Part 6

“The friends did not say anything. They just took hold of me and set me in the saddle; and then we started for the hill of vision. The one who walked ahead to show the way was carrying the offerings for where the sun goes down--the bow and wooden cup--, and for the place of cleansing--the white wing and the herb. The other walked behind me with a morning star made of rawhide for where the light and the days of men are born; the hoop and staff for where the growing power lives. I held the pipe; and I was holding it very tight with both hands in front of me, for on that must I depend. It was a sacred, fearful thing that I was doing, and although my legs were getting long there was still a little boy inside me. I did not look where we were going. I just looked hard at the pipe, and held it tight. There were four painted strips of skin hanging from the stem, blue, white, red, and yellow for the quarters and the powers. Also from the stem a long wing feather of an eagle hung, and that was for the Great Mysterious One. Last, upon the mouthpiece was the bison hide, and that was for the breast of Maka where all that live, with legs or wings or roots or fins, are little children nursing. I did not understand it all till I was older, but I could feel the power in the pipe.

“The sun was shining bright and level across the world, getting ready to go under, when we came to the hill standing high and alone, with shadows gathered around it like a blanket and die last of day upon its head. I felt an aching in my breast, for it was like the time we took my father to the scaffold on the hill.

“When we came to the top I could see that the friends had prepared the place for me. It was flat, and they had dug a hole there as deep as to my waist, and round about it sacred sage was scattered. Then, with the hole for center, they had made a circle, maybe fifteen steps across, and at each quarter a stick was set, each with the proper color on it--blue, white, red, yellow. There were strips of painted rawhide for the black road and the red; and where these crossed at the holiest place in the center the two friends put me down. Then when they had placed the offerings at the proper quarters, they left a skin-bag full of water, and went away down the hill leading the horse. They did not say anything to me, and they did not look back. It was the way they would have done if I were dead up there and lying on a scaffold.

“With my robe about my shoulders, I stood in the hole up to my hips, holding the pipe in front of me. I watched the round red sun slip under. A thin new moon appeared low down and like a ghost. It looked lost and lonely yonder going to the spirit world. Some wolves mourned. I remembered I had heard the criers calling to the people that the village would move next day. The stars got brighter. The night was big and empty when the wolves were still. The thin new moon touched the edge of the world and sank. All at once I wanted to get out of the hole and run and run back to my people before they went away. Then I remembered my pipe. I must hold fast to it. On it must I depend. So I held it as tight as I could, and right away I could feel the power running all through me again, up my back and into my hair. I remembered the _wakon_ said he would be with me, and that my father would help me on the hill. I could almost hear him saying, ‘Never be afraid of anything.’

“Then all at once everything was different, and I felt like praying. So I threw back my robe and started naked for the quarter of the sunset where the bow and cup were hanging; and as I went, the world was a great shining bubble and in the midst of it the pipe and I were floating. At the blue quarter I raised both hands with the pipe in my right and cried out to the power that makes live and destroys, the power of the rain and the lightning. Four times I cried, ‘_hey-a-hey_.’ Between the cries I waited and listened, but it was so far out yonder that no voice came back. And when I cried, ‘Lean close and hear and help me,’ there was nothing.

“I walked backward to the center and waited there awhile with my face to the white quarter, where the goose’s wing and the white herb hung. Then I went there, and, as before, I raised my hands and the pipe, crying out four times and asking the power of cleansing and healing to hear and help me. But the world was a big, empty bubble, and no voice came back. At the red quarter of the morning star and the sunrise, where the light is born and the days of men begin, I cried out four times and asked for help; but there was nothing. At the yellow quarter, where the sacred hoop and tree were set, I called upon the growing power for help. The voice I sent forth went far, so far it could never return, and there was stillness. When I stood in the hole at the most sacred place in the center and raised my face and my hands and the pipe, and prayed the prayer Blue Spotted Horse had taught me, there was nothing. And there was nothing when I leaned with my face and my hands and the pipe on Maka’s breast and asked the mother of all to help me.

“I prayed around the hoop again and again, but still there was nothing. So I stood in the hole for a while and thought hard about what I was doing. It was not easy to find a vision, and I must try and try until I found it--like getting the first deer or the first bison calf, only harder, maybe. Pretty soon I was not thinking about the vision at all. I was in the brush by the waterhole and the deer was coming down with the fawn to drink. The cow was chasing Whirlwind and me up the hillside. I was coming into the camp with the haunch of the fawn on my shoulder. My grandmother was jumping up and down crying: ‘Oh, see the vision our grandson has brought us!’ Only it was not my grandmother, but the _wakon_ looking that queer way at me. ‘If the heart is not good something very bad will happen.’

