Ashes of Heaven (2 page)

Lakota

Casualties

ARMY-NAVY JOURNAL
quoted H.Q., Second U.S. Cavalry, in listing two more wounded:

 

In fact, the Great Sioux War was the only conventional war the army ever fought against the trans-Mississippi Indians. It was the type of conflict these Civil War veterans were supposedly used to, where large massed bodies of troops maneuvered for control of battlefields. Reynolds, Crook, and Custer were simply outmaneuvered and defeated in quite conventional battles. It was only when the military could return to the harassing tactics employed so successfully in the Red River War that the Indians were defeated by starvation and exhaustion.

—Paul Andrew Hutton
Phil Sheridan and His Army

Hon. George W. McCrary, Secretary of War,

… I now regard the Sioux Indian problem, as a war question, as solved by the operations of General Miles last winter, and by the establishment of the two new posts on the Yellowstone, now assured this summer. Boats come and go now, where a year ago none would venture except with strong guards. Wood-yards are being established to facilitate navigation, and the great mass of the hostiles have been forced to go to the agencies for food and protection, or have fled across the border into British Territory.

—William Tecumseh Sherman
General of the Army
July 17, 1877

[Lame Deer's] band commenced to surrender, in small squads from two to twenty, immediately thereafter, until at length, on the 10th of September, the last of the band, numbering 224, constantly followed and pressed by troops from the command of Colonel Miles, surrendered at Camp Sheridan. The Sioux war was now over.

—Philip H. Sheridan
Lieutenant General
October 25, 1877

The Lame Deer fight was the last battle. For better or worse, the only remaining free-roaming band was now as destitute as the rest and would have no other choice but to go into the agencies and surrender.

The Great Sioux War was over.

—Charles M. Robinson, III
A Good Year to Die

Prologue

Tioheyunka Wi
1877

“Crazy Horse!”

The first time he heard his name drift up from below, he thought it was nothing more than the cold, harsh whisper of the winter wind taunting him where he sat on an outcrop of rimrock overlooking the valley of the Buffalo Tongue River. The wind always howled and snarled in this country near the foot of the White Mountains.
*

Here at last, near the mouth of Prairie Dog Creek, the camp's hunters had stumbled across a few poor buffalo.

“Tsunke Witko!” repeated the faint, distant voice, reverberating a little within the rocks this time.

He knew it was not the wind.

This strange man of the Oglalla looked down, tugging some of his long, brown, wavy hair from his eyes. He had never worn it in braids, never adorned it with anything more than a feather, two feathers at the most. Below him among the rocks and the dirty snow and scrub cedar he spotted movement. The figure of a man took form. He stopped, heaving for breath from the climb, then called out again.

“Crazy Horse! Are you here?”

Slowly, reluctantly, the strange one held up his outstretched arm and waved it side to side. In that hand he gripped the small personal pipe he had come here to smoke among these sacred rocks of the earth, alone. During the Moon of Frost in the Lodge, he often walked away from camp to visit these high places where the wind blew cold, where he could smoke and think. Here he could pray.

But few answers came.

Below him now he made out He Dog's face.

“I am here,” Crazy Horse said, hollow with despair that he had been found, and with a sour resignation that his old friend had come looking for him.

Why didn't these people just let him be? Why did this band of Hunkpatila Oglalla still depend upon him? No longer was he a Shirt-Wearer. After he had run off with Black Buffalo Woman, No Water came searching for them and Crazy Horse had been stripped of his shirt. Yet the chiefs chose no one to wear the shirt after Crazy Horse lost his honor for taking another man's woman. Only He Dog continued in the old way of the Shirt-Wearers.

A life that was dying.

“I followed your tracks,” He Dog gasped breathlessly when he was close enough to speak without shouting.

For a moment Crazy Horse watched his old friend scrambling among the rocks in his wet, buffalo-hide winter moccasins.

“I did not hide my coming here.”

He Dog dusted the icy snow from his hands, tightened the blanket he had belted around his shoulders, then settled back against the rock an arm's length from Crazy Horse. He looked around and sighed, “You come to be among the stones and high places more than you are among your people these days.”

“Those people do not need me,” he answered with a bitter sadness, staring at the snowy heights of the White Mountains. “They no longer need warriors.”

“Your people still look to you.”

His eyes locked on He Dog's. “If I choose to lead them in to the White River Agency,
*
will they follow me?”

He Dog nodded. “They will follow.”

The Horse gazed at his old friend a moment, then looked away again. “And if I choose to stay away from the white man's agency … who then will they follow?”

“These people will follow you, no matter the path you take.”

Sadly, Crazy Horse remembered, “Last winter you started south with your family, He Dog—”

“It was a mistake.”

