Crow Dog : Four Generations of Sioux Medicine Men (9780062200143) (21 page)

Forty-one Indian men and women were arrested and charged, among them Sarah Bad Heart Bull. She was later tried for rioting and attempted arson, and served five months in the penitentiary. Her son’s killer did not serve a single hour.

On February 27, 1973, started the biggest event in Indian history during this century—the seventy-one-day occupation of Chankpe Opi, Wounded Knee. This place has great meaning for me because my great-grandfather Jerome, the first Crow Dog, was a ghost dancer. At the time they massacred our people there, in the ravines along Wounded Knee Creek, his own band was dancing deep inside the Badlands not so far away. He and his people also had been surrounded by the soldiers, and would have been killed if Crow Dog had not had an inspiration, given to him in a vision, through which he could save his dancers. In 1973 our close relative and member of our clan, Uncle Dick Fool Bull, was still living, close to ninety years old, and he was a survivor of what had happened back in 1890. He was the last flute maker and player in our tribe, and he told me his story many times. I still have on tape what he told me in 1968.

“I’ll tell you what I remember about the trouble, the terrible trouble. I was born in Indian Territory, in 1883, I think. I’m not sure, really. They didn’t have a census in them days. They didn’t have birth records like they have today. There was the ghost dance going on, in 1890. We happened to be in Rosebud, camping under guard—soldiers, cavalry, cannons. They rounded up all the fathers and grandfathers and made sure they didn’t mix up with the hostile bunch—that’s what they called the ghost dancers, ‘hostiles.’

“My father was hauling freight with an ox team from Valentine, Nebraska. He went there in the morning and camped there overnight and then came back to Rosebud and unloaded. Sometimes he used horses, hauling rations, flour and stuff like that, for the government. Rosebud had been an agency, a reservation, for some time.

“Things were bad up north at Standing Rock. They killed Sitting Bull and his men for ghost dancing. Everybody was scared. My father and my uncles got a twenty-day pass to haul freight to Pine Ridge Agency. After twenty days the police would send them back. Pine Ridge was just a few buildings then, a couple of offices and the stockade. The tipis were all pushed together and crowded, and they were guarded day and night. But some of the people got away in the night to join the ghost dancers in the Badlands.

“We camped near Wounded Knee. We went there with a team and covered wagon. My father was a medicine man and as kids we had learned the ghost dance and the ghost dance songs. It was winter and very cold. There was a little snow on the ground, here and there. Other people were camping near us. The soldiers said that if we gave them our bows and arrows, our knives and guns, they would let us visit our friends. So the men stood around in a circle and piled up their weapons. Even the women’s awls, which they used for sewing, they called them weapons too. But the last guy, an old man, he had a blanket around him, and he had an old carbine under it and wouldn’t give it up. And the
sergeant, or lieutenant, or whatever he was, almost had us killed over it.

“A little ways off, at Wounded Knee, they had trenches dug for reinforcements, you know, and quick-fire guns, big ones, pointing at Big Foot’s band of Minneconjou from all around. In the morning I was playing with my cousins when I heard the cannons, the quick-fires. Everybody was scared and hollering, ‘War is on! War is on!’ And the women started weeping: ‘They are killing our people!’ Everybody was running around: ‘What shall we do?’ I heard the gunshots, the cannons, the rifle fire. Then it was still for a while. I guess they had already killed most of them. But it started all over again, shooting, shooting, shooting. That’s when the soldiers went down into the ravine, killing the women and children who were hiding in there, killing mothers with babies on their breasts. I don’t know how many they killed there or how many were in that camp. They left them to lie there, I guess, overnight. The next morning they were digging the grave, a long ditch, and they had mule teams and wagons, and so they took the frozen bodies and just piled them in the wagons and took them to that ditch and threw them in there. When they had them all in there, they took shovels and covered them up. When it was safe, my father, my uncles, and cousins went there. I saw it all.”

The second Wounded Knee happened just three weeks after Custer. At Pine Ridge the goons were running wild. Things had gotten to where the people just could not endure it any longer. Nobody was safe, not even women and children. The goon squad beat up people every day. They shot into windows. Houses were firebombed. There were murders that never got investigated. So the elders, the traditionals, the AIM followers and the OSCRO people, and all the medicine men called on AIM for help, and AIM answered the call.

