The Dying Grass, page 96
we remain horse-rich:
black and ocher they accompany us, red and white, lovely palominos and strong Appaloosas, our jewels—
a thousand and more!
and just as a silty stream flows into a clear green river, muddying it, our wealth pours onto the trail, sometimes half a dozen abreast, raising the Big Dust for Cut Arm, saying: Hinimí!,
our herders riding in and out of the horde, quirting the slowest: kíw, kíw!
Now we arrive at the place where White Thunder’s grandfather Homas died while hunting buffalo. We ride up the river and cross it where the two big rocks stand, there on the south side of Tongue Water,*
TRAVELLER’s light greening the golden sagebrush, buttes standing out, the sky finally bluer than blue-white,
riding on as if we were thirsty and the river were receding,
but where we go is as obscure as the part of the forest where GRIZZLY BEAR WOMAN dwells all alone.
2
Meanwhile Looking-Glass, he whom the Crows call Arrowhead,
who in his youth used to climb trees to kill eagles for their feathers,
now decorates himself,
his wives winding brass wire around the ends of his braids as he fastens on his brass earrings, his daughters cleaning that tin looking-glass he loves:
soon he will be smoking again with Blackfoot the lucky man, whom he aided against the Cutthroats
and Húsishúsis Kute pulls on his eagle-plumed headband of fine hard rawhide;
Toohhoolhoolsote will likewise ride with them, for he is longing to eat buffalo liver in order to improve his old eyes;
Strong Eagle,
remembering a certain Crow woman who paints her face with white clay,
and his new war-friend Over The Point will also go
(although Wottolen, Red Owl and Two Moons speak against it);
likewise Ollokot, because when his marriage dance with Fair Land was held, Looking-Glass came to him, and gave many horses
and because he has said to Heinmot Tooyalakekt: Elder brother, stay here and I shall go for you, in case they kill us;
therefore, thanking and praising him, his brother chief,
who has travelled to the Buffalo Country only once
(to Looking-Glass he is as ignorant as one who cannot recognize the coughing of a grackle),
remains to help the weak,
whom Lean Elk leads deeper into the forest, shouting: Hurry, hurry!
(Looking-Glass’s heart is so happy to ride away from this man that he begins singing).
Riding their best fast horses northwest into the hot country of mourning doves,
and wondering how it will be,
they go easily, unworried about that pale old creeper Cut Arm:
Ollokot first, on the same cream-colored buffalo horse he rode at Sparse-Snowed Place,
then Húsishúsis Kute,
and because Heinmot Tooyalakekt saved Looking-Glass’s horses at Ground Squirrel Place, and those good sister-wives Blackberry Person and Asking Maiden have saved most of his ornaments, Looking-Glass, wishing to rest his favorite stallion Home From Capture, rides a fresh bay whose collar is of trade cloth dark blue, light blue and yellow, embroidered with white pony beads in diamonds and triangles outlined in black,
while Toohhoolhoolsote’s horse is ugly and old like him
and Strong Eagle’s horse is as graceful as a woman,
and Over The Point rides a fine black stallion whose saddle is lightly decorated;
so they ride on, their horses bending down to drink as they wade each cañon stream,
until these emissaries presently see smoke and send word;
and just as a rider throws up his arms when he is shot in the breast, then whirls off his horse, so the red SUN speeds out of the ground
as they enter the Crow Country,
watching for Lice-Eaters and Bostons to kill.
Looking-Glass the renowned one now paints his face red
and Over The Point and Húsishúsis Kute paint their faces in reds and ochers,
while Strong Eagle,
he whom we can always recognize from far away, from the lovely shoulder-beadings on his elkhide shirt,
decorates himself in stripes of white and yellow,
but Toohhoolhoolsote makes himself more varicolored than anyone,
for he, farfaring Dreamer, has ridden west through the Umatilla country to Painted Hills, treasury of pigments, where some mounds are scarlet, and others violet-grey or else golden-green with rays of black descending them; here are hills of ocher-brown which blends into pure red, and yellow hills, and hills of broken white stone bearing leaf-images and shell-images;
this of all places is the place for a man who paints himself;
so now they have become ready;
and coming into Blackfoot’s camp, leading three gift-horses, Looking-Glass smiles to see a young girl riding alone on a pony behind her mother, both of them with saddleblankets and blouses decked out in elkteeth
and the bleached buckskin fringe on her sleeves hanging and swaying way down the horse’s side
so that loveliness is shimmering in all our hearts:
and one Crow has painted an X on his face, signifying that he has killed an enemy;
now here come the old men and the young boys and all our old friends:
the Lost Lodges, Bad Honors, Bear’s Paws, Ravens and Prairie Dogs
(even Horse Rider is here);
young women begin to smile at them,
pretty ones who have painted their hair partings red and perfumed themselves with yarrow,
so that Looking-Glass, swallowing hard with lust, remembers the way that Crow women incite us to war by waving scalps;
Toohhoolhoolsote’s leg-rattles are hissing; his fishbone necklace is chattering
and a little Crow girl comes carrying her doll-baby on her back
while in the dying grass graze so many painted ponies (some with Mexican brands) that we can almost believe we have come back into the days when the Crows were rich in horses;
as from that sunbleached tipi painted with a golden-ocher SUN-device, circletted with outward-pointing white teeth, Blackfoot emerges.
