Then the mother’s face shone with a wonderful smile. She stood in silence with heaving breast as her white chieftain went out. “He is good,” she said. “He is our brother.”
To this, serene old Tah-You nodded: “He knows my medicine is very strong—for he is half red man.”
RISING WOLF—GHOST DANCER
RISING WOLF—GHOST DANCER
He sat in the shade of the lodge, smoking his pipe. His face was thin, keen, and very expressive. The clear brown of his skin was pleasant to see, and his hair, wavy from long confinement in braids, was glossy as a blackbird’s wing. Around his neck he wore a yellow kerchief—yellow was his “medicine” color—and he held a soiled white robe about his loins. He was about fifty years of age, but seemed less than forty.
He studied me quizzically as I communicated to him my wish to hear the story of his life, and laughingly muttered some jocose remark to his pretty young wife, who sat near him on a blanket, busy at some needlework. The humorous look passed out of his face as he mused, the shadows lengthened on the hot, dry grass, and on the smooth slopes of the buttes the sun grew yellow.
After a long pause, he lifted his head and began to speak in a low and pleasant voice. He used no gestures, and his glance was like that of one who sees a small thing on a distant hill.
“I am well brought up,” were his first words. “My father was chief medicine man[1] of his tribe, and one who knew all the stories of his people. I was his best-loved son, and he put me into the dances of the warriors when I was three years old. I carried one of his war-bonnet feathers in my hand, and was painted like the big warriors.