Stone Song (48 page)

As the headmen watched, their old enemies the Psatoka, who were scouts for General Miles now, opened fire on the peace messengers. Drum-on-His-Back and four other men were down before the rest could get away.

The soldiers rode out fast and stopped the shooting and called and signaled for the Lakota to come in.

Crazy Horse said disgustedly to Little Big Man, “Yes, after five good men are dead.”

They rode back up Buffalo Tongue River.

Crazy Horse didn’t know how they would survive the winter.

Maybe he had to face it: What was a life for him was not a life for the people.

He didn’t know. It seemed possible. The agency was death for him. But…

He went to Horn Chips. They smoked. He stated as clearly as he could the case against agency life: People would say anything, do anything, for whiskey, coffee, sugar, or enough food. They became white people: Morning Star said sixty of the scouts who had come against his village were Lakota.

Worse, what had happened at Fort Laramie would take place more swiftly and severely now. Medicine would be forgotten,
akicita
would lose influence, no one would become a shirtman, ceremonies would disappear. Those who became Big Bellies would be those good at currying favor from the whites, not those proven to have the good of the people at heart.

If the Lakota fought, the whites would kill them. But if they no longer cared about the powers, no longer kept the awareness of Spirit at the center of their lives, they had killed themselves. The hoop of the people would be broken forever, and the flowering tree would wither.

Horn Chips listened carefully. Crazy Horse thought the man of stone medicine might have wise words, for he had lived with the agency Lakota as well as the wild ones. But Horn Chips seemed to have no specific advice to give. He only said that they would sweat and prepare Crazy Horse to seek to see beyond.

In the sweat lodge Horn Chips prayed for insight to be granted on the mountain to this leader of the people. One of the sentences of his four prayers Crazy Horse marked down in his mind: “Help us to remember that the hoop contains both the red road and the black road, contains peace and harmony and discord and hardship, and all these are part of the embracing circle of life.”

As they walked to the site of the vision-seeking, Chips made one suggestion: “Remember,” he said, “sometimes we ask Power to be on our side. This time you must ask how to be on the side of Power.”

So Crazy Horse cried for a vision on the mountain, naked and forlorn. He asked the four directions for their help, and Father Sky and Mother Earth, and all the grandfathers. He paid attention to Hawk in his heart for guidance. He touched the stone behind his ear with a finger and squeezed the moss stone he had gotten at the Split Rock against his ribs. He listened to the beat of the drum of the earth, a language older than the stone language. He sat for days, waiting for counsel.

During this time he had no new thoughts about how to deal with Three Stars or Bear Coat or the people’s agency relatives. He did not see where herds of buffalo stomped in the snow. He did not see anything in particular.

For himself he felt a kind of peace. He wanted to fight. He would fight. That was his way.

For the people he saw no peace yet. Maybe somehow, somewhere, a way he did not see opened ahead for them. Though it seemed that the sacred hoop must be broken, he tried to remember that the hoop held not only the good red road of peace but the black road of war. He reminded himself that the people had undergone great changes in their way of life before, like the one marked by the coming of White Buffalo Cow Woman. Maybe this time was the beginning of one of those changes. If he did not see the future, maybe someone else would.

Sometimes Crazy Horse had hope that his young cousin Black Elk, the son of the elder Black Elk, would see the way. The boy had been granted a great vision. Maybe some power lay in that vision for the people.

But he did not see it. Yet. The drum beat forever, but did not explain itself.

In front of the sweat lodge, after Crazy Horse told Chips what he had seen, Chips asked him whether the Inyan spoke to him.

“No,” said Crazy Horse. “I sit with them. I pray with them, perhaps not as often as I should. They don’t speak to me. They give me something, though. When I put my mind on Inyan, I feel the way I used to feel with my
hunka
when we were youths.” He could not say Hump’s name. “We would sit on a ledge, a secret place we went, and talk all night. Especially we would talk about the stars, and Hump would tell the star knowledge he got from his uncle. Then sometimes we would fall silent for a long time and just look at the stars. Just look. Somehow then we felt together, with each other and with the stars, and with the earth and all things. I believe we heard the drumbeat, the pulse of the earth, the same
pulse. A feeling, not words. But it was strong. It was a bond between us.”

