RavenShadow (25 page)

I prayed to the Grandfathers, I prayed to Wakantanka, and I prayed to Blue Crow. Yes, to my great-grandfather, Blue Crow. I apologized to him.
I spent my whole life running from you. All that time I am you
.

I spent my whole life running from my dead, when I should have made friends with you
.

PART SIX

The Big Foot Memorial Ride

Pleasant Sunday

E
mile and I lurched out of the darkness and cold through the doors of the Takini School, December 22, 1990. I hate cold. I was miserable and scared. Even after two months of getting ready spiritually and emotionally, I was in a funk. Tomorrow I was going to start riding a horse six days through below-zero weather—that’s in the daytime—toward a place my relatives didn’t want to go and where the U.S. cavalry killed them. I was going to travel with people who were obsessed with a past that had been deadly to their forebears and still seemed to hold them paralyzed. I would be miserable the whole time, and angry at myself for coming.
Talk about a fool’s errand
.

I’d never been to this schoolhouse on the Cheyenne River Reservation, and I didn’t like it. It was ponderous and ugly, looked like a place of dead concrete, not of live minds. A glance at Emile told me he didn’t like it either. As an artist he is a kind of Indian elf, all light and airy, not one for heavy places.

We hauled our sleeping bags and packs down the hall and across the gym floor to some bleachers. Lots of people were already nestled down here, snugged into the foot places between the seat places. I gave the world a scowl. These foot boards weren’t big enough for a full-sized man, in fact none bigger than
Emile. I hitched my gear higher on my back and headed for the end of the bleachers, and Emile followed without a word. I gave an audible
hmmpff
!

I looked around for reasons to be grumpy and found them. There were a lot of white people here, many of them carrying cameras and notebooks. I remembered something Tyler had said—“We decided to use the media to broadcast our message far and wide.”

Beyond the bleachers was some room in a chaos of sleeping bags, packs, and horse tack. I threw my stuff on the floor, and then spotted more reasons to be grumpy. A dozen or so Japanese monks and nuns sat on their bedrolls, heads shaven, all smiling, all facing the center of the gym, and all drinking something out of identical cylinders.
What the hell are the Japs doing here?
I speculated irritably that they would all drink their tea or whatever at the same instant with the same motion, like in a store window of mechanical toys.

What are the Japanese doing here? And all the white people?
I asked myself more seriously.
Isn’t this our problem? Isn’t the broken hoop ours to mend?

Two tall Indians walked past us looking for a place for their sleeping bags. They looked about fifty, and the gray was beginning to show. They also looked familiar.

“Who’s that?”

Emile glanced up and said, “Russell Means and Dennis Banks.”

“Oh, shit.” To me, if the names meant leadership—Wounded Knee II and a hundred other protests—they also meant grandstanding for cameras and microphones.
I’m here to do personal spiritual work
.

“Which is which?”

“The one with an expression like he’s looking for someone to snarl at is Means.” So Banks was the one who looked like he found the world quirky and funny.

Emile arranged his blankets and sleeping bag neatly, and
folded his parka for a pillow. I looked at him and thought,
Banks and Means and the media and everything else is a distraction. Keep your mind on why you’re here
.

A microphone man in the middle of the floor announced something, I didn’t hear what. As I turned toward him, I almost bumped into Chup, who was reaching to touch my sleeve. He grinned. “Great start, freezing our asses!”

Sallee stood behind him, kind of backing away.

“Hi, good to see you.”

“Hi,” she answered. “I’m glad you came.” She seemed, well, grave about it.

I touched my hat and tried for a devil-may-care grin. “Really glad to see you. Ride along with Emile and me.”

“I’m walking,” she said. “Like them.” She nodded at the Japanese. “They’re wonderful people. I met their leader, June San, the one standing.” A woman of rimless glasses and forbidding aspect. “I’m hugely impressed that they come halfway around the world to wipe away our tears.”

“There are walkers?”

She nodded. “Some of them are fasting, too. I’d be nervous about that.”

“Unbelievable.” It didn’t come out the way I wanted it to, as awe and admiration.

Sallee turned gracefully and walked to join the Japanese.
Never will be able to suit that woman
.

“Don’t try,” said Chup, and I laughed at how he always read my thoughts.

