Neither Wolf nor Dog (25 page)

Dan reached in his pocket and took out the cigarette that the stranger had given him. He rolled it between his fingers until the tobacco came out. He walked up to the obelisk and began placing little piles of it on all four sides. Grover did the same. Then they held some up to the sky. The wind scattered it as they let it loose. Finally, they dropped some to the ground.

We walked back to the car in silence. Fatback was lying in the long shadows near the back tire with her head on her paws. We all got in and headed back down the winding road. The stranger we had given the ride was nowhere to be seen.

Dan was thinking hard. I could see him mouthing words low under his breath. Then he spoke.

“I want you to understand this, Nerburn. I don't think you've got it figured out. Sitting Bull was a leader. He was a real chief. People followed him because he was great. He never won any election or was appointed by any government official. That's not how you get to be a leader.”

“You're saying the policemen didn't have any real authority.”

“That's right. They were policemen because the government told them they were. Gave them uniforms and a job. It didn't have anything to do with the old way, where it was an honor you earned.”

“Unfortunately, that's the way the white system works,” I said, though not with conviction.

“It doesn't work too damn well,” he responded. “At least for Indian people. We had a system that worked, then the white man came along with his elections and laws and now we've got one that doesn't. They should have left us alone.”

“So why doesn't it work?” I asked. I was curious to hear Dan's ideas on government.

“Aw, it's too complicated to explain,” he said. “You've got to know too much about the old days.”

“No. Try me,” I said. “I'm interested.”

He heaved a weary sigh and held his two hands up like a man comparing the weights of two different objects.

“There are leaders and there are rulers. We Indians are used to leaders. When our leaders don't lead, we walk away from them. When they lead well, we stay with them.

“White people never understood this. Your system makes people rulers by law, even if they are not leaders. We have had to accept your way, because you made us Indians make constitutions and form governments. But we don't like it and we don't think it is right.

“How can a calendar tell us how long a person is a leader? That's crazy. A leader is a leader as long as the people believe in him and as long as he is the best person to lead us. You can only lead as long as the people will follow.

“In the past when we needed a warrior we made a warrior our leader. But when the war was over and we needed a healer to lead us, he became our leader. Or maybe we needed a great speaker or a deep thinker.

“The warrior knew his time had passed and he didn't pretend to be our leader beyond the time he was needed. He was proud to serve his people and he knew when it was time to step aside. If he won't step aside, people will just walk away from
him. He cannot make himself a leader except by leading people in the way they want to be lead.

“That's why Sitting Bull was a leader. He was needed by the people and the people followed him. He was brave. He was smart. He knew how to fight when he had to. And he understood what the white man was all about. People saw that he could not be tricked by the white man, so they followed.

“That's why the U.S. government hated him so much. It wasn't just that he set a trap for Custer. Anyone could have done that. It was because he was a leader and people listened to him, and he wouldn't listen to the U.S. government. He listened to the needs of his people.”

I nodded my assent.

Dan continued. “If people didn't want to follow his way, that was fine. They could follow another way. That's what happened with Gall. He'd fought with Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse against Custer. But he decided he had to work with the white people if he didn't want all the Indians to be killed. So he left and went his own way. I think he was wrong, but that was his choice. If enough people had decided not to follow Sitting Bull, then he wouldn't have been a leader anymore. But people still followed him, so he stayed a leader.”

“It sounds utopian,” I said.

Dan looked perplexed. “Perfect,” I amended.

“It wasn't perfect. But it sure as hell worked,” he went on. “That was the Indian way. A person wasn't a leader because they got votes. They were a leader because the people would follow them. The same with teachers.”

The example seemed pointed. I imagined he was thinking about me teaching Indian children at Red Lake while I was too obtuse to understand why a hundred-year-old grievance should determine the way you greet a stranger. “A person wasn't a teacher because they had been elected or got a certificate. They
were a teacher because they knew something and were respected. If they didn't know enough, they weren't teachers. Or if we didn't need to know what they knew, we didn't go to them. Now you send us teachers and you tell us to send our children, when we aren't even sure what the teachers know. We don't even know if they are good people who will build up the hearts of our children. All we know is that they are teachers because someone gave them a piece of paper saying they had taken courses about teaching. Do you follow me?”

“Yes,” I said, almost adding, “more than you know.”

“What we want to know is what kind of person they are and what they have in their hearts to share. Telling us they have a paper that lets them teach is like putting a fancy wrapping on a box. We want to know what's in that box. An empty box with a fancy wrapper is still an empty box.

“We just don't like people standing in front of us and telling us what to do. Teachers, governments, anything else. We will say who our leaders are. They can't make themselves leaders and laws can't make them leaders for us.

“Those police who shot Sitting Bull, they got scared. They were like little children who were afraid they would be punished if they didn't do what the false leaders said. They thought they wouldn't get food. So they did what the false leaders — the law leaders — said, even though they knew it was wrong.

“There are all these stories about how the police were crying when they shot Sitting Bull. If they thought it was wrong, they shouldn't have shot him. They should have listened to their real leaders, not to their law leaders. They didn't understand the difference between leaders and rulers.”

