Joseph M. Marshall III (11 page)

Light Hair, like anyone who listened, heard the worries expressed by the old men in the council lodge and the men who came to sit with his father. Many of them likened the situation to a man staring into the fire until he remembered that his vision would be momentarily spoiled if he had to look into the darkness to find an enemy. One had to look away to clear his eyes so he could see into the dark. Perhaps this was happening to the Lakota, they feared. Many were so blinded by the white man’s things that they could no longer see the goodness and strength of the Lakota way.

The days slid into the Moon of Leaves Turning Brown. Buffalo scouts returned with news of good herds to the north. Hunters and their families went joyfully to hunt and make meat, not to enjoy the killing but to honor the pursuit of life. They returned riding on laughter and happiness with their drag poles piled high with meat and hides, their stomachs full and their hearts bursting with a sense of connection. Cool breezes turned sharp as came the Moon When Leaves Fall and the land divested itself of the flamboyance of autumn to humbly await the season of cleansing—winter. Summer camps split, although there were no sad good-bys since no one was farther than half a day’s travel away.

Lone Bear, He Dog, and Light Hair—approaching his fifteenth year—put the things and games of boyhood aside in favor of more manly activities, such as helping with the horse herd when the Hunkpatilas moved to a favorite winter spot past the middle fork of the Powder. Light Hair was less talkative than usual and though he divided his time between his friends and his mentor, High Back Bone, he also began to go off by himself. No one knew exactly where he went and he rarely divulged what he had done, but everyone had habits and ways that set them apart. His parents and his friends accepted the fact that Light Hair liked to be alone now and then. They surmised that there was something on his mind.

Winter held the Powder River country in its usual cold embrace, but it was a good winter. The autumn hunts had yielded plenty of meat. Even so, the hunters came home often with fresh elk. Children played even in the cold. Light Hair taught his younger brother Little Cloud, now nearly ten, the snow-snake game since the ice on the Powder was thick and solid. In the game, long, peeled willow rods were slid far across the ice - toward a painted stone. The rod, the snow-snake, closest to the stone earned the shooter a pebble. The shooter with the most pebbles after twelve shots won.

Stories were told by the grandmothers and grandfathers at night, or during the days when the wind threw the snow about in confusing swirls. Deep beds of glowing embers kept the lodges warm. During the Moon of Snow Blindness, restlessness crept into the lodges and people were anxious to shed the snow and cold. Toward the last days of the Moon When the Geese Return the days became warmer, although the old ones kept an eye out for sudden storms, knowing full well that spring blizzards were ferocious. The months slid by; summer came and with it a new journey for Light Hair. One of his mothers suggested he spend time with their Sicangu relatives and get to know his uncle Spotted Tail. It was a reasonable thought, easily spoken, but the journey it would bring was the kind that gave strength from adversity.

Spotted Tail’s Sicangu were between the Shell and the Running Water, west of the sand hills country. They were on the southern fringes of Lakota territory. Light Hair had been in their camp but a few days when a raiding party prepared to go against the Pawnee and Omaha, who had become too daring of late, coming north well past the Running Water. He accepted the invitation to go along.

The raiders went east toward the Loup River, an area of rolling hills and tall grass and many deer. There they separated into two groups. One turned south to probe into Pawnee country and the other, with Spotted Tail and Iron Shell leading, had spotted an Omaha camp in the breaks east of the Loup. A small number from the group crept close to the camp while the rest hid and waited. Light Hair was one, staying close to his uncle. They crawled in among the horse herd and slowly cut the hobbles from the horses’ legs and chased them out of camp. Though the Omaha didn’t immediately respond, a large contingent soon started out to recover their horses. Spotted Tail’s group waited a little longer, then attacked the camp.

The few Omaha men left in camp fought hard, but so did the Lakota. Spotted Tail charged several times on horseback alone, and Light Hair claimed his first victory as a fighting man. An Omaha tried to attack through some tall grass, but Light Hair stopped him with a well-placed arrow. The confusion and chaos delayed his reaction to what he had just done, though he was vaguely aware of the man’s death throes. Seized by a sudden bravado, he crawled through the grass to take the scalp of his first kill. A wave of sickness swept through him. The dead Omaha was a young woman. He turned away. The fighting was over.

