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    There are some who call me a traitor. Not in words, at least not to my face, but with their eyes when I walk past them. There is an accusing there, with somean emptiness, a shame. I do not care. It is the same accusing look which a child might give his parents, after his father has killed a beloved pup in a time of hunger and the mother has boiled it. It is a look which betrays an ignorance, a lack of understanding about life. Looks do not change what is, or what must be.

I take some comfort, also, in knowing thatthough the accusing eyes are cast toward methose same people know they are as guilty as I am, if guilt is to be laid. They know that the fact they live, even if not as they wish, is due to men like me. Men who saved them from starving amid the bleached bones of our brothers the buffalo, men who saved them from falling to the guns and knives of the wasicu, the white men. These accusers hate because they are alive to hate, and they are alive, at least in part, because of me. They do not throw away the scraps the wasicu give themthey eat, they live. They adapt, as they must adaptthey move forward, away from the past and into the future.

And yet, there are times when the past reaches out to me. The old songs to Wakan Tanka, and to the Six Powers, echo in the wind and vibrate on the crucifix that hangs around my neck. Sometimes a sudden fear seizes me when I look upon the square house where I live, and realize that nothing in the World is square except those things transformed by white menand I know in those sudden moments that I am outside the circle of life, in the darkness.

In those times I see him, as I saw him so often in the days of my youth when we were as brothers. I call his name sometimes. Tashunkewitko. Crazy Horse.

He turns then, in my mind, to face me, his hair fluttering and the single hawk feather bristling in the wind. There is no accusing in his eyes, no hatredonly a deep and powerful sadness.

Let me go, my friend, he says softly, as he said on that day. You have caused me enough hurt.

And, as on that other day, I wish to weep but do not. I flinch beneath the gaze of my friend, my hero, my curse.

Sometimes, also, I see myself as I once was, a memory which shimmers before me as if seen in the distance on a blazing-hot day. Little Big Man, Lakota-mighty warrior of the Oglalas. Bow and lance in hand, paint pony breathing powerfully between my knees, shouting my defiance at the enemy, be it Shoshoni, Crow, or white soldier. My friends are with me. Red Feather, He Dog, Touch-the-Clouds, Hump, Little Hawk, Lone Bear, whom we teased because of his constant bad luck.

And Crazy Horse. Always Crazy Horseamong us but distant, the example we sought to follow.

I pause before the looking glass, see myself as I am now. The hair cropped short, the woolen clothes which itch and burn, the cigarette that dangles from lips which once pressed the stem of my own chanunpa, and breathed in smoke that was sacred, not acrid.

Those moments come, but they pass. They come more often now, yes, as my summers accumulate. They are something to be endured for a little whilelike the pain in my fingers when the rain comes or the slow trickle of my piss, once a manly stream.

Traveling in circles will get you nowhere. I know this now. The world of the white man travels in a straight lineyou must move with it or be left behind. You must move forward.

Crazy Horse lived in a circle, lives still in a circle, perpetual, eternal.

I remember the wind rushing at us as we charged among our enemies the Crows. The blows traded between warriors, the glory, the boasting around the fires when we returned home. I remember the twang of the bowstring, the buzzing song of the arrows as they cut through the air.

I remember the white settlers in their wagon trains, come to steal our land, come to paw the yellow metal from the soil of our sacred hills. I remember the blood spurting from their cut throats, the ripping of scalps, the screams of their women shrill in my ears, an echo of our own screaming women.

I remember how good it all felt.

My blood surged in my veins, eager for war, like the blood of all young men. Crazy Horse was the patient onethe only patient one, it sometimes seemed. How many times I saw his face darken with fury when some warriorme, often as notmoved too soon, and ruined his carefully laid plans. It was his patience which kept him from striking at us instead of the escaping enemy in those times, I could tell.

On the occasions when his comrades did as Crazy Horse suggested, though, how different it was. What glories.

What glories.

Like the Fetterman fight. Captain Fettermanthe young soldier who was so eager to fight us. He had courage and confidencenoble things in a warrior, even a white onebut he was also a fool. With eighty men, he said, I could ride through the entire Sioux nation. When you do not know your enemy, courage is of no useit becomes rashness, and is another weapon in the hands of your foe. Fetterman could not be bothered to learn about his enemy, he was too busy basking in honors he had not yet won.

But Crazy Horse knew him.

Fettermans commander had told him, as everyone knows now, to go protect the wagons which had gone out to gather wood for the soldier fort. He was not to chase any Indians, especially not over the ridge.

We already knew that something special was going to happen that day. The Minniconjous who rode with us had a winkte, a woman-man, whose special medicine told them we would have a big victory.

A group of our people attacked the wood cutters that day, to draw the soldiers out of their fort. This is when Fettermans commander sent him out, wisely telling him not to go beyond Lodge Trail Ridge. There were eighty soldiers, just the number the young captain had boasted he would need.

I rode toward the fort with Crazy Horse and eight others. No sooner had Fetterman come out than Red Cloud gave the signal for the first group of decoys to abandon the attack and retreat toward the ridge, even as our own little band approached the soldiers.

