PROLOGUE
Tongue
River Reservation, Montana Territory
One of the residents of the Tongue
Reservation was Mean to His Horses, a member of the Crooked Lance
Warrior’s Society, and a nephew of the most notable of all Cheyenne
warriors, Roman Nose. Mean to His Horses was but a youth when he
saw his uncle killed at Beecher Island in September of 1868. Later,
Mean to His Horses had been by the side of Crazy Horse in the fight
against Custer. Crazy Horse was killed September 5, 1877, at Fort
Robinson, Nebraska. He had been told that he was going to a meeting
with the white officials to correct a misunderstanding. The
misunderstanding was the result of a deliberate misrepresentation
of his words by a translator during an earlier conference. Instead
Crazy Horse was arrested, and as they attempted to put him into a
guard house, he resisted. During the altercation, Crazy Horse was
stabbed and killed.
Mean to His Horses was thinking about
this when he entered the sweat lodge. Though he was alone, he
observed the etiquette that would have been required had there been
others in the lodge. He smudged his face with sage, he loaded his
sacred pipe with tobacco, he turned in a clockwise circle at the
door, then he crawled in through the opening, saying the sacred
words Mitakuye Oyasin (All My Relations).
Crawling in a clockwise direction, he completely circumnavigated
the tipi, then he poured water over the seven hot stones to produce
the steam.
He did not know how long he had been in
the sweat lodge when it began. He heard singing and drums, but he
had built the sweat lodge far from the village, so he knew there
were neither drums nor singing to hear. He could see, in the clouds
of steam, a great battle between Cheyenne and white soldiers, and
he saw that the Cheyenne were winning because all the soldiers were
falling from their horses.
Then the scene of the battle went away,
and the drums and the singing stopped, and it was so quiet that he
could hear his own blood flowing through his veins. That is when a
new vision came to him.
The vision was of a man with long curly
hair, not too tall and with a somewhat rounded face. His hair hung
to his waist, braided with beaver-pelt covering and with two eagle
feathers hanging down on the left. This could be only one person,
and yet Mean to His Horses knew this could not be.
He challenged the
apparition.
“Are you Crazy Horse?” Mean to His
Horses asked. He asked the words with his heart, since speaking
aloud would be inappropriate.
“Look,” the apparition said, putting
his finger to his left jaw. “What do you see here?”
There, Mean to His Horses saw a scar on
the apparition’s left jaw near his mouth and nose. The scar, Mean
to His Horses knew, was from a bullet wound where No Water shot him
for being with Black Buffalo Woman, who had been No Water’s wife at
the time.
“It is you!” Mean to His Horses
said.
“Listen, and I will tell you of a new
thing,” Crazy Horse said.
Mean to His Horses listened, and
learned of the new thing: Wagi Wanagi or
Spirit Talking.
“If all Indian people will do Spirit
Talking, the Great Spirit who guides our lives will be pleased, and
he will send the whites away so that all the land and the water and
the game will return to the Indian people,” Mean to His Horses was
told. “You have been chosen to teach this thing to all Indian
people.”
“And if the white man objects and there
is war?” Mean to His Horses asked.
“You are a war leader,” Mean to His
Horses was told. “If there is to be war, the people will follow
you.”
“I will lead them,” Mean to His Horses
said.
“From this day forward, you must wear
the sacred paint,” Crazy Horse said. The right side of your face,
you will paint red. That is for the blood of the whites that must
be spilled. The left side of your face you will paint white. That
is so that our people will no longer be in darkness. Do these
things and you cannot fail.”
Upon leaving the sweat lodge, Mean to
His Horses obeyed the commands of Crazy Horse. He painted the right
side of his face red and the left side of his face
white.
No one asked why he had done
this.
Broken
Bar K Ranch, near Virginia City, Montana
Territory
It was late morning and Len Kennedy and
his two oldest boys, Len Jr. and Luther, were working in the field.
