Crow Dog : Four Generations of Sioux Medicine Men (9780062200143) (20 page)

Being AIM’s spiritual leader caused problems for me. Before, I had been one of several medicine men in our Rosebud tribe. Now it seemed that I was the medicine man for every Indian in the country. That was hard, especially for my family. Crow Dog’s Paradise became a sort of AIM settlement. People were camping out everywhere. Folks dropped in at all hours, day and night. Guests had to be fed. They slept anywhere they could find a place to plant their bodies. They slept in my dad and mom’s house, which Dad had built himself out of odds and ends—tree trunks, car windows, whatever. They slept in my family’s house just a few yards away, a red-painted “transitional” house, the kind the tribe put up for us Rosebud people. The floors of both houses often were covered with sleeping figures. You had no place to put
your feet. The transitional house was not solidly built. It seemed to fall apart with the wear and tear of so many visitors. Young white people, hippies, and flower children camped out on the Paradise, trying to find something they had lost, some spiritual belief, and they stayed, and stayed, and stayed.

People came to the medicine man for help, for spiritual as well as material assistance. I was expected to provide. As long as I was the medicine man just for some Rosebud people, I could do it. Now it seemed the whole world was coming to me for advice, consolation, doctoring, money, food. So what was I supposed to do? I had to hustle. In between all my other tasks, I traveled, always with my whole family. I raised money by giving lectures on Native American culture, even though my English at that time was pretty bad. Richard Erdoes got me to do a TV commercial. They needed a Native American who could ride a horse and do war whoops. They had an Apache outfit ready for me to wear, but I told them I had my own Sioux outfit. They let me use that. They took me way out to a place on Long Island. For three days I galloped all over the landscape, screaming out war whoops. I got so hoarse I could hardly talk. They paid me one hundred sixty-eight dollars, which was very disappointing, but six months later I got a check for six thousand dollars, for “residuals.” That was more money than I had ever seen in my life. I hoped to get maybe a well out of it, because at that time we still got our water from the Little White River in a bucket. Or maybe I could have gotten a second-hand pickup truck.

We had a four-day giveaway feast, and so many people came to me for help that on the last day I had only five dollars left. But that was okay. That’s what medicine men are for. I always had something to give to those who needed it, though sometimes all I had left was a bag of potatoes or a pound of hamburger meat.

In the meantime things had gotten bad in South Dakota, especially at Pine Ridge. The tribal president was a half-blood named Dick Wilson, who ran the tribe like a dictator and won elections by fraud. The U.S. Justice Department later issued a twenty-eight-page
report saying, “Almost one third of all votes cast appear to have been in some manner improper.” Wilson dealt out all the chief tribal jobs to his relatives. Besides having his hand-picked tribal police he misused federal funds to hire a private army of killers, who beat up, and even murdered, those who were against him. He fired his own elected vice-president, David Long, for “condoning publicly the American Indian Movement.” This was against tribal law. Long told a reporter, “Wilson is influencing the council in a violent way to keep the people quiet. He is seeking power. I have bullet holes in my window and eight horses shot.”

Wilson had condemned the Trail of Broken Treaties as a trail of hoodlums, commies, and radicals. He suspended free speech and the right to assemble peacefully on the reservation. When Russell Means, a tribally enrolled member of the Pine Ridge Oglala tribe, ran against him for tribal president, he had his tribal court sign a restraining order prohibiting Means from setting foot on the reservation. He had a poster in his office reading
REWARD! RUSSELL MEANS’ BRAIDS
$50.
RUSSELL MEANS’ HEAD
$50.
RUSSELL MEANS’ ENTIRE BODY, PICKLED
, $1,000. When Russell went on the rez anyway, Wilson had his goons beat him with their billy clubs; Russ was lucky to get away with only a cracked skull. Nobody was safe. The goons had high-powered rifles with armor-piercing bullets. The full-bloods got together a group calling themselves Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization (OSCRO). The leaders were Eugene White Hawk, Vern Long, and Pedro Bissonette. Pedro was my true friend. He was later brutally murdered by the goons.

OSCRO handed out petitions to impeach and get rid of Wilson. But people were afraid to sign them, because those who did were worked over by the goons. They fired guns into people’s homes. They threatened to hurt Indian children. By the middle of 1972 there was a civil war situation on the rez. Members of OSCRO and AIM were shot at. In spite of all this, the government supported Wilson, because he was
their
goon, their stooge, who had given away eighty thousand acres of tribal land as a gift to the National Park system.