The captain looked confused, like he was not sure which group of Indians to go after. Crazy Horse helped him make up his mind. While the rest of us rode hard toward the ridge like our brothers, Crazy Horse rode straight toward the eighty soldiers. He was yelling, and waving his blanket like a mother trying to draw a hungry enemy away from her children.

Many years before, when he was very young, a vision had told Crazy Horse he would never be killed by bullets or by an enemy, but that his own people would hold him and pull him down. So he knew, then, that the soldiers could not kill him. But even if he had not known, it would not have mattered. He would still have charged the wasicus.

Seeing how all of us were running around, acting crazy, and how Crazy Horse was covering our retreat, Fetterman took the bait. He led his soldiers after us, trying to get in good range so they could shoot us in the back as we ran. Crazy Horse wheeled his pony around and ran with us, then. He beat his pony madly with his hand, or at least he seemed to. Really, he was only striking the air. With the other hand he was holding the pony back, so he would not pull so far ahead that the soldiers gave up the chase. When it did seem that they were not gaining fast enough, he would stop his pony and hop off, frantically adjusting a rope, or checking a hoof as if the pony were going lame. Once he even built a little fire, making the wasicus think he had given up on the idea of ever escaping them. When they got close enough that their bullets kicked up dust all around him, Crazy Horse jumped on his pony and rode once more.

The soldiers chased us over the ridge and down into the valley hidden behind it where two thousand of our comrades awaited. We killed all those soldiers. If Crazy Horse had not been both brave and clever, maybe even Fetterman would not have been foolish enough to run blindly into our trap.

If only every fight could have been like that oneor like the fight at the Greasy Grass, where we rubbed out Longhair and most of his Seventh Cavalry. Or if they had fought us only with bullets, instead of with hunger and cold. I would not have taken the paint from off my face if it had been that way. I would have died with the paint on, facing my enemies like a man, and my last breath would have been a happy one.

I was still ready to fight, even when Red Cloud and the others were ready to give up and sell the sacred hills to the wasicus. This was before the fight at the Greasy Grass. When they asked Crazy Horse to come to a council between the soldiers and many of our people, to talk about selling the land, he would not go. He sent me, instead. I rode my pony through the crowd and right up to the white men, the feathers of my war bonnet sailed behind me, and I held my rifle high in the air.

Hokahey! I shouted. I have come to kill the white thieves!

Young Man Afraid, who had become an agency Indian, came with his Indian policemen and took my gun away. I gave it to them, and left, but I saw the panic in the white mens eyes. They knew that there were still some among us who were not afraid of them.

Yes, I wish it could have stayed that way. But it could not. Red Cloud, and Young Man Afraid and the others, their eyes had opened sooner than mine. Where I saw only the redness of my anger, they saw the truth which awaited us.

Hoka. Hokahey. I am not afraid. I whisper the words into the wind sometimes, even now, though I do not know why. The words do not rise like smoke to my father the sky; they hang in the air like fog, and the sun melts them quickly away. I have no father, no grandfather. I am old, and am very afraid, even though I have no enemy now except time.

Perhaps to grow older really is to grow wiser, and perhaps to grow wiser is not so much to be desired. Perhaps the flame which crackles and blazes in our hearts as young men burns itself out in most of us, leaving us with warm ashes which we hold stubbornly to our breasts as a reminder that once we were alive. The fire still burns in a few... though maybe they are born with more tinder, or else their hearts are made of greener wood. I do not know.

All I know is that my fire burned out, and Crazy Horses blazed as fiercely as ever.

The wasicu army did not go away and leave us alone after we killed Longhair. It might not have mattered if they had. There was no buffalo left to feed us, and even those who returned to the reservations went hungry; the white man would send no more food until we gave them Pa Sapa, which they called the Black Hills. So we did. And what was the point of fighting if there was no sacred land to defend, if our helpless ones starved and died? It was mostly the foolish young men, who cared more for honor and glory than for their peoples lives, who refused to submitthem, and a handful of older ones who thought they could feed themselves on lost dreams. Crazy Horse was one of these. I was not.

I had hoped to slip off from camp quietly, to join my family at the Red Cloud Agency. It was perhaps a cowardly thing to do, this slinking away in the dark of morning, but I had enough pride left that I wanted to just get on with my surrender, without announcing it to the world.

I was not completely surprised to find Crazy Horse standing in my path.

You too, Little Big Man? he said. I did not answer. He stepped sadly aside.

I did not expect you to give up so easily, he said as I rode slowly past him. I paused.

I do not give up easily, I said. But we have lost. Any more fighting will get us all killed. We can never win.

They can never win, he said, unless we let them.

You are wrong.

Maybe you will become a big man at the agency, Crazy Horse said. Like Red Cloud. Maybe you can distribute the white mans food, or be a policeman and tell people what to do.

Red Cloud is no coward, I told him. But he has seen the big cities full of whites in the east, and can see how things are. Even you have changed. You have punished others who tried to go to the whites. You took away their things. I thought only white men gave orders to their own people.

His expression did not change.

Will you seek to punish me now, too? I said.

