Lakota Woman (21 page)

It did not surprise me when the rumors started that she was an FBI undercover agent. People were saying: “Look at that woman, she is always traveling. Wherever something happens, she’s there. So she must be an informer.” Annie Mae came to me and cried. She said, “The goons are after me. They might kill me as they have killed so many others. I don’t know what to do. If I get killed I don’t want my children to think that I died working for the enemy. Promise me, if the goons blow me away, to tell my girls that I died true to my beliefs, fighting for my people.”

For a while Annie Mae stayed at the point of greatest danger. She was helping Sioux women intimidated by the goons in Oglala, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, where Dennis Banks had set up a camp of opponents to Wilson’s rule. That was like going into the lions’ den. On June 26, 1975, the FBI invaded the little settlement in force under the pretext of investigating, of all things, the theft of an old pair of boots. Whether the FBI people were just dumb or whether they wanted to provoke an incident, I cannot say. What is sure is that their wading into that explosive situation was the spark that blew up the whole powder keg. A firefight started. It ended with one Indian and two agents dead. It may have been pure coincidence that this happened on the ninety-ninth anniversary of the Custer battle. Among those accused of having shot the feds was Leonard Peltier, Annie Mae’s close friend. The witnesses against him later withdrew their testimony, saying that they had been nowhere near and that they had testified against him only under threats and compulsions. Peltier is now doing two lifetimes in the white man’s prisons.

In the aftermath of this incident, the situation at Pine Ridge got totally out of hand. The whole reservation was in a state of panic. Annie Mae did not even dare use her own name anymore. She took refuge with us, again staying in the tipi behind our house. She was at Crow Dog’s place when the big bust occurred. On September 5, 1975, the whole SWAT team, about a hundred and eighty agents in bulletproof vests with M-16s, rubber boats, helicopters, heavy vehicles, and artificial smog fell upon our and Old Man Henry’s homes, as well as upon Annie Mae’s little tent and the cabin of Crow Dog’s sister and brother-in-law, less than a mile away. It was an Omaha Beach type of assault, like the movies one saw on TV of actions in Vietnam. We found out, much later, that the FBI thought that Peltier was hiding out at our place, which was completely untrue.

When the feds saw Annie Mae, they said, “We’ve been looking for you.” They handcuffed her, throwing her around like a rag doll. When they were dragging her into the squad car she smiled at me and gave me the Indian Power sign with her fists even though she was handcuffed. They questioned her and questioned her although she had not been anywhere near the scene of the shootout. The FBI was convinced that she knew where Peltier was hiding. They knew how close she was to him. Then, suddenly, they let her go for lack of evidence. She came to see me. She related to me what had happened to her. The agents had told her that she would not live long if she did not tell them everything she knew and some things she could not have known—where some people had gone to ground, for instance. If she did not talk and if she did not do everything they wanted, she wasn’t going to live. They would make sure she’d be dead—or put her away for the rest of her life, which would be worse.

She said to me: “They offered me my freedom and money if I’d testify the way they wanted. I have those two choices now. I chose my kind of freedom, not their kind, even if I have to die. They let me go because they are sure I’ll lead them to Peltier. They’re watching me. I don’t hear them or see them, but I know they’re out there somewhere. I can feel it.”

I told her to stay with us if she wanted to, she was welcome to move in with me anytime. I told her to take care of herself. She said: “Maybe this is the last time we can talk together. Remember, your husband is an important man to his people. Love him and protect him from all bad things. Don’t let this white man’s culture destroy him. Don’t let him drink. Don’t let him go with people who might do him harm. Watch him. He is a good man. He is needed.”

I saw her one more time in Pierre, South Dakota, when Leonard went on trial. She had come to support him and to comfort me, to give us courage. We were all staying at the Holiday Inn. She came to my room. She did not say anything much, she was just sitting on the bed looking at me. She said, “I just wanted to see you. You won’t see me again.” We talked about a few unimportant things, said our goodbyes, shook hands, hugged each other, and she cried and cried. That was the last time I saw her. It was as if she had heard Hinhan, the owl, hoot for her, death calling her. She knew and she accepted it.

In the last days of November 1975 just disappeared. Everybody said, “Annie Mae has gone underground.” At the same time I had to take leave of my husband, who was sent to prison on Wounded Knee–related charges. Leonard was held in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, a maximum-security prison. I went with my little son Pedro to New York to stay with white friends so that I could be close to him, within visiting distance. It was there, in New York, in early March 1976, that I got a phone call from a friend in Rapid City, telling me that Annie Mae Aquash had been found dead in the snow at the foot of a steep bluff near Wanblee on the Pine Ridge Reservation. The FBI was there at once, swarming over her. They shipped her to Scotts Bluff for an autopsy. They cut her hands off to send to Washington for identification—a needless cruelty as they could have made fingerprints on the spot without mutilating her. It seems that those who killed her had also raped her. She was buried in a pauper’s grave. After the FBI had identified her, an official report was issued that she had died of exposure. The implication was that here was just another drunken Indian passing out and freezing to death. But no alcohol or drugs had been found in the autopsy.

