The Dying Grass, page 134
once we have first silently looked down into the turnings and along the length of that softgrassed coulee where OUR MOTHER will drink in our blood and eat away our bones:
exactly here was Heinmot Tooyalakekt’s lodge; from here he rose with his daughter to catch horses
(he whose heart was not bravest in war but unfailingly straight through all sorrows),
as a hawk darts over the coulee—
while far away, dream-white, the Wolf’s Paw Mountains squat on the horizon,
where Bear Coat came down to kill us;
and if we keep riding south,
back into the country called O-to-kur-tuk-tai,
where the Crows stole our horses,
our hearts may begin to become joyous again, as if we were riding back into time.
Before they know it, our best men have already returned to the Swift Water,
exactly here where we once had fun teasing the Bostons just a little,
burning their stagecoach, shooting them dead and shouting orders,
the locusts singing tekh-tekh-tekh!
(this year there will not be many locusts)
and find a place which our good friends the Americans now call Terry’s Landing.
White Eyes is one of these warriors; he wishes to uplift his heart again. Finding two Bostons in this place—tall, quiet men who keep their Winchesters close—he kills one and wounds the other: Áhaha!— Now we are fleeing home to Sitting Bull,
laughing as we ride,
our hearts already expecting to see the Cutthroats’ nine-pole-clawed tipis rising at last on the far side of the foggy plain,
but White Eyes falls behind;
our fine friends the Crows catch him and put him to death.
11
Sitting Bull stays good to us: We dwell in the shadowed stare of his oval face:
two deep vertical grooves above the bridge of his nose;
we have learned the shallower lines on his moon-bright forehead, the dark wrinkles from his nostrils down to the corners of his mouth, and his many-stranded, pefectly combed black braids, his multitudes of necklaces, the fringes on his hide shirt.
He helps us, but sometimes we are all hungry.
Even until now Cloudburst still kept the dead Bluecoat’s breastplate that Ollokot gave her at Sparse-Snowed Place; now she gives it to Sitting Bull’s youngest wife, who now opens her heart, presenting her with a hunk of dried buffalo meat,
and this she takes to her dear niece Sound Of Running Feet, who has grown ever more sad and pale,
and who thanks her in a whisper, turning the gift round and round in her callused hands.
12
Now in the season called Towering Plants,
when the bindweed first comes out at Butterfly Place
and we used to ride to the higher place so that our women could dig cous,
when the redwinged blackbirds throng back to the rivers and swamps, males calling females to come and follow them,
White Bird, wishing to wrap his braids in otterskin after Sitting Bull’s fashion, rides to the creek to kill whichever animal he desires;
later there will be a dog feast,
and the whispering of the tin tinklers on the Lakota’s clothes;
and at last we must smoke the pipe with our old enemies the Shinbones,
for they are Sitting Bull’s friends.
He finds no otters, but kills seven muskrats,
and after dawn, when Sound Of Running Feet comes down there to fetch water, she sees the old chief skinning them,
so that her heart remembers that story we tell our children:
MUSKRAT’s tail is naked because it got caught by the shutting of the dying MONSTER’s anus after the rest of us had all rushed out
—so her father told her when she was small,
and White Bird, looking up, now says: Sound Of Running Feet, my lovely niece, your father still lives, I am telling you three times!
Feeling shy, she smiles, flushes, then runs away to fill her pot and kettle.
13
Slumped, pallid and glaring, General Sheridan, richly buttoned, locks his elbow on the table, presses his pale spread fingers against his ear, sinks his head between his epaulettes, with his hand on his hip, never ceasing to remember Sitting Bull with the balefulest hatred and White Bird with rage,
but now he has orders;
hence General Terry,
whom the Sioux call Star,
and Colonel Miles get theirs,
so that Lieutenant George W. Baird,
who remembers his wife’s red-rimmed eyes and moaning nightmares when he rode out with Miles’s column in hopes of avenging Custer
(for the third time—such is the lot of an Army wife—she had to give birth when I was far away:
for myself I don’t care if that d——d Sitting Bull gets me, but as for her . . .)
and whose ear still appears a trifle nasty from the wound Chief Joseph’s bunch gave him at Bear’s Paw,
receives Miles’s order and sets out for the British Possessions,
carrying with him Húsishúsis Kute,
whom Cut Arm still imagines to be chief of the Palouses,
Yellow Bull,
the father of our slain hero Red Moccasin Tops
(he is White Bird’s nephew),*
and Estoweaz,
called Thunder-Eyes
—all on loan from the Indian Territory:
Maybe they’ll make White Bird see daylight.
14
It is the time when serviceberries have just begun to turn purple back home in the Chinook Salmon Water country. By now our women would have finished digging camas at Split Rock; soon we would be riding away to meet the Salish at Weippe. Up on this side of the Medicine Line, it seems, rather, as if summer has just opened.