Crazy Horse sighed, and stepped further away. I could see in his eyes that it was I who punished him.

Go, he said. Let the whites put you on their reservation. I am a manthey will not put me anywhere that I do not wish to go.

I rode away. My heart was heavy, but I knew I was right. I would see my friend only once more after that morning.

Crazy Horse did finally come in, you see. The soldiers hounded him, and placed rewards on him, and many Lakotas were fearful he would get them all killed. Thousands of our people clustered around the fort to see the great warrior surrender himself at last. When he dismounted and walked across the parade ground I rushed to his sidenot as a fellow warrior, this time, but as an enemy. I had learned that only those who sided with the whites would ever win, or would ever rise to be a leader of his own people, like Red Cloud and Spotted Tail.

I was one of them now.

Crazy Horse was told that he was being led to the adjutants office, to meet with the colonel. The colonel had given different orders. We were to take Crazy Horse to the guardhouse and lock him up. The next morning he would be shipped off to prison.

It was a bad thing to do. The wasicus had decided it, though. They hated and feared him greatly, and there was nothing I could do about it. To protest would be to lose their trust.

I took Crazy Horse by the arm.

He did not know that the building we were leading him into was the guardhouse, not at first. It was the smell which told him. Prisoners were never allowed out, and the place stank of piss, stale sweat, and shit. His nose wrinkled, indignant; he was not accustomed to the odors which seem to settle around white men. I had already grown used to it.

Crazy Horses eyes blazed when he peered into the darkness of the building and made out the tiny cell which awaited him, and the ball-and-chain. I felt his muscles tensing, but he gave me no chance to react.

He jerked his arm free from my grasp, and at the same instant reached behind him and drew out a concealed knife. I grabbed for him, and he slashed at me. He cut my wrist, but I still wrapped my arms around himeven as he lunged into the other Lakota guards behind him. The momentum carried us all out the door, and into the bright sunlight. I held his arms tightly to his body, so he could cut no one else.

Stab the son of a bitch! Stab him! the colonel cried.

In an instant, several soldiers had come forward to do just that. They thrust their bayonets into his body, so violently that I feared one might pass all the way through and stab me as well.

He broke free from me, and they stabbed him again. He fell to the ground, limpI and several of the other Lakotas rushed to catch him. I grabbed his arm, even as he hit the ground. There was no strength in his limbs now. His life was bleeding swiftly into the dust.

Let me go, my friends, he said weakly, but his eyes bored deep into mine.

You have hurt me enough.

At that moment, high above us, a hawk screamed. Many among us took this to be a sign of Wakan Tankas displeasure. I did not want to believe such a thingfeared to believe itbut the sound reminded me of Crazy Horses vision. I stiffened.

No bullet had killed him. nor had an enemy, really. He was dragged down by his own people. He was held down by one of his own.

I had killed him. We all had, in our own way, but it was me who had done the holding.

The soldiers wanted to drag him into the dirty cell even though he was dying, but the people would not allow it. His friend Touch-the-Cloudsa giant of a manpicked Crazy Horse up easily, lovingly, and carried him into the adjutants office. Worm, father of Crazy Horse, was quickly at his side.

I pressed close. I heard Crazy Horse say, Father, it is no use to depend on me. I am going to die.

I tried to push my way into the office. Touch-the-Clouds looked up, and caught my gaze from across the room. His face wrinkled much as Crazy Horses had wrinkled at the stink of the jail, and set into an expression which I had never seen beforebut have seen every day since. Sometimes I see it on my own face.

An hour later, Touch-the-Clouds stepped back out to face the crowd. He had to duck down to pass through the doorway. He looked slowly over themcomrades in arms, all of them, at one point or another. This time, he did not look back at me at all.

It is good, he said solemnly. He has looked for death, and now he has found it.

The women began to wail. It was no use to depend on Crazy Horse. Now, and forever, we had only the white man to depend on.

Even as the last of Crazy Horses blood poured out, the people began to forget. They forgot that, in life, they had feared the trouble he would bring down on us all. Many of them began to remember only his brave deeds, and his determination to protect the sacred ways. And who it was that held him down.

One of the soldiers at the fort began to call me Brutus after thata strange wasicu word I did not understand, and many of the other soldiers did not seem to understand either.

Never again have I sung the old songs. Never again have I looked for the shadow of my spirit guide. Hawks are only hawks now, crows only crows. There are neither signs nor omens. The thunder beings bring only rain, never power. Even the white mans god does not seem to listen when I try to talk to him, as if he does not understand my attempts at his language.

I was never alone in my youth, not even when I was on the prairie with no other two-legged creature for a days ride in every direction. I am alone now.

The only vision which comes to me is the image of Crazy Horse, as he looked on the day I rode out of his camp. He stands before me, gazing sadly. He does not beckon, nor does he speak. He only stands there.

My people still liveis that not worth any price?

Or perhaps my people are dead, and Crazy Horse is their ghost.

It tires me to talk of these things. It tires me.

*~*~*~*~*

Copyright © 2001 Troy D. Smith. All rights reserved.