Crow Dog : Four Generations of Sioux Medicine Men (9780062200143) (6 page)

“The man and woman thing, it’s sacred. It’s good. The missionaries always say, ‘Don’t do that with a woman or the devil will get you.’ I tell them, ‘You guys invented the devil, you keep him. It has nothing to do with us.’ A man and a woman have to experience everything. The man is a human compass, the needle leads him to the woman. Those pious wasichus, that’s like a short in a radio. A man has to connect to understand women. You have to go to bed early to make a baby. At Crow Dog’s Paradise they ought to breed, to make more full-bloods. There aren’t enough. Well, Leonard and I, we have done our part. The Crow Dogs always had the elk medicine, the love herb.”

People would listen to my father for hours. He led a hard life, but he did not let it conquer his spirit. Under all the poverty and suffering, he was proud of who he was. He spoke of the “royal-ness of our bloodline.” He told me, “We are the born government of this turtle continent, physically and spiritually. They call us aborigines because we are the originals on this earth. The Crow Dogs are royal blood—that is, full-bloods. We are the people of the center.”

My father held on to our land, our allotment, which he named Crow Dog’s Paradise. He never sold the land, even when he was starving. He never dressed up. He always wore the same floppy pants and out-of-shape hat. But it was different when it came to his dance outfits. They were beautiful and he made them himself. He was the greatest eagle dancer our tribe ever had. Watching him you forgot that it was a man dancing, not a bird. He spoke about this: “I was great doing the eagle dance. I could make myself into Wanbli, the sacred bird. I could think and move like a bird, move slowly, cock my head, turn it this way and that way—just like an eagle. I had big eagle wings with feathers from my shoulders down to my fingertips and an eagle’s head and beak hiding my face. They all came to see Crow Dog dancing. A soaring song. The eagle has to soar, to fly high. I could crawl into the mind of an eagle. An eagle spirit took over my body.” My father’s dance was a prayer, a sacredness.

Old Henry didn’t have much of the white man’s learning, but whatever he learned he made good use of. He always said that he got his education from the spirit. He knew the old ways better than any man alive now. He could put it all together. He thought deeply about things. He wrestled with his thoughts. He was a teacher. He taught my sisters how to bead. His hands were always busy—making a feather bustle, a headdress, or painting a picture with a spiritual message in it. He was one of the first members of the Native American church in our tribe, the peyote church. He made a fire place for it at Crow Dog’s Paradise. He made our place into a spiritual center where our old ceremonies
were being performed. He and I never talked much to each other. We didn’t have to. We understood each other without words, in our minds.

Henry Crow Dog was born on September 2, 1899. He died in the winter of 1985. He was still in very good shape for his age. It was night. The snow was deep. It was very cold. He went to visit my sister Diane who lives only about half a mile from us. We didn’t notice him going out. We had a crowd of relatives staying over that night. He didn’t know that Diane had gone out and that her door was locked. They found him lying at her doorstep. He might have had a heart attack, or simply frozen to death, or both. It was as he always had said: “I am the last real Sioux left.”

We don’t have men like him anymore.

My mother, Mary Gertrude, was like her husband, full-blood and traditional. Her life was sad—of her twelve children only myself and my sisters Diane and Christine are still alive. She lost so many of her children, but she was strong enough to carry on, to take on the burden. She was born in 1900. She married my father in June 1921. Sixty years later you could still see them walking hand in hand. My mother took good care of us, in the old Indian way. She was a member of the Native American Church and one of the first to sing during meetings. Up to then only the men did the singing. She sang well.

On my mother’s side they don’t use peyote, only the pipe. They are the Left Hand Bulls. They are related to many medicine men, to Chips and Moves Camps. They come from White River, on the Rosebud reservation, some thirty miles north of Crow Dog’s Paradise. When my mother married Dad people told her, “You are going to carry a heavy load. You’re going to lead a hard life,
because the Crow Dogs live by themselves in the old way out on the prairie. When you marry Henry, you’ll carry a heavy burden.” She didn’t mind. She had a broad back. She stood up for us and protected us always.

My mother had a broad, full-blood face, with black sparkling eyes and a determined mouth. She was always busy cooking, beading, or making moccasins. She spent hours bending over her old Singer sewing machine, the kind you work with your foot, because, until 1965, we had no electric light, just kerosene lamps with big reflectors. We had no running water and no indoor plumbing. So life for my mother was not easy. People liked her arts and crafts, and she earned money with it. She taught beading to her daughters and grandchildren. Doing so much work with tiny beads and thread so fine it was almost invisible made her shortsighted. Even though she wore glasses, she was bending so low over her work that her nose almost touched her hand holding the needle.

My father said, “Waktapo, my wife’s grandmother, was a fine tanner. She still did brain tanning. It stinks but it’s the best. She also used porcupine quills well. She made beautiful things. She was a Left Hand Bull, part Cheyenne. My wife took after her. She learned from her to make beautiful beadwork. But she didn’t do the quilling much. You wear down your teeth flattening the quills. My wife has the Indian understanding. She keeps track of a whole trunkload of papers, with seals and stamps on them. Piles and piles of documents, allotments, treaties, promises, guarantees, all broken. A mountain of paper flying in the wind. When our house burned down, most of this was lost. We took to each other, never quarreled, never complained. She’s a fine woman and a fine mother. She knows the Lakota ways.”

