Joseph M. Marshall III (41 page)

Though the days and nights were growing colder the Bow Maker decided to stay in his camp and build a bow out of the stave he liked. He worked and worked, slowly and patiently. With his tools of stone, bone, and antler he shaved and then shaped the stave until it became a bow. He sang songs as he worked calling on the skills taught to him by his father and grandfathers, and he sang songs of honor to the Thunders and their power. In his weathered and rough hands, hands that had turned many staves to bows, this bow of the lightning tree took shape. It was thickest around the middle, where it was two fingers wide. From the middle it gradually tapered to each end where it was the size of the tip of his little finger. Each limb or wing was as equally long as the other, and as graceful.

The Bow Maker worked using all the skills and the knowledge he had gathered in his lifetime. As he watched the bow take shape he marveled at its feel and balance. Never in his lifetime had he made a bow as fine. When he tied on the sinew string and drew it back for the first time, he knew it was the most powerful as well. Pulled back and drawn to an arc, it resembled the thinnest new crescent of the new moon. It was appropriate, for as all bow makers know, the moon is the mother of the bow.

Arrow after arrow he sent from his new bow, farther and faster than any bow he had made or shot. Truly, this bow had a power and a spirit he had never seen, or felt, in any other. The Bow Maker returned home to his village with six staves from the lightning tree and his new bow. All the hunters and warriors were curious as he took his new bow to the river to shoot arrows into a sandbank. To a man they marveled at the speed and power of the bow. Each arrow flew almost faster than thought and drove itself deep into the bank.

Men of the village came with offers to trade for the powerful new bow made from the lightning tree. Word went out to other villages and although it was winter many came. The Bow Maker allowed each man to shoot the bow. Not one of them had ever seen such a bow and all praised its strength.

Offers were made for the bow; each man who touched it and used it wanted it and promised anything the old Bow Maker would want in trade. The Bow Maker patiently listened to all the offers but said nothing. Days passed and the men in the village were growing impatient, some returned and increased their offer of payment. The Bow Maker didn’t want to trade. He had enough to make his life comfortable for he required little in the way of material things. He had it in mind to give the bow to the man he thought was most deserving. So he patiently waited.

More days passed and the village was growing restless, anxious for the Bow Maker to make a trade, but nothing happened. The men began to talk among themselves, asking what they must do for one of them to have the bow. Some suggested there be a contest of some kind, a foot race or a test of strength, and the winner would receive all the possessions of each man who lost and then he could trade for the bow. But others had different ideas and arguments grew, some men became angry and accused the Bow Maker of some kind of trickery. Fights broke out among some and families joined in until there was a deep unrest in the village. The Bow Maker watched and was sad. He hoped that one man would show himself worthy of owning the bow from the lightning tree, a bow with the power of the Thunders. But a bow such as that could not be given to anyone who was willing to stoop to anger or deceit to own it. The old Bow Maker was heart broken. He had not meant to cause such trouble. Even the best of gifts can bring out the worst in some, he had learned. He was just as sad that not a single man could prove himself worthy of the bow from the lightning tree. There was only one way to fix the difficulty he had caused.

The Bow Maker sent a Crier through the village to announce that on the sundown of the fourth day hence, he would have an answer. The people grumbled that it was about time. During the night the Bow Maker slipped away unseen from the village with a sad heart and a long bundle under one arm. The people noticed that his lodge door was tied shut and grumbled all the more. On the sundown of the fourth day the Bow Maker returned, empty-handed.

“The power of the bow made from the lightning tree is a special gift,” he told the people when they gathered to listen to him. “It is more than a thing to be owned. I did not want to trade. Though I made it, it did not really belong to me. I would have given it to the man with the humility to own it. All I saw was arrogance and anger and how you made yourselves more important than the gift. Therefore I have given it back to the Thunders. I still have six more staves from the lightning tree, someday before I die, perhaps I will make another bow. Perhaps . . .”

