Stone Song (50 page)

In spite of himself, Clark was enthralled. He stood up and took off his uniform coat. Then he thought to look at Garnett for confirmation that this was a good idea. Garnett gave a tiny nod. Clark put on He Dog’s war shirt. He looked at the gleaming beads on his shoulders, arms, and breasts. Hesitantly, he touched the scalp hair. He felt a primitive thrill.

Now he hung the beaded bag from his neck. He wondered what he would put inside. Something small but of singular importance to his own life, he thought. His father’s ring, perhaps.

He lifted the warbonnet onto his head. He Dog himself rose and helped to arrange the eagle feathers, the ones standing above the head and those trailing all the way down the back and legs. Clark felt self-conscious. He felt proud. He looked into the eyes of the chiefs surrendering to him and felt their generosity, the tribute they were offering, the honor they were giving him. He thought,
Watch out, you idiot, or your eyes will moisten
.

He wondered whether Washington and the high command had any idea what these people were really like. He knew it didn’t matter.

Remembering his orders, Clark sat. There was still a considerable distance to go. There was the signing of a paper of unconditional surrender, and other necessities.

Clark instructed Garnett to tell Crazy Horse that he was invited to Washington to see the Great White Father.

Now Little Big Man put words in. “Crazy Horse says that he would be honored to speak with the One You Use for Father. He will make that journey when he knows where our people’s agency will be.”

So the chiefs were not abject in surrender. Clark liked that.

“He says that the headwaters of Beaver Creek, on the west side of the Black Hills, would be a good place,” Little Big Man went on. “It has good grass for the horses, and some game.”

So Crazy Horse didn’t intend to go to Washington, D.C., to meet with Rutherford B. Hayes until he was given an agency where he wanted it. Clark smiled. Surely the chief didn’t know that a photograph of himself with Crazy Horse, the conqueror of Custer, would be political capital for the new President. Certainly he didn’t know that Hayes, elected amid sharp dispute, needed all the political credit he could get. Clark smiled to himself. It was funny that Hayes didn’t have his people’s confidence in the way that this simple tribal chieftain did.

“Or Goose Creek, by the Shining Mountains.” The Bighorns, Garnett
translated. “That is a good place,” said Little Big Man. “If His Crazy Horse cannot have Goose Creek, he will accept Beaver Creek.”

Clark felt the steel in the words. Surrendering but not defeated, these chiefs. They wanted an agency in their own country, so that surrender would change their lives less. They wanted it as far from Red Cloud and Spotted Tail as possible, because of old rivalries.

What’s more, they were hinting that giving up their horses and guns would only be temporary. They wanted their agency in a country good for hunting. They were even hinting that they knew the Great White Father wouldn’t feed them, as promised.

It was all subtle, indirect, and done without a hint of offense. Clark knew it wasn’t unreasonable. Everyone knew that the agents and freighters stole rations until the Indians got only the crumbs and the worms.

Handling them would require all his skills. But he had no authority to make any such promises. He had to suppress an ironic smile. He could make a recommendation—he would do that. Colonel Mackenzie, the commanding officer at Fort Robinson, might support that recommendation to his superior, General Crook, or might oppose or suppress it. General Crook might make a recommendation to Gen. Philip Sheridan, Military Commander of the Missouri. Sheridan in turn would have something to say to his superiors, who ultimately would confer with the president of the United States.

Each of these men would have a stake in the decision. Like Clark himself, each would see himself as gaining or losing influence, showing strength or weakness, rising or slipping in the eyes of the public. The new President especially would view it that way, a man who had nearly become the first Republican Presidential candidate since the start of the War between the States to lose an election to the Democrats.

How enviable for these Indian leaders before him, to have the consent of your people and to speak for them directly, saying exactly what you mean.

Well, Crook would have the welfare of these Lakota people at heart, at least in part. He would want to keep whatever promises he made to them. But as the question went higher and higher, the men in power would care less and less. Some of them, in fact, would be in the grip of the fever to avenge Custer.