Annie Mae’s friends and relatives were not satisfied. They obtained a court order to exhume the body and had their own pathologist perform a second autopsy. He at once found a bullet hole in her skull, found the bullet, too, a .32-caliber slug. He also found the cut-off hands thrown with the body into the coffin. William Janklow, the attorney general of the State of South Dakota, had said that the only way to deal with renegade AIM Indians was to put a bullet through their heads, and someone had taken the hint. Leonard could occasionally call me collect from the prison. When I told him that Annie Mae had died, and how, he wept over the phone. We cried together. He would have liked to be the one to bury her, but that could not be.

Annie Mae Aquash is dead. Leonard Peltier is doing two lifetimes. Maybe the prison hacks let him wear the moccasins she made for him. Nogeeshik was in a bad car accident and is now a wheelchair case. Leonard and I still have a lot of things she once treasured, which she gave to us. Someday I am going to find out who killed this good, gently tough, gifted friend of mine who did not deserve to die. Someday I will tell her daughters that she died for them, died like a warrior. Someday I will see Annie Mae. In a strange way I feel that she died so that I, and many others, could survive. That she died because she had made a secret vow, like a Sun Dancer who, obedient to his vow, pierces his flesh and undergoes the pain for all the people so that the people may live.

CHAPTER 14

Cante Ishta- The Eye of the Heart

You got to look at things

with the eye in your heart,

not with the eye in your head.

—
Lame Deer

S
ome of our medicine men always say that one must view the world through the eye in one’s heart rather than just trust the eyes in one’s head. “Look at the real reality beneath the sham realities of things and gadgets,” Leonard always tells me. “Look through the eye in your heart. That’s the meaning of Indian religion.”

The eye of my heart was still blind when I joined Leonard to become his wife. I knew little of traditional ways. I had been to a few peyote meetings without really understanding them. I had watched one Sun Dance, and later the Ghost Dance held at Wounded Knee, like a spectator—an emotional spectator, maybe, but not different from white friends watching these dances. They, too, felt emotion. Like myself they did not penetrate through symbolism to the real meaning. I had not yet participated in many ancient rituals of our tribe—the sweat bath, the vision quest, yuwipi, the making of relatives, the soul keeping. I did not even know that these ceremonies were still being performed. There were some rituals I did not even know existed.

I was now the wife of a medicine man who had been a finder and seer since boyhood, because the elders of the tribe had noticed his spiritual gifts when he was still very young, about eight years old. They had said, “Watch this boy. He’s the one,” and had taught and prepared him for his future life as a medicine man. Because going to a white school would spoil him for the role the elders had chosen for him, Old Henry had driven the truant officers away with his shotgun, telling them, “I will rather go to jail before I let this boy go to your school!” Now Leonard would teach me to be a medicine man’s wife, and I was eager to learn.

I think it was not easy for him to teach his wife. She knows him during the day and during the night, too. Knowing his strengths, she cannot fail to see his weaknesses also. And he knows the good and the bad in her likewise. We were under stress from the outside all the time, and so we had our ups and downs. Also, with the kind of life I had before, I did not respect him just because he was a man, as some Sioux women do. Some of those old macho Sioux proverbs like “Woman should not walk before man” I did not think were meant for me. We loved each other, and sometimes we fought each other. Under the conditions under which we had to live, how could it have been otherwise? But always, always I felt, and was enraptured by, his tremendous power—raw power, spiritual Indian power coming from deep within him. It was raw because, never having been at school and being unable to read or write, there is no white-man intellectualism in him. At the same time, his thinking and ideas are often extremely sophisticated—unique, original, even frightening.

I was at first very unsure about the role of a medicine man’s wife, about the part women played, or were allowed to play, in Indian religion. All I knew from childhood was that a menstruating woman had to keep away from all rituals, and the thought intimidated me. Leonard helped me overcome these feelings of insecurity. He told me about Ptesan Win, the White Buffalo Woman, who brought the sacred pipe to our tribes. He told me about medicine women. He said that in 1964 he went to Allen, South Dakota, to take part in a number of ceremonies. While there he met a medicine woman. She said good things to the people at this ceremony. Her name was Bessie Good Road. She used a buffalo skull in her rituals, and always a buffalo came into her meetings. She had the spiritual buffalo power. Every time the buffalo spirit moved his legs, his hoofs struck sparks of lightning. Every time the buffalo grunted, flashes of light shot from his nostrils. Every time the buffalo swung his tail, one could see a flaming circle. “I took my drum and sang for her,” he told me. “I had never seen a medicine woman before and I was awed by her power.” She told him: “Someday I won’t be here anymore. I want to leave these things, this power for my people to stand on. We are losing many sacred things, losing sacred knowledge, but to this place the buffalo spirit still comes.”

