RavenShadow (23 page)

Mitakuye oyasin
.

An Experience at Wounded Knee

T
he next morning, after a night in the Lincoln, I felt different. My mood (or would you call it the state of my spirit?) was up, my mind was clear, things felt simple, and I felt like doing things simply. I was pleased by the change—so many years I’d felt grumpy, out of sorts, wry, cynical, all that
stuff
, I thought that was normal. This morning I went about normal things, gassing up the car, having breakfast at the Wild Horse Cafe. I enjoyed noticing what I was doing, just being aware.

After breakfast, I thought. No, don’t want to drive down to see Grandpa and Aunt Adeline. So I called Tyler Red Crow, and fifteen minutes later he pulled into the parking lot at Little Wound School and I jumped in. We shook. He was driving over to Pine Ridge today, something about his job, and invited me to ride with him.

Tyler is a tall Oglala about my age, hint of a belly, genial, articulate, a likable guy with a lot of bubbly energy, and he likes to put that energy into talking.

“I am traditional,” he says right off. “I grew up, one foot in the traditional Lakota way, one in the Christian way. One
hunska
[grandpa] traditional, the other, Episcopal priest. I
chose
the Lakota way of praying.”

He eyed me sideways and scooted the truck around a corner too fast. I fidgeted.

“We’ll go by the massacre site, okay? I stop there to pray when I can.”

I nodded and fidgeted some more.

He looked at me long, until he ran the front right tire onto the gravel—that road is a twisty one. He corrected easily and looked at me again. “I’m not easy in that place,” I said. I began to get a dark feeling.

“Hey, Lakota people, we ain’t gonna be easy, that place. ’Less you pray a lot there, make peace.”

“Never.”

“Your relatives died there?”

“Yeah.” The feeling was dark and heavy both. “My grandmother’s father.”

He eyed me long again. His face turned sober and he studied the road hard. “You need to go,” he says, fingers drumming on steering wheel. “You need to go. Well, we’re going.”

Then his energy burst into talking again. He hopped from subject to subject like a jackrabbit. My mind was half somewhere else—already at Wounded Knee—but I can tell you some of the things he said.

“For twenty years, me, no praying. Back from army, 1976, I renewed my Lakota spiritual life. Chose the Lakota way of praying, best thing I ever did.”

I didn’t feel like talking—I was dreading seeing the massacre site again. But I managed to get out some words that said, “In a way I’m the opposite. Raised traditional, pushed onto the white road, then chose it, now maybe choosing to come back to traditional.”

“I’m so happy now,” puts in Tyler. “I’m
rich
.”

I was quiet, thinking on Wounded Knee.

Later—“You go Christian when you went the white way?”

“No.”

“I consider all Christian churches my enemies. I don’t associate with them whatsoever.”

Later—“Hope what’s coming, strong revival of traditional life on the rez. Hope these rides bring back those values. To me, that’s what they’re all about.”

Later—“I want the rez to be traditional. I invite Lakota who want to be modern to leave us by the year two thousand. We want to be traditional.”

Later—“Chup tell you how these rides got started?”

“He told me to ask you.”

“Birgil Kills Straight, Alex White Plume, Jim Garrett, coupla others.” (Kills Straight and White Plume were old Pine Ridge rez names everybody knew.) We say, ourselves, “It is now seven generations since Big Foot’s people died at Wounded Knee. Black Elk said the hoop would be mended and the tree would flower in the seventh generation. We need to do something to help the people heal.”

Now a different feeling came, a sense of rising in my heart. It mixed peculiar with the dark feeling from before.

“We decided, wanted do something, start mending the hoop, didn’t know what. So we went to Curtis Kills Ree and asked for guidance.” He looked sidelong at me. “You know Curtis?”

I shook my head no.

“Medicine man, good one. Curtis, he says, ‘Make a pilgrimage, repeat Big Foot’s ride to Wounded Knee four times, plus a fifth ride on the hundredth anniversary of the massacre. Pilgrimages to release the spirits of those who were murdered, finally, and wipe away the tears of the people.’”

My feeling was big now, the rising, but really my heart was all up and down, like a stick tossed on the waves of the ocean.

“So we did a Makes-Vow ceremony. We promised to do that thing.”