Of course Sitting Bull declines to come, hunkering himself away in his lodge, just as a buffalo will wallow in summer mud to armor himself against sun and flies,
while Wottolen sits half lost amidst the snakelike and ladderlike tattoos of the old men, unnerved by the loosehaired young warriors who sit almost smiling with murder-dreams
(he is telling himself the deeds of Rainbow at Big Water
and counting up the murders of our People by the Bostons before this war:
now his heart begins too late to understand
—although many other best men dispute this, preferring White Bird, who planned our victory at Sparse-Snowed Place and led us across the Medicine Line—
that our greatest chief was Heinmot Tooyalakekt,
he who never had hope,
desiring only to help our women, children and old ones:
when Toohhoolhoolsote spoke against him at the Split Rock council, because he had sold OUR MOTHER, he replied: I shall go against my promise to him who was my father and chief. I shall now live and die on painted land, never to go out).
as Kate sits weeping with Good Woman, fearing that Bluecoats will now carry off her husband,
and perhaps her heart whispers what is straight,
for indeed this Lieutenant Baird, rereading his instructions for one last private instant in the Redcoats’ sleeping room
(Sitting Bull has supplied the buffalo robes on their beds, so they have sometimes allowed him a slice of the dark tobacco cake beside the two-handled chopper)
is now meditating on that dawn raid last May when Lame Deer, surprised and defeated, had already shaken hands with Colonel Miles,
so that Baird could begin coaxing Iron Star to lay down his rifle,
when one of our d——d Cheyennes saw fit to snatch at it,
at which point Lame Deer, thinking the worst, shot at Miles,
so that history must take its course:
fourteen Minneconjous killed
(General Terry later said: It is the best thing that has been done since hostilities commenced).
Now what I’d like to do is get the drop on White Bird, if these Britishers will stand for it. Why should they care anyhow? It’s not as if he’s one of their Indians! I’ll bet General Terry would commend me—
But I can’t do it here. If my Nez Perces can talk him into surrender, maybe something can happen on the way back to Tongue River.
But Miles might say it ain’t right. He’s awfully soft on Joseph’s whole bunch.
All the same, wouldn’t it be for the best?
No,
spitting into the square spittoon filled with sand.
I’m not going to get in hot water just to bump off some lousy Indian. What do I care?
15
Next to the half-breed interpreter I see smooth-faced many-necklaced White Bird sitting watchful, with pale beads on the ends of his dark braids and his hands clasped into almost-fists upon his blanketed lap. Behind him, a mosquito squats on the whitewashed wall of logs.
Across the table I find Commissioner Macleod next to his American guest, that selfsame Lieutenant Baird, who again remembers his wife’s red-rimmed eyes and moaning nightmares when he rode out with Miles’s column in hopes of avenging Custer,
and from General Howard’s report he recollects how at that fateful council at Lapwai last spring, this same White Bird persisted in hiding his face behind an eagle’s wing;
and Baird scans the long dark cracks between ceiling-planks.
By the door stands James Morrow Walsh, the Mounted Police superintendent: very handsome, open-faced, almost delicate of skin, with a pretty moustache and wavy hair, looking innocent and kind for a policeman,
as indeed he is: even Sitting Bull likes him,
hoping that the Lakota may dream away their lives here in the White Mother’s country just as quietly as the grass grows on the roof of the North-West Mounted Police station at Wood Mountain, killing buffalo and perhaps stealing horses or shooting Crows.
A bull train of flour, bacon and coffee comes on toward the fort. Soon traders will ride in from the town. Heavily, the sentry’s relief ascends the plank-steps of the Southeast Bastion.
Lieutenant Baird now explains to White Bird: The Americans are your friends, and want you to go back to your old home, and if you don’t, you will go to some other good reservation.
White Bird listens, jibberjabbers something in Injun, and then the interpreter says: If the Indians and the Government have made treaties already, it is not my place to interfere.
I don’t understand what you mean by interfere, replies Lieutenant Baird.
I want Joseph to come back to our own country. I see how the hearts of both Governments are toward the Indians. I am so happy. My heart is open . . .
He doesn’t look happy, remarks Lieutenant Baird to the interpreter; at which Commissioner Macleod rubs his projecting bearded chin.— Tell White Bird the following: The Great Father sent me up here to give you the opportunity to go to Joseph. If you want to go, you ought to make up your minds at once.
We are all glad to hear it. I am glad the other chiefs surrendered. When they surrendered
(this sure is one logical Injun!),
it showed that they did not want to fight anymore.
Mr. McDonald, this is not to the point. Please make him understand that if he comes over the line with us to Joseph, there is a very good prospect that they will all go back to their old home, but if he stays here, Joseph’s prospects may not be so good. This is because the Great Father may say: White Bird and his people are living with my enemies, the Sioux.
I don’t care for the Sioux; I just camp there to pass the time, just for a little while. My heart is very good; there is not a bit of bad in it.