Looking-Glass and his People give the Crows brass bracelets, and the Crows give them pretty parfleche bags of buffalo pemmican. Their hosts invite them to a buffalo feast, serving the meat in buffalos’ shoulderbones,
so we keep our hearts quiet as men should,
determined not to speak of the Bostons—or, as they are called here, the Yellow Eyes—
until it comes time to pass the pipe.
The Crow chief, whose hair is tied in a greying, feathered knot over his forehead, stares upon Looking-Glass almost in dread, the pair of great white shells upon his breastplate of necklaces trembling like a butterfly’s wings, his cheeks drawn in, perhaps with illness, his lips silently parted to emit sad breath, his eyes wide yet dull
and the vertical wrinkles between his eyebrows deepen
as beside him Curley Crow, who rode to Little Big Horn with Yellow Hair* last spring, and never disdains to take the Bluecoats’ part, now squints into the sun, showing off his smooth bare chest and neck with the many white necklace-loops on them, his wavy brown hair braided almost like a white woman’s; he is gazing at the ground
(although even now Looking-Glass’s eyes cannot help but seek a certain Crow woman whose forehead bears a circle tattoo);
and Yellow Hair’s old scout, White Man Runs Him,
naked to the waist, crowned with eagle feathers,
frowns and flares his nostrils at Looking-Glass, who begins to speak in words as sweet as the tight-clinging leaves of a sweetgrass bundle: My dear brothers, we are now here in this place so that we may know each other’s hearts.
Taking the pipe, Blackfoot replies: Brothers, my heart is glad to see you. I wish that we could stop this bad feeling between your nation and the Bostons, but it is too late, because your young men have done evil things, and the Bluecoats will hunt you down forever. Looking-Glass, ever since I have first seen you, my heart has loved you, and I still have the same heart. Now I wish I could guide you straight, or persuade Cut Arm to listen, but since I cannot, there is nothing for you here. Now I am finished speaking; now I have opened my heart,
and the lucky man, with his many feathers radiating from his scalp, draws in his blanket with his arm inside it, half-closing his eyes, lowering his head, as if he could truly be sad
to which Looking-Glass replies: My brother, have my ears become addled, or have you really spoken such words? Have you then forgotten your promises?
—speaking loud and long about this matter,
his words winding around: pokát, pokát—
until Blackfoot says: Why should you ride here to carry war to our fireside? Why bring the Bluecoats upon us? You know that I do not lie; if we go against them they will take away our country, I am telling you three times! But hear me, Looking-Glass: Should Cut Arm require us to ride against you, we shall shoot in the air . . .
Blackfoot, I had not looked to find you such a cowardly old woman. You have grown too fond of the Bostons’ sugar. Blackfoot, you cower before them like a dog!
That may be so, Looking-Glass; but I remember how you refused to rise up against them when we urged you; moreover, from what I have heard, you would not help your own People when they struck the Bostons on the Chinook Salmon Water,
and Horse Rider, the “white Crow” who could never help us much, is not much help to-day, either,
so Toohhoolhoolsote snarls: You too have sold your country,
and Ollokot widens his eyes, smiling at the Crows with extreme hatred,
and White Man Runs Him finally takes the pipe only to say: My heart falls to the ground,
so that once again Toohhoolhoolsote’s heart finds occasion to say: It is warped;
and Strong Eagle, who should have left the talking to the chiefs, but like our other young men has lately learned to speak yes and no, smokes the pipe, then slowly tells the Crows: If you fight us, I shall make your women gash their foreheads with arrowheads,*
after which the People take their gift-horses back again;
their dreams have withered, just as the MUSSELSHELL SISTERS dry up in the sun.
3
So we must ride to Sitting Bull. If we are straight in our hearts, perhaps he will not kill us.
There remains nothing but to cross the Medicine Line to the far place, the cold place, the Place Where Dead Trees Whistle,
but for all the ride back Looking-Glass is speechless, and even Toohhoolhoolsote,
bowing his head, with his hands clasped across his chest and his white braids hanging still across his arms,
now says: I know not where to go.
4
Ollokot, my dear younger brother, please tell me exactly what has been done,
but before Ollokot can open his mouth, Toohhoolhoolsote explains: Once again Looking-Glass has misled you. He promised that the Crows would save you. As for me, I am a man, and so I expect nothing,
and in much the same way that a woman knows that something bad has happened when her needle breaks while she is sewing, Cloudburst (although she has not been sewing to-day) understood already before she even saw Ollokot’s face;
now she is boiling soup for him, and for him she is cutting off a piece of Welweyas’s gift to her,
that dried huckleberry cake from the Salish country;
while Looking Glass keeps silent; a headache is haunting him. Blackberry Person crushes up some sage leaves for him to sniff, and then he sits grimacing on his horse.
