Walking Wolf (16 page)

As I looked about, I noticed that many of the assembled warriors were wearing strange-looking shirts decorated with eagle feathers and painted with symbols of power. As they listened to Coyote Shit's prophesy of victory, they became more and more agitated.

Medicine Dog did not try to hide his disgust as he stared at the man who had replaced him as the tribe's shaman. “The years have not served Coyote Shit well in wisdom. His vision is false; his medicine untrue. He has convinced these warriors that the only way for the Comanche to become a great nation again is to kill all the Whites. He has provided them with “medicine shirts” that he claims will turn aside the Whites' bullets.” Medicine Dog spat, producing a sizable gob for a dead man. “They are doomed.”

Before I could say anything, Medicine Dog grabbed my hand. I felt myself shooting through the air like an arrow released from a bow. When he let go, I was standing on a distant hilltop overlooking the battlefield. I recognized the place as Adobe Walls, one of the oldest settlements in that part of the country. Below us, Quanah's warriors attempted to attack twenty-eight buffalo hunters barricaded in the ancient fort. The buffalo hunters were armed with rifles that could bring down buffalo as easily as rabbits.

The first wave of Comanche rode in headlong, arms thrown wide, screeching their war cries, exposing themselves to enemy fire without fear. After all, they had their medicine shirts to protect them. Most of them were blown clear out of their saddles.

I shook my head and looked away from the slaughter below, only to find myself standing beside Coyote Shit. He was desperately singing prayers and working medicine, no doubt hoping to effect some change in his tribe's favor. A brave rode up from the battlefield, bearing a message from Quanah. ‘Where was the magic promised them?' Before Coyote Shit had a chance to respond, a stray bullet—fired by a rifle seven-eighths of a mile away—crashed into the hapless brave, splashing his blood all over the frightened medicine man.

Medicine Dog and I stood over Coyote Shit as he shivered and hugged himself, his eyes wide with fear. I expected Medicine Dog to gloat over his rival's downfall, but he looked sad, almost pitying.

“What will become of him?” I asked.

“Quanah will not kill him, if that's what you're thinking. He will forgive Coyote Shit what he has done. But he will not forget, either. Coyote Shit's power with the Comanche is at its end. He will go to the reservation with the others next year, and spend the rest of his days as an object of ridicule. He will live to be old. Much older than those who believed in his medicine shirts.”

“And Quanah?”

“He shall become old, as well. And fat. And corrupt. The reservation will make all of the great chiefs rot before their deaths.”

“Why are you showing me these things, Medicine Dog?”

“So that you will see the folly that came to the friends of your youth, so that you might warn your adopted family of the trouble that is to come.”

“But I don't understand—”

“Understand later. It is enough for now that you remember.” With that, Medicine Dog touched my hand one more time, and I felt my body turn into lightning and shoot across the sky, back to the land of the Sioux.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back in my own tipi, my wife pressed against my side. As I puzzled out what my dream meant, I lifted a hand to wipe the sleep from my eyes, only to find it caked with the blood of a dead Comanche brave.

That winter, runners appeared at the winter camps of all the non-treaty chiefs. They bore a grim message from the Great Father in Washington: They were to come to the agencies at once or be considered hostiles. That meant the White army was prepared to make war. Of course, Sitting Bull and the others chose to ignore the summons. As Sitting Bull was fond of saying: “God made me an Indian, not an agency Indian.”

During the late winter months, Digging Woman took Small Wolf with her to visit her sister, who was in a village on the Powder River. I was loath to let them go, but Digging Woman had not seen her sister in a long time, and the aunt was a particular favorite of our son. In March of that year, General Crook led an attack on the village. It was a short but vicious skirmish. While Digging Woman managed to escape unharmed, her sister was shot while attempting to flee the camp. Eight-year-old Small Wolf, standing over his fallen aunt with nothing but a toy spear for protection, was shot through the head by one of the bluecoats. There was little pleasure to be taken from the knowledge that Crook later bungled the follow-up to the attack and was forced to retreat.