Len’s wife Mary had just called her family in to lunch when they
saw Indians approaching. They thought nothing of it. All the
neighboring Indians were friendly.
There were ten Indians in the party,
and they rode right up to the back of the house.
Len was still not concerned because the
Indians, while hunting, often came by the house for water, and
sometimes for food. Just as often, the Indians left some of their
game with Len. He recognized the leader of the group.
“Mean to His Horses,” Len said. He
chuckled. “Why do you have your face all painted up like
that?”
Suddenly, and without so much as a
word, the Indians attacked, sending an arrow through the senior
Len’s torso.
“Pa!” Len Jr. shouted.
The Indians shot Len Jr. and then they
shot Luther as he tried to climb over the fence.
Mary Kennedy, hearing her son call out,
then hearing the sound of a gunshot, came out onto the back
porch.
“Mean to His Horses! What are you
doing?” she screamed in fear and anger.
Mean to His Horses signaled to some of
his men, and they grabbed Mrs. Kennedy and the three youngest
children. Then his warriors went inside and ransacked the house,
taking the money box and whatever else they thought might be
useful.
Back outside, they planned to take Mary
and her three youngest children with them as they left, but as they
started to tie the boy, Toby, to a mule, Mary and Toby began crying
and screaming.
Mean to His Horses shot Mary several
times and ran a lance through Toby’s neck. Then, leaving
seven-year-old Tamara with her five-year-old brother Donnie and
their dead mother, father, and brothers, the Indians rode off.
Tamara stayed with Donnie and the dead members of her family until
nightfall. Then she led Donnie back into the house.
The next morning, three passing freight
wagons stopped by to visit and to see if they could get water for
themselves and their team.
“Whoa,” Doodle Priday said, as he
halted his team. “Len! Len, where are you? I know you seen us
coming, you thick-headed Irishman. How come you ain’t out here to
meet us the way you always are? I got that tobacco you wanted. Len!
Len, where the hell are you?”
“Doodle, they’s somethin’ that don’t
feel right here,” Arthur said. Arthur, sitting on the seat beside
him, was the shotgun guard.
“Yeah, it does seem awful quiet, don’t
it? Len! Len, where are you?” This time Doodle’s call was more
insistent, and more worried.
“Doodle!” the driver of the second
wagon called up to him. “Look over there. On the
fence!”
Looking toward the fence, Doodle saw
Luther’s arrow-riddled body, draped across the top
rung.
“Damn!” Doodle said.
“Ain’t that Len, over there?” Arthur
said.
“What the hell happened here?” Doodle
asked. He set the brake on the wagon and climbed down. By now, the
other two drivers had seen the bodies as well, not only Luther and
Len, but Len Jr. All three, in addition to bullet wounds, had
several arrows protruding from their bodies.
“Oh, sweet Jesus, Doodle, look over
there!” one of the other drivers said.
The driver was pointing to the bodies
of Mary and Toby.
“God in heaven,” Doodle said. “Have the
Injuns gone mad?”
After determining that none of the ones
they found outside were alive, the drivers and shotgun guards went
into the house.
“Is anyone alive here?” Doodle
called.
Getting no answer, he called
again.
“Hello! Is anyone here!”
“Me and Donnie are here,” Tamara
answered.
The young girl’s frightened voice came
from behind a hutch.
“Tamara? Tamara, child, come out
here.”
Tamara and her younger brother crawled
out from behind the hutch.
“We were hiding in case the Indians
came back,” Tamara said.
“That was a wise thing to
do.”
“Are they all dead?” she
asked.
Doodle was amazed at how calm the young
girl was, and he was sure it was the result of her being totally
overcome by the events.
“I’m afraid they are, darlin’,” he
said.
“I thought they were.”
“I expect you had better come with us,
child,” Doodle said.
“Not until mama and daddy and my
brothers are buried,” Tamara said. Overnight, she had aged from a
seven-year-old girl to a responsible young woman.