Lakota (7 page)

Their elders then took charge of the raid. Hinhan Hota and a younger warrior known as Wapaha Luta, Red Lance, were foremost among the eight proven warriors. Cehupa Maza, having first spied the camp, went along, as did Mastincala, Hokala, and four other young men. Two boys of twelve rode along to help handle the stolen ponies, but they left their bows behind. With only a knife for a weapon, such small ones wouldn't rush into a fight and spoil the raid.

Mastincala carried his fine ash bow and a full quiver of arrows. He brought along the buffalo shield, too, and he tied a good iron-bladed knife onto his leg. Except for a breechclout and moccasins, he rode naked. He Hopa had painted his light skin red, and he seemed more ghost than Lakota. Mastincala hoped the Crows would find him so.

He rode erect, proudly displaying the feather awarded him for standing before the bear long ago. The lance wore a bonnet full of coup feathers, and many of the men decorated their hair with eagle plumes. Hinhan Hota disdained decorations, for his medicine was only strong when he rode to battle in simple dress. Tasiyagnunpa lamented that her husband could not show off her fine beadwork, but a warrior never went against his medicine and lived. Everyone knew that.

Of the other young men, only Sunka Sapa, Black Dog, dressed with distinction. His mother's father had passed into his hands a bracelet molded of silver, taken from a wasicun trapper who had come into Paha Sapa to hunt and been captured by the Lakotas. It was a beautiful thing, bright as the moon, and Hinhan Hota argued it might attract the eyes of the Crows. The Dog would not be swayed from wearing it, though, for his grandfather had led many successful war parties against the Rees.

"We don't come to this place to kill Crows," Hinhan Hota reminded the party. "We go to take their horses and leave them to walk naked back to their women. Killing will bring them down on us, and there are enough among us who have sung the mourning songs and made the ghost giveaway."

"Hau, these are good words," Wapaha Luta agreed. "Give us brave hearts to make this ride, Wakan Tanka! Let all return."

"Hau!" the others cried wildly. Afterward they rode in silence toward the Crow camp.

Among all the peoples who rode the plain, the Crows were most skilled at stealing horses. They bred the best to create stock prized among all their neighbors. But good as they were at stealing, the Crows now suffered at the hands of Lakota raiders.

Hinhan Hota had struck the Crows twice. Always before, the Crows had awakened to find their horses gone and their pony guards stripped and bound to cotton woods. The Owl planned a third such success. He approached the Crow camp on a dark, moonless eve, and he spread out his small band so that they avoided the guards and got between the horse herd and the camp.

"Now, brothers, hear me," Hinhan Hota told the six raiders he took under his leadership. "There are only boys watching the horses. I will capture the one by the water. Wapaha Luta will tend the ones on the far side. Then I will raise a howl, and we will drive the horses away."

The assembled raiders whispered their assent. Then the Owl set out after the guard. There was a small splash, followed by the sound of an object colliding with the ground. Mastincala held his breath a moment. Then his father appeared in the faint light, and the Rabbit prepared to drive off the horses. Before Hinhan Hota could give the shout, though, a rifle discharged.

"One of the guards," Hokala cried in alarm.

The Crow camp rose instantly. Warriors raced naked from their beds toward the horse herd. A boy ran by Mastincala, his yellow shirt torn across one shoulder and stained by blood. In moments the well-laid plan was forgotten. The men waved blankets at the Crow ponies and screamed terrifying yells to set the animals to flight. The young men rode along or fought to avoid the stampede.

The Crows had done much trading with the wasicuns, and their many rifles now sent lead balls tearing at the air. One cut a braid of Mastincala's hair and stung his ear.

"Ayyy!" the Rabbit howled in anger as he turned his horse back toward the onrushing Crows. Cehupa Maza was driving the last of the ponies along, and Mastincala's heart raced at the sight. Indeed, Iron Jaw hadn't forgotten their purpose. And even though three Crow rifles fired in his direction, the young Lakota rode along unhurt.

Not so his horse. A ball plunged through the pony's side and stopped its heart. With a terrible shriek, the horse collapsed, pitching Cehupa Maza into a tangled nest of nettle.