Crazy Horse felt his eyes moisten. He had not often allowed himself to remember his
hunka
so vividly.

Horn Chips said, “Then the Inyan are speaking to you. Listen.”

What Crazy Horse heard didn’t come from the drumbeat or the Inyan or from Spirit but from the scouts: General Miles was coming up the Buffalo Tongue River with about five hundred walking soldiers.

Chasing Indians in the snow again. This was what the villages could not stand. The ponies weren’t strong enough to travel much. The snow slowed everyone down. The weather took a toll. If you didn’t keep a good watch, the soldiers would drive off your horses, take your food, and burn your homes.

The women and children packed up and moved back. The warriors, more men than Miles had but with little ammunition, held the soldiers off from a ridge.

The headmen were worried. They started the pony drags toward the Greasy Grass. If the soldiers stayed in the field and did not let them settle down, children and old people would die of exposure, hunger, and weakness.

Late that afternoon it started to snow, hard. Crazy Horse sent the warriors fast after the women. He and He Dog and two Sahiyela stayed behind to guard the rear. Occasionally they shot a soldier. Sometimes they recovered some bullets from the bodies. They kept up enough fire that the soldiers did not know the village was gone.

That night the village traveled through the snow and the darkness, crossing as fast as they could to the west, over the divide toward Rosebud Creek. When the snow was coming so hard it filled a hoofprint quickly, Crazy Horse and the others followed.

The next day Crazy Horse’s scouts said General Miles had gone back down Buffalo Tongue River. Probably they were nearly out of food.

Messengers came with presents from White Hat, the young officer at Fort Robinson. Though they promised that the Crazy Horse people could have an agency in their own country, none of the chiefs would accept the presents.

Messengers came with presents from General Miles. The chiefs refused to touch the presents. Crazy Horse was on the mountain, they said, seeking a vision. They could not say what to do until they talked to him.

Crazy Horse hardly saw Black Shawl or his own lodge the rest of that
winter. Over and over he went to the mountain seeking a vision. The elder Black Elk found him there one day. Crazy Horse told him not to worry. “Cousin, I can live well enough in caves. Maybe the powers will show me something. We don’t have much time.”

He listened to the Inyan and heard nothing. He listened to the drumbeat and heard everything, but saw no path in it.

In the Snow-Blind Moon, Spotted Tail came to appeal to Crazy Horse, with lots of lodges and lots of food.

“My son is on the mountain,” Worm told Spotted Tail. The Sicangu leader understood that his nephew was seeking guidance. His wives put the lodge up, and they waited. Since Spotted Tail seldom saw his two sisters and brother-in-law, he was glad of the chance. And he was glad to have the chance to talk quietly with many people of the village and find out how their spirits were.

It was as he suspected: Half the time they were enamored of being the last holdouts, they and Sitting Bull’s people. When they felt that way, they were ready to fight to the end. Or ready to go to Grandmother’s land, Canada, with Sitting Bull. The other half of the time they were weary of being heroes. Hardly a woman among them had not lost someone, a brother or husband in war, a parent to starvation, a child to freezing. Every one of them had suffered severely, traipsing over the high plains in winter to avoid soldiers when they ought to have been tucked snugly in a warm canyon.

Yes, they gloried in the whipping of Long Hair last summer. No, they didn’t want to die. True, this clinging to the hunting life felt grand. But it wouldn’t keep a baby warm. When Spotted Tail gave out the presents of food he’d brought from the agency, the women’s faces were so avid that he was embarrassed.

He also found out something personal about his nephew. His wife, Black Shawl, had the coughing sickness. When Sitting Bull had proposed that all the wild Lakota go to Grandmother’s land, Crazy Horse said the winters were too cold and too long and even the summers too cool. His wife would die of the coughing.

Spotted Tail was moved to pity. He thought his nephew was not often enough moved to pity.

He admired his nephew as a man, as a warrior, and especially as a war leader. The young man had more power than anyone had hoped, even his relatives.

