Man on Two Ponies (16 page)

Billy took the letter, which had been written by a white man or mixed blood for a Shoshoni named Blue Horse, who lived on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming.

“Brother, there is good news,” he
read.
“A God or Messiah has come to earth far to the west of us, in the land of The-People-Who-Wear-Rabbitskin-Blankets or beyond. I have not seen
him,
but they say he is the Messiah of the Indians and has come
to
earth
to
save all Indians from whites. He has promised to bring back the buffalo, so we can hunt again. I wanted you, my friend,
to
know of this good news.”

Short Bull eyed Billy suspiciously. “You're not making it up? He really said that? That an Indian Messiah has come to save us?”

Billy translated the letter again for him. “That's exactly what it says. It's too bad it can't possibly be
true.”

“It
didn't matter after
all
that they kept us from planting,” Billy said one day in July, as hot winds seared the withered grass under a cloudless Dakota sky. He shaded his eyes and stared at distant hills dancing in heat waves. “The corn wouldn't have lasted this long. The Oglalas' corn was coming up good, only Three Stars kept them at the agency so long their cattle ate it. But it would have died by now anyway.”

Culver wiped the sweat from his face with a red bandanna and squinted at the sun. “You're right about that. Two Strike says this is the driest summer he remembers, and he's one of the oldest. I hear that homesteaders are leaving the Dakotas in droves, most of them skin and bones.”

“Like us, only they don't have to stay here. We're prisoners.”

As he watched the Brulés at issue time, Billy knew from their sunken eyes and air of resignation that they had nearly lost hope. They had been hungry much of the time for several years before the drastic cut in the beef ration, but now real hunger was chronic. Bishop Hare and others estimated that their rations were sufficient for only two-thirds of the ten days for which they were issued. Billy knew only too well that was true.

Having no tangible enemy to attack, the Brulés quarreled bitterly among themselves. Tribal leaders continued
to
condemn the squaw-men, mixed bloods, and Christian fullbloods who had signed the agreement—everyone still blamed the land sale for
all
of their troubles. “You have betrayed your own people by helping the
Wasicuns, “Two Strike said. “You are traitors.” Others said much
the same things or worse.

Billy observed all of this with mounting concern. The whites have us in a big trap, and there's no way we can ever escape. Little by little they're starving us to death, making our people mad enough to kill each other and save them the trouble. It was all so confusing and hard to understand. The Sioux commissioners claimed that the Great Father watched over them like they watched over their children. They lied. People who called themselves Friends of the Indian were willing to make the Sioux go hungry if they refused to do their bidding. The Grandfather, the Wakan Tanka,
had
thrown his children away. Then the troubling thought arose—perhaps he is dead, killed by the white men's God.

In early August, Chasing Crane returned from a visit to the Crows and stopped at the trader's store for tobacco. “The Crows have heard about a god who has come to earth,” he told several Brulés who were there. “He has been grieved by parents crying for their dead children, and he has promised to let the sky fall down on the whites and to destroy the disobedient.” The Brulés looked at him skeptically. What he said reminded Billy of Short Bull's recent letter from his Shoshoni friend. Others also appeared to have recalled it.

“We heard that before, but who believes it?” Lame Deer asked. “It sounds like a Wasicun promise. They say sign this, believe
what
we
tell you, and you'll have everything you want. What you get is nothing.” The Brulés talked about it some.

“It sounds like a big lie,” Gray Eagle said to Chasing Crane. “Who would help Indians? And how do we know you're telling the truth?”

“I tell you what the Crows told me,” Chasing Crane growled. “They believe it's true. That's all I know.”

It's silly to expect the impossible, Billy thought. But unless something happens,
all
of the Tetons are doomed to die of starvation or disease. Biblical stories he'd heard Sundays at Carlisle kept running through his mind. Could it
be
possible that a new Messiah
was actually coming to save the Indians? He shook his head.
It
was foolish to think that was possible, so he put it out of his mind.

Talk of the Messiah spread among the Brulés and Oglalas, who desperately embraced any phantom of hope. Finally, Red Cloud,
Young-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses, Little Wound, and American
Horse agreed they should hold a secret council to discuss what to
do. They sent letters to Short Bull at Rosebud and Kicking Bear at Cheyenne River, inviting the Brulés and Miniconjus to send representatives. After Billy read the letter to
him,
Short Bull and two other Brulés
slipped
away and
rode
to
Pine Ridge without informing the agent.

Because the land commission had made so many promises to the Sioux that were not part of the land agreement, Foster got permission to invite a delegation of chiefs to Washington in early December. Crook went over all of the promises with them, so there could be no misunderstanding, for he was determined to see that every promise made was fulfilled. He was particularly concerned over restoration of the beef ration, for he knew the cut must have caused widespread hunger.

He protested to Indian Commissioner Morgan that beef is the mainstay of the Sioux diet. They were already suffering from hunger, he said, and the cut meant severe hardship, even starvation. He had, furthermore, assured them that if they signed the agreement their rations would not be reduced. Both their survival and his honor were at stake. The Sioux had been talked out of half
their land and were being forced
to
work
hard
to support themselves. Starving them at the outset was not the way to make the program successful, he said.