As usual, Dan had wound his way through the hills and valleys of his own logic to arrive at a destination.

“I understand why people followed Sitting Bull,” I said. “But he was a chief. Didn't people have to follow a chief?”

“The chiefs weren't like that,” Dan answered. “They had to earn their respect. At least with our people. You might be a chief because your father was a chief, but if you were a coward or not a good man, people would just move away from you. You would be a chief only to yourself. To be a chief you had to be a leader.

“You know, this was a lot of the problem with the treaties. Lots of times our real leaders didn't want to sign the treaties. But your government needed to have a piece of paper, so they found an Indian who would sign a piece of paper and they told him he was a leader. Maybe he was from our tribe, but he wasn't a leader unless we all said he was. He couldn't sign that piece of paper any more than someone down the street can sign a piece of paper giving away your house. These men were false chiefs. They were law chiefs, made up by white people who needed one Indian to speak for everybody.

“But no real Indian leader would try to speak for everybody before hearing from everybody. He might get the elders together, or the council of chiefs. It depended on the tribe.

“Then they listened to everyone. Everyone could speak. If someone didn't like the decision that was made, they could leave. If the chief made a decision enough people disagreed with, they could make another chief. All they did was move their tepees near to the new man's, and he was their leader.

“I would rather we had this old way, where the wisest people got together and discussed. If there was one person in the tribe who knew more than any other, he was raised up.

“But now you make us do it differently. You tell us we have to elect a leader to represent us, and he has to represent us in everything. He is supposed to be wise about everything because he is responsible for everything. Even if we don't want him to speak for us on some matter, he gets to because it says so in the constitution you made us write.

“That is not the way it should be. Good leaders wait to be called and they give up their power when they are no longer needed. Selfish men and fools put themselves first and keep their power until someone throws them out. It is no good to have a way where selfish men and fools fight with each other to be leaders, while the good ones watch.

“You made us follow this way, so now we have no government worth the name. Our leaders have no power; our rulers are not leaders.

“That is why Sitting Bull was great. He did not rule. He led.”

D
an seemed to have finished. Grover grunted his approval. He reached across and dug into the glove compartment. “Got any matches?” he asked.

“I don't have any,” I said.

“I need a smoke.”

Dan rummaged in his pockets. “Fresh out,” he announced.

“Damn!” Grover cursed. “That Indian made me want a cigarette. Got to go into Mobridge to get some fire and smokes.”

I could see that Dan wasn't thrilled with the idea. I was gradually realizing that he didn't get to white towns often, and that they made him uncomfortable.

The sun was a flaming orange ball behind us as we descended to the Missouri River basin. The hills were darkening from brown
to gold, and the long fingers of evening shadows were creeping down the draws. On the far side of the river you could see Mobridge huddled like an outpost against the banks of the river. Behind it in the distance the rich alluvial farmlands shimmered in the late afternoon sun.

The difference between the two sides of the Missouri was astonishing. It was a difference of spirit as much as of geology. The land to the east had been formed by the glacier. It had been scraped inch by inch into a land of endurance. If you worked it, tilled it, struggled with it, if you gave it your life, inch by inch, it would yield. It was a land for farmers and workers, not for dreamers.

To the west of the river the golden hills of the Missouri Breaks rose into the lyrical swells and undulations of a great dried seabed. It was at this river that the glacier had stopped, and meaning had been washed across the land rather than ground into it. It was a land of surprises and guile, of hiding places and rolling distances that beckoned the eye ever onward with the coursing of the sun. It was a land of freedom more than labor, of hope more than perseverance.

In a word, it was the West.

This fact had not been lost on Grover and Dan. “Sure is different on the other side,” Grover observed as we approached the erector-set bridge that spanned the Missouri. I told them about the glacier and how it was at the Missouri that the great ice sheet had stopped.

“Now, that's interesting,” Grover said with obvious sincerity. “I guess you're good for something after all.”

I smiled weakly. Since the start of the visit everything I thought or knew had been devalued to almost nothing. Who I was, where I came from, and how I saw the world had been of no interest to anybody. I felt like I had no self. With the exception of prodding Dan for information and making
rough attempts at humor, I had essentially tried to disappear. Grover's simple acknowledgment, barbed though it was, made me swell with a tiny pride.

It occurred to me that this sense of irrelevance and worthlessness was what most Indians probably experienced constantly around white people. To be agreeable or invisible was the best one could hope for. What one knew mattered little, because it was irrelevant. All that mattered about Indians in our current climate was earth-sated pronouncements of wisdom. I could see why Dan was more willing to be seen as a drunk than as a wise man. To be seen as a drunk was at least to be seen; to be seen as a wise man was to be reduced to a projection of a white fantasy.

Dan's face had frozen into a scowl as we approached Mobridge. He jerked his head from side to side in irritable little movements. Billboards had begun sprouting up along the road, announcing various goods and services. Their ungainly presence seemed an affront to the windswept landscape.

A highway sign declared that we were approaching the Mobridge Indian Bible College. “Look at that,” Dan pointed.

“What is it?” I asked.

“One of those places where they turn Indians into missionaries. As bad as the old boarding schools.”