When we taped my mother in 1983, she said, “Both our families, mine and Henry’s, are traditionals. My father, my uncle, and my father’s sister had ceremonies all the time at their places, and I was always there. So I know all those songs. And when I went to mission school, at Saint Francis, I was a choir singer, so I catch
everything. All the songs, any songs. From then on, whenever there was a ceremony, they took me along. I sang the starting songs. The spirit comes for the songs.

“My father was a Left Hand Bull. And my mother’s name was Camilla; her Indian name was Shorty, or Neck. I was the oldest girl in the family. My father told me to get married and not come back over there. ‘Make your own life,’ he said. ‘Stay with your man. Don’t ask for trouble.’ He taught me that, and I did that. I was never parted from Henry. My mother told me, ‘If you are unhappy, come over for a while, for comfort.’ But I never had to go to her for that kind of comfort.

“My father was a traditional full-blood. He used to be a tribal policeman at Rosebud. He was a good man. He could speak good English. And my mother heard it and she learned by listening to him. I hardly went to school, but I could talk English. People asked me how come I can talk all that wasichu language? ‘I listen and I learn,’ I told them. ‘And what I learn I use.’

“I met Henry when I was twenty-one years old. I met him at Saint Francis, at some doings there. But before that I already knew him. Well, that was June 26, 1921. First we stayed over at my mother’s place and then we went to live at Ironwood. Then we went back to my mother’s place again, and my father told me, ‘Now you are married. So you have to have a house and make a living, the two of you.’ So Henry brought me here, on the other side of the Little White River. We lived in the log house Henry built himself, right at this place here on Crow Dog’s allotment land, right under those hills. Henry made the house large, because we were having kids. He used anything he could find to build this house. He was good with his hands and could make anything, build a house or make himself a dance costume or a war bonnet. He used tree trunks to support the ceiling. He painted the whole works sky blue with a yellow trim. He also built two outhouses a little away from the big house, and also a cook shack for hot summer days. So we lived in there with plenty of room, not only for us, but to have plenty of space for ceremonies—peyote
meeting, yuwipi, dog feast, giveaway, any kind of ceremony. The house was always full of guests. When people came for meetings they slept on the floor. Whenever there was a ceremony the whole floor was covered with bodies.

“And cooking went on all the time, twenty-four hours almost. Indians are not like whites, who eat and sleep always at the same time according to the clock. We sleep and feed whenever we feel like it. So it was cook, cook, cook all the time. But it was nice, so nice. We stayed there for a long time, until the house burned down, and with all the troubles we had, it was still a good time of much friendship and laughter. The house burned down in 1976. We think somebody did it on purpose. The goons, maybe, who hated us because of AIM and Wounded Knee and who saw their chance when Leonard was away in jail. Well, we had no gas, no well, no electricity. We had nothing, but we managed. We got the water from the river. We had a stove to keep warm in winter, we had a cookstove. We lived there for over forty years. First, while Henry was building the house, little by little, we lived in a big tent. So we lived, sometimes hot and sometimes cold.

“Henry was a good worker. He was always cutting and hauling wood. He sold it. My mother gave us two horses and a wagon. We got a little lease check every December. We leased land to ranchers to run their cattle on, but we always had to wait until December or January until we got our money. The government fixed the amount the ranchers would have to pay us, but they fixed it way too low. Mister Indian always gets the wrong end of the stick.

“Left Hand Bull, my father, and the other Left Hand Bulls, they kept the pipe. They all smoked it together and prayed that way. My mother told me, ‘That’s holy in the Lakota way. Never forget, you’re a Lakota. So if you sit there and pray quietly the Indian way, that’s good.’ My mother taught me how to pray with the pipe. Leonard’s first wife, Francine, was a Left Hand Bull too. She gave him children, but they parted ways. They had a reason, I guess. Henry’s father, I knew him. He and his wife were parted,
but he was a nice, good man. We stayed with him for a while, but he never stayed for long in one place. He moved around, stayed by himself.

“There are women around here, old ones, who are bashful. They’re afraid to talk, afraid to open their mouths. Some younger ones are that way too. I tell them, ‘Speak up! You can talk. English or Indian, don’t hold back!’ I never was bashful. Maybe that’s why Henry liked me. He isn’t bashful either. I went to school as far as the sixth grade. I learned what I needed to know and made a living.