The medicine woman did not talk much. She had to wait a long time until she could use her medicine, until she no longer had her moon time. He was not ashamed to have this holy woman teach him. Hearing this made me feel good.

In this way Crow Dog talked to me. It did not matter where. Riding in a car, at the table eating fry bread and hamburger, around the stove with other people listening, or at night lying by his side. He taught me how to listen. Sound is important. Our sound is the sound of nature and animals, not the notes of a white man’s scale. Our language comes from the water, the flowers, the wild creatures, the winds. Crow Dog believes that the newborn child can understand this universal language, but later he forgets it. He teaches about harmony between humans and the earth, between man and man and between man and woman. He always says: “What’s the saddle good for without a horse? Get the horse, and a saddle blanket, and the saddle together. That’s what the sacred hoop means.”

Tunkashila, the Grandfather Spirit, has filled this universe with powers, powers to use—for good, not for bad. We only have to suffer this power to enter into us, to fill us, not to resist it. Medicine men, Leonard told me, have a sort of secret language. Sioux, Crow, Blackfeet medicine men, before they start talking, they already know what they’ll be saying to each other. I guess that goes for medicine women, too.

I had to learn about the sweat bath, because it precedes all sacred ceremonies, and is at the same time a ceremony all by itself. It is probably the oldest of all our rituals because it is connected with the glowing stones, evoking thoughts of Tunka, the rock, our oldest god. Our family’s sweat lodge, our oinikaga tipi, is near the river which flows through Crow Dog’s land. That is good. Pure, flowing water plays a great part during a sweat. Always at the lodge we can hear the river’s voice, the murmur of its waters. Along its banks grows washte wikcemna, a sweet-smelling aromatic herb—Indian perfume.

The lodge is made of sixteen willow sticks, tough but resilient and easy to bend. They are formed into a beehive-shaped dome. The sweat lodges vary in size. They can accommodate anywhere from eight to twenty-four people. The bent willow sticks are fastened together with strips of red trade cloth. Sometimes offerings of Bull Durham tobacco are tied to the frame, which is then covered with blankets or a tarp. In the old days buffalo skins were used for the covering, but these are hard to come by now. The floor of the little lodge is covered with sage. In the center is a circular pit to receive the heated rocks. In building a lodge, people should forget old quarrels and have only good thoughts.

Outside the lodge, wood is piled up in a certain manner to make the fire in which the rocks will be heated—peta owihankeshni—the “fire without end” which is passed on from generation to generation. After it has blazed for a while, white limestone rocks are placed in its center. These rocks do not crack apart in the heat. They come from the hills. Some of them are covered with a spidery network of green moss. This is supposed by some to represent secret spirit writing.

The scooped-out earth from the firepit inside the lodge is formed up into a little path leading from the lodge entrance and ending in a small mound. It represents Unci—Grandmother Earth. A prayer is said when this mound is made. A man is then chosen to take care of the fire, to bring the hot rocks to the lodge, often on a pitchfork, and to handle the entrance flap.

In some places men and women sweat together. We do not do this. Among us, men and women do their sweat separately. Those taking part in a sweat strip, and wrapped in their towels, crawl into the little lodge, entering clockwise. In the darkness inside they take their towels off and hunker down naked. I was astounded to see how many people could be swallowed up by this small, waist-high, igloo-shaped hut. The rocks are then passed into the lodge, one by one. Each stone is touched with the pipe bowl as, resting in the fork of a deer antler, it is put into the center pit. The leader goes in first, sitting down near the entrance on the right side. Opposite him, at the other side of the entrance sits his helper. The leader has near him a pail full of cold, pure water and a ladle. Green cedar is sprinkled over the hot rocks, filling the air with its aromatic odor. Outside the entrance flap is a buffalo-skull altar. Tobacco ties are fastened to its horns. There is also a rack for the pipe to rest on.