Crazy Horse studied the man's eyes a moment, realizing how his friend must have felt: reluctantly leading his relations south for the agency with some of Old Bear's Shahiyela
*
when the soldiers attacked them on the Shifting Sands River,
†
starting a long and terrible year of fighting.

The Horse went back to gazing at the distant bulk of the mountains. “You must realize I leave the camps to get away from the dark, hollow-eyed hunger that has sunken into the faces of the women who suffer in silence,” he whispered against the rising whine of the cold wind. “I walk into these hills so that I do not have to listen to the little ones whimpering at the pain in their empty bellies.”

“You cannot blame yourself that there are so few buffalo this winter—”

“Will there be more buffalo next winter?” Crazy Horse interrupted. “Will we have enough meat to dry before the first snows?”

“No man can answer that,” He Dog finally admitted. “Not even you,
mita kola,
my friend.”

Crazy Horse reached out and laid a hand on the warrior's arm. “You are right: I should try no more to understand what I was not meant to understand.”

He Dog's eyes narrowed in concern. “Have you slept in these seven days since we fought the Bear Coat
#
at Belly Butte?”
@

“I have closed my eyes some,” he confessed.

“Perhaps it is time to come down from the rocks. Go sit by your wife's fire,” He Dog proposed. “Eat enough to fill your belly for once. Then wrap yourself inside your robe and press your skin against your woman's flesh. When you are done coupling with her, then sleep.”

“Fight and eat, ride and couple,” Crazy Horse said with a sad grin. “You make it sound like our old days together,
kola.
”

“I am afraid those old days are gone … for us both.” He Dog struggled with the words.

“They truly do want to make agency loafers of us.”

He Dog snorted, bobbing his head in derision, thinking of the Lakota emissary from the faraway soldier chief who had reached Crazy Horse's camp two days earlier saying that the
wasicu
*
agent at White River knew how the Lakota were suffering. The emissary had journeyed north with the promise of food and blankets and clothing if only Crazy Horse and the Hunkpatila would come in. “Have you decided to send Sword back to Red Cloud and Three Stars Crook
†
with empty hands?”

“I am not an agency loafer.”

“None of us ever will be,” He Dog proclaimed. “No matter how much Sword wants to entice his own relations with the
wasicus'
hollow promises.”

“We may send him away, back to Red Cloud and Three Stars, but every day in our camp there are more and more who talk of surrender.”

Dolefully He Dog vowed, “We will stay strong, we will keep them from leaving as we always have.”

“With more of them wanting to surrender now than ever before … it is so hard to soldier them all—to break their lodgepoles, to cut up their lodges—when to stay on here with us offers these people so little hope.”

Not knowing what to say, He Dog looked away for a few moments as the wind tormented his braids. “An old friend has come to see you.”

The casual way He Dog announced this news made Crazy Horse turn to look at his friend's face. “Is this why you climbed up here to find me?”

“I came to tell you he is here to visit you.”

The Horse snorted, “Another rider come from the loafers' agency proposing that I should bring these people in?”

“No,” He Dog declared. “Sitting Bull has journeyed south … looking for you.”

“S-Sitting Bull?” he echoed as it sank in, baffled by the sudden mix of excitement and trepidation from this startling revelation. “He is here?”

He Dog nodded. “Sent me to find you—”

“This is good news! The messengers we sent out found him north of the Elk River!” Crazy Horse bubbled, sensing a momentary leap of joy like the spirit-wings of the red-tailed hawk fluttering beneath his breastbone. For far too many moons there had been little to make him feel hopeful.

“Yes—our messengers found him.”

Gripping He Dog's wrist tightly, the Horse asked, “Did he bring the rifles and bullets we wanted him to trade for with the Metis?”

He Dog was a moment before answering. “Sitting Bull has very little anymore. No Lakota is rich these days. The Bear Coat has chased and chased and chased him this winter. The soldiers drove him into the snow twice.” He wagged his head and stared at the dirty snow between his moccasins. “No Lakota will ever be rich again.”

For a long time, Crazy Horse refused to release the firm hold he had on He Dog's wrist, brooding on the words of his friend, on this announcement that Sitting Bull had come to visit. He let the gale whip the wavy, brown hair across his face as he stared beyond the broad river valley to the rumple of snowy hills on the far side, hills that climbed ever higher toward the slate-gray sky.

“Perhaps there is still hope,” the Horse finally said. “If Sitting Bull came here with his people, his warriors and his weapons, without the Bear Coat catching him or turning him back, then perhaps there is still hope that we can reunite our peoples and drive the army from our hunting ground. How many lodges did he bring?”