At this reply, which could not contain any more equivocation even if White Bird still possessed a fan to hide behind, good Lieutenant Baird, who is tall, pale, bearded and exhausted, like a Union soldier from our late Secession War, or perhaps like President Hayes when he was younger, peers at him, then rubs his swollen ear, while White Bird ponders the fancy ropes arcing down from the lieutenant’s epaulettes almost like overlapping Indian necklaces.
After making marks in a book whose pages are creamy-white like the crown of miniature death camas flowers, Lieutenant Baird tries again, saying: I know you are brave men, and I like to hear brave men talk, because I know they will tell me the truth.
Wishing to aid his American colleague, Commissioner Macleod assures the Indians: You have a splendid chance.
I understand, says White Bird very delicately, that Chief Joseph and his people do not want to go south of Leavenworth, where the country is bad for them. If Joseph comes back to our part of the country, to a good reservation, we shall join him.
Now Lieutenant Baird seems to be out of sorts. Gazing away from his hosts, as if the gilt chevrons on their scarlet coats make him feel shy, then stretching himself like some MONSTER preparing to hunt upstream, he says: Tell him that those who slip back one at a time will be treated as hostile Indians.
Yellow Bull, still permitted to wear his Dreamer’s peak, watches everyone with a wary desperation in his hard face, his long hair shining loosely down his shoulders. A mosquito crawls upon his Hudson Bay blanket-coat of many stripes. The other two prisoners, Húsishúsis Kute and Estoweaz, seem not very interested. In confidence they have informed White Bird of how it truly fares with the People in the place where they are kept. Soon Lieutenant Baird will hale them back there.
White Bird says: I shall not go.
16
Nearly weeping, she cries out: Husband, you have returned! My heart is glad. How were his words?
Like a blanket not good enough to be a present.
Did he make himself angry?
Síikstiwaa, he is nothing; he resembles some nasty creature eating mice,
and soon our best men ride secretly back across the Medicine Line with Sitting Bull’s best men to hunt buffalo,
with a little reddish-grey coyote trotting along for blood,
although White Bird, always cautious, declines to go.
17
In the fort he has seen a sack of biscuits, and canned corn, peaches, salmon and pears from Fort Benton; this he remembers when he tastes Kate’s thin bone soup and watches the old men sitting hungry and silent across the fire.
His People still Dream along with Sitting Bull’s, flashing skinny thighs as they dance around the fire:
their heads upraised, their gazes mild, bead-circlets in their ears:
we are all flying up, circling round,
remaining hungry.
18
Once the People understand in their hearts that the Old Woman will never feed them, nor allow them to take a reservation here, they begin to slip away
—some of them, most of them, but never White Bird and Kate—
back across the Medicine Line,
disturbing the brown mirror of the Milk River and then
creeping like snakes through the great new enemy country, the Boston, American country
where wild roses are in full flower,
and at Wolf’s Paw they stop to rebury their dead
(Painted Arrows, dogs and souvenir hunters have played with them);
then, camping along the creek, butchering buffalo, watching out for Big Bellies and our former friends the Women Nation,
dandelion down blowing and caught in spiderwebs,
they point out to one another where White Bird and Kate once had their lodge:
exactly here on the creek’s wide eastern lip, fifty paces from the coulee’s white-grass wall
(through the thick green line of Snake Creek the locusts snapping);
and from there where the wide round grass-hill meets the clouds the Bluecoats first came galloping
and our hearts began once again to hate Looking-Glass, who has now left us,
but the rifle-pits still show in the pale yellow grass on the gentle ridge to the east of the creek;
so then down where the ridge fans out into pale-grassed fingers outspread by Snake Creek they stand atop Red Place, where Toohhoolhoolsote and his warriors died:
dead yarrow, gayfeather flowers both purple and white
—and vaulting off their horses, they descend the pink rock, which is lichened orange, black and white, and the bees, flies and grasshoppers are singing:
—a few steps now to where they were killed, and then the orange meadow flattens out to the pale grey-green lips of Snake Creek, whose flow cannot here be seen.
Welweyas the half-woman wraps herself tighter in her grubby King George blanket.
Now the People’s story is tapering like a bullet or Nez Perce moccasin
as they follow the Place of the Cave of Red Paint, riding west, then south as the river curves,
although some of them go farther south and then west to Ground Squirrel Place,
where the hair has been ripped off our women’s skulls and our children’s teeth lie scattered like the lovely white cluster of miniature flowers which form a spoonlike crown on spring beargrass,
then back over the Lo Lo Trail
to our homes,
avoiding Lewiston, which used to be Riverfork and Ripple Place;
while at Sweat Lodge Place the Bostons are growing potatoes;
at Crossing Place they have found and burned our secret treasures;
at Old Woman Place they are gashing OUR MOTHER beside the bridge they have built;
everywhere they hunt us without pity,
until our women grow tired, our men despair, and in small groups the People surrender at Butterfly Place,
expecting to be scolded by smoothfaced Tsams Lúpin, then maybe whipped and fined by Moss Beard until we must cut our hair and go to church,
