John G. Neihardt

“ Maybe the people have been wandering in small bands, living in little hoops by themselves. Maybe some of them have almost forgotten the power of the great hoop to shield and make them strong. And maybe even in the little hoops some people are so proud they begin to forget that by themselves they are nothing. It is good for them to feel the sacred power of the great hoop again, for it is the power of Wakon Tonka. And at the center of that hoop the Sacred Tree shall grow and spread above them all and fill with leaves and bloom and singing birds. It is a time of happiness for all the people ”

“ There was only air—blue air, blue air; and nothing anywhere but two men made of light and two girls with their arms about the necks of those, flying fast and higher, very fast and very high. Then all at once there were shining villages of star people on a wide blue prairie, and from all the villages came singing as the fliers passed, for all the people there were happy. And afterwhile there was a village bigger than all the others in that wide blue country, and there the flying men of light came swooping down like eagles to their nests. ”

“ Hoka-hey! Hoka-hey! It is a good day to die! It is a good day to kill and die! Poof!” He clapped his hands like gunshots. “The brush and the gullies are alive! There is noise everywhere—cries everywhere. We are swarming up along the sides of the ridge. The arrows are a cloud. They are grasshoppers clouding the sun. The soldiers’ horses are feathered. They are screaming in the evening that the arrows make. They are crowding back up the hill in the smoke of the guns. Saddles are empty; feathered soldiers are falling. ”

“ Now it happened the next evening that Thunder Sounds came to a deep narrow valley where trees grew and a little stream flowed among the trees and the grass was deep and green beside the running water. There was growling, jolting thunder just beyond the valley, and yonder clouds were piling up above the treetops, and surely there was going to be much rain. So Thunder Sounds thought: I have no tepee; it is nearly night already, and the rain will be cold. It is no way for a brave man to get sick and shiver until he dies. ”

“ Next day there were drying racks all over the village, and I can see the stripped red meat turning brown in the bright sunlight, and the brown turning black. And I can see the happy women sitting in little circles with their sharp knives, unwinding the chunks of meat in their laps. They are joking and laughing and holding up their strips of meat to see whose is thinnest and longest. And outside the village raw hides are pegged out everywhere, and the old women are scraping and beating them for the soft tanning that made them good to wear and to sleep in on the coldest night. ”

“ We hear iron hoofs yonder. Now the soldiers come out of the sky up there. They stop and look. Now they are riding two together down the ridge, walking their big horses. There is a long blue line of them. Their breaths are white; their horses’ breaths are white. They are looking here and looking there, and they are seeing nothing. They are listening and listening. They are hearing their saddles whine. They are hearing iron hoofs on the frozen road. Maybe a horse shakes its head, and they hear the bridle bit.
“It is still. There is no sound in the gullies and the brush. ”

“ We all ran out of our tepee, but I thought of my quirt and hung it around my neck, down my back, as I ran with my gun. Out there all the people were running towards the bluff—men and women and children mixed up and running, screaming and shouting; horseback soldiers galloping and shooting all over the village; women running with babies, old people hobbling, horses rearing and knocking tepees over! It was day, but there was no sun. The wind was strong and full of snow and horses’ heads—something like the fight with the Shoshonis. ”

“ There is a great hoop; and so big it is that everything is in it, for it is the hoop of the universe, and all that live in it are relatives. When you stand on a high hill and look all around, you can see its shape and know that it is so. This hoop has four quarters, and each is sacred, for each has a mysterious power of its own, and it is by those powers that we live. ”

“ The Wanekia would come like a whirlwind. Then all the Wasichus would disappear like a smoke. The earth would be made new and green forever and all the spirits would come from the other world and be alive here again. And with these the bison would return and the people would be happy together under a blue, blue sky; and there would be no crying any more, no hunger or sickness, no growing old or dying. A long while ago this same Wanekia came to the Wasichus, and they killed him. ”

“ Nothing could stop them; and if any man broke a law, they took care of him, even a brother or a father. If the chief himself broke a law, the akichita could throw him out of the tepee okige, and a better man would be chosen. If any should go on a war party or a hunt when the council said, ‘no,’ the akichita could whip them and cut their tepees in pieces. And if any fought the akichita, they would be killed. If you broke a law, it was like breaking the sacred hoop a little; and that was a very bad thing, for the hoop was the life of the people all together. ”

“ So Falling Star walked far, and afterwhile he came to another hilltop, and in the valley yonder was this big village the meadowlark man told about. It looked as though nobody was young down there—people sitting by their tepees with their chins on their breasts, boys walking around like old men without canes. And when you listen, you hear little children whimpering and crying, like being very hungry and no meat. ”

“ I felt queer again and a little scared while I sat there all alone with the old man in his tepee, and maybe a ghost behind me that he was seeing. When he had looked at me that way for a long time and I wanted to get up and run away, he said: ‘This is a sacred thing you are doing, and if the heart is not good something very bad will happen. But do not be afraid, for I have seen into your heart. Already you have fed old people, and you want to be a man they all praise. While you were in the sweat-lodge your father came to me, and he will help you on the hill. ”