Emile tugged my sleeve and pulled me toward the center of the floor. Now I understood what the announcer was saying—a ceremony called Shaking of the Hands. Easy. We were going to say hi to everybody.

Everybody meant several dozen Indian people and several dozen white Americans, Europeans, and Japanese. Tyler had talked excitedly about numbers. “Scads of people, I bet over a hundred riders to start with, and more every day of the ride.”
Now I looked at them as they gathered on the gym floor, these people I would ride with for six days. Some of them would pledge to ride or walk the entire distance, in honor of the dead. Some would drive cars, haul wood and water, and do whatever else was needed. Others would come back and forth to support family members who were riding. We had, maybe, the beginning of a common purpose.

Half the time I don’t know what
my
purpose here is
.

The drum struck up the beat, the singing voices rose high, and we started walking. We stepped in an Indian double circle, a sort of coil of two rows of people facing each other and walking opposite directions. We shook hands and kept moving, but there was courtesy in it, an ease that allowed for human contact. I didn’t focus on how many people were non-Indians, and I let my eyes speak white-man body language, lingering, making real contact with each face. The faces were open, the eyes joining with mine. We said a word or two of greetings, warm greetings, and moved on, circling, circling.

I came to the Japanese and now was struck by the imperial beauty of the woman in rimless glasses. She nodded her head to me, a kind of bow. Yes, severe, and her face seemed to reserve her beauty for a higher purpose.

I came to Banks and Means. Banks looked tickled about something, and Means seemed to convey the high seriousness of the occasion with his great dignity.

I was getting into the spirit of the thing. People had come from everywhere for a high purpose. They were here to release the spirits and wipe away the tears of seven generations. Me too. Something in my heart eased.

“
Hau, kola
,” said the next face circling. It was Tyler, grinning big at me. I shook his hand a little tentatively, remembering the day I fell down at Wounded Knee.

Right behind Tyler came a big, shaggy, Indian-looking guy, maybe sixty, with wild, bushy gray hair down his back and the friendliest face you ever saw. “Pleasant Sunday,” he said, “Cherokee
and Shoshone,” and moved on, saying the same words to everyone. For a moment, though, he held my eye, and I thought I saw a special glint for me.

Pleasant Sunday, Cherokee and Shoshone? What the hell is that? On a Saturday?

Now the song rose higher and stronger, the fervor grew intense, and I began to feel the rhythm of the moving lines. Whether we were clumsy as individuals or not, the arcing lines glided across the floor in stately fashion, with a sexy, sinuous beauty. I began to feel myself as part of a whole of many parts, subtly interlocking, smoothly gliding in and out of one another. And our lives individually were difficult, maybe unattractive, but we created a new life together, serpentine and majestic.

I stopped seeing individual faces and introductions. I listened to the song and felt the beat of the drum throb up from the floor into my feet and through my body. I reached out and gave the beat to another human being with every handshake.

People were smiling now, and weaving a dance motion into their sideways steps, their reaching for hands, the bobs of their heads.

I laughed.
This is
FUN
. Sallee and Chup approached. After shaking Sallee’s hand, I twirled her gently in a full spin. She laughed. Chup made like he was tapdancing. I let out a whoop. I danced right through until …

The song ended. The announcer called for us to take our seats for the Makes-Vow Ceremony. Sitting down felt like suppressing myself.

A man I didn’t recognize introduced the ceremony and said a prayer for those who would come forward and take eagle feathers from the sacred hoop. I should not write down the words of a prayer—sacred things are not to be written, not to be photographed—but here’s the gist of it. He said, “When we take a feather, we vow to make the ride, the same ride Big Foot and his people made it a hundred years ago. We’re honoring them. If we take this vow, we say we’re going every mile. It’s like a
Sun Dance. No matter how hard it is, we’re gonna do it. No matter how cold, no matter how much we hurt. We pledge every step, all the way to Wounded Knee. Our pledge will be fulfilled when we stand in the circle around the mass grave on Cemetery Hill. If you are willing to make this pledge, no matter what, step forward and take an eagle feather from the sacred hoop. That eagle feather, it shows you promised.”

Then he begged the help of Wakantanka and the Grandfathers, to give us the strength to keep this vow.

The eight men of the drum raised sticks and started the music. The song, a strong, high, unison melody, raised to the gym roof. Men, women, and children lined up to make their vows.

