Man on Two Ponies (8 page)

After thinking about it, Billy shook his head. “I've waited nine years to be with him again. I may have to wait nine more, but there's one thing I want above all, and that's to hear him call me his son. Once I hear that I won't care what happens, but until he does I'll never know who I am.” Culver's mustache twitched like his lips were moving, but no words came out.

Billy settled into the routine of the trading post, glad he had
something to occupy his time. He built new shelves for the post and storerooms. “You're a pretty good hand with a hammer and saw,” Culver told him, as he inspected his work.
I never thought I'd be pleased to hear anyone say that.

One day Billy looked up and felt a sudden thrill to see Mollie Deer-in-Timber and her mother enter the post. At fifteen Mollie was taller and prettier
than
ever in the dress she'd made, which was tight enough to show that she was becoming a woman. Her eyes opened wide for a moment when she saw Billy. She walked toward him, looking pleased but not quite smiling.

“Billy, it's good that you're finally back,” she said, offering her hand like a Wasicun. Her mother eyed Billy suspiciously.

“Julian told me you're helping the teacher.” She nodded. “You never baked a cake for me like you promised.” She smiled. “Julian also said you'll be married soon.” The smile faded and she lowered her eyes.

“It's not that I put you out of my mind as soon as I got back, Billy. I kept hoping you'd write me.” She looked embarrassed to admit that. “When you didn't I was sad for a while, for I knew you'd forgotten me and that I must forget you. It wasn't easy.”

“I meant to write,” Billy stammered. “Really I did. I tried to, but it sounded so stupid I tore it up.” She looked a little sad.

“My father wants me to
marry
a white man. He says I'm too much Wasicun to live like an Indian. There's a man... He's a bit older, but I think he'll
be
a good husband. He wants to wait a year or two,
till
I'm older.”

As she left with her mother, she said, “I hope I'll see you the next time we come.” Billy weakly tried to smile. He felt empty inside, and could think of nothing to say.
I never knew how much I wanted her. Now it's too late.

Culver regularly received newspapers from Dakota Territory and Nebraska, and Billy got in the habit of scanning them when no one was in the post. In November he read that the Friends of the Indian had met with Secretary of the Interior
L.
Q.
C. Lamar to give him their views on what his Indian policy should be.

The Friends of the Indian held their annual meeting at A. K. Smiley's plush hotel at Lake Mohonk in October 1885 to decide
for the government what it should do about the Indians. The time has come, they
agreed,
to give each Indian family a
farm,
sell the surplus land, cut off
free
rations, and force the Indians to support themselves. We must educate the Indians and make them citizens whether they want these things or not. A few expressed concern over pushing the Indians
too
rapidly, but the majority favored all possible speed in stamping out the Indianness in all Indians by one great stroke.

Captain Pratt, who had been invited to attend because of his humanitarian work with Indian children, recommended turning the Indians out into the white population
to
sink or swim. When someone worried that the Indians weren't prepared
to
cope with that and would surely sink, Pratt cheerfully agreed. “A few, those who desetve to, will sutvive,” he said, and dismissed the rest with a shrug. The well-fed brethren now spoke of statving the Indians into submission by cutting off their rations in the same breath they talked of educating them.
As
St. Paul said, “He who will not work shall not eat,” they intoned.

Their course set, in November they sent a delegation to Washington with the distasteful task of making their views known to new
Secretary
of the Interior Lamar. Not only was he a Democrat-even worse, he was a former rebel slave owner. Hoping he would
be
as amenable as the Republican secretaries they preferred
to
deal
with, they presented their plan for scrapping all treaties, allotting land to families, cutting off rations, dissolving the resetvation system, and making all Indians citizens.

Lamar listened politely, then told them bluntly that he would have no part in uprooting
the
Indians and
casting
them, unprepared, into the position of tax-paying citizen land owners. “No
hard
and fast policy can be applied
to
all the tribes,” he explained, “and making them suddenly citizens and land owners is nearly as cruel as a war of extermination. Those that are ready I will push on; those that are not I
will
protect.” The brethren withdrew
to
regroup and plan their attack.

“Who are the Friends of the Indian?” Billy asked Culver. “I didn't know Indians had any white friends.”

“There are some wealthy Republicans in the East who
like
to
champion causes, and after the slaves were
freed
they forgot them and discovered the Indians. The brethren are sincere and well-meaning folk who do what they decide is right, but they insist on having their own way even when wrong. None of them has ever seen an Indian, but no matter. They've
made
their fortunes, so what they
think
and say must be right—the arrogance of wealth, someone called it. Occasionally they may do something good, like blocking the Edmunds land grab, but they're dangerous friends because they're so self-righteous.”

“The Edmunds land grab?”

“A couple of years ago, when you were in school, a commission under Newton Edmunds of Dakota Territory was sent to ask if the Sioux would sell some of their land. On his own, Edmunds drew up what he called an agreement that was intended to swindle the Sioux out of more than half their land, then claimed the Sioux had approved it. The brethren heard about his methods and blocked it, not that they object to the Sioux selling land. Then Edmunds said that the government had broken a
treaty
when it took the Black Hills, which set a precedent for doing it again. That didn't fly either—at the
time
the brethren said treaties are sacred, and of course Congress backed off. Now it sounds like their attitude toward treaties has changed,
thanks
to Captain
Pratt.”

