When the tree flowered

by John G. Neihardt

“I was thinking of all that is gone,” he answered, the meditative mood still strong upon him. “When I was a boy I heard the old people tell about a great wichasha wakon [holy man] who did wonderful things; and his name was Wooden Cup. He had a vision of the Great Mysterious One, and that is how he got this power. He could make fire with his fingers, just by touching the wood; and he could see far off into the days that were going to be when babies that were not yet born would be walking with their canes. He saw it and he said it. A strange people would come from the sunrise, and there would be more of them than the bison. Then the bison would turn to white bones on the prairie. The mother earth would be bound with bands of iron. The sacred hoop of our people would be broken by the evil power of the strangers, and in that time we would live in little square gray houses, and in those houses we would starve. He said it, and we have seen it. I will not live in them, for the Great Mysterious One meant all things to be round—the sky and the prairie, the sun and the moon, the bodies of men and animals, trees and the nests of birds, and the hoop of the people. The days and the seasons come back in a circle, and so do the generations. The young grow old, and from the old the young begin and grow. It is the sacred way.

“My daughter in the little gray house yonder is good, but her heart is half Wasichu. She feeds me of the little that she has, and her man brings me wood. They say it is warmer in there; but I was born a Lakota, and I will die in a tepee. It would be well if my young bones had been scattered on the prairie to show where a warrior fell and to make a story, for it is not good to grow old.”

For a while the bone whistle called plaintively to him as from a great distance, and he listened, staring at the ground.

“I think I did not believe what Wooden Cup said,” he continued; “for I was young and the world was new. There was strangeness everywhere so that maybe something wonderful was going to happen. I remember, before I had sharp arrows for my bow, the way I would be in a valley all alone, and there would be no sound, and all at once the hills would be wrinkled grandfathers looking down at me and saying something good that I could almost hear.

“When we were camped near the soldiers’ town on Duck River that time, I heard the old people talking about the iron road the Wasichus were making all along Shell River [Platte]. And there was a long high dust of Wasichu wagons full of people always going and going to the sunset. It was part of what Wooden Cup saw. Little boys talked about it, and they said afterwhile all the bad Wasichus in the world would be yonder where the sun goes down; or if there were any left when we got big, we would just kill them all, and then everything would be the way it was when our grandfathers were boys.

“I remember there was a big meeting at the soldiers’ town [Fort Laramie] the day before we broke camp and went north to fight. It was the day more soldiers came to steal the road up Powder River if our people said, ‘no.’ I can see Red Cloud talking to the people and the Wasichu chiefs who came from the Great Father in Washington. They came to ask for the road through our hunting country; but the soldiers came to take it. When I remember, Red Cloud is standing on a high place made of wood, and he is taller than a man. I cannot hear his words, but he is very angry at the Wasichu chiefs. The men cry, ‘how,’ and ‘hoka-hey,’ and the women make the tremolo. We are going to fight, and I am scared; but I am glad too.

“So our people broke camp and we traveled fast with Red Cloud until we came to the Powder River country. There many others came to us. Much of what I remember about that time is like something I have dreamed, but some of it is clear; and I have heard much that is like remembering. But I can see my father going away with a band of warriors; and I can see them riding on a hill into the sky, until the sky is empty and the hill looks afraid. I can see warriors coming back, and my father is among them. They are driving many mules that they had taken from the soldiers, and some big Wasichu horses. I can see the warriors riding about the circle of the village with Wasichu scalps on their coup sticks. I can see my father making a kill-talk, and I can hear the drums beat between his tellings of brave deeds, while the people cry out to praise him. And while I listen, far away now, I can see Wasichu wagons burning yet and the people in them dying on the road that was not theirs.

“The big sun dance that summer made the hearts of the people strong to fight and die; and my heart was strong too. When I got a little bigger I would be a great warrior like my father. The little boys played killing Wasichus harder than ever; and we had victory dances and made kill-talks about the brave deeds we were going to do.

“Then it is winter. The snow is deep and heaped along the creek. The wind howls in the night, and the smoke whirls round inside the tepee. Maybe it is afraid to go out there. I crawl deep under the buffalo robe, for there are angry spirits crying in the dark.

“Then there are nights when the wind is dead and something big is crawling close outside without making any noise. If I peek out through the tepee flap, the stars are big and sharp, and everything is listening. Trees pop in the cold. It is the Moon of Popping Trees [December].