Spotted Tail did not admire Crazy Horse as a leader for all the people. He thought his nephew shortsighted and self-absorbed.

So he went to see Horn Chips. He couldn’t suggest that Crazy Horse’s spiritual counselor guide his nephew in this direction or that, not at all.
But speaking his thoughts to the man might help, and listening might reveal the future.

They shared some food and some smoke. They spoke of relatives. They exchanged news and gossip. Spotted Tail sat his full height and consciously made himself physically imposing. He watched Horn Chips carefully. Did this man think of him only as a white-man chief, a conciliator? Or did he remember that Spotted Tail had knocked thirteen soldiers off their horses at the Blue Water? And had many other coups? Did he realize what Spotted Tail had truly done in taking his people to the agency?

Spotted Tail couldn’t be sure. Finally, he asked one of the questions that bore on the truth here. “The young men in this camp seem to believe that no good life is possible at the agencies. Do you think so?”

Since Horn Chips measured his response carefully, Spotted Tail knew he understood the full weight of what he was being asked.

Then Horn Chips delivered a discourse on the nature of life. At first Spotted Tail did not see how his question was being answered. At last he did see. And then he wanted Crazy Horse to hear these words. He knew Crazy Horse needed to hear these words.

At the end Horn Chips waited awhile. Spotted Tail was silent out of great respect. Chips smiled. “You want your nephew to hear these words, I know,” said Horn Chips. “I have thought about it a long time. It’s hard to guide him. He has his own way to see. But yes, I want to say all this to him. When he gets back, I will invite you and him to eat.”

Spotted Tail was delighted.

When his nephew came down from the mountain, all the leaders sat in the council lodge and talked things over. Crazy Horse said how glad he was to see his relatives and thanked Spotted Tail for the many gifts. The Sicangu chief relayed the promise of the soldier chiefs to Crazy Horse: If he came in, he would be given an agency here in his own country.

Crazy Horse said nothing, as Spotted Tail had expected. The other leaders were noncommittal. Spotted Tail could not divine what his nephew would do. He held out hope for when they talked to Horn Chips together.

The dinner Chips gave for Spotted Tail and Crazy Horse was not congenial. All the conversation had to be carried by the agency chief.

Finally Horn Chips surprised his guests by saying he wanted to talk to the two of them about what his own Inyan told him. It was rare, and a privilege, to hear a
wicasa wakan
’s communications from his Inyan. Then Chips surprised Crazy Horse again by seeming to tell the story of the creation of the world.

“From the beginning,” he said, “there was Inyan, rock, the first of all
things, who was then soft and shapeless as a cloud. Inyan wanted to use His powers, so from part of Himself he made Maka, Mother Earth. In creating Maka, Inyan let too much of his blue blood flow away, and it became the waters. Since power cannot stay in the form of water, it changed itself into the sky god, Taku Skanskan, which means what makes motion move, that which moves and changes. And from Inyan and Maka, Skan created Wi, the sun. These are the four principal powers,” said Chips. “They are the shapes creation takes.

“From these comes everything we see.” He proceeded to mention the creation of the four subordinate powers: Moon, Passion, Wind, and Thunderstorm. He spoke of the star people, of sands by the waters, of growing things and rain, of monsters that could abide in the waters and go upon the lands, of crawling, winged, and four-legged people, and of the buffalo and the human beings. “My stones are Inyan,” he said. “Inyan is all substance. Everything is Inyan,” he said, “and Skan, the force that moves it.

“One of the teachings of the Inyan,” Horn Chips declared, “is that in each stage of this making of the world in its present form, Skan was, and life was, but changing, always changing shape. In each time since then, including the time of the two-legged creatures,” he said, “Skan was, and life was, but changing, always a new way to live. Always, including many ways that are lost from the memory of the people.

“Many generations ago, White Buffalo Cow Woman came and gave the people a new way to live, by the buffalo and the sacred
canupa
. That is one of many ways for two-legged creatures to live. Ways change,” said Horn Chips, “but life is, and Skan is.

“Big changes come sometimes,” he said. “Skan circles, life circles. Not every seven generations, but seven times seven or a hundred times seven, changes come that are too great to foresee, far too great to understand.”