Return of Little Big Man (61 page)

There weren’t no more cannonfire, and after a little while here come a troop of U.S. Cavalry riding down into the bottomland. We stood up at that point, for the firing from the trees had stopped, and in fact I could see Sitting Bull’s men slipping away upstream. In the immediate sense, this hadn’t been a fight with the Americans.

Now soon as the soldiers rode into the settlement, Amanda marches up to the captain in charge even before he dismounted and starts in on the crimes of the Indian police.

I guess he had heard she was living with Sitting Bull and therefore thought her at best crazy and at worst a harlot so low she would cohabit with an Indian, but to his credit he was civil enough while not taking her too seriously.

“Missus,” he said, “I’m just a soldier following my orders. You want to take your charges to my C.O. at Fort Yates, Lieutenant Colonel Drum. Now excuse me please, so I can attend to my duties.”

He strides away with Sergeant Red Tomahawk, who is talking in an excited rush of Lakota, which I doubt the captain could understand a word of but kept nodding.

The other soldiers dismounted and was staring at Amanda, for though far from her best at the moment, having been rolling in dirt and blood, she was still something to see.

I was worried they might say something fresh, which I would have to respond to, though being so worn of mind and heart I could hardly stand straight, so once again I found myself trying to divert her from what came natural to that girl: sticking her nose into the affairs of others to serve the cause of right, which, don’t get me wrong, I admired, but which often tended to get complicated. Here you had Sioux killing Sioux to serve white policy, but the whites who dreamed up this policy believed they was trying to help the Indians in a place and era in which many other whites would of liked all redskins exterminated.

“Amanda,” I says, “that captain’s right. What we ought to do is go back to the agency and report on what happened. We can’t do no good here.”

“I hate to think that’s true,” said she, but she did stop and think about it. I don’t want to ever give the impression that Amanda though opinionated was unreasonable. “Maybe there’s something we can do for the poor women.” She started off for the other cabin, where the mourning wails had continued so long that it would of been noticeable now only if they stopped.

When Amanda went I had to follow, and we got to the cabin, where the wives and grownup daughters was sitting in a line on top of a long deep pile of blankets, producing that chorus of grief. Amanda walked along touching each on the shoulder, but what I noticed was the total absence of young kids, for there was always otherwise some nearby.

In glancing around to look for them, I seen hanging on one log wall that portrait of himself Sitting Bull had told me about, a full-length view of him in full feather headdress and best beaded and fringed deerskin clothes, a stark contrast to the bloody body which lay outside now on the cold ground. As he had told me, the picture was signed by the white woman who made it, “C. Weldon,” the name he claimed was so hard to pronounce he forgot it. The Indianness of that statement was such that I could of shed a few tears if I thought about it, but I didn’t have no time for that, for now a white Army officer come in, accompanied by some Sioux policemen, and the lieutenant, holding his ears, hollered at the women to stop that howling, and Amanda screeched at
him.

Meanwhile one of the police spotted the painting of Sitting Bull, and yelling in fury that his brother had been shot and killed by the Bull’s followers, pulled Catherine Weldon’s picture off the wall and smashed in the canvas with the butt of his rifle.

I had to shout to be heard by the young cavalry lieutenant. “I talk Sioux,” I says. “What are you looking for?”

He rolls his eyes at Amanda and shakes his head. “Weapons,” he told me. “We don’t want to get shot or knifed in the back.” He pointed at the Lakota women. “Tell them to get their dirty asses up. I want to see what’s underneath those blankets.”

Amanda says, “You keep a civil tongue in your head!” And then blunts her point by adding, “You foulmouthed bastard.”

The officers starts back at that, and thinking she was Sitting Bull’s white whore, he might of slapped her face, but my presence gave him enough pause for me to speak to the Indian women.

“He wants you to get up,” I says, “and you’d better do it before they yank you up by force.”

So Seen by the Nation and her sister Four Robes done as asked, rising in their wrapped blankets, as did the daughters, the married Many Horses and her Pa’s favorite, little Standing Holy, just entering her teen years.