Anywhere from twelve to sixty rocks can be used in this ceremony. The more rocks, the hotter it will be. Once the rocks have been passed into the lodge, the flap is closed. Inside it is dark except for the red glow of the rocks in the pit. Now the purification begins. As sage or cedar is sprinkled on the rocks, the men or women participating catch the sacred smoke with their hands, inhaling it, rubbing it all over their face and body. Then cold water is poured on the rocks. The rising cloud of white steam, “grandfather’s breath,” fills the lodge. A sweat has four “doors,” meaning that the flap is opened four times during the purification to let some cool outside air in, bringing relief to the participants.

Everybody has the privilege to pray or speak of sacred things during the ceremony. It is important that all take part in the ritual with their hearts, souls, and minds. When women have their sweats, a medicine man runs them—which is all right because it is so dark inside that he cannot see you.

The first time I was inside the oinikaga tipi, the sweat lodge, when water was poured over the rocks and the hot steam got to me, I thought that I could not endure it. The heat was beyond anything I had imagined. I thought I would not be able to breathe because it was like inhaling liquid fire. With my cupped hands I created a slightly cooler space over my eyes and mouth. After a while I noticed that the heat which had hurt me at first became soothing, penetrating to the center of my body, going into my bones, giving me a wonderful feeling. If the heat is more than a person can stand, he or she can call out “Mitakuye oyasin!"—All my relatives!—and the flap will be opened to let the inside cool off a bit. I was proud not to have cried out. After the sweat I really felt newly born. My pores were opened and so was my mind. My body tingled. I felt as if I had never experienced pain. I was deliciously light-headed, elated, drunk with the spirit. Soon I began looking forward to a good sweat.

Once we were in California testifying for an Indian brother on trial in Los Angeles. Some of the local Indians invited us to a sweat somewhere in the desert eighty miles from L.A. As I was hunkering down inside the lodge, they started passing in the rocks. When about twenty were in the pit, the usual number for a woman’s sweat, I expected them to close the flap and start the ceremony. Instead more and more rocks, a big heap, were coming in. I stared at the huge pile of glowing, hissing rocks rising higher and higher. I tried to back away from the rocks, but there was no room. My knees started to blister. Already the heat was terrific and they had not even poured the water yet. I cringed at the thought of what cold water on this big mound of fiery rocks would do. Then it came, the water. I thought I would die. Never, never thereafter would I eat lobsters, knowing what these poor creatures have to go through. I felt I could not cry out to have the flap opened. After all, I represented the Sioux women on this occasion. As the hissing steam enveloped us there rose a chorus of cries: “Ow, ow, ow, Great Spirit, we thank you for making us suffer so. We are suffering for our poor brothers in jail. Make us suffer more!”

“Jesus Christmas,” I thought, “these people don’t sweat to purify themselves. They sweat to suffer.” There were some anguished cries: “All my relatives!” The door was opened, but it was so hot outside in the desert that it brought me no relief. The flap was closed again and more water poured. The prayers started. I was praying too, silently: “Please make the prayers short,” but they were long. When it was all over we could not get out quickly enough. Some women were in such a hurry they did not even wrap their towels around themselves and came out stark naked. The relief of being out of that particular sweat lodge was indescribable. Leonard told me that they had used more stones in the men’s sweat than in ours. I could not see how that was possible.

Once Leonard ran a sweat in New Jersey for New York Indians—just a good, normally hot Sioux sweat. As Leonard poured the water those New York Indians began to scream. They tore apart the back of the sweat lodge, clawed their way out, and ran away in all directions. If that had happened in Sioux country it would have been a serious desecration of a religious ceremony. Leonard just gave the kind of laugh he reserves for tragicomic situations. “I forgive these people,” he said. “They just don’t understand Indian ways. They have to be taught.”

I have to admit that Leonard’s sweats are very hot. He has been in so many of them that he does not seem to feel the searing heat. During a peyote ceremony, I saw him picking up glowing embers with his bare fingers to put them back into place. Because he is no longer bothered by intense heat, he thinks everybody is like him in that respect. People are always dropping in to meet a medicine man, or to learn from him, or simply out of curiosity. One such visitor was a young black man called Jamesie. He made himself into a slave for me, chopping wood, fetching water, helping in the kitchen. That was nice. Then he wanted to take part in a sweat. Unfortunately for him, it was one of those in which men want to suffer for a brother in the slammer. That meant not only that it would be excruciatingly hot, but that there would be no crying “All my relatives!” and no opening of the flap during the ceremony. When the heat got to poor Jamesie he started screaming: “I’m dying, I’m dying!” Crow Dog told him that it was the most wonderful thing in the world to die during this ceremony, the most beautiful end a man could wish for. It was but little comfort to Jamesie.

I often tell Leonard, “Purify them, but don’t cook them!” And Leonard always answers, looking innocent, “But it wasn’t hot at all. I can’t understand these people. There must be something wrong with them.”