The people were ashamed of what they had done, of the manner in which they had behaved, and expressed their regret to the Bow Maker. And all hoped that someday he would make another bow from the lightning tree, before it was too late. The Bow Maker didn’t have to remind them that until then they would all need to live in a good way, so they could be worthy of such a bow if one were to be made again.

Sources

This district or community was named for the creek that drains into the Little White, or Smoking Earth, River.

My maternal grandparents were Albert and Annie. Lucy and Maggie were my grandfather’s sisters. Lucy married Moses Rattling Leaf. In the 1950s when many Lakota were still using horses and wagons (and buggies), Grandpa Moses had a very good-looking pair of matched draft horses for his wagon. Maggie married Paul Little Dog, who was also known as No Two Horns.

My parents are Joseph and Hazel. My mother has patiently answered questions in the past three years, especially concerning the names in this Sources section. I was not surprised to hear various bits of family, cultural, and historical information from my father in the years before he died; which I always suspected he knew, and am exceedingly glad he finally saw fit to divulge.

 

Sam Brings (aka Brings Three White Horses) George Brave

 

Sam told me of a place along Horse Creek where he had found arrowheads and flint chips when he was a young man or boy. My grandfather and I later found stone flakes there, too, but no arrowheads. The site was bulldozed when Highway 83 was widened in the 1960s. George was an avid hunter and later in his life drove a bus route for the local school district that hauled only Indian students.

Harris and Millie lived west of us on his land that bordered the Little White River, adjacent to my grandmother Annie’s land. We walked to their log house often, especially in the summers. I remember trying desperately to stay awake as he and my grandfather would talk far into the night about the old days.

 

The Swift Bear district or community is located on the northern edge of the Rosebud Reservation. Its northern border is the Big White or White Earth River. It is named for one of the Sicangu Lakota headmen, Swift Bear, also known as Quick Bear. All of the following were in some way related to my maternal grandfather, Albert.

Katie (Katherine) Roubideaux Blue Thunder and M. Blanche Roubideaux Marshall were sisters. Blanche was my father’s mother. Their mother (one of my great-grandmothers) was Adelia Blunt Arrow, a Sicangu Lakota, and their father was Louis Roubideaux, a mixed-blood of French descent and a district agent and interpreter for the Indian Bureau at the Rosebud Agency. My grandmother Katie lived to be nearly 101 years old.

Sam and James Provincial were brothers. Sam was a very distinguished-looking man with a strong baritone voice. By contrast, James was very soft-spoken. Sam’s wife was Mercy and Jim’s wife was Ollie Lodgeskin Provincial. My maternal grandmother Annie and Ollie were first cousins, and had known each other since childhood. Ollie’s mother, Lulu Lodgeskin, was a small woman who also lived to be a hundred years old. I never heard her speak English.

My father’s older brother was Narcisse Brave. Both of them were involved in tribal politics with the Rosebud Sioux Tribe at one time or another. My father was a council representative from the Horse Creek Community and Uncle Narcisse was tribal vice president.

Laban was my uncle by marriage. He was married to my father’s sister Adelia. He, like my grandfather, the Reverend Charles Marshall, was an avid fisherman. Uncle Laban liked to tell stories as he fished.

 

 

Wilson and Alice lived along a creek bottom not far from my grandparents, Charles and Blanche Marshall, near the town of Kyle on the Pine Ridge, in the Potato Creek District. They walked a lot because Wilson was blind and Alice, as I recall, didn’t drive. Alice had extensive knowledge of midwives in the old days, and Wilson just knew a lot. Adolph was my uncle by marriage, married to one of my father’s sisters. He was not an old man when I first met him, when I was eight, but I suspect that much or all of what he knew historically and culturally he learned from his father, Guy Bull Bear, who lived through some interesting times. Bull Bear, is, of course, an old and distinguished name among the Oglala Lakota.