After a little bit Tyler went on. “On the day of the hundredth anniversary, perform the ceremony Releasing of the Spirits.”
He fixed me hard with his eyes. “You know this ceremony?”

I shook my head no again.

“It can be done once every seven generations, that’s all. Release the spirits from that place.”

With these heavy words we both fell silent. Though I didn’t know the story well, I knew the spirits of the people who died in the valley of Wounded Creek a hundred years before were still there, still suffering. In fact, the massacre itself was still going on, on and on, time without end. Time, we Lakotas know, does not truly divide itself into past, present, and future—this is one of the great illusions. All time is happening forever in the eternal moment. And some darknesses must be … exposed to the air for healing. Darknesses like mass murder.

The truck nosed down a hill. Porcupine Butte was off to the right. “This is where it started,” says Tyler. “The people fled from Cheyenne River, heading south toward the Badlands, escaping from the soldiers and heading for Pine Ridge. Right off the army got real excited—find those Indians, they’re gonna join the Ghost Dancers, Badlands, big trouble. Army units ran all over the place, Cheyenne River to Pine Ridge—find Big Foot!

“But the people traveled way faster than the whites thought they could. Every place the soldiers looked for them, the people were already gone. Even with Big Foot getting sicker all the time.

“Then Big Foot, he sent some men ahead to tell the chiefs at Pine Ridge, I’m coming. I’ll be at Porcupine Butte tomorrow and Pine Ridge the next day.

“The Seventh Cavalry was camped at Wounded Knee, looking for Big Foot.” Tyler nodded three or four times. “That Seventh Cavalry,” he repeated grimly, and shook his head bitterly.

Custer’s old outfit.

“The Pine Ridge chiefs sent word back—the soldiers are looking for you around Wounded Knee, better swing to the east and avoid them. But Big Foot was so sick by that time, he decided
to head straight for Pine Ridge, never mind the soldiers.

“Big Foot’s people and the soldiers, they met here at Porcupine Butte, everyone got ready to fight. But the soldiers said, ‘Hey, peace if you give up your firearms.’ Big Foot didn’t like this, afraid of trouble, but looking like bigger trouble if he didn’t. So he says, ‘Let the army escort the people to Wounded Knee Creek, we stay the night, talk about the weapons the next day.’

“Big Foot was really sick by this time, coughing up blood. The soldiers put him in a wagon to make the trip.

“So. Yeah. This is where it started.”

We rode in silence. I can’t say where Tyler’s mind was. Mine was on the mountain, and the people I laid with there.

In the darkness and the shadows black silhouettes stirred in a low huddle and moaned in a chorus, and of the moaners I was one. I uttered moans, and I became moans, and my soul itself moaned, was Moan
.

Pete said what I saw on the mountain was Big Foot’s people at Wounded Knee, dead. My people.

The truck topped the rise and pointed down into the wide valley surrounded by low hills, the creek in the middle, the church on the hill just west of the road. I had never wanted to check out this place, to feel what was here for me. When I drove this way, I kept my eyes on the road and my foot on the gas.

Tyler pulled up in front of the big sign,
WOUNDED KNEE BATTLE
, turned off the engine, and went to the sign. I shambled out and stood beside him. Someone had crossed out the word
battle
and written
MASSACRE
.

The sign explained what happened here, but I couldn’t bear to read it all.

Huge hands gripped my stomach and wrung it like a dishrag.

Tyler walked around the sign and on up the hill. I followed him. It was a short walk that was very long.

In front of the small, white Catholic church (“I consider all Christian churches my enemies,” Tyler had said) stood the mass grave. It was surrounded by a low wire fence with a creaky gate. In the center was a monument listing the names of people of
Big Foot’s band buried there. “Hundred forty-six,” said Tyler. “Not so many names on the monument. Joseph Horn Cloud had the monument put up, tribute to his father, name Horn Cloud. See here by the name, it says, ‘Here the peacemaker died innocent.’”

Tyler lit a cigarette, blew out the smoke. “The total Indian people killed, like a lot of other things about the massacre, it’s in dispute. Don’t matter, you can’t get your mind around it, can’t feel it, all them people snuffed. I try to picture so many, try to feel so many wounds, so many lives put out, and I gag.”

I walked to the other side of the monument, away from Tyler’s gab.