Morgan airily dismissed Crook's protests. The Indians had cheated the government, he said. Congress had cut the Sioux appropriation and only Congress could restore the beef ration. The chiefs returned to their agencies with Crook's promise to urge Congress to restore the beef issue, but with little else. They knew that the commission's report stated that the Sioux had signed only because they trusted the commission to secure a number of additional benefits not incorporated in the land agreement.

Some of the benefits, such as employing Indians at the agencies
whenever possible and permitting them to hold certain dances, required only the approval of
Secretary
of the Interior John W. Noble, and he agreed to most of them. Others, especially an appropriation of $100,000 to restore the beef ration to the amount promised
in treaties, required action by Congress. Knowing that Three Stars
was an honorable man, the chiefs were confident that this time,
at least, the promises would be fulfilled.

When they arrived back at their agencies in mid-December, the chiefs found many adults dying of influenza, while children succumbed to measles and whooping cough at an alarming rate. The Brulés were sunk
in
depression.

Hunger was nothing new, but in the fall and winter of 1889 it was worse than ever. Commissioner Morgan denied that any of the Sioux were hungry, and he quoted figures to prove it. The beef contract called for buying fat northern ranch cattle, but to save a little money, he had allowed the beef contractors
to
buy Texas
trail
cattle that arrived in the
fall
in poor condition.
On
the parched range these animals continued to lose weight; steers that weighed 1200 pounds when fat were down to half that weight after a few months of poor grass and cold weather. They became so pitifully thin that the embarrassed agent stopped having them weighed on issue days.

It was customary to provide one steer to sustain thirty people for ten days, which was adequate only if the animal was large and fat. The practice continued even when the animals were half-starved. The severe loss of weight the steers suffered during the winter months reduced the already shrunken beef rations by another
fifty percent or more.
It's part of their plan to destroy us. We are starving and children are dying, but no one in Washington cares.
Only Bishop Hare expressed concern. The Sioux, he said, were so weakened by hunger that when they became ill of any disease it often proved fatal.

None of the papers Billy saw even mentioned that the Sioux were dying of hunger and disease, although as many as
thirty
a month, mostly children, succumbed at Rosebud, and even more at Pine Ridge. Then he read the plans of the Friends of the Indian.

“We will make the Sioux self-supporting farmers during the coming year,” they cheerfully announced. “The whole Sioux tribe must perforce be jostled from the apathy and sluggishness of its old condition and be thrust into one that must, of necessity, compel a struggle in which all will be tested and many saved.”

We are being tested right now, Billy thought, but few are likely
to be saved, and many have already given up hope. Our children are dying, they said; we may as well die too.

A few days after the chiefs returned from Washington in the Moon of Frost on the Tipi, the Brulés who had gone to Pine Ridge for the secret council brought word that the Oglalas had decided to send men to the Shoshonis to learn what they knew about the Messiah. They invited the Brulés and Miniconjus to send some of their people to accompany them.

The Brulés held a secret council away from the agency to consider the offer. Some of the progressives, who had been too young
to
remember the old days, called the Messiah story nonsense. Older men, especially former hostiles, insisted that they must learn more before dismissing the story as false. Finally all agreed that several men should accompany the Oglalas to hear what the Shoshonis had to say.

Billy watched Short Bull and two others ride off to the west toward Pine Ridge, wondering what they might learn.
I wish they'd discover that it's true, but it's probably just a cruel trick to get our hopes up for nothing.
He wanted to put it out of his mind and forget it, but it refused to be banished.

A few weeks later, early in the Tree Popping Moon, Short Bull and the others returned, and everyone gathered around them to hear
what they had learned. “It is true what we have heard,” Short Bull said. “There is a Messiah come to earth who lives in the land of The-People-Who-Wear-Rabbitskin-Blankets. He promised to save the Indians from the Wasicuns.”

The Brulés pondered this news, some of them eagerly, others suspiciously. “The Oglalas are sending men across the mountains to seek the Messiah,” Short Bull continued. “We must send men at once to accompany them.”

“Across the mountains in mid-winter?” White
Bear
said. “Who would go?”

“I, for one,” Short Bull replied. Flat Iron, Yellow Breast, and Mash-the-Kettle also volunteered.

The council approved and the four men set out at once for Pine Ridge. Billy watched them disappear over the hills, this time with a feeling of rising hope, although he told himself to forget them.

A month after Short Bull and the others had departed, Billy read
that on February 10, President Harrison had announced that the Sioux land agreement had been approved. The
ceded
land, he said, was now open
to
settlement. He did that, Billy thought, even before a single promise made
to
us has been carried out. There had been no survey to establish the reservation boundaries, nor was there any provision for allotments for the Sioux families living in the area
opened
to
whites.
The
beef ration
had
not
been restored.
Where is Three Stars?

On the same day the President also sent the commission's report to Congress along with a draft of a bill containing all of Crook's promises to the Sioux. Billy felt better when he read that the President had urged Congress to pass the bill quickly.
If
the Great
Father asks them, like us they must
do
as he says.
He watched the papers for news of action on the bill in Congress.

The long-awaited land
rush
to the
ceded
area failed to
materialize,
although a few families did buy farmsites. Because of the prolonged drouth, however, there was more movement away
from
the
Dakotas
than
toward them. “They took our land against our wishes,” Billy said. “Now that they have it they no longer want it.”