5
Red Spy, who even until now believed in Looking-Glass, has been thirsting in his heart to ride alongside the Crows, raiding and killing Shinbones, Big Bellies and Walking Cutthroats,
and tasting enemy women in much the same way as we crack bones and suck out their marrow,
for before this war, when the People used to come together at Weippe and Split Rock, Looking-Glass many times told us how the great Crow chief Tattooed Forehead disguised himself as a Big Belly, spied two Big Belly maidens bathing naked in a river, and when they laughingly hid themselves in the brush, caught one by the hair and quicker than you can imagine cut off her head!—Red Spy, feeling hilarious over that joke, immediately thirsted to kill more enemies; and now that he has begun shooting Bostons, his heart has learned to laugh at the blood of others; he has made himself brave; why should he not kill Big Bellies?
Now we must ride north alone, hoping that these enemies will become our friends,
and so Red Spy grows enraged at Looking-Glass.
6
Now again we all ride together,
our young warriors still perfect with their tight braids and their roached hair shining with grease;
and Toohhoolhoolsote is listening to the creakings of trees as he goes
(even after this he will Dream himself where he likes, no matter whether the Crows think to deny to us the Buffalo Country:
like a green-grassed creek-groove down deep in the dry dirt always runs his Dream, cutting through the skulls of any who would tell him where he must go;
because Toohhoolhoolsote, who knows the pale gold of the Buffalo Country in late afternoon
and black buffalo in the golden grass,
has what belongs to a man),
while Cut Arm must sit on the ground far behind, because we have got his mules!
Exactly here where pallid grey fans and pillars of rain connect the clouds across the pale whitish-grey air to the almost silhouetted pines along the soft green ridge, we find buffalo in a row, and kill three of them;
the women butcher the meat and pack it on ponies; to-night in camp we shall roast it. Asking Maiden and Blackberry Person are glad,
but as for their husband, once again he has grown silent:
treachery upon treachery undoes him!
Even now he can scarcely believe in Cut Arm’s crookedness; the murders of our women and children at Ground Squirrel Place have grown almost unreal to his heart; and what the Crows have now done,
those very ones who have sung praising-songs for my war-deeds,
his heart cannot comprehend; closing his eyes, he feels himself galloping down, galloping down
through rimrocks and currant bushes, these junipers so still against the dark blue sky,
because we must all now pass through the sayings of Lean Elk’s heart like mice running through dark narrow slits in sandstone,
Looking-Glass meanwhile waiting for some Power to fly down and restore his luck.
7
Lean Elk shouts: Hurry, hurry!
—to which Toohhoolhoolsote replies: I, a chief, will not be spoken to so.
8
Our tired old ones become strong from eating so much meat, so Lean Elk makes us travel as quickly as the mules can go. Now we enter a valley where another herd of fat shaggy buffalo grazes like black stars on the sky of grass, munching and slowly ambling, rolling on the ground as if they itch; white dust rises from them even in mist and drizzle.
Smiling, Toohhoolhoolsote stalks a buffalo cow who is ducking her head down against the heavy rain which has greyed every ridge down to outlines,
riverbends of living white fog in the rain
(even between the nearest trees there seems to be fog);
now he and the animal have both vanished as we ride on past bubbles, geysers and overlapping raindrop-rings in the puddles between sagebrush
(Lean Elk is not certain which way to lead us):
here runs the wide, steel-grey river, rain-pimpled, wriggling over blue-grey rocks,
and Looking-Glass is silent; then
pim!
at which Toohhoolhoolsote’s hungry old wives come grinning and galloping, ready with their knives.
9
We have begun to lose our way; even Lean Elk cannot explain why even the best men have come to this. He sends scouts in three directions to find a safely secret way to the Swift Water,
which we must cross to get into the dry prairie
(soon that place will be getting cold),
through the coulees and into the marshes where the yellow columbine grows low and high,
then around the snowy mountains to Place of the Cave of Red Paint
and thus to Wolf’s Paw*
past Big Bellies and Walking Cutthroats
to the Medicine Line
—so far away!
Our wounded and our old ones will keep dying.
So our scouts ride out, northwest, north and northeast:
The other People follow, riding too far on weary horses, resting too little, Dreaming horribly, awaking in fear to flee again
(as she begins to help Cloudburst pack Uncle Ollokot’s horses, a stallion tries to kick Sound Of Running Feet, so she pricks him hard with her knife; he rolls his eyes and jerks; she clouts him on the muzzle as he skips and cringes; then the packbags go on him)
and Lean Elk yells: Hurry, hurry!
Strong Eagle spies a mule deer’s outstretched ears in the golden grass:
Pim!
the doe falls dead; her chest explodes; to-night our widows will be praising him.
Over The Point and Swan Necklace ride back up to the pass:
Cut Arm is not yet in sight, nor any Lice-Eaters.
White Thunder’s party,
watching down the winding pine-walls to the white river-pavement where the mourning doves are creeping,
finds an old Boston, evidently a miner. Gathering round their captive,
his face white as a new-peeled lodgepole,
they tell the half-breed Bunched Lightning what to say, and in the Boston language he shouts: You Boston, answer quick! Can you find Elk Water?*
Since he can, they do not kill him. They take him to the People. We make him draw a map, to show us the marks of this country. Then we keep him, and make him drive our horses as if he were a woman