The raid had been successful, though the Omaha had recovered some of their horses. Spotted Tail’s daring and courage was the talk around the fire. Light Hair sat quietly wrestling with the reality of taking human life. Like all newcomers to it he had learned something about the unfettered violence of combat. Ordinary perception did not exist and senses became confused. The Omaha who attacked him seemed to move so swiftly, too swiftly for a deliberate reaction. On the other hand, when he had let go of her head because he didn’t want her scalp, everything around him seemed to move very, very slowly. Her hair was soft, thick, and very long. Light Hair said nothing although he knew the overall outcome of the raid had been good. They had new horses and no one had been hurt. But the face of the dead girl stayed in his mind.

Another raid was carried out, against the Pawnees this time. More horses were taken, and a young Lakota was wounded in a fight. Finally, the raiders decided to go back to their own country.

A man from the fort came looking for Iron Shell with a message from the French trader Bordeaux. The Long Knives had received word that the “great father” was very angry over the killing of Grattan and his soldiers. More soldiers were being sent and their purpose was to punish those who had done the killing. It was an ominous message, but one not totally unexpected. Had the “great father” been told that the soldier Grattan had opened fire first? Had the “great father” been told that more than adequate payment had been offered several times for the worthless cow of the Mormon white man? Why should the “great father” care about such facts, someone asked. That was the problem, - everyone agreed; the whites had one truth and the Lakota another.

Summer passed. Light Hair grew taller, his voice deepened, and he walked with a surer step. When there was dancing, he stayed in the shadows, satisfied only to watch. But he liked the feeling of belonging that always came with such doings. Perhaps it was the rhythmic pounding of the drums that represented the heartbeat of the Earth Mother herself, or perhaps it was the outright celebration of life.

The Spotted Tail people joined the camp of Little Thunder nearer to the Blue Water River, which flowed into the Shell. These groups of Light Hair’s Sicangu relatives often pitched their camps on the edges of Lakota lands, as if daring the enemies to the south, such as the Pawnee, to cross the Shell. But another enemy crossed the Shell instead.

After days of hunting, Light Hair was returning to the Little Thunder camp early one evening. Over the hills to the east rose a large plume of dark smoke. At first he thought someone had set the prairie grass on fire, but burning grass gave off a thick, whitish smoke. The smoke he saw was black and not moving. A sense of caution gripped him, prompting him to ride down into the gullies and stay off the skyline. Thus he rode a meandering trail toward the encampment.

He stopped below a familiar hill, hobbled his horse, grabbed his bow and arrows, and climbed to the crest to have a look. Thick and dark the smoke billowed. Something was wrong. To the north was movement just beyond some low hills, but it was too far to distinguish what was moving. Light Hair remounted and put his horse into a gallop.

From another and higher vantage point he could see that the smoke was rising from the encampment. A few horses were scattered about, watching to the north, but there was nothing else. No children playing, no dogs running about. Leaving his horse hobbled he ran toward the camp. Light was fading, a dog barked tentatively, and a stench hung in the air. Among the smoking lodges and collapsed poles were objects scattered over the ground.

Whatever had happened was over. An eerie silence hung over the camp—nothing was moving. The horses he had spotted earlier had not moved; they were still gazing intently at something - toward the north. Light Hair entered the camp. The objects seen from a distance now took distinct shapes. They were rawhide meat containers, willow chairs, clothing containers, robes, and cradleboards, scattered indiscriminately as if by a sudden, angry wind. But it hadn’t been a wind. Someone had attacked the encampment.

The horses had been telling him something, looking north as they had. He walked over to a hobbled mare. She appeared unharmed, so he fashioned a jaw rope, untied the hobbles, swung onto her back, and urged her into a lope toward the north where there had been movement earlier. If the people in the camp were running away, they would be moving as fast as possible. In a bare patch of ground, he saw the grooves left by a pair of drag poles. Pausing to look he saw other signs of drag poles. Then he saw something else. Even in the fading light, the distinctive prints of the metal shoes worn by Long Knife horses were not difficult to distinguish. Unless soldiers had taken to pulling drag poles, something wasn’t right.