When the news reached me of my son's death, I was inconsolable. My son—my only child—was dead at the hands of the Whites. I screamed and howled like a thing gone mad and ran into the snow-covered hills on all fours, baying at the frigid moon until my lungs bled. Digging Woman was equally distraught. She cut off her braids and burned them as a token of her grief, ritually cutting her breasts until they were wet with blood. Sitting Bull assured us both that there would soon come a time for vengeance against the bluecoats. And that it would be sweet indeed.

Within two years, the number of Indians fleeing the reservations for the non-treaty camps had reached epidemic proportions. There were twelve hundred lodges represented, and easily two thousand warriors gathered in one place. Our camp, located along the Greasy Grass River, extended for three miles. Never before had there been such a gathering of tribes in the history of the Plains Indians. Hunkpapa, Oglala, Brûlé, Miniconjou, Sans Arc, Blackfoot, Northern Cheyenne—they were all there. Several powerful and influential chiefs made camp with Sitting Bull, among them Black Moon, Hump, and Crazy Horse. None of these men were looking for a fight, but neither would they avoid one, should it come looking for
them.

Earlier that season we had staged the annual Sun Dance on the banks of the Rosebud, where Sitting Bull had received a vision of great strength and clarity. He claimed to have seen many dead soldiers fall into our camp as if they were dolls dropped by fleeing children. Everyone liked this vision and no one doubted its truth, for Sitting Bull was known to be a true seer. And, besides, he had the luck of Coyote at his right hand—how could his medicine fail?

When the news came that bluecoats were marching down the Rosebud, Crazy Horse took a large war party and rode off to do battle. They fought the bluecoats for six hours, after which Crazy Horse called off the fight and the soldiers retreated. While this fight had been good, Sitting Bull knew it was not the battle he'd seen in his vision.

Meanwhile, General Terry and Colonel Gibbon joined at the mouth of the Rosebud, and sent out a strike force of six hundred cavalry under the command of the same Yellow Hair who had violated the sanctity of the Black Hills, the most holy of Sioux places. Yellow Hair followed the Indian trail up the Rosebud, across the Wolf Mountains and down to the Greasy Grass, which the Whites called Little Bighorn.

I did not take part in the battle. Nor did Sitting Bull, for that matter. Shortly before Yellow Hair's regiment arrived on the scene, we retired to the nearby mountains to work our medicine. We were so wrapped up in our prayers and rituals that we did not hear the clash of sabers or the crack of gunfire until the battle was well underway. I remember looking down at the blue-clad figures scurrying about in the dust as the smell of their fear rose to greet me on the wind. As I watched my adopted people slay those responsible for the death of my son, I knew I should feel elation or victory. Instead, there was a taste of ashes in my mouth.

I turned to Sitting Bull and said, “The Whites will not let this go. They will hunt us down like wild animals.”

Sitting Bull shrugged. “Better to be hunted down like wolves than to live like dogs.”

After the battle was over and the gun smoke had cleared, we left the mountains and headed into the valley to count the dead and aid the wounded.

Over the years, all sorts of wild tales have come out of Custer's Last Stand. The one that gets repeated the most is that Crazy Horse took Custer's scalp for his lodgepole. That's pure crap. The other story is that Sitting Bull cut open Custer's ribcage and ate his heart. That's an out-and-out lie. I was there, and I can testify that Custer's body was not mutilated.

We butt-fucked the bastard's corpse, of course, but that's a different thing entirely.

Within a few days of their victory at Greasy Grass, the various bands broke up and went on their way. Some even headed back to the reservation. Despite being faced with a common enemy, it was still difficult to get the different tribes to band together. Little Bighorn was an exception, not the norm. Although Sitting Bull was greatly respected, he could not hold a three-mile-wide camp together.

What should have been the Plains Indians' greatest triumph ended up being their undoing, of course. The massacre at Little Bighorn shocked and outraged the Whites and shook the Peace Policy to the point of collapse. It also brought a flood of bluecoats into Indian country, and rationalized the forced sale of the Black Hills to the United States.

