away data-hungry ethnologists, Native American apologists, and at least one media-famous founder of the American Indian Movement, but he always had time to sit and talk and smoke a pipe with any young person or old person without, as the
wasichu
like to say, an agenda. Many of the Natural Free Human Beings who visited him during the summers of those last years remember his curious great-grandson Robert, and how the boy had a gift—unusual for
wasichus
, they said—of knowing how to listen. The old man also often had other great-grandchildren around or was planning a trip to Denver or elsewhere to visit
them.
Even when the elder’s arthritis became very painful near the end, he would neither complain nor curtail such travel.
Many of those who visited Paha Sapa in those last decades remember that one of his favorite phrases was—
Le aNpet’u wa¸ste!
This is a good day.
One of the younger Lakota visiting heard that and asked Paha Sapa if he didn’t mean to say Crazy Horse’s and the other old warriors’ famous old saying “This is a good day to die!” but Paha Sapa only shook his head and repeated
Le aNpet’u wa¸ste!
A good day to live.
Paha Sapa died at his home in the Black Hills in August of 1959. He was ninety-three years old.
As per his wishes—found written in pencil on an old napkin he’d kept—Paha Sapa was cremated, and the majority of his ashes were buried next to his wife, Rain, at the old Episcopal Mission Cemetery on Pine Ridge Reservation.
But, as per those same wishes, some of Paha Sapa’s ashes were taken by a few of his friends and relatives, including his great-grandson Robert, and either scattered or buried somewhere along the small river called
Chankpe Opi Wakpala
where, it is said, the heart of Crazy Horse and the bleached bones of the old-days
wičasa wakan
Limps-a-Lot, whose wisdom was taught so widely and so well by Paha Sapa in his last years, also lie there undisturbed in places secret, sacred, and silent except for the sound of the wind moving on the face of the high grass and amid the leaves of the
waga chun
trees.
Acknowledgments
T
HE AUTHOR WISHES TO ACKNOWLEDGE
the following sources for information used in
Black Hills:A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn: The Last Great Battle of the American West
by James Donovan © 2008, published by Little, Brown and Company;
The Custer Myth: A Source Book of Custeriana
, written and compiled by W. A. Graham, © 1953, published by Stackpole Books;
Troopers with Custer: Historic Incidents of the Battle of the Little Big Horn
by E. A. Brininstool © 1952, published by the University of Nebraska Press;
Custer’s Fall: The Native American Side of the Story
by David Humphreys Miller © 1957, published by Meridian, the Penguin Group;
Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors
by Stephen E. Ambrose © 1975, published by Anchor Books, a division of Random House;
Custerology: The Enduring Legacy of the Indian Wars and George Armstrong Custer
by Michael A. Elliott © 2007, published by the University of Chicago Press.I’d like to make special mention of
Killing Custer: The Battle of Little Bighorn and the Fate of the Plains Indians
by James Welch (with Paul Stekler) © 1994, published by W.W. Norton and Company. I was privileged to meet Jim Welch and his wonderful wife, Lois, at the Salon du Livre in Paris in the 1990s and always looked forward to seeing them again. His death in 2003 at the age of sixty-two was a shock and a loss to us all.Other sources to acknowledge include
The Black Hills After Custer
by Bob Lee © 1997, published by the Donning Company;
Exploring with Custer:
The 1874 Black Hills Expedition
by Ernest Grafe and Paul Horsted © 2002, 2005, published by Golden Valley Press, an imprint of Dakota Photographic;
1876: The Little Big Horn
by Robert Nightengale © 1996, published by Robert Nightengale through DocuPro Services;
The Custer Album: A Pictorial Biography of General George A. Custer
by Lawrence A. Frost © 1964, published by the University of Oklahoma Press;
With the Seventh Cavalry in 1876
by Theodore Goldin © 1980, privately published;
Custer and His Times (Book 4)
edited by John P. Hart © 2002, published by Little Big Horn Associates; “Carbine Extractor Failure at the Little Big Horn” by Paul L. Hedren © Summer 1973 issue of
Military Collector and Historian; Archaeology, History, and Custer’s Last Battle
by Richard A. Fox © 1993, published by the University of Oklahoma Press.Reference material for Elizabeth (“Libbie”) Custer include
The Custer Story: The Life and Intimate Letters of General George A. Custer and His Wife Elizabeth
edited by Marguerite Merington © 1950, published by the University of Nebraska Press;
Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth
by Shirley A. Leckie © 1993, published by the University of Oklahoma Press;
Touched by Fire: The Life, Death, and Mythic Afterlife of George Armstrong Custer
by Louise Barnett © 1996, published by Henry Holt and Company;
Boots and Saddles, or: Life in Dakota with General Custer
by Elizabeth B. Custer © 1885, reprinted 1969, published by Corner House Publishers;
General Custer’s Libby
by Lawrence A. Frost © 1976, published by Superior Publishing Company. It should be noted that frequently cited dates for Elizabeth Custer’s death, including Wikipedia and multiple printed sources, are wrong. Mrs. Custer died on April 4, 1933, and her obituary appeared in the
New York Times
on April 5 of that year.Material referred to for the Lakota and Indian side of the Battle of the Little Big Horn and other details include
Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life
by Kingsley M. Bray © 2006, published by the University of Oklahoma Press;
Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux as Told through John G. Neihardt
© 1932, published by University of Nebraska Press;
Counting Coup and Cutting Horses: Intertribal Warfare on the Northern Plains, 1738–1889
by Anthony McGinnis © 1990, published by Cordillera Press;
Mother Earth Spirituality: Native American Paths to Healing Ourselves and the World
by Ed McGaa (Eagle Man) © 1990, published by
HarperSanFrancisco, a division of Harper Collins;
American Indian Myths and Legends
selected and edited by Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz © 1984, published by Pantheon Books;
Black Elk: The Sacred Way of a Lakota
by Wallace Black Elk and William S. Lyon © 1990, published by HarperSanFrancisco, a division of Harper Collins;
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West
by Dee Brown © 1971, published by Bantam Books by arrangement with Holt, Rinehart & Winston;
Where the Lightning Strikes: The Lives of American Indian Sacred Places
by Peter Nabokov © 2006, published by Penguin Books;
My People the Sioux
by Luther Standing Bear © 1975, published by the University of Nebraska Press;
The Tipi: Traditional Native American Shelter
by Adolf Hungrywolf © 2006, published by Native Voices Book Publishing Company;
Lakota Belief and Ritual
by James R. Walker (edited by Raymond J. DeMallie and Elaine A. Jahner) © 1980, 1991, published by University of Nebraska Press in cooperation with the Colorado Historical Society;
Lakota Star Knowledge: Studies of Lakota Stellar Theology
by Ronald Goodman © 1992, published by Sinte Gleska University;
Stories of the Sioux
by Luther Standing Bear © 1934, published by University of Nebraska Press.The author wishes to acknowledge
An English-Dakota Dictionary
by John P. Williamson © 1992, published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press;
Lakota Dictionary
compiled and edited by Eugene Buechel and Paul Manhart © 2002, published by University of Nebraska Press;
Reading and Writing the Lakota Language: La¸kot’a Iyaþi nahaN Yawaþi
by Albert White Hat Sr. (edited by Jael Kampfe) © 1999, published by the University of Utah Press.For help in searching the Black Hills area and the Dust Bowl period, the author wishes to acknowledge
Exploring the Black Hills & Badlands—Summer & Autumn 2008
© 2008, an official publication of South Dakota’s Black Hills, Badlands, & Lakes Association;
Deadwood: The Golden Years
by Watson Parker © 1981, published by University of Nebraska Press;
The Worst Hard Time
by Timothy Egan © 2006, published by Mariner Books, a division of Houghton Mifflin Company. And a very special thanks to Dr. Dan Peterson and his wife, Barbara, from Spearfish, South Dakota, who introduced me to so many of these historical and hidden places in and around the Black Hills.Materials referenced for the carving of Mount Rushmore include
The Carving of Mount Rushmore
by Rex Alan Smith © 1985, published by Abbeville Press Publishers;
Mount Rushmore
by Gilbert C. Fite © 1980, published by the Mount Rushmore History Association;
Mount Rushmore’s Hall of Records: The Little-Known Story of the Memorial’s Sealed Vault and Its Message for Future Civilizations
by Paul Higbee © 1999, published by the Mount Rushmore History Association (originally published in
South Dakota Magazine); Gutzon Borglum: His Life and Work
by Robin Borglum Carter © 1998, published by the Mount Rushmore History Association;
Mount Rushmore Q&A: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
by Don “Nick” Clifford © 2004, self-published.The author would especially like to thank Mr. Clifford, who was a Mount Rushmore worker from 1938 to 1940, for his time and conversation at the Memorial site.
For reference material relating to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, the author wishes to acknowledge
The World’s Columbian Exposition: The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893
by Norman Bolotin and Christine Laing © 1992, 2002, published by University of Illinois Press;
The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893: A Photographic Record
with text by Stanley Appelbaum © 1980, by Dover Publications;
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
by Erik Larson © 2003, published by Crown Publishers;
Images of America—Chicago’s Classical Architecture: The Legacy of the White City
by David Stone © 2005, published by Arcadia Publishing;
The Great Wheel
text and illustrations by Robert Lawson © 1957, published by Walker & Company.A special thanks here to the members of the Dan Simmons Forum at dansimmons.com for their help on the long and amusing chase through original newspaper accounts and other printed materials to discover which way Mr. Ferris’s original wheel rotated.
Of all the myriad Internet and other materials accessed, none was more useful in finding details of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge than my old favorite,
The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge
by David McCullough © 1972, published by Simon and Schuster.Finally, a sincere thank you to Maka Tai Meh Jacques L. Condor for taking the time to read and comment on this manuscript.
D
an Simmons is the award-winning author of several novels, including the New York Times bestsellers Olympos, The Terror, and Drood. He lives in Colorado. For more information about Dan Simmons, visit
www.DanSimmons.com
.