When the tree flowered

by John G. Neihardt

“In the daytime we were often merry; and if someone started singing, we would all sing together. That made the horses feel good, and maybe one would neigh and start the others neighing.

“Where we could not see far, there would be riders out ahead of us and off on both sides to watch for enemies. Sometimes when we were walking the horses slowly to rest them, somebody would start a funny story, and others would crowd close to take it from him and go on with it. There was one about the young woman bear who saw a handsome young hunter; and right away she loved him so much that she made up her mind to have him for her man. This was very hard on the young hunter, and it got harder and harder the longer the story became. He did not want to shoot anybody who loved him so much, but he did not want to be her man either. Sometimes he would think he had lost her at last; but just at the wrong time she would show up again.

“Maybe there was a pretty girl and he had been sneaking around a long while, trying to make her talk to him. And at last he would catch her down by the creek when she was getting water for her mother, and they would be talking. Then that woman bear would rush out of the brush groaning and with tears running down her face, because she loved him so much. And when the girl screamed and ran and he turned and ran too, the bear would chase him—maybe up a tree.

“Then maybe the handsome young hunter had the girl for his woman at last, and the bear would sneak into his tepee in the night just at the wrong time, and there would be a big woman fight in there, and all the people would come yelling to see who might be killing somebody.

“The bear always got away and there never was an end to that story. I think it is still getting longer somewhere. Anybody could tell about another time the woman bear did something, and he could make it up if he could not remember any. This story had to be told like something very sad and without seeming to know it was funny. I would laugh so hard to hear the story and see how sad and worried the story-tellers looked, that I could hardly stay on my horse. Maybe at night the bear story would begin again; and when they got it going it was hard to stop.”

Eagle Voice chuckled awhile, evidently enjoying remembered fragments of the bear yarn.

“Yes,” he continued at length, “High Horse and I would roll and hold our bellies with laughing. High Horse was a Miniconjou boy as old as I was. I knew him when we were small and I used to play over there being Tashina’s horse, and he was a girl’s horse too. It was on this war party that we began to be brother-friends. We were always together; and we liked each other so much that we decided we had been twins over in Twin Land and had got parted because we did not happen to find the same mother over here. We had heard the old ohunka story from our grandmothers, and maybe we did not quite believe it; but we wanted to, because the story made it more wonderful for us to be together.

“Twins are not like other people, and there is something wakon about them. They come from Twin Land where they have lived together always; and when they come into this world looking for a mother, they ride around on jack rabbits. Nobody can see them; but they ride around anyway, looking and looking for a good and pretty young woman. Maybe she is getting water from a spring or a creek and the twins have followed her on their jack rabbits. They are hiding in the brush, and when the good and pretty young woman leans over, they hurry and get inside of her. If only one gets inside, then the other must find himself another mother, and all their lives each will be hunting the other one.

“So we had found each other, and we said we were never going to be parted any more. If the story wasn’t so, why did everybody know it?

“Beyond the Powder we came to a great flat land where many antelope were feeding. Some high buttes were there standing all alone, and when High Horse and I climbed one of them, far off towards where you are always looking [south] we could see the tops of Pa Sapa [the Black Hills] low down in the sky like a black thundercloud just beginning to come up.