Pedro Bissonette and his OSCRO people were holding a get-rid-of-Wilson powwow at Calico, six miles north of Pine Ridge. So AIM went there to meet with the Oglala people. The chiefs were
there and all the medicine men and a lot of strong-hearted women. There was a big crowd, about three or four times as many as we had in the AIM caravan out of Rapid City. It looked peaceful. People were drinking coffee. Kids were playing ball. Then everybody crowded into the community hall. The place was crammed, but only two AIM leaders took part in this meeting, Dennis Banks and Russell Means. I was glad that the two most respected and oldest medicine men, Pete Catches and Frank Fools Crow, were there too. It seemed as if all the main speakers were women. One of the women said, “We’re going to make a stand. We’re going to Wounded Knee and make our stand there. If you men want to hold back, we women will do it. If we’re going to die, then we’ll die there!”

As soon as Wounded Knee was mentioned, I got very serious. Everybody did. Wounded Knee was our most sacred site. To be standing up there would be the greatest thing we could do. Why hadn’t the leaders thought of this? One of our women had shown the way. So you see, the occupation of Wounded Knee wasn’t planned. It came about naturally, as the spirit inspired the woman. So we took off to meet our destiny.

Someone started worrying about roadblocks. Wilson and his goons had been watching us. They reported by radio, telephone, teletype, and walkie-talkie on our every step. And they
were
waiting for us, all got up in their riot gear. Wilson was happy. He had told his men, “The AIMs want to be martyrs. Let’s accommodate them!”

We drove right through Pine Ridge, the whole caravan of fifty-four cars crammed with people. We roared right by them. We saw them standing on the roof of the tribal council building. It was all lit up. We saw Wilson standing there, open-mouthed. We passed some goons on the road. They were bug-eyed. They didn’t catch on. It didn’t occur to any of them where we were headed. We got to the Knee after nightfall.

Standing on that hill where so many of our people were buried in a common grave, standing there in that cold darkness
under the stars, I felt tears running down my face. I can’t describe what I felt. I heard the voices of the long-dead ghost dancers crying out to us. Their ghosts were all around. They had been waiting for us for a long time. They had known that we were coming. They were standing with us on that hill. It was the night of all nights.

A wind was playing with the eagle feathers some had stuck in their hair or hatbands. I heard birds. Toward morning I saw two magpies in the ravine. They were black and white, standing for night and day. Magpies are sacred to the ghost dancers, who have pictures of magpies painted on their ghost dance shirts. Maybe, I thought, these birds wanted to tell us that the long night was over for Native Americans and that for us a new day was dawning. Coyotes were whooping. I took it all for a good sign.

At first we tried to take stock of the situation. People were milling around the white-painted Sacred Heart Church, the “museum,” and Gildersleeve’s trading post with its garish sign:
WOUNDED KNEE MASSACRE, NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE. TRADING POST, AUTHENTIC INDIAN ARTS AND CRAFTS. SEE THE MASS BURIAL GRAVE, VISIT THE MUSEUM. CURIOS FOR SALE. GAS, OIL. ALL CREDIT CARDS ACCEPTED.

The trading post was the biggest building in “downtown” Wounded Knee. It was a combination general store, cafeteria, food market, curio shop, and pawn shop. It had a gas station with pumps and neon lights in front. It had started as a little peddler’s store and then had been added on and on until it was now a million-dollar emporium. The place on earth most sacred to us had been turned into a tourist trap. So now the people were taking it over, liberating cigarettes and food. A few people who were cold took some clothes. I told people not to take anything, but they did it anyhow. They were saying, “Gildersleeve has robbed us and overcharged us for years and years. We are only getting a little back of what is owing to us. We are the ones who made them rich.”