Five months later, eleven hundred cavalry fell on Dull Knife's camp, slaying forty braves. The rest were forced to watch the soldiers burn their tipis, clothing and food supply. The temperature plunged to thirty below that night, and eleven babies froze to death at their mothers' breasts. Those who managed to escape made their way to Crazy Horse's encampment on the Tongue River, but the soldiers followed them there as well. Come that spring, Crazy Horse led his Oglalas to the Red Cloud Agency and threw his weapons on the ground in token surrender. Four months later he was dead, stabbed by a soldier's bayonet during a skirmish with guards.

Sitting Bull, on the other hand, refused to surrender. Rather than go to the reservation, he led his people northward to Canada. The army watched the boundary line like a hawk the whole time, making sure Sitting Bull didn't ride into Montana to hunt buffalo. After four increasingly lean years, Sitting Bull finally surrendered to the United States government at Fort Buford, Montana.

However, Digging Woman and I were not in the group that rode onto the reservation that summer day in 1881. I figured if the Whites had trouble with Indians like Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, then they would most certainly make life difficult for someone they viewed as a ‘traitor'. So I took my wife and disappeared into the wilderness.

Chapter Ten

After sitting bull surrendered and went on the reservation, I took my wife and built myself a camp on Paintrock Creek, up in the Big Horn Mountains. While the White government was adamant about keeping Indians on the reservation, they tended to turn a blind eye to settlers who set up housekeeping with squaws. And, to the casual observer, that's all I was.

Digging Woman suffered far more than I did. The Sioux, like the Comanche, are a social bunch, given to getting up and visiting one another whenever the mood strikes them. It didn't sit well that she should be kept from seeing her sisters, aunts and other kinfolk. When, miracle of miracles, she came up pregnant again, her hankering to visit her folks became so strong there was nothing I could do but let her go.

A lone squaw traveling back and forth wouldn't have raised suspicions, but I was fearful she might be caught and forced to stay on the reservation for good. But my fears proved to be unfounded. Digging Woman managed to sneak in and out of the Pine Ridge Agency, where Sitting Bull's people had been placed, without anyone being the wiser. In fact, she became so adept at it over the years, I stopped worrying about her taking trips.

However, the stories she brought back concerning the quality of life on the reservation were troublesome. The reservations might have seemed like an ideal solution for the Whites, but they were proving extremely unhealthy for the Indians corralled upon them. Where once crime had been rare within the tribes, and most disputes were settled by giving ponies to the aggrieved parties, now the White agents dealt harsh punishments to even the most trivial offender. There were few pleasures allowed them, as the native dances had been banned by the authorities, and the missionaries were busy stamping out many of the ancient customs that had held tribal society together for centuries. A communal, nomadic people by nature, they were suddenly expected to appreciate and respect the value of individual land and free enterprise. And, to top it all off, they were expected to dry farm in flinty badlands soil that wouldn't have raised a prayer.

In 1884, I was given another son. Like his brother before him, he was born with a pelt of light fur that fell away within a week of his arrival, leaving him hairless everywhere except his legs, for some reason. So we called him Wolf Legs. He was a good-natured child, bright and inquisitive and with the brave heart of a true warrior. He was my pride and joy, and when I held him in my arms the day he was born, the love I felt for him was almost enough to make me forget the loss of my firstborn son. Almost.

I was a happy man in those days. When I look back on that time, I see it through an autumnal haze, as if the nine years I spent along Paintrock Creek was one long Indian Summer. I was living free, away from the misery of the reservations. I had a sod lodge, divided into two areas—one for sleeping, the other for everything else. Although my camp was far from the agencies, the number of braves seeking council did not slack off. Somehow these young men always managed to find their way to my camp, most of them rail-thin and racked with fever by the time they arrived. Many died on my doorstep. I have no way of knowing the number who died along the route. Most came seeking visions from the fabled Walking Wolf, Hand of Coyote, or cures from his shaman wife. Some of them could still afford ponies, blankets and beadwork in exchange for my services, but most were too poor to give me anything but respect. I began to hear from the pilgrims talk of a strange new religious movement sweeping the tribes on the reservations. Something called the Ghost Dance.