At the end of 1972 and the beginning of 1973, AIM had come in force to Rapid City to demonstrate, educate, and sensitize the white people there. AIM called South Dakota “the most racist state in the Union, and Rapid City the most racist town in the state.” In Rapid, Indians were discriminated against in every way. They were made to feel unwelcome in stores, restaurants, and bars. They were called all kinds of names and beaten up. If they got any jobs at all they were paid less than whites.

Conditions were worst at a place called Sioux Addition, three miles out of town. This was a kind of apartheid slum the city had set aside to get rid of its Indian population. Sioux Addition was a jumble of more than a hundred shacks and rusting trailers without running water or sanitation. The fire department would never come in there. It was a place of neglect and despair.

At that time Ron Petite was executive director of the Sioux Indian Emergency Rehabilitation Center in Rapid City. He was very worried about Indian veterans who were being mistreated and could not get the services they were entitled to by law. Instead of an open door they got the back of the hand. Ron Petite called on AIM for help. So, many reservation people and about two hundred AIM members from all over came to Rapid City to clean up the situation. Dennis Banks, Russell Means, and the Bellecourts were in charge of the operation. I was there, too, as the protest’s spiritual leader. Most of us stayed at the Mother Butler Center, a Catholic church hall, which became our headquarters. There were three thousand Indians living in and around Rapid City, and we were going to deal with their grievances. Dennis Banks declared a freeze on the whole city. He said, “We will shut the whole business district down on account of the discrimination and mistreatment of Indian veterans. We’ll literally chain up the doors of the big business enterprises, federal agencies, and local community service centers.” We boycotted Northwestern Bell Telephone, Black Hills Power and Light, Kmart, Piggly Wiggly, Dunkin’ Donuts, Sooper Dooper, and the law enforcement agencies. We put up posters:
WELCOME TO THE MOST RACIST STATE IN THE U.S.A
. and
SEE SOUTH DAKOTA LAST
. Dennis tried to train the people in nonviolent tactics, giving orders by blowing a whistle, but he gave it up soon, because young AIM kids weren’t good at being drilled.

I was resting at Mother Butler’s when someone came to warn me that the town was about to blow up. A Pine Ridge man had brought the news that still another Lakota, Wesley Bad Heart Bull, had been killed by a white man and that the murderer had been charged with only involuntary manslaughter, which meant that he would go free. Without waiting for any leaders to tell them what to do, all the young AIMs went down into the streets. The real trouble started when an Indian went into a bar crammed with white customers. One of them threw a glass of whiskey in the Indian’s face. A real battle began. These saloons had always been places of humiliation for us. So now the young Indians did a thorough job on them. Whites and Indians fought each other with fists, bottles, ashtrays, bung starters, whatever they could get their hands on. The police went amok and arrested every Indian in sight. The mayor ordered a bus and a fire truck to be used as extra paddy wagons. Hundreds were arrested and wound up in the Pennington county jail. I myself knew the jail from the inside. Being a South Dakota Sioux, you couldn’t avoid it. Not a single white man was arrested.

I led some one hundred fifty Indians to protest in front of the jail. We were faced by a line of police in full riot gear. We had a drum and were singing and chanting. Then we went to the courthouse and did the same. The situation was dangerous. Anything could have happened. Bloodshed was averted when Dennis Banks created a “demilitarized zone” between wasichus and Native Americans, but Rapid City was just a warm-up for what took place immediately after—the confrontation at Custer.

It started with a murder on January 20, 1973, at Bill’s Bar, in a place called Buffalo Gap at the edge of the Black Hills. The town got its name from being on an old buffalo trail at a spot where the hills opened up to make a passage. Buffalo Gap and the bar look
like a set from a western movie. It was a Saturday night, and there was a big crowd at Bill’s Bar, mostly white cowboys and ranchers from Hot Springs, Hermosa, and Custer. In the bar was also a young Lakota named Wesley Bad Heart Bull, his mother, Sarah, and a friend, Robert High Eagle. Wesley was only twenty years old. The bar’s owner had told Wesley several times that he did not want him around, but Wesley had come anyway. Why should a white man tell him that he couldn’t have a drink in there? It was the only bar for miles around. Also in the bar was Darald Schmitz, a thirty-year-old air force vet who ran a gas station in Custer. Schmitz made some racist remarks about Wesley, and Wesley answered back. They had had words before that, and Schmitz had threatened several times that someday he’d kill “that son-of-a-bitch Indian.” The next morning, Sunday, January 21, Wesley Bad Heart Bull was lying in the street near the bar with a knife stuck in his chest. He died on the way to the hospital at Hot Springs.