There were about three hundred of us occupiers. We had people from many tribes. Navajo, Cheyenne, Crow. Arapaho and
Shoshone. We had Oto, Potawatomi, Sac and Fox, Ojibway, Kiowa, and Hopi. There were North Dakota and Northwest Coast Indians, too. Also Blackfeet and members of New York State tribes, Onondaga and Mohawk, one single beautiful Shinnecock lady from Long Island. We were joined by some Apache and Cherokee. Altogether we had close to fifty tribes at the Knee. Among our warriors were Charles and Robert Yellow Bird, who claimed to be descendants of either General George Armstrong Custer or his brother, Tom Custer, who had repeatedly forced themselves upon a Cheyenne woman prisoner who later married a Lakota. The thought of what had happened to their great-grandmother made them extra-militant. The leaders stood in front of the church, speaking to the people. Russell Means said, “I am ready to die right here. I’m not going to die in some barroom brawl, I’m not going to die in some car wreck on the side of a lonely road on the rez because I’ve been drinking to escape the oppression of white society. I’m not going to die walking through Pine Ridge because Wilson’s goons think I should be killed. That’s not the way I am going to die. I am going to die for my treaty rights, right here if necessary.”

Dennis Banks spoke: “This is not an AIM action, it’s an all-Indian action. They can’t do anything worse than kill us. The feds will be coming soon. Be prepared to defend this position with your life! What is at stake here at Wounded Knee is not just the lives of a few hundred Indian people, but our whole Indian way of life.”

I told the people, “Our movement began when the Great Spirit organized the creation. The sacred altar is this hemisphere, this earth we’re standing on, this Wounded Knee. They massacred us here, our women and children. We want to massacre only the white man’s attitudes. I am not afraid to die. If I die here I will go where Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull are.”

The first thing we did was establish a defense perimeter, at the start only around the top of the hill, around the church and the cemetery. We dug a trench and put up a low wall made of cinderblocks,
sandbags, and sacks of masonry cement. Later we widened the perimeter to include all of “downtown.” Downtown was where we lived, and cooked, and ate, and had our meetings. It was made up of about ten buildings: the trading post, which we turned into our community center; the post office; the clinic; a low wooden house across from the trading post, which had running water and heat; the museum, which became the security center; and another wooden building, where some people slept. Overlooking downtown, about two hundred yards to the north, the Sacred Heart Church was used to house people. We established a kitchen in the basement. Toward the east were two small churches and the minister’s house. We put some seventy people in there. Wounded Knee was the hub of four roads, coming from Porcupine, Manderson, Pine Ridge, and Denby. The whole area around the Knee is rolling prairie with grass-covered hills. Way in the distance are patches of pine. It looks as if there is little cover for a man to hide. You can see far. But there are all kinds of little gullies and ravines that we could use to sneak in and out.

It was decided that I was not only to give spiritual guidance, but that I would also doctor the wounded and handle all gunshot cases. Wallace Black Elk, a Rosebud Sioux like myself, was the other medicine man. He had come with his wife, Grace. We both performed ceremonies. Stan Holder was named head of security and Bob Free would be our engineer in charge of electricity, the gas pumps, and all other equipment. Lorelei Decora was put in charge of the hospital. We lost little time getting organized.

We counted our weapons. We had twenty-six firearms, mostly hunting rifles, .22s and 30-30s, 12- and 16-gauge shotguns. Some had been liberated from the trading post. We also had maybe a dozen handguns. We had no high-powered rifles. There was only one automatic weapon, an AK-47. It belonged to Bobby Onco, a brother from Oklahoma and a Vietnam vet, who had brought it home as a war souvenir. Only one in ten was armed. One young kid had brought a modern hunting bow and arrows. One guy had an old Italian World War I rifle but could find no bullets to fit it.
Ammo was a big problem. We piled up what little we had on the altar of the church and Dennis or Stan Holder rationed it out. That was all we had to challenge the greatest power on earth.

The feds, as we found out during the long siege, had armed personnel carriers (APCs), heavily armored tracked vehicles, like tanks. They had M-60-, 50-, and 30-caliber machine guns, aerial illumination flares, trip wire flares, M-16 automatic rifles, searchlights, fancy starlight and infrared night scopes, M-79 grenade launchers, and rockets to launch CS tear gas. They had three helicopters to watch us, and several times we were buzzed by low-flying phantom jets. They had mobile field communication systems. We had all this coming down on us.

We took stock of our food supplies. We had taken a lot of food, mostly in cans, from the trading post and stored it in the church basement. But we had no idea how long it would have to last. Some thought we would occupy the Knee for only a few days. I thought it could last for a month. As it turned out, the siege lasted for seventy-one days. The feds, of course, tried to stop supplies from coming in. Dennis announced that we would eat horses, dogs, cats, rats, and even dirt before we’d let the government starve us out.