Ashes of Heaven (34 page)

Last Bull came to Wooden Leg and said, “In the morning I want you to go scouting for buffalo.”

He loaned Wooden Leg one of his strongest horses and a packsaddle to lash the meat upon. The young warrior headed into the hills alone, hopeful. He had the rifle he had taken from a dead soldier, after the fight on the Little Sheep River, and a good supply of ammunition for it. Three nights he stayed out, without sign of buffalo. Although he spotted some game off in the distance, when Wooden Leg caught up to the others he was empty-handed, but for two turkeys.

Never before, Wooden Leg told them, had he seen that countryside so bare of deer and antelope, elk and buffalo. He realized it wouldn't be long before hunger would return to the eyes of the little ones. How it made his heart ache to look about those three-times-ten in Last Bull's camp, to see how every man, woman, and child's clothing had worn beyond repair. And not nearly enough skins to replace their tattered garments.

Long gone were the blue coat and breeches he had taken from that dead soldier beside the Little Sheep River. Even his leather shirt and the wool leggings he had been wearing since early winter now hung ripped and ragged. The only decent article of clothing Wooden Leg still owned was the wide-brimmed white hat he had captured during the Rose-berry River fight. It alone had survived not only the heavy snows of the previous winter but the drenching downpours of spring.

While Wooden Leg had been off searching for buffalo sign, a despairing Last Bull reluctantly dispatched two of his warriors to the White Rock Agency to sniff out the conditions of those who were surrendering. Yellow Eagle, who had recently come out from the reservation, took White Bird south with him. A few long and hungry days after Wooden Leg rejoined the camp, the two scouts returned from their journey.

“Morning Star's and Little Wolf's people have made it there,” Yellow Eagle reported. “They told me they were being treated well.”

Last Bull asked, “They have not been punished?”

“Not yet. The
ve-ho-e
haven't come for their guns and ponies yet,” the scout said. “There is a good soldier chief there the Little Star People call White Hat. He knows how to talk to Indians with his hands. And he has seen that the agent has plenty of food and blankets and supplies for those who come in. White Hat says he is very happy the northern Indians came in to surrender to Three Stars.”

When Last Bull asked his people who wanted to stay out and continue their search for buffalo in the old way, and who wanted to start south for the agency—all of those with families said they would go where they knew they could find food for their children.

“But more of our people will come to hunt with us now that spring has come,” Yellow Hair told those ready to surrender. “Just like last summer, when the hunting camps grew crowded and all was good once more!”

“I have been a long time coming to my decision,” Last Bull explained. “I do not think very many Indians will ever come again to this country.”

“Give them time to come, Last Bull,” Yellow Hair chided. “It has been a very wet spring—”

Buffalo Bull Sitting Down has run away to the Land of the Grandmother and he won't be back with his Hunkpapa,” Last Bull growled. “And now reports tell us that Crazy Horse has started for the agency with his Little Star People. Never again will there be many people in this country, not as long as the white man keeps pouring in to take up all the space, to run off all the game and kill off all the buffalo.”

In the end, many of the young men chose to follow Last Bull to the agency. Only four of the single warriors—Yellow Hair, Meat, Growing Dog, and Medicine Wolf—declared they would continue to hunt.

“Perhaps you will see me again soon,” Wooden Leg said to his brother the morning after he had decided to go south with his chief.

“I will look to the southeast every morning, and again every afternoon,” Yellow Hair replied. “I will watch for you to rejoin us.”

As those four bachelors turned west to start their search for the Lakota village of Lame Deer, reportedly hunting in the valley of the Roseberry, Last Bull started away from the north country with the last of his people.

Days later a few of the older men and women began to recognize some of the country they had reached. One of them announced they were getting close to the agency. Last Bull's band hadn't gone much farther when Wooden Leg and the others at the front of their march spotted three horsemen in the distance. The closer they got to the strangers, the more the horsemen looked to be soldiers.