The lieutenant had the policemen pull away the top coverings from the heap the women had been sitting on, revealing two young Hunkpapa boys cowering together, naked except for their breechcloths.

I doubt, with the officer present, them lads would of met with the fate of Crow Foot, but Amanda wasn’t going to take a chance. She lighted into the lieutenant, threatening to ruin him if a hair on those boys’ heads was touched. And whether that were the reason or not, nothing worse was done them than a search of their persons, which uncovered no weapon aside from a broken clasp knife, which was confiscated.

The lieutenant happened to see that picture of Sitting Bull on the floor where it fell, with a smashed frame and a torn canvas, and he says to me, “That looks like a genuine oil painting. Tell them I’m willing to buy it though it can’t be worth much with the rip in it.” He winked. “Anyway, how would they know?”

That seemed pretty cold to me, since the picture was a remembrance of Sitting Bull in better days than would ever come again, but I passed the offer on to Seen by the Nation and Four Robes, not wanting, for the wives’ sake, to put the officer in a bad mood.

But their reaction was a surprise, not because they was Indians, who I thought I knew, but female, who I sure didn’t know. Turned out they was only too agreeable to selling the portrait. It finally occurred to me that might of been because it had been painted by that white woman. You notice it had not been hanging in the main cabin run by the senior wife. Anyhow, the lieutenant acquired it for two dollars, to which, without telling him, I added all the bills I had in my pocket, which turned out to be a rash gesture on my part, for I hadn’t any money left, and Cody had departed from the region. But I never thought of the consequences at the moment.

The officer had the Indian policeman who tore the painting carry it out for him, and he followed with the rest of them and me. I figured serving as interpreter I might be able to head off any treatment of the defeated that was too nasty, for Indians saw no reason for mercy towards them that had been opponents, even when related.

But I didn’t get out of there soon enough to prevent what might practically of done no harm, for the old man was dead, but was as ugly a thing as I had lately seen, and had I been closer I would of put my knife in the belly of the perpetrator.

Them loyal to Sitting Bull had long gone, but there had now gathered a number of non-uniformed Sioux to see what happened, relatives of the policemen what had been killed or hurt in the fight, and just as I stepped out of the cabin one of them was carrying a heavy yoke he had took from the barn, probably for some such purpose as this, and raising it high above the body, brung it down on Sitting Bull’s dead face.

Just ahead of me, the lieutenant saw this too, and yelled, “Stop that man!”

And running, I translated it literally,
“Nazinkya!”
for the benefit of the policemen ahead of us, who of course till then thought it was perfectly okay, and for the perpetrator himself, I added, “Or your guts will be cut out and fed to the crows.” He dropped the yoke then.

The features of Sitting Bull’s once noble face had been rearranged, and I won’t say more except I was just glad Amanda had remained behind with the women.

The disrespect to Sitting Bull’s corpse wasn’t at an end, but I couldn’t interfere in what occurred next, for I understood what was involved. The Indian police intended to deliver the body to McLaughlin at the agency, but they also had four corpses of their own men to haul back and only one wagon. Putting Sitting Bull alongside their comrades in the wagon bed would mean he was a man of equal value, and their blood was still running hot due to the bitter fight.

So they pried his old body from the ground, where its blood had froze and glued him down, and throwed it, the back of the head blown off and the chin where the nose should of been, into the wagon, then carefully placed the dead policemen on top of him.

All I wanted now was to get away from there, and not just from the Indians, who was now so degraded as to act like the whites in Dodge and Tombstone, hating and killing one another of their own kind. I had had a stomach full of that long before and should never of come back West. Hell, I had been on good terms with the Queen and Prince Bertie and a lot of Frenchies I couldn’t even understand, not to mention Italians and Germans, all of them civilized to the hilt. I was mostly ignorant at the time of the mass slaughters they held periodically and not only of the various kinds of coloreds in their distant empires but also of one another right on their own ground. But at this period they was in between such, at least in Europe while I visited, no doubt getting ready for the next bloodbath, so it wasn’t for a few years yet I come to realize that no matter how old I got or where I went there would probably be a lot of killing sooner or later, and I should remember to accept it as I did when a boy amongst the Cheyenne. Growing up had made me soft. But so be it. At this time I had seen enough people die violently, and I was getting too near fifty years of age.