Therefore, knowingly, Lieutenant Clark said that he would pass the request of the headmen for an agency on Beaver Creek or Goose Creek on to Three Stars, with his personal support.

They all understood that the question of Crazy Horse’s going to Washington, D.C., was left hanging.

Clark said that a week’s rations were in the wagons outside, plus blankets,
pants, shirts, and cloth. He would dispense them now. Perhaps it was not enough, he admitted. The agent would be getting more freight soon.

The leaders suppressed smiles. They had heard that story before—more rations soon.

In Pehingnunipi Wi, the Moon of Shedding Ponies, which the whites called May, horsemen waited on the white, cedar-dotted bluffs above the White River. They watched, silent and motionless as the cedars, looking impervious to weather and time. They were Lakota, agency Indians, followers of Red Cloud or Spotted Tail.

Below, spread along the river valley, waited thousands of Lakota people, mostly of Red Cloud’s agency. The sense was in the air, the knowing. Like the feeling of springtime renewal in the earth, people could sense it in the wind, in the sunlight, in the way their feet felt on the earth, in a dozen ways they did not name. Something big was happening today.

Fort Robinson sat in the wide valley below the cliffs and the agency a little way on down the river, to the east. Everyone was looking up the river, up the lodge trail that came this way from Powder River country.

The sentinel horsemen sat on the cliffs, and below thousands of Lakota watched for their signal. Others watched, too—white soldiers, some Sahiyela, Mahpiyato, and members of other tribes. They were all watching for the great event to begin. Tasunke Witko, Crazy Horse, the man they thought of as the one true leader of the last free Lakota, was coming in to the agency today.

It had begun a month ago, when he had started moving his village this way from Powder River. Yes, it had been anticipated—over a hundred lodges had already come in from his camp in the past quarter-moon, those with stronger ponies, those without too many of the weak and helpless. Yes, it had been partly accomplished three days ago, when Crazy Horse met Clark and shook his hand in surrender. The left hand, people said, because it was the one closest to the heart. And they looked into each other’s eyes with the sense of something momentous taking place, and hope and despair and love all at once, and sometimes envy and rivalry and even hatred. Many Lakota had shed tears quietly last night, off to themselves. Some would shed them openly today, when they saw their Strange Man walking quietly behind the soldiers.

Today would be the occasion. Today the heart of the Crazy Horse people would come in, with all the shirtmen and war leaders, roughly a thousand people. When they got here, they would first give up their ponies,
that was the agreement. Then they would hand over their firearms.

Though the wild ones had promised, people wanted to see them actually hand over their horses and guns to the soldiers. Some people thought that at the last moment they would refuse and a big fight would start, and plenty of killing. But most people said that if the Strange Man agreed and gave his hand on it, he would do it.

When the free Lakota had surrendered those two strengths, their only way to travel and so their only way to hunt and their power to fight, it would all be over, truly over.

Now two horsemen at the west rode their horses in a circle, the traditional sign meaning, “Many people are coming.”

Clark and Red Cloud rode first, with some of the principal agency Oglala alongside their leader, the one-time Pretty Fellow, now called Woman Dress. Alongside them his brother Standing Bear, White Twin, and his brother No Water.

Red Cloud’s eyes glinted with a kind of pride. The people regarded their chief with two minds. One said,
This is not a man of honor
—
he is the murderer of Bull Bear, he schemes for himself instead of the people, he would do anything for attention and status
—
see, even now he pretends to be bringing in the Strange Man, though that is not truly his accomplishment
. The other said,
This chief and Spotted Tail are the only ones who understood long ago that we must make accommodation with the whites. They saw the only road that could be walked. Through every kind of difficulty, and with sorrowful hearts, they have kept us on the road. They deserve our gratitude
.

“Where is Spotted Tail?” some people said. They thought His Crazy Horse’s uncle, his mother’s brother, should be the one bringing him to the agency. Many of them said it was Spotted Tail’s words that had changed the heart of the Strange Man, and Red Cloud went out only later. But the soldiers had made a deal, the people whispered. Red Cloud was to appear to bring the free Lakota in. In return he would be restored to chieftainship. That was good, thought most of the Oglala. They needed one of their own as leader, not Spotted Tail. So the Sicangu stayed home today.