In the center of the circle stood ten or twelve leaders of the ride, including Tyler and Alex White Plume. One man held the sacred hoop, draped with eagle feathers. It was Arvol Looking Horse, the keeper of the White Buffalo Woman Pipe. In each generation one person in that family is entrusted with the Pipe, the one White Buffalo Woman brought us. Though I didn’t know him then, I recognized him from pictures in the Lakota
Times
. He had a solemn face, reflecting the weight of the vows being taken. One by one people plucked feathers from the hoop.

I got ready. I was going to make this vow. I’d spent two months preparing my spirit to do this, and I was going through with it. Along the way I’d gotten the willies a dozen times. I’d told myself every bad thing I could think of, I’d shaken every accusing finger I had at me.
You’re going back to the blanket. You know better than this. You might as well refuse medicine and blood transfusions—you might as well dance with rattlesnakes. It’s like being a fundamentalist
. I’d said all of this. Ain’t it funny how, when you set your feet on a good road, thoughts come and bedevil you. Sometimes I think that’s Iya, the Evil One, Wind Storm, always working at us.

Here I am. I am going to make this vow. I don’t know why. When I make it, I am going to fulfill it
.

The fellow of “Pleasant Sunday” stepped in behind me, and grinned in a way that seemed lit especially for me. He said, “I saw that my introduction was confusing. My name is Pleasant Sunday. I’m Cherokee-Shoshone. Call me Plez, rhymes with
rez
.”

I just looked at him queer. From the front his hair looked like a stick of broccoli, tight to the back of his head, and then a clump of curls. His face was shaven clean as an egg, but everything else was hairy, even the backs of his hands. Hair stuck out above the top button of his shirt, and tufted out of his ears. Nobody should be that hairy. I turned back to the hoop.

I feel shy about telling you the details even now. I waited, my mind on nothing but what I was promising to do. When my turn came, I took a feather. I felt Looking Horse’s grave demeanor without looking at him. I kept my eyes on the hoop of the people, which I hoped to help mend. I looked at the feather which represented my task.

I walked back changed. I walked back scared.
I have a big purpose
.

I sat down on my rolled-up sleeping bag. Emile said, “For tonight, you want me to tie the feather into your hair?”

I thought, and discovered I did. “Thanks.”

He got down on his knees behind me, and I felt his fingers tug my hair. He stopped. “Up? Down? Sideways? What do you want?”

I remembered Grandpa had said Crazy Horse wore his eagle feather pointed down. Grandpa’s story was, that’s because when the eagle angles its tail down, it’s about to kill. “Down,” I said.
I am going to kill the drunken, drifting, self-pitying Blue Crow, and rise a new man
.

Emile’s fingers went back to work.

Pleasant Sunday, Chup, and Tyler strolled up. “Call me Plez,” Plez said to Emile, “rhymes with
rez
.”

I was gonna get sick of hearing that.

Tyler says to me, “This is a good man, this Pleasant Sunday. He knows things, help you maybe.” And walked off.

Chup says to me, “This man, I’ve been wanting you to meet him. He … like Tyler said.”

Pleasant Sunday grinned at me.
What is this, a conspiracy?
There was something about him like out of
Alice in Wonderland
—the Cheshire Cat?

He turned to Emile. “Want me to tie your feather in?” he says, touching the crown of Emile’s head.

“Yes, thank you,” said Emile, “tip up.”

“I’ll tie yours,” says Chup to Pleasant Sunday.

So there we were, four men doing each other’s hair, or having it done. I would have made a circle and tied in Chup’s, but it was already tied to the button of his baseball cap. This cap was fully beaded on the brim, and the crown said in big letters,
FBI
, and below, “Full-Blooded Indian.”

“Next is an honoring song for Sitting Bull,” called the announcer.

“I’ll just tie this off temporary-like,” said Plez, and jumped to his feet.

Emile finished my feather in a jiffy. I’d never worn an eagle feather before. Had never been entitled to. It felt good.

The voices of the drum group seemed to me very beautiful in this song: high, heroic men’s voices, giving honor to one of our great ones. A man who himself was a poet, a songwriter, a seer, a lover of the old ways, that’s what I heard about him. That’s why we gave him an honoring song, and stood while they sang it.