"Ayyy!" Mastincala shouted a second time. This time he galloped toward his fallen comrade, extending an arm so that Iron Jaw could draw himself up behind Mastincala atop the horse. A tall Crow charged them both, and Mastincala grabbed his bow, notched an arrow, and fired all in one motion. The arrow struck the Crow in the right hip, and the warrior cried out in pain. Howling a third time, Mastincala then charged toward the fallen Crow. He slapped the enemy across his chest with the fine ash bow, then turned again and fled toward the other Lakotas and the thundering herd of Crow ponies.

"You counted coup!" Iron Jaw exclaimed as they thundered on. "And rescued me also. Two brave deeds! Hau, you are a great man this day, Mastincala!"

So others thought as well. When the raiders returned with their eighty captured ponies, prayers of thankfulness were made. Then a fire was kindled, and brave deeds were recounted. Red Lance had counted coup on the two Crow boys at the fire, and Hinhan Hota had struck the third. It was the news of Mastincala and his rescue which raised the greatest clamor, though, and when the Rabbit told of his coup upon the Crow, the warriors rose as one.

"Hau! He is surely called by Tatanka to tend his people," He Hopa said as he tied a second and a third feather in Mastincala's hair. "From this time he is Rabbit no longer. He has proven a brave heart, and so he will take a brave name."

"Yes," Hinhan Hota agreed. "I, his father, so give him this name, carried by my own father and given later to my brother. From this day he is known as Tacante."

"Hau!" the warriors cried. For they all knew here was a young man called by Tatanka, one who held above all things the heart of the people. It was right he should be called Buffalo Heart.

In honor of the naming, Hinhan Hota gave five of the captured Crow ponies to families in need of horses. The giveaway marked a father's great esteem for a worthy son, and the young man now called Tacante honored his father with a second giving. He presented two fine ponies to He Hopa, for the medicine man's own horses were aging. One had gone lame.

Others then joined in the giveaway, for all of the raiders could now afford to be generous. Even Itunkala would have his own horse now, and young Hokala was wealthy indeed with five ponies of his own.

It was a remembered day for Tacante. It filled his chest with pride to wear his father's name, a good, ancient name among the Sicangu. And as he put behind him the boy's path, filled with wrestling and swimming and idleness, he held few regrets. His was a path full of promise.
Perhaps,
he thought, /
may even come to be a shirt wearer as the other Tacante was, or even a headman like Hinhan Hota.

Winter passed into summer, became winter, and passed into summer again, and in that time Tacante did nothing to dim the hopes placed upon him by Hinhan Hota and He Hopa. The young warrior devoted himself to the hunt, and he never rested so long as any among the band were hungry.

He Hopa tutored him in the healing ways, and Tacante grew to know the plants and roots of Paha Sapa and Powder River and the distant snow-crowned peaks of the hecinskayapi, the big-horned sheep. It was into that country that Hinhan Hota led his band the summer of Tacante's sixteenth year.

Tacante himself was disappointed, for Hinkpila, his true friend and adopted brother, had promised to join the buffalo hunt that summer. The wasicuns marked that year, 1864, on their counting papers, and Rene Le Doux passed along grave news at Fort Laramie.

"The whites are nearly finished with their fighting," Le Doux explained. 'The Platte River road is thick with wagons once more, and gold has been found on the Yellowstone. Already wagons cut through the Big Horns on Mr. Bozeman's road. Some are sent back, but others go through. There's been folks killed, and the soldiers talk of building forts."

"That is our country!" Hinhan Hota barked. "Ours promised for all time by the white fathers. We will not give it up."

So others said as well. Among the Oglalas, Mahpiya Luta, Red Cloud, was already protecting the land against the wagon people and the hunters who came to dig the yellow powder from the streams. But it was sure to be a hard fight. Tacante gazed into the faces of the soldiers at the fort. No longer were they old and weary. None walked with the limp. These were young men, and there were many of them. They often rode with the wagon trains.

"It's a bad time to be a Lakota," He Hopa declared. "I have seen a blue cloud swallowing the earth in a dream."