Sarah and High Eagle had seen Schmitz with a knife in his hand, leaving the bar after Wesley. Schmitz himself boasted of “having got myself an Injun.” The white bartender said that Wesley had attacked Schmitz. High Eagle said that the stabbing had been unprovoked. Schmitz was arrested on a charge of second-degree manslaughter, the smallest charge they could use. He was taken to Custer and there released on bail.

The news spread fast that another Lakota had been killed by a white man, almost exactly a year after the murder of Raymond Yellow Thunder. People from Rosebud and Pine Ridge went to Custer to see that justice be done. They asked AIM for help. It was a coincidence that so many AIM people were already in Rapid City for the protests. Rapid is only about an hour’s drive from Custer. We hated that city already for its name. It is deep inside our sacred Black Hills, stolen by the government in violation of the Fort Laramie Treaty after gold had been discovered in the hills. On February 6, we formed a caravan of more than thirty cars out of Rapid City to drive the forty-five miles to Custer and
join the Indians already there. It was snowing and it was cold, six or seven degrees above zero. We got there in the early afternoon.

About two hundred of us, AIM and reservation people, assembled before the courthouse, an old stone building with a white wooden porch. Wesley’s mother, Sarah, was there too. At the start, things were peaceful. We had made up a delegation of five to speak to the DA, Hobart Gates, and the sheriff, Ernest Pepin. Dennis Banks, Russell Means, and I were part of the delegation. Bob High Eagle was already there as a witness, but the DA told Bob that he believed Darald Schmitz’s version of what happened. It was going to be the same old story—a white man who had killed an Indian would go free.

As word of this got out, there was a big howl of protest from the crowd at the steps of the courthouse. Some twenty-five Indians forced the door and got in. During the scuffle that followed, law enforcement shoved a young boy down the porch steps. The sheriff ordered the courthouse cleared. About two dozen highway patrolmen had been hiding on the second floor. They now came down on us, swinging their long clubs. They wore red jackets, gray pants, and fancy golden helmets. They were armed with shotguns, rifles, and nightsticks. The sheriff and his deputy had huge six-shooters. They drove us out of the building with their clubs and tear gas. I busted a window on the first floor and jumped out. Dennis jumped after me. Outside, nobody was smiling. Russell was down on the ground, dazed, clubbed, bleeding, handcuffed. Sarah Bad Heart Bull, who tried to get in and talk to the DA, was stopped by a highway patrolman. He grabbed her from behind, put a nightstick across her throat and, using both hands, was almost choking her to death. Her jacket was gone, her glasses smashed. The police used more tear gas, smoke bombs, and firehoses on us. Some of the elders told the sheriff that we hadn’t come here to riot, we only wanted to be heard. But it was no use. There was fighting in front of the courthouse and all along Main Street. Some kids were trashing two patrol cars. Others were chucking rocks, bottles, and Molotov
cocktails through the courthouse windows. A crowd of young people tried to storm the building. Two guys came running up and poured gas all over the steps and door. One patrolman pointed his shotgun at them, screaming, “If you set a match to this I’ll shoot to kill!” A dozen of our girls were making the wichaglaka—the high-pitched, trembling brave-heart cry that gets the blood pumping in your veins. Someone tossed a match and the front of the courthouse caught fire. A gas station was in flames. Then some of the AIM boys set the chamber of commerce on fire. The police had two fire trucks going but couldn’t prevent it from burning to the ground. The police and highway patrol were all over us. I saw two of them dragging a young girl along the ground. It was twenty below zero and they had ripped most of her clothes off. Ashes and snowflakes were swirling around them. I saw a middle-aged Indian lying beaten unconscious on the ground, like a heap of rags. The billboard
WELCOME TO CUSTER, THE TOWN WITH THE GUN SMOKE FLAVOR
went up in flames. Stores along Main Street were torched and wrecked. I saw brothers and sisters spread-eagled against a wall, being frisked and handcuffed. The sheriff was saying to Russell, who was still handcuffed, “We were waiting for you AIM sons of bitches. We knew you were coming. You were looking for trouble and you got it!” Russell told him, “If we had wanted to have a war here, we wouldn’t have brought our women and children.”