But as the trio approached, it was evident from their long, unbound hair, and the feathers attached, that they were Indian. Last Bull's warriors grew anxious, frightened of an ambush. Hurrying into a broad line that put the women and children behind them, the men drew the covers from their weapons, cocking the hammers on pistols and rifles.

“Stop and tell us who you are!” Last Bull demanded.

The trio halted immediately and explained in sign that they were scouts from Red Cloud's agency. They had heard some more Indians were on their way from the north country and the White Hat told them to come out to help the new arrivals find their way. When Last Bull's warriors finally allowed the three close enough to converse, they discovered that one was a Cheyenne, one a Lakota, and the last a Cheyenne-Lakota named Fire Crow.

“Is it true that no one has been punished at the agency?” Wooden Leg asked Fire Crow that night.

The scout nodded, staring at the fire. “No one is punished.”

“Did you ride with Long Knife's
*
scouts last winter?”

“I rode north with him, yes,” the man answered sadly.

Wooden Leg growled, “You must have helped Three Finger Kenzie attack Morning Star's village!”

Fire Crow finally responded, “I did not shoot my rifle in anger and I did not kill any of my people, if that is what you are asking. But you must know that I helped Long Knife and the soldiers talk to the chiefs. We tried to get Morning Star, Little Wolf, and the others to stop fighting so the women and children could surrender.”

For a long time Wooden Leg gazed into the flames. Then he eventually said, “I am sorry I became angry with you, Fire Crow. Nothing is served by making old wounds bleed.”

The army scout replied, “We did what we thought best for our people.”

“Our leaders always do what they think best for our people,” Wooden Leg agreed quietly. “And tomorrow … our warriors will bring in their women and children—to surrender.”

*   *   *

Like Last Bull of the Kit Fox Society, White Hawk decided he wasn't ready to surrender north or south.

When the great
Ohmeseheso
village began to break up on the Powder, this little chief of the Elkhorn Scraper warrior society announced that he would wander west, looking for the hold-out bands of Lakota reportedly in the valley of the Roseberry River. Fifteen warriors swore their allegiance to White Hawk, seven of whom brought wives and children with them as the band set off on their own to hunt. They left during those wet days of early spring, while lacy collars of snow still clung to the slopes, back in the shady places, gathering round the trunks of aromatic cedar and juniper and stunted pine.

White Hawk remembered the words some Little Star friends of his told him the winter before when the Red Fork survivors joined the Crazy Horse village. They said Buffalo Bull Sitting Down had claimed he was the last real Indian. When they heard that, White Hawk and his warriors all had a good laugh. Buffalo Bull Sitting Down the last real Indian? By now the man was probably already far to the north in the Grandmother's Land—country that wasn't even Lakota hunting ground.

“No, he is not the last,” White Hawk was quick to say. “There are still a few real Indians left in this country. Indians who haven't gone in to the
ve-ho-es'
agencies. Indians who haven't surrendered and become scouts for the soldiers like those in so many tribes, like our own people who came to fight us on the Red Fork, like White Bull and the others who have disgraced the Shahiyela.

“There are still a few real Indians left,” he told those loyal to him. “And we will join together with them to fight the soldiers when they come for us.”

What made a people give up, decide to become either prisoners or servant dogs of the
ve-ho-e,
decide to remain captive on their reservations summer after summer? Even Crazy Horse was said to be slowly limping south with the last of his stalwarts. What had happened to their hearts? White Hawk wondered. Was it the cold of winter? The desperate hunger?

“An end comes to every winter,” White Hawk sermonized to his small clan. “And if there is no longer enough buffalo to feed all the northern bands, then there are enough buffalo to feed the last few real Indians who will be hunting the beasts in the old way. There will always be plenty of meat to fill our bellies for generations of hunters to come.”

In the days to come, when it finally suited him, White Hawk declared they would search for the camp of Lame Deer, the
Mnikowoju
who had vowed never to go in to an agency.