So I went to the door of the cabin of women, and I asked Amanda to please come outside.

And she done so, saying, “Jack, we’ve got to do something for these people.”

“Amanda,” I says, “no we don’t.”

She stared at me with them big eyes, which in certain kinds of light looked so dark as to be navy blue. “We don’t?”

“Mind you,” I says, “I’m not saying they ain’t in trouble. What I mean is only that you and me are not going to be able to do anything about it staying here except just to witness more of the same. We can’t stop it or even slow it down by hanging around. I say let’s get out. That book of yours will be a greater help than anything you can do here. You seen quite a bit by now that will be news to other whites, and you know English real good and can tell a story I bet people will read.”

“And what will you do?” She actually seemed interested.

“Well, you might not approve, but I’m going back to Cody’s Wild West, where a number of Indians make a nice income from shooting blanks. They might just be actors now and not the noble savages they was once, but they don’t get killed either.”

She had the saddest and also the sweetest expression, for in Amanda them two feelings often seemed intermixed, whereas when she was most pleased she was brisk and cool. “I do learn by experience,” she says, “unlikely as that might seem.”

I never before heard any self-doubt from her, and in a way I was sorry to do so now, for as I have said often enough I was always impressed by them who was assured. But then most such that come to mind had had unfortunate ends, the latest of which was Sitting Bull, whereas if you seldom knowed what you was doing, like myself, you might live as long as me.

Having give all my cash to the Indian women, I hadn’t none for railroad fare, so was forced to borrow some from Amanda, who carried some money in gold under her clothing someplace, and while we traveled together for a short ways, she was going on to New York, whereas I was heading back to Cody’s ranch at North Platte, Nebraska, the nearest thing to home I had, where I expected to find Buffalo Bill and tell him the true story of the death of his old friend Sitting Bull, because Lord knows what version he would get from others.

My heart was full on parting from Amanda again, though this time it was on real friendly terms, and unless it was my imagination she too seemed reluctant to say goodbye, shaking my hand a little longer and more warmly than ever before.

All I managed to say was, “I hope we meet again, Amanda. I sure do.”

“Thank you for saving my life, Jack,” said she. “I want to stay in touch with you.”

For an exciting instant, I took that statement literally, but then I realized she probably meant we could keep in contact through the mail. By the way, now she was going back to civilization she had spruced herself up, getting rid of that bedraggled dress and buying nice clothes at a ladies’ shop in Pierre including even a fashionable hat.

“It sure would be great to get a letter from you, Amanda,” I says, “but I got to admit I myself can’t write proper English.”

She smiles and says, “I don’t have any difficulty in understanding your speech.”

“Nice of you to say so, but I don’t have to spell when I talk.”

She then says seriously, “Such things shouldn’t matter between friends.”

As usual she was thinking of what ought to be rather than what was, but had she thought otherwise I would not of put her on a pedestal as I had always done.

Now just let me conclude this part of my story with what was not a part of it personally and say that some of Sitting Bull’s followers, fleeing from the Grand River, joined up with a band of Minneconjou Sioux led by a chief named Big Foot, and a couple of weeks later, at a creek by the name of Wounded Knee, Custer’s old regiment, the Seventh Cavalry, met up with Big Foot’s bunch to parley about them turning in their guns and settling down quietly without no more Ghost Dances or anything else of a troublemaking nature, and a shot got fired by somebody, maybe by accident, touching off a scuffle which, unlike the Custer fight, had a satisfactory result for the civilized, in that this time all the Indians got massacred, a couple hundred of them including women and children.

The Minneconjou, if you recall, was camped on the other side of the Little Bighorn opposite Medicine Tail Coulee, down which that day in June of ’76 General Custer rode with an idea of crossing the river to attack the big village, only to be drove back and up to the ridge where he died. That shallow part of the river was ever after knowed by the whites as the Minneconjou Ford.