How is it you white people, so eager to tell us right from wrong, kill three hundred men, women, and children here, no reason?

And why don’t white people think there is evil in the world any more, think that’s superstition? Hey, we Lakota, we know about Iya, the Evil One, Wind Storm, and all his bad doings. You showed us.

Tyler and I stood on opposite sides of the monument and looked. I made myself breathe in and out regular.

My eyes ran up and down the list of names. “Hired civilians brought the bodies up here,” said Tyler, “dug one big hole, dumped them in, and posed for photographs standing in and around the grave.”

Partway down the first column of names, I thought, I should look for the name of Unchee’s mother and father here. Then it struck me.
I know nothing about them, nothing, not who they were, how many children they had, what members of the family died with them…. I don’t even know their names
.

I threw my head back, sucked at the sky with my eyes, gaped my mouth open as if to scream, and Raven shot down my throat.

Knowing, I fell, and my spirit plummeted to …

I was in a world I did not know, along a river in a canyon. The walls stood red, orange, and brown. Above, the sky was violet, and unbroken as far as I could see, ahead and to the sides, unmarked by any cloud, or even the slightest variation in color. The ground at my feet was silver-gray. In this world apparently was no vegetation of any kind, not trees, not bushes, not grass under my feet. To my left a river roiled, a great, snarling flood of yellow-orange, molten, like lava—and not flowing in the ordinary way but holding itself like a cable of twisted wire and writhing past me, downhill, the opposite of the way I needed to go.

But … where should I go?

Black shadow
.

I looked into the violet sky, which had no sun at all, though I stood in bright daylight. Suddenly from behind came a black speck, growing. Its shadow fell on me, and was chill.

Raven blasted into sight over my head, immense, and roaring like a jet. He circled to the right, wingtips spread like dark fingers, and from behind me roared over my head once more. His roar was the call of all the ravens of the world, though this Raven gave none. He began to wing-flap up the valley, and I knew that I must go. Raven was my guide.

He grew to a speck in the distance.

Black fear shot through my blood.

I shuddered all over my body, I felt my limbs shake crazily. About to put my left foot out unwillingly to take the first step on a journey, I waggled my head violently and shouted, “No!”

“Blue Crow!” cried Tyler. He rocked me by the shoulders.

I shook my head again. “No!” I forced my eyes open.

I did not snap back from the strange land, wherever or whatever it was. For a moment I was completely clear about this—I had a choice. I could stay in the strange world, extend my foot, bring it down, and begin the journey with Raven. Or I could be at Wounded Knee with Tyler.

I boomed my shoulders and trunk upright and threw my
arms out to prop myself. For a moment my head swirled—my physical head, here in this world—but I refused to lie back down.

Tyler put an arm around my shoulders to help me stay up. “Blue Crow, are you okay?”

I shook my head slowly sideways, back and forth. He must have thought I was saying, No, I’m not okay—because he pressed in close behind me.

“I’m all right, I can sit up,” I said, and edged away from him. “I saw something, I went somewhere. I don’t know what.” I stretched my body this way and that. “Guess I don’t know what happened for sure. Maybe I saw something, maybe I went somewhere.”

I forced myself to stand up.

Tyler eyed me hard. “Did you cross into the spirit world for a minute?”

“Maybe,” I said quickly without thinking. I wasn’t going to give room to that notion. “It’s over now.”

I want it to be over
.

O strange! I am standing at the Wounded Knee mass gravesite for the first time. I have never been here, and at the same time I have always been here
.

I don’t want to be here. Why would I ride across the plains and Badlands for endless miles in the winter to get here?

“Let’s sit in the truck,” I said. Somehow it seemed protective, like the air in the truck wouldn’t be the air of Wounded Knee.

While I got into the cab, Tyler came partway down the hill, found some white sage, knelt, said a prayer, and picked the sage. Back in the truck he opened the glove box, got out some shiny red ribbon, wrapped the sage, and hung it from the rear view mirror. “I asked for good things for our ride to this place,” he said, “and good things for you from this place.” He let that sit a minute. “That last one,” he went on, “that’s a hard one. Hard for you here.”

Being Tyler and always in motion, he started the truck and
headed south toward Pine Ridge. We rode in silence. Finally I said, “Why do you say Wounded Knee is hard stuff for me?”