“My head jerked, and at first I did not know where I was. Then I remembered my pipe and held it tight and began my praying all over again. I did that all night long, advancing to each of the quarters in turn and back to the center. I did not rest long there, because I had to stay awake as long as I was able. I got so tired and sleepy that sometimes I would forget what I was saying; then I would remember the old _wakon’s_ eyes with the new moons upside down in them and the queer look, and then I would hold my pipe as tight as I could, and go ahead. Sometimes the coyotes would mock me when I waited and listened between cries, but that is all there was.

“The night was like always, until all at once there was the morning star out yonder and a pale streak of day beneath it. It was looking at me the way it did when I ’woke beside my father’s scaffold. I remembered how I tried to hold him fast in the dream, but he melted away and the buffalo-runner too.

“When I got back to the center that time I was crying a little, and when I put my hands and my pipe and my face on Maka’s breast and asked for help, I cried harder, because I was sad for my father, and the grass on my face was soft like my own mother’s breast when I was little.

“When I looked again the sun was shining. Something was happening away off yonder. There was a big whirling cloud of dust, and things were flying around in it. Then I saw that the cloud was full of coup-sticks with scalps on them, and they were flying about in the cloud and the cloud was the whirling dust of many hoofs in a battle.

“I looked until it was not there any more. Then there was a voice above and behind me that said, ‘Hold fast to your pipe, for there is more.’ When I turned to see whose voice that was, it was an eagle soaring low and looking back at me until it was not there.

“The sun was shining almost level. I had gone to sleep kneeling in the hole with my face and hands on the grass, and I thought it was still morning. But the blue stick, with the bow and cup, was where the red stick should be! The sun was shining low out of the blue quarter, and it was getting ready to go under! I had slept dead all day, and it made me feel good; but there were teeth in my belly, I was so hungry; for I had not eaten the day before.

“I filled up on the warm water in the skin and thought about what I had seen. Maybe all those coup-sticks and scalps meant I would be a great warrior. But if they meant that, what more could there be, and what did the eagle mean?

“I began to pray again as soon as the sun went under and the thin moon appeared going to the spirit land. I prayed harder than ever because of what the eagle said, and I could feel power getting stronger and stronger in me every time I came back to the center. When I advanced to the quarters, it was like floating with the pipe in the midst of a great starry bubble. And afterwhile, whenever I began to say the prayer to Wakon Tonka at the most sacred place, the prayer the _wakon_ taught me, it made me cry. And this is the prayer:

“‘Grandfather, Great Mysterious One! You have been always, and before you nothing has been. There is nothing to pray to but you. The star nations all over the heavens are yours, and yours are the grasses of the earth. You are older than all need, older than all pain and prayer. Day in, day out, you are the life of things.

“‘Grandfather, all over the world the faces of living ones are alike. In tenderness have they come up out of the ground. Look upon your children, with children in their arms, that they may face the winds and walk the good road to the day of quiet.

“‘Teach me to walk the soft earth, a relative to all that live. Give me the strength to understand and the eyes to see. Help me, for without you I am nothing.’[3]

“That is the prayer, Grandson. Maybe it will help you, Wasichu though you are, to walk the black road and to find the flowering tree.

“The lean moon was gone and the night must have been getting old when a great sudden voice roared from the quarter of the sundown where I was facing. I had not seen it coming; but all at once it was there--a heaped-up cloud coming fast towards me, with swift blue lightning on its front and giants shouting in it. And in between the shouts that shook the hill I could hear the deep voices of the rain singing all together, like many warriors charging.

“I was not afraid. I felt very big and strong, and I cried back to the thunder beings as loud as I could, ‘_hey-a-hey, hey-a-hey_,’ and they answered. Then the lightning and the voices were all about me, so that I could not hear the cries I sent forth, and the rain was a roaring between thunders. I stood there, holding my pipe high in both hands, but not a drop of rain touched me. And when the swift storm had past and the stars were bright again, I could hear the giant voices cheering far away.

“I knew my praying had been heard and I would see. The power was mighty in me as I prayed around the hoop and back to the most sacred place at the center.

“I was standing in the hole with my face and hands and pipe raised to the Great Mysterious One, and I was crying hard while I prayed, but I was happy and my heart sang. I was saying, ‘All over the world the faces of living ones are alike.’ But all at once I was not saying; I was seeing!