Behind Clark and Red Cloud rode Clark’s detachment of bluecoats, and behind them the Indian police. The people looked at each other with knowing eyes. To be a tribal policeman, that was an honor, well, a sort of honor. The
akicita
men had always been important to the people, enforcing the discipline needed to act as a group, whether moving the village or conducting a big buffalo hunt.
Akicita
men made people follow the rules, but that was for everyone’s protection. It was the same now, in a way. Except that these Indian police were responsible to Clark, and so to the whites. Now they enforced the white men’s rules. “It is the only way,”
most people said reluctantly. Other people said bitterly, “It is the white man’s way.”

The only way.

A way of death.

The
only
way.

Behind the Indian policemen there seemed at first to be nothing but a cloud of dust. Then, after a long space, the front rank of the last free Lakota.

When the first watchers saw them, voices raised in song.

At the front of the traveling village rode a rank of its leaders, not only Crazy Horse but one of the ones he called
ate
, Little Hawk, along with Little Big Man, He Dog, and Big Road. They were impressive-looking men, strong, physically vital, proud, conscious of position. As befitted a ceremonial occasion, they were outfitted in the regalia of rank. They wore the emblems that showed their status, the shirts of the shirtman, the staffs of honor and leadership in warrior societies, the signs of coups, the scalps of their enemies, and full-length bonnets of eagle feathers. With paint, feather, and fur they spoke their personal achievements and their rank in the tribe.

Except for Crazy Horse. He did not wear the sign of a single achievement. Among his resplendent lieutenants, he looked small, thin, barren, poor, almost nude. To the many agency Lakota who had never seen him, he looked less like a great leader than a boy among men.

A teenage girl who had stood on her tiptoes and craned her neck to see him cried, “
Hinu, hinu!
” in astonishment, then looked with shame at her mother.

More than one young man wondered if he could not outshine this man, and wondered where he’d gotten his reputation.

“Our Strange Man,” people murmured throughout the crowd, and many saw some of its meaning for the first time.

Perhaps it was worse because most of the people were dressed poorly today, as they were every day. The women were wearing calico dresses or even dresses made from stitched-up flour sacks. Men wore breechcloths not of blanket or buckskin but scraps of cheap cloth crazy-quilted together.

The whites, especially the women of the fort, thought these clothes were an improvement. “At least they’re wearing
cloth
,” one army wife said. “They’re out of animal skins,” agreed another with a droll smile.

But the people did not feel that way about it. Who would prefer cloth to buckskin? Cloth would tear on the first bramble. Hide would last for decades. Who would prefer the white man’s calico to quillwork done patiently over many long evenings—which one showed more love? Who
would rather have the calico pattern than decoration in quills and beads and paints and furs? Who would rather have the impersonal figures of a manufacturer on his clothing than the tale of his own life and his own medicine?

They wanted to see the leader of the wild Lakota looking splendid. Instead they saw what they feared was their future, not simplicity but poverty.

Yet the people knew. Everyone knew who this man was, what he had done.

They responded with every kind of feeling—adulation, excitement, a sense of glory, pride, admiration, curiosity, envy, rivalry, and fear.

A few of the people, understanding the event, had decorated themselves as best they could in paint, feather, and fur. Their minds and spirits were not debased, and they wished to salute a great occasion. Many of them, hungry, had still traded food for a little paint or some bright cloth.

These were the ones who sang. They did not sing together, some great chant of lamentation or acceptance or a new vision of peace and harmony. Each sang his own song, reflecting the meaning of this occasion in his own life.

Red Roach, for instance, stood close to the lodge trail at the far west. He was one of the first to see the free Lakota coming and the first to sing. In front of his scalp lock he was wearing the roach that gave him his name. It signified that he had attacked an enemy while the enemy was protected in some way.