Ration day was visiting time, the chance to see friends and relatives from distant camps. Every family collected the stringy beef, salt pork, coarse flour, brown sugar, and cheap coffee that had to last them for ten days. Then they made pan bread, cooked beef and salt pork in a big pot, and gorged themselves. “That's how it was in the old days,” Culver observed, chewing on his pipe. “They'd go hungry until they had a successful hunt, then everyone ate all he could hold. Most of these families run out of food and go hungry for a day or two before drawing rations.”

When all were sitting around with full stomachs, Wright came and talked to them through a mixed blood intetpreter. “Like I've said many times,
all
I ask is that you build a cabin and tend an acre or two of corn. We'll help with the cabin and supply a door, windows, and a cookstove for it.” The intetpreter called the stove a kettle on legs, the Lakota expression for it.
“If
you plant an acre or two of corn, the government will also give you a wagon
and harness for a
team,
and a sewing machine for your wife.”

Each time, Billy noticed, four or five families
accepted
the agent's offer, while other nonprogressives glared at them. Their wives enviously watched the gleeful women receive their sewing machines, then scowled at their husbands. At later ration days Billy saw some of these same nonprogressives agree to build cabins and plant com, while their wives stood by smiling. Wright's methods were successful, but they aroused the resentment of the die-hard nonprogressives.

Billy watched for Mollie Deer-in-Timber on ration days but seldom saw her, and she rarely accompanied her mother to the trading
post.
Whenever he thought of her marrying a Wasicun he felt sick. Then he
realized
that what hurt wasn't that the man was a Wasicun, but that she was marrying someone else.

In March 1886 Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts introduced a bill for alloting Indian reservations, giving each family 160 acres. Dawes told reporters that in the bill he tried to
safeguard
the tribes in every way, but it had been changed over his protest. The provision requiring the majority of men in any tribe to approve of allotment before it could be applied to them had been dropped.

“If my land in severalty bill should become law,” Dawes added, “it will depend entirely on the character of the government agents who execute its provisions whether it is a success or failure.
If
it is entrusted to men of unflinching honesty and broad views, the Indians will be secure in the possession of the best lands of the reservations, but if it is entrusted to dishonest men the Indians will be cheated out of their lands.”
That means we'll
be cheated, just like that
candy
they promised us.

Under the bill, when the President decided to have a reservation surveyed, allotments could be
made
only to Indians who voluntarily applied for them. But after four years, those who had not applied could be forced to accept allotments. “If that bill ever becomes law and is actually put into effect,” Culver said, “it will be absolute disaster for most tribes. Let's hope it fails.”

The nonprogressives watched with growing
ire
as others were rewarded with wagons and sewing machines. The wife of Wooden Knife, a crusty old nonprogressive with a missing front tooth,
grumbled about wanting a sewing machine so loudly she finally stirred him to action. That provided a little excitement and broke the monotony of reservation life for a few days. Wooden Knife came to the trading post one day and lisped to Culver, who turned to Billy.

“He needs to
talk
to the agent and wants an interpreter who won't twist his words. Go with him and see if you can help him.”

In the agent's office Billy translated Wooden Knife's request, while the old warrior stood like a statue, with arms folded and head high. “He says that you should give his wife a sewing machine like other women have.”

“Tell him that if he wants her to have one, he must agree to build a cabin and plant corn like the others have done,” Wright replied, stroking his beard. “When he does that she can have one, not before. That's the rule. Tell him it's up to
him.”

When Billy relayed this, Wooden Knife was furious. “We'll get them our own way,” he growled as he stalked out. Billy didn't translate that remark.

On the next issue day, when most of the Brulés were at the agency as usual, Wooden Knife and his friends rode up.

“Everything in the warehouse belongs to us!” he shouted. “It's ours for the lands the Wasicuns stole! They can't make us work for what is ours.”

Those with him shouted “Hau!”

“You interpret for me,” Wooden Knife told Billy. His friends crowded into the agent's office behind the two. Billy sympathized with Wooden Knife—what he said made sense—but the habit of obedience to white officials drilled into him at Carlisle made him regard the old warrior as wrong and likely to be punished for defying the agent.

Shouting threats, Wooden Knife and his friends backed Wright into a comer while Billy did his best to translate their noisy demands. Wright shook his head. “No!” he thundered.

Yelling “Kill him!
Kill
him!” Wooden Knife and the others ran out, loudly complaining to anyone within hearing about the bad treatment they'd received from the agent. Crow Dog, the killer of Spotted Tail, took them to his cabin. Billy remained at the agency and didn't hear what Crow Dog told them, but
when they returned late in the afternoon they were still angry.

In the meantime, Wright had summoned the Indian police, and after seeing them and shouting more threats, the troublemakers withdrew. They soon reappeared, this time waving their Winchesters and singing war songs. Realizing they were in a mood for killing, Billy and others ran out of their way.
They
must have lost their heads—willing to fight over sewing machines. What
has
happened to the Brulés?

The council
hall
was soon jammed, with Wooden Knife and his excited warriors on one side, the police and friends of the agent on the other, howling into one another's faces. Several police elbowed their way through the crowd to the door of the agent's office. Wright opened it and held up his hand for silence. Finally the shouting ceased, while Wooden Knife bared his remaining teeth and his friends glowered at the agent, menacingly fingering their weapons.