“I was standing on the highest hill in the center of the world. There was no sun, but so clear was the light that what was far was near. The circle of the world was a great hoop with the two roads crossing where I stood, the black one and the red. And all around the hoop more peoples than I could count were sitting together in a sacred manner. The smokes of all the peoples’ little fires stood tall and straight and still around the circle; and by the murmur of the voices of the peoples, they were happy. And while I looked and wondered, there was a tree that sprang at my feet from where the two roads crossed. It grew so fast that, while I watched, it reached the sky and spread, filling the heavens with blooms and singing leaves.

“Then I felt dizzy, and all at once I was sitting in the hole with my head on the grassy edge of it. When I looked about me, the circle of the world was empty and the sun was high above. While I sat there looking around me at the empty world, I felt homesick for what I had seen without my eyes, and there was an aching in my breast.

“Afterwhile I knew I was very hungry and thirsty. So I filled myself with water from the skin; and when I looked around me again, far off down a valley I could see the friends returning with the horse.”

The old man fell into one of his prolonged silences which I finally broke with a question: “And the _wakon_? What did he say when you told him?”

“I was alone with him in his tepee,” Eagle Voice replied, “and a little fire made the light. He looked hard at me for a long time when I had spoken, then he said: ‘You have seen in a sacred manner and your praying has come alive. By the lightning and the thunder and the rain that fell about you, the power to make live and to destroy will protect you to the end of the black road, and the road will be long. You shall breathe the dust of battles, counting many coups, and shall not be hurt. You shall travel far and see strange peoples; but the sacred hoop of all the peoples under the flowering tree, you shall not see by the light of the sun. It was your father talking through the eagle. Hold fast to the vision Wakon Tonka has sent you, and pray for the strength to understand it. _Hetchetu aloh!_’

“Then he waved his hand, and I went out into the low day. I was very hungry.”

IX

_The Old Bull’s Last Fight_

Dry snow had fallen in the night, and it was scurrying drearily under a dull sky when I reached the old man’s tepee the next morning. He sat smoking serenely with his blanket tucked about his waist and legs. “I thought you might not come, Grandson,” he said; “but you are here, and it is good.” When we had smoked awhile together, he began:

“We are going on my first war party today, and it is very bad weather for fighting; but no snow has fallen in my story. The grass is getting strong; the animals are making fat; there is a warm wind blowing; and I am just a boy with long legs.

“After my vision quest people noticed me more than before, and they did not treat me like a little boy. So when it was time for a war party to start out, I went along on Whirlwind. There were thirty-seven of us, and we were not all Oglalas. Some of us were Miniconjous and Sans Arcs, and a few were Cheyennes, for we had camped together along the valley of the Greasy Grass that winter. Some of us were only boys getting started to be men; some had been in many fights and had scars to show; and there were a few who almost could have been the grandfathers of the boys.

“Crazy Horse was leading the party, and he was already getting a big name then, for he had a mysterious power. People talked about him, and told stories of his deeds in fights with the Crows and Shoshonis. Also he had fought the soldiers when the hundred were killed on the ridge, and that was a story too. He was not a big man, for I was even then almost as tall as he; and he was not a little man either; just above a little man, and he was not fat at all. He was slender and very strong; and his face was lean too. It looked sharpened like an arrowhead. They said he never wanted anything for himself but a good horse and weapons to fight for his people, and that he always gave everything away.

“His hair was not so dark as most other Lakotas’ hair, but was a little brown; and his skin was not so dark either. He always braided his hair with one braid down each side of his head, and he wore a braided buckskin with his medicine in a little bag at the end of it, also an eagle-bone whistle, like mine, tied on. This he always had with him.

“Just before the beginning of a battle, when they were ready to charge, he would get off his horse and take a handful of earth from a mole hill or an ant hill or a prairie dog’s house. This he would put between the horse’s ears and then on the hips of the horse. After that he would stand in front of the horse and throw the earth back over him. Then he would stand behind and throw some towards the horse’s head. Last, he would rub some of the earth from the horse and put it on his own head. He never wore a war bonnet in battle and he did not paint his face. He wore only one spotted-eagle feather tied in his hair and hanging down the back of his head. It was Chips, the _wakon_, who taught him to do this, and always advised him. He would be ahead in a fight, and when he killed an enemy he did not count coup. He would call others to take the honors. I think he had so many honors he did not want any more, but helped others to get them.

“He had a society of his own; not a feast and dance society, but just followers. They were called _Ho-ksi-ha-ka-ta_ [The Last Child]. The last child in a family is not thought of as much as the others, and so he chose the last child to follow him. They were very brave warriors because they had to do great deeds and be honored even more than the first child. They were always trying to make themselves greater, and so they were not afraid to do anything.