Throwing caution aside, Light Hair galloped in the direction of the signs. And at the second or third hill, he saw them. People were walking and leading a few horses pulling loaded drag poles, though it was difficult to count how many they were. But on either side was a column of mounted soldiers. They were heading northwest.

Most of the men from Little Thunder’s camp had been away hunting. Some of them were bound to return sooner or later, but for the time being, Light Hair was alone. He returned for his own horse so he could take two along to follow his relatives who were captives of the Long Knives.

Back at the burned-out camp he retrieved his gelding and gathered stones from several cooking fires and built a marker, pointing it to the northwest. Anyone would know to go in that direction, especially given the condition of the camp.

He had been only in the south end of the camp, so he led his horses through it to the north end. The mare snorted in apprehension and shied away from a long, dark object on the ground. Light Hair bent to it and felt a leg. It was a woman! She was dead. He discerned other shapes in the growing darkness and went to them. They were all dead. He retched after he bent low over a woman and realized that both her breasts had been cut off. Searching in the growing darkness, he found one dead body after another, all of them scalped or mutilated in some fashion. He retched again and sat for a time before he pulled a robe back from the next body, a child this time, perhaps ten.

Gathering his horses he walked out of the camp. He had covered every body he found—covering the shame of the insults they had suffered after the pain of death. With the shock and the grief came another feeling, starting like a small cloud growing over the horizon. Anger.

He kept going northwest and stopped briefly to rest in a deep gully. A soft noise startled him. In the darkness, he saw a bundle and scrambled toward it. The body he touched was warm. Light Hair heard the sob, the kind of sob that ends a long weeping when there are no more tears and no more strength to weep. A frightened whisper reached his ear.

He leaned close and recognized her; he knew her to be a young Sahiyela woman. She and her husband had been visiting relatives in the camp. Her name was Yellow Woman. In her arms she held a new baby, whose journey had been like the shooting star, a flash of new light over much too quickly. Yet she clung to him, refusing to part with the tiny lifeless body. Her husband’s body, she told Light Hair, was at the end of the gully. He had tried to fight off the soldiers that had trapped them there. A bullet had torn through the body of their new son. Some of the - people had gotten away toward the east, trying to reach the sand hill country. She and her husband had planned to follow them, but the soldiers had found them first. As far as she knew, everyone who wasn’t killed had been taken captives by the soldiers.

Light Hair coaxed the woman out of her hiding place. They would head for the sand hills, he told her. He would take her there so she could be safe. Weeping, she left the body of her baby with the body of her husband.

Light Hair rode back to the camp and found a set of drag poles; he put them on the mare to give Yellow Woman a place to ride. And so they left the place of killing and death and headed east toward the sand hill country.

Through the long night they went. Light Hair was too angry and still too shocked to let weariness and the need for sleep take hold. He kept the horses at a steady pace, listening to the soft scrape of the drag poles over the ground mingle with the sobs of the grief-bound woman. At dawn he found a water hole and stopped to let the horses drink. Yellow Woman refused water and would not be comforted.

Light Hair decided to rest the horses. He dozed off sitting against the front legs of his gelding; when he woke he noticed a man standing before him. He was a scout from the Spotted Tail camp.

Hidden among the sheltering hills of the sand country, Spotted Tail’s camp was well guarded so that the many wounded and injured could have a few days to recover. Spotted Tail, Light Hair was told, lay grievously wounded. Yellow Woman told how Light Hair had found her and brought her through the night. After Light Hair told of finding Little Thunder’s camp, he was told about the soldiers.

Early in the morning soldiers had been seen moving up the Blue Water. Spotted Tail and Iron Shell and a few of the warrior leaders rode out under a white banner of truce to talk. The leader of the soldiers was a white-haired and bearded older man who said his name was General Harney. He smoked the pipe with Spotted Tail and told the purpose of his journey. He had come to take the men who had caused the killing of Grattan and those who actually killed the helpless soldiers. Spotted Tail assured him that it was Grattan who started the fight by firing first and wounding an old man. Harney would not hear the truth spoken by Spotted Tail and continued to insist that there would be no trouble if the guilty killers were given up to him for punishment.