“Farther on towards where the sun goes down, there was a people that we called the Shyela [Cheyenne]. It was they who found the shonka wakon [horse] first. They were hunting from where they lived towards where you are always facing, and in a valley by a spring there stood this strange four-legged with long hair upon its neck and tail. It was living wild, but it was tame. At first the hunters were afraid, but after there was a council to talk about it some hunters were sent to catch it, and this they did with lariats of hide. And after some moons, this shonka wakon had a young one. Then one day when it was making a high shrill noise, another shonka wakon came, and this one was a stallion. So after that the Shyela had horses, and the Lakota traded for them, giving bows and arrows and beaded moccasins and clothing. The Arapahoes also found many horses and with them too the Lakota traded; and these peoples and the Lakota were friends after that, although their tongues were not the same. The old men said it was from the Wasichus who were towards where you are always facing [Spaniards] that the first horses ran away, and that is why they were so tame at first.
“So we had come at last to the Island Hill as the vision had foretold, and the land around it was ours and it was holy. There we lived in the sacred hoop with the sacred fire and the pipe; and the bow and the shonka wakon made us mighty.
“But when I was about seventeen winters old, a long dust of horseback soldiers with their wagons came down upon Pa Sapa, and I heard their chief was Long Hair. They came to look and went away; but they had seen the yellow metal [gold] that makes Wasichus crazy; and I think the whole Wasichu nation heard about it. So when the young grass came again and died, big trouble started.”
XXIII
Fighting the Gray Fox
As the old man had foreseen, a melting wind had risen with the waning of the softened day, and the night came roaring with no cloud. Next morning, when again we sat together, the puffing wood-fire grumbled to the gusts of false April, and the tepee canvas bellied, whipping the poles.
“It was a wind like this,” said Eagle Voice; “a big wind, strong and roaring, but it was full of snow and cold. I think I was eighteen winters old that time, and it was in the Moon of Snowblinds [March]. We of the Oglala band had our winter village in the valley of the Powder, not far from where the Little Powder comes in. I think there were fifty or sixty lodges of us; and when our Cheyenne friends came from Red Cloud’s agency to visit and trade with us, I think there were a hundred smokes in our village. We had plenty of papa and wasna and buffalo robes, and the Cheyennes came with powder and guns and canvas tepees they had got from the Wasichus. Also, they came with more word of the big trouble about Pa Sapa. They were saying down yonder that the Wasichus would drive us into those little islands that Wooden Cup had seen long ago; and there we would have to turn ourselves into Wasichus, so that our country could be taken from us. We knew that Gray Fox [General Crook] was in the country and that he had many walking soldiers and horsebacks waiting for the young grass. I was out on a hunting party just before this happened that I am going to tell you, and we saw some of the soldiers. But it was long before the grass, and not yet the time for war, so we were not afraid.
“When our Cheyenne friends came to visit us, there was feasting, for we had plenty, and I heard much talk around the fire at night about the trouble, and about a big village the crazy Wasichus had built in Pa Sapa. But there was talk about the old times, too, when everything was better; and old men told stories that were good to hear, so that those who told and we who heard did not sleep soon.
“It happened when the day had just come and the people were sleeping yet. I thought I was dreaming of many horses galloping and guns shooting and men yelling; but I was not dreaming. We all ran out of our tepee, but I thought of my quirt and hung it around my neck, down my back, as I ran with my gun. Out there all the people were running towards the bluff—men and women and children mixed up and running, screaming and shouting; horseback soldiers galloping and shooting all over the village; women running with babies, old people hobbling, horses rearing and knocking tepees over! It was day, but there was no sun. The wind was strong and full of snow and horses’ heads—something like the fight with the Shoshonis. It was very cold, and we had little clothing, but I did not feel the wind’s teeth. I ran against a man, and when I saw his face, it made me strong, for it was Crazy Horse. He was carrying some little boy on his back, and he was yelling for the men to gather about him behind the women and the old ones. Some near by heard and others saw, and many gathered about him, and more and more. We fought back of the running women and children, but we could not do much. When we were crowded up along the side of the bluff, the canvas tepees were burning down yonder, and the powder the Cheyennes had brought was going off—boom, boom, boom! Tepees and poles flying in the snow wind.
“On the bluff I was not far from Crazy Horse and I heard him crying, ‘We are going back! Let us die today, brothers!’ Then we all began singing the death-song and started back, charging down the hill—Lakotas and Cheyennes, all mixed up and singing. The cowards and baby-killers yonder did not wait long to fight us. I think they did not want to die that day. They galloped away up the valley of the Powder; and there was only the sharp wind blowing full of snow. A few tepees were standing, and some were smoking yet. I saw dead children trampled by the iron hoofs of the horses, and women with babies dead or wounded in the snow.
“When the soldiers ran away, the women and children and old people came swarming down from the bluff; and the mourning was louder than the wind among the scattered homes.