“Leonard had an older brother. During the war he worked in a cement factory and he breathed in all that cement. They didn’t give them masks and all that. And when he came back, he was coughing all the time. He got worse, so they took him to the hospital for a while. When he came back again he told me, ‘Mom, I can hardly breathe. I am drowning for air.’ They took him to Rapid City and kept him there for a while. And he came back again and seemed better. But soon he was coughing once more, and the coughing never stopped. Then he died, from all that cement. At that time the war was still going on, though coming to an end. And nobody was back around here. We had no men to help us. So I had just my sister and my mother to help me. We buried him at Saint Francis. His name was Cleveland, Cleveland Crow Dog. He took peyote. He belonged to the Native American Church. He was a good singer. He had a soft, sweet voice, not like Leonard’s. He knew every song. Everyplace we went, people wanted him to sing. He was that good. He was a nice boy, and even after all those years I still miss him real bad. He was a good boy. He was so young. And he died.

“Just like my daughter Delphine. She was nice too, but she had no luck. A drunken policeman beat her to death. He broke her arm and left her lying there in the road. It was snowing and so cold. They found her dead, her tears frozen on her cheeks. When he sobered up, that policeman asked my forgiveness. What can you do? I had twelve children, but they’re all gone except three. They died so young. All gone, gone, gone.

“Leonard had an older brother whom he never got to know. We named him Earl Edward. In 1934 he was about two years old. We were living in Saint Francis at the time, near the church. Henry was working for the WPA, putting out square chunks of compressed hay for cattle and picking beets. What the whites called Indian work. John Black Tomahawk came over to visit us. He was singing powwow songs and Henry did the drumming. We were having a good time. Somebody heard it and thought we were having a peyote meeting. So he went and told the priests in Saint Francis. The priests ran things there. They said, ‘Crow Dog is a heathen. He contaminates the flock, leading them to damnation.’ They sent the tribal police to arrest Crow Dog. They told Henry, ‘The missionaries don’t want your kind here. You have two hours to get out of town, two hours or else.’

“Henry ran over to Uncle Dick Fool Bull. He asked, ‘What shall I do? My little boy is sick with a cough.’

“Fool Bull told him, ‘What can you do? They have the police. They have the power. You have your own allotment near the river. They can’t chase you from there. Go there and pray.’

“So Henry packed up. He took down the tent that was our home and fixed up the wagon, hitched up his team. He loaded up everything we owned and put us all in the wagon. There was a blizzard. You couldn’t see your hand before your eyes. And it was so cold! So Henry drove the team all the way to our allotment, with the snow and icy wind in his face. It was dark and you couldn’t see. The horses were all iced over. There was hardly any road. It was slow going. And somewhere between Saint Francis and our land, our little boy died. Of the cold. Of the wind. His name was Earl Edward. Weeping, we made camp across the river from where the house is now. There was no house then. There was nothing. Henry and his friend Ed Red Feather went to the BIA office and got a coffin and all the things needed for the funeral. It was such a little coffin. Henry did not know where to bury our son. At Saint Francis they wouldn’t have him, because their cemetery was for ‘good Christians only.’

“Ed Red Feather told my father, ‘You have been to the Native American church and you are welcome to return. You have a seat there. You can bring your son to be buried in our cemetery.’ Sky Bull told the members of the church, and they made our dead son a member of the Native American Church and buried him that way.

“I was so sad. I went to a meeting and took peyote for the first time. And in my vision I saw the spirit with my dead children, and was encouraged, even though I couldn’t stop crying. Grandfather Peyote comforted me and Henry through his spiritual power. One year later, on the memorial day of our little son’s death, Henry and I were baptized in the Native American Church. We were baptized by Ed Red Feather. Whoever was Catholic in our family then left the Church. They said it was the priests who killed our little child.

“Henry went to a Native American Church meeting one time and didn’t come home that night. My mother told me not to say anything about that, not to let those missionaries hear about it. It could cause trouble. My mother was a good woman. She never talked down any church or religion, white or Indian. She was raised a Catholic, but, at the same time, she prayed with the pipe and prayed in the Lakota way. From that time on, Henry always went to the peyote meetings.

“I was sick at the time, very sick. I had lost a lot of weight, but the white doctor had not helped me. Dick Fool Bull said to me, ‘Sister-in-law, you ought to eat peyote, eat the holy medicine. You’ll be all right, because you’ve got some kids and you are still young. That medicine can help you.’ I went down-river to Dick Fool Bull’s place and he gave me a cup of peyote tea. At that time I knew little about the peyote church and the sacred medicine, so I went to the meeting. I ate peyote all night and began getting well the next day. The herb made me feel so strange, so very different. I didn’t think I could get well, so I prayed as hard as I could. The woman next to me said, ‘Watch me praying. Do like me.’

“I said, ‘There is something strange going on inside me, in my mind. Something wrong, maybe.’

‘“No, that will help you. That’s the medicine working on you.’

“And they prayed over me, and feathered me, and they were singing. I got to feel well, like soaring. My body, and my thoughts, and my mind, they felt good. It was a new kind of good feeling. Like looking down into myself from the outside. I felt good, and warm, and contented, and comforted. Toward morning, I felt well, better than I ever had in my whole life. I was light-headed, clearheaded, and my sickness was gone. All those germs had got out of me. So, from that time, I was never sick.”

My mother died in 1987 of cancer. As long as her husband was alive she remained strong, but when my father died she lost heart. She lost the will to live. I wept for a long time. We miss her.