“They say the ponies Crazy Horse rode never lasted very long. They wore out fast because of the great power that was in him. It was from a vision that he had. When he rode into a battle, he would remember his vision and be in it again, so that nothing in this world could hurt him. I do not know this, but so the people all put it out. They did not say it about other brave men, and I think it was so. When the Wasichus murdered him, they had to do it from behind when he was not ready for battle.

“I had seen him around the village as long as I could remember. People thought he was queer because he did not talk often, and sometimes he would not notice anybody. But he would stop to play with little children, and he liked to tease and joke them till they laughed. When he was on a war party, he was different. Then he would joke with the warriors, and tell funny stories. It kept them feeling good, so that they could fight better. They all liked him, and whatever he said, they would do that.

“We rode towards where the sun comes up when the summer days are long. The world was young and wide as day, and we were going almost to the end of it beyond Mini Shoshay [the Missouri]. We crossed the Rosebud and the Tongue and the Powder, and there were no enemies. The young grass was getting strong for our horses, and there were deer and elk in plenty, so that, man and horse, we feasted every night.

“There was story-telling around the fire when we had feasted; and there was always one I did not hear the end of, being over-full of meat and heavy sleep. When I had to take my turn along with older horse-guards; it was like a wonderful story with no one to tell it out there under the stars, listening to the horses chewing and blowing, and watching every shadow all around. It made me feel tall and brave, and something was always about to happen all at once, so I did not feel like sleeping.

“In the daytime we were often merry; and if someone started singing, we would all sing together. That made the horses feel good, and maybe one would neigh and start the others neighing.

“Where we could not see far, there would be riders out ahead of us and off on both sides to watch for enemies. Sometimes when we were walking the horses slowly to rest them, somebody would start a funny story, and others would crowd close to take it from him and go on with it. There was one about the young woman bear who saw a handsome young hunter; and right away she loved him so much that she made up her mind to have him for her man. This was very hard on the young hunter, and it got harder and harder the longer the story became. He did not want to shoot anybody who loved him so much, but he did not want to be her man either. Sometimes he would think he had lost her at last; but just at the wrong time she would show up again.

“Maybe there was a pretty girl and he had been sneaking around a long while, trying to make her talk to him. And at last he would catch her down by the creek when she was getting water for her mother, and they would be talking. Then that woman bear would rush out of the brush groaning and with tears running down her face, because she loved him so much. And when the girl screamed and ran and he turned and ran too, the bear would chase him--maybe up a tree.

“Then maybe the handsome young hunter had the girl for his woman at last, and the bear would sneak into his tepee in the night just at the wrong time, and there would be a big woman fight in there, and all the people would come yelling to see who might be killing somebody.

“The bear always got away and there never was an end to that story. I think it is still getting longer somewhere. Anybody could tell about another time the woman bear did something, and he could make it up if he could not remember any. This story had to be told like something very sad and without seeming to know it was funny. I would laugh so hard to hear the story and see how sad and worried the story-tellers looked, that I could hardly stay on my horse. Maybe at night the bear story would begin again; and when they got it going it was hard to stop.”

Eagle Voice chuckled awhile, evidently enjoying remembered fragments of the bear yarn.

“Yes,” he continued at length, “High Horse and I would roll and hold our bellies with laughing. High Horse was a Miniconjou boy as old as I was. I knew him when we were small and I used to play over there being Tashina’s horse, and he was a girl’s horse too. It was on this war party that we began to be brother-friends. We were always together; and we liked each other so much that we decided we had been twins over in Twin Land and had got parted because we did not happen to find the same mother over here. We had heard the old _ohunka_ story from our grandmothers, and maybe we did not quite believe it; but we wanted to, because the story made it more wonderful for us to be together.

“Twins are not like other people, and there is something _wakon_ about them. They come from Twin Land where they have lived together always; and when they come into this world looking for a mother, they ride around on jack rabbits. Nobody can see them; but they ride around anyway, looking and looking for a good and pretty young woman. Maybe she is getting water from a spring or a creek and the twins have followed her on their jack rabbits. They are hiding in the brush, and when the good and pretty young woman leans over, they hurry and get inside of her. If only one gets inside, then the other must find himself another mother, and all their lives each will be hunting the other one.

“So we had found each other, and we said we were never going to be parted any more. If the story wasn’t so, why did everybody know it?

“Beyond the Powder we came to a great flat land where many antelope were feeding. Some high buttes were there standing all alone, and when High Horse and I climbed one of them, far off towards where you are always looking [south] we could see the tops of Pa Sapa [the Black Hills] low down in the sky like a black thundercloud just beginning to come up.