When the tree flowered

by John G. Neihardt

And so, next day, we feasted—Eagle Voice, No Water, Moves Walking, and I. It was well past noon when we began, for after delivering the makings of the feast to the daughter in the little gray log house, I had gone in search of the guests, taking the son-in-law with me as a guide. Drifted by-roads, that had ceased to be even the desultory trails they were at best, led at last to lonely shacks some miles up the creek valley where the old men lived, or, rather, waited, in apathetic squalor for nothing in particular. Curiosity, chronic loneliness and the immemorial lure of a feast, which is more than eating, assured a ready acceptance of the invitation.

So the four of us were sitting in a close circle with a steaming pot of veal in the center. Pae zhuta sapa [black medicine] bubbled in the battered coffee pot on the sheet-iron stove, and there was plenty of chun humpi [juice of the tree, sugar] to sweeten it. Bread, cookies, and canned peaches were close at hand. As giver of the feast and the youngest of the party, I had filled the tin cups with meat and broth, passed the bread around, and filled other tin cups with coffee liberally dosed with sugar. I had been greeted by each in turn, “Ho! Grandson, how!” To this greeting, Eagle Voice had added: “This is indeed my grandson. See! He has given me these fine warm moccasins. Now my toes do not smart when I get wood in the snow.” When the moccasins had been examined and generously approved, No Water, the older of the guests, both of whom were younger than Eagle Voice, had a little speech to make. It was to the effect that I could not help being a Wasichu any more than he could be other than a Lakota. And, indeed, a little brown paint on my face and a blanket—“Could not tell the difference,” he said; “could be Ta Shunka Witko [Crazy Horse].” I thanked him for the too generous compliment, and his round, bulbous-nosed countenance, that normally bore a vaguely grieved, apprehensive look, glowed with good humor. “Maybe Wakon Tonka gave him a Lakota heart,” Moves Walking added. “Maybe if all Wasichus were so, things would be better.” Wiry and smallish for a Sioux, a cast in his left eye gave to his sharp, shriveled face an air of angry intensity; but now even the recalcitrant off-eye softened a bit with good will.

Having first offered choice morsels of meat to the wahnagi, we fell to serious eating with fingers and sharp knives, the latter for cutting off the bite. Eagle Voice broke the silence with a remark to the effect that the meat was tender. “Even I can chew it, and most of my teeth are uprooted. I might be eating the first young calf I killed when I was a boy. I think this will make me stronger.”

When it was unanimously agreed that the meat was tender and washtay, we resumed the serious business of eating in silence. At last, the peaches and cakes having been sampled and approved, the pipe went round and Eagle Voice spoke: “Our grandson likes to hear stories, and I have told him many already. There is a story about a dog. I have heard No Water tell it.”

“Dho,” assented No Water; “it is a true story [woya kapi]. I can prove it by a Hunkpapa, much older than I am, who told it to me.”

He searched our faces with his vaguely grieved apprehensive look. There being no denials, he proceeded: “Sometimes the four-leggeds are wiser than we two-leggeds. A horse will take his man home in the darkest night when the man is lost. If you try to lose a dog, he will find you, even if there is no trail to smell. I do not know how this is, but it is so. I think they are closer relatives to the spirits than we are. Sometimes they can talk too, but not many can understand them. This dog could talk, but only a very little girl could understand, as you will hear.

“This man’s name was Sitting Hawk. He was not a noted warrior, but he was a good hunter and took good care of his family, so that they always had plenty to eat. I did not hear his woman’s name, and I am telling only what I know. He had two daughters, one of them not quite a woman yet and the other just a little girl—maybe three winters. They had a little dog, and the little dog had four pups.

“The scouts had been out looking everywhere, and there were no enemies; so Sitting Hawk thought he would go hunting and take his family along to have a good time. He liked to do that. There were horses for all the family to ride, and the little dog rode on the pony-drag with her pups when she was not running around smelling things. Afterwhile they came to a place of green grass with plenty of water and wood, and there they made a camp. It was good weather, so they were happy there. Sitting Hawk would go hunting, and his woman and older daughter would stay at home and dry the meat. The very little girl would play with the four pups. That is the way it was, for I do not know how many days.

“One day Sitting Hawk came home early and he was very tired. So he ate and lay down in the tepee to sleep awhile. It was not yet dark, so the others were all up. The woman and her older daughter were scraping a deerskin they had staked out on the ground. They did not notice the little girl much, and the dog was letting the four pups eat. Afterwhile the little girl came and asked for something to eat. So the older daughter gave it to her. Soon the little girl came back and asked again for something to eat. The sister gave her some more meat and said, “This is all you can have. You will make yourself sick eating so much.’

“So the little girl went away; and this is what she was doing. There were four men hiding out there in the brush, and one of them could speak our tongue. Perhaps they were kind to the little girl. It must have been so, for she was not afraid. When they told her to get them something to eat and not to tell, that is what she did. Maybe it was like a game she liked to play all by herself.