“Like this Lakota chief,” White Hawk said as his people moved into the valley of the Roseberry River where it was reported Lame Deer's people were hunting, “I will die before the
ve-ho-e
drives me to a reservation.”

Some distance to the south, he and his warriors spotted the smudge of smoke. Enough to indicate a village. Not a small camp but a sizeable village.

“That can only be Lame Deer's people,” one of the men said.

Another agreed, “Everyone else in this country has already headed south by now.”

“Come,” White Hawk instructed. “Let us go join these Lakota who would rather live free and die like warriors … than be scrap-eating dogs for the
ve-ho-e
on the reservation!”

Chapter 28

Spring Moon
1877

Not long after they left the Powder with the greater part of the village, the two Old Man Chiefs agreed they should divide their people for this journey to the White Rock Agency. Little Wolf announced his party would hurry ahead on the best of what ponies the People still possessed. Morning Star's larger group would follow along at a slower pace, with those seriously wounded in the Red Fork Fight and the battle at Belly Butte last winter. There were still many travois dragged by the horses.

Although he found his own body much slower to heal after all these winters of life, Little Wolf had miraculously survived the six wounds he took in the battle with Three Fingers Kenzie. All the
Ohmeseheso
agreed this was proof certain that their Sweet Medicine Chief was blessed by
Ma-heo-o!

Perhaps it was so, Little Wolf thought. And if he was truly blessed by the Creator, then he prayed the Spirits would let the blessings flow through him to his people.

So much had been lost in this war with the
ve-ho-e:
every family had lost relations and friends, not to mention the decades of their cultural history. All of it had disappeared in an oily, black smoke that slammed against those low-hung snow clouds to make a profane, dirty smudge across the heavens as the soldiers put a torch to everything that had once been a way of life for the Northern People.

Finally, with winter's end in sight, after running and hiding, after fighting only to run again, Little Wolf reluctantly decided the time had come to take his people in to the agency. There they would have enough to eat. There they would be among their old friends, the Little Star People. There the
Ohmeseheso
had lived before … and could live again.

Historically, the Sweet Medicine Chief always put the good of his people before his own. Their lives sprang from his, and he protected them with his life. Now he was taking his people where they would have nothing to fear from the soldiers, where they would have enough to eat and blankets to stay warm.

Day after day this journey had been one of the great struggles of the Shahiyelas' experience. An ordeal filled with despair and physical misery that tested every last one of them as they battled Cold Maker's final onslaught. Steadfastly they trudged on into the first of spring's gloom. When they began this journey south, Little Wolf's people had battled deep snow that formed huge, crusty ice sculptures across the land. They clawed their way up one snowy slope, slipped down the next—yet they persevered.

Then as the air warmed a little more each day, a new misery confronted the
Ohmeseheso.
What had once been snow and ice now turned to a cold, soppy slush that soaked their torn and tattered clothing. Tendrils of icy mud plastered to the ragged bottoms of their leggings, to their moccasins, caked on their bare feet like clumps of buffalo glue.

This past winter there had been little chance to cut new poles for their lodges, to replace those burned by the soldiers. Instead for several moons now these Northern People had dragged with them the half-burnt stubs they had salvaged from the Red Fork fires, along with what tree branches and limbs they could trim and put into service. Over these they draped what scorched and ratty hides they still owned, patched now with burlap bags found abandoned at soldier camps, or a few canvas flour sacks brought in from the agencies.

Little Wolf looked upon the widows and orphans with great sadness gripping at his heart. Once these proud women wore their hair tied neatly in braids. But now the hair of so many hung in rough-shorn clumps crusted with the mud and ashes of mourning. Wild tangles of it whipped this way and that, with the cruel, capricious winds slashing at their tear-streaked, sooty faces. Exposed arms and legs showed the wounds: long, blood-clotted slashes that rendered mute testimony of their profound grief.

As Sweet Medicine Chief, he had sworn to protect these widows, their orphans, and those old ones who had no one to provide, feed, and shelter them from want and winter and white men.