There was fierce talk within the camp, for some had heard of the war fought by Little Crow's Dakotas against the whites in Minnesota. Much death and suffering had befallen those people, and now the Santees were prisoners fenced in on a reservation like the Omahas. A few had come out to join their Lakota brothers, but many were farmers and didn't know the buffalo hunt.

"We are warriors, used to the hard life," Wapaha Luta spoke. "I've fought the white man before. I wear a war bonnet filled with feathers marking the coups I've counted. I go to ride with Red Cloud and the Oglalas."

Others argued against it.

"There are more wasicuns than stars in the sky," said Sinte Gleska, who had been in the white man's jail in Kansas. "We can't kill them all."

"Better to die as a free man than live in a cage," the Lance muttered.

"And what of the women, the little ones?" Hinhan Hota asked. "Will they die as at Blue Creek?"

"Can they live in a cage?" Wapaha Luta asked.

And so the band dissolved. Some families stayed close to the fort, trusting in the treaties. Many others set off west to hunt the buffalo or to join Red Cloud. Tacante was old enough to choose his own path, but he remained with the Owl and old He Hopa. There was Itunkala, after all. And He Hopa hadn't passed along everything he knew.

"What will we do, Ate?" Tacante asked as another three lodges left the fort.

"I have thought long of the choices," Hinhan Hota answered. "There are so few of us left. Mostly young men not proven in battle, with many little ones and old mothers to feed. They should stay, but if I go to Powder River, they will follow."

"Tacante, who was my father, said it is a hard road, leading the people."

"Yes, my son. But when a thing is hard, then it is sure to be right. Wakan Tanka never sends us an easy road, for it would make us weak."

"We go to Powder River, then?"

"It is all I know to do. If there's to be a fight with the wasicun soldiers, there will be need of brave hearts and strong arms."

"Yes," Tacante said, grinning at his father.

Before leaving the fort, Tacante rode into the nearby hills with Hinkpila, Louis Le Doux, to hunt fresh meat for the journey. The two young men, growing tall in their different ways, still shared a closeness for the land and a devotion to each other. They located deer tracks, and Tacante took the lead. Louis hung back, seemingly surprised at the agility and cunning demonstrated by this new person, the Buffalo Heart. Tacante stealthily approached a pair of deer, then drew an arrow from his quiver, notched it, and killed the first animal in an instant. Louis shot the second with his rifle. The choice of weapons, as much as anything, reminded them of how far their paths had diverged.

"You go to Powder River to fight the whites," Louis said as he began butchering his deer. "I'm mostly white myself, Tacante. Oh, the white men don't say it, but I am."

"And I am Lakota," Tacante answered.

"I'm Hinhan Hota's son, too. Your brother. Maybe I, too, should come to Powder River."

"You would be welcome," Tacante said without hesitation. Then he frowned. "But for you, Hinkpila, the white man's road is not so crazy. You wear wasicun clothes and shoot his rifle. If a fight comes, it will be hard on your father for you to be away. You have young brothers and sisters."

"You understand then?"

"There is a word among my people," Tacante said, gripping his friend by the hand. "Kola."

"It means friend."

"More, sometimes. Warriors who have no brother often call each other kola, brother-friend. They share all they have, and their hearts are like one."

"We did this long ago, when you were but a rabbit boy and not a Lakota warrior."

"Yes," Tacante agreed. "I call you kola, Hinkpila."

"And I you, my brother," Louis said, grimly forcing a smile onto his face. "We'll meet again, you know, in a better time."

"Hau! We'll hunt the buffalo then!"

They went on with the butchering, but neither entirely believed there would be another time, or a better one. The paths were so far apart already.

And yet all the world lies within the sacred hoop, Tacante told himself. Don't all paths turn?

So it was that Tacante followed Hinhan Hota into the land of the hecinskayapi. As he rode along atop a tall buckskin pony, he observed the deep ruts cut by wasicun wagons in the Platte River road. The grass there was eaten down to its roots, and there wasn't a hint of the buffalo or antelope which had once frequented the area.