“ 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. [Pg 8] 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. ”

“ Seeing this, the Shyela also began to grin—a grin that broadened until it touched his eyes and set them dancing. And seeing this, the Chickasaw snickered. Then Thunder Sounds snickered; and all at once both began to laugh so loud that the steeps along the narrow valley roared with mirth, and the four ponies yonder in the deep green grass lifted up their voices all together in screaming laughter. If there had been anyone there to see, he might have said: ‘These young men are dying of the bellyache the way they hold their bellies and howl. ”

“ And in those towns the Wasichus were as many as the bison when they follow the grass all together. And the tepees were made of stone, tepee on top of tepee, so that if you would see the top, you must look far up and then look again, and sometimes after that, again. And there was more and more about the great medicine power of the Wasichus. There were big iron horses breathing smoke and fire, and there was a gun so long and heavy that maybe a hundred men could not lift it, and when it shot, there was a great thunder cloud full of lightning, and the whole sky was full of thunder. ”

“ The Grandfather, Wakon Tonka, has given me to Maka, the mother of all living things, and she has shown mercy to her children that they may live. On her thousand breasts I am grass; in her thousand laps I am meat; and again on her thousand breasts I am grass. The bison’s strength is mine. The great warrior, I have made him strong for his deeds. The greedy-for-me, their days shall be easy to count; but those who are liberal with me, upon me shall they uproot their teeth [grow very old] . Unless the great warrior gives me with his deeds, they shall be as a coward’s. ”

“ The morning star went out and the sun blazed over the edge of the earth. The blindness came. I prayed hard, ‘Let me see!’ I danced hard, like a homesick runner going home. The blindness did not go away. The darkness was burning hot. It pressed down upon me with great power. I did not float on the drumbeats and the singing. I worked hard to keep on dancing. My tongue was a stranger in my mouth. It was hard to blow upon my eagle-bone whistle. ”

“ And the steep sides of the valley laughed and sang. And because all hearts were strong with kindness, there was a big giving-away until no one had anything left at all that had been his or hers; but everyone had plenty. Even the little children gave their playthings to each other. Men who had been strangers gave themselves and were brother-friends. And their sisters became sisters, and the father of each became the other’s uncle, and the mother of one the other’s aunt. From that day to this no Shyela has ever harmed a Chickasaw, no Chickasaw a Shyela. ”

“ The first thing this grandmother gave to a little girl was a deer-hide pouch with everything in it that a woman needs to make a home—a knife, an awl, a bone needle, and some fine sinew for sewing. And she would say, ‘You must always keep this with you whatever happens and never let it go if you want to be a real woman and good for something. With this you can always make a home.’ It was the way a grandfather gave a little boy a bow and arrows, a knife, and a rawhide rope for taming horses. ”

“ There are battles to be fought, and ponies to be stolen, and coups to be counted. And there is happy hunting when the bison herds were wide as day, and meat was plenty, and the earth stayed young. That was before the rivers of Wasichus came in flood and made it old and shut us in these barren little islands where we wait and wait for yesterday. And there are visions to be seen again and voices to be heard from beyond the world. ”

“ But it was spreading all along the valley now. Women and children and old people were running down the river towards me. Women were screaming, men were shouting and running for their horses. Some were riding or running on foot towards the attackers yonder. It was so crowded at first where I was that I could not ride fast. So I turned out to the right into the prairie, and the whole flat along the stream was covered with the big mixed, singing noise that floated above the people. ”

“ I have to kill an enemy, I have to count coup so many times, and I have to get a scalp. Nobody can say I was ever afraid. But that is only the beginning. I must never break any laws, I must be good to everybody in the hoop, so that afterwhile people notice this and talk about it until everybody is saying it. And that too is only the beginning, although it takes a long time. I must be very generous and always see that old people and the needy have meat. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was a time for the people to be happy, so we traveled slowly. And when the sun stood high above us, it would be time to rest awhile and let the ponies graze. The councilors would choose a place where there was water and good grass. Then the criers would call out to the people: ‘Take off your loads and rest your horses! Take them off and rest your horses.’ And if wild turnips were growing there, they would say: ‘Take your sticks and dig some turnips for yourselves!’ And the women would do this while the ponies drank and grazed and the councilors sat on a hillside watching the people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is dust, dust, and thunder in it and singing over it like a high wind blowing. The horses and men are floating in it. It is closing in over the prairie, but the ring of boxes looks empty and is still.
“No! It is not empty and still. It puffs smoke all around and goes out in a cloud and a roar. The cloud gets higher and does not go away. The roaring does not stop. It is like a great blanket ripping. ”

“ It was the Big Horn yonder, and in the valley among trees there was a big Crow village, and the tepee tops were beginning to smoke. They were careful to keep from being seen, and when they had found a deep gully full of brush, with the big ridge between them and the village, they made a camp and even had a little fire. Then Sharp Nose said to the boy: ‘We have come to get back our horses; but you have seen that there are many people yonder. We have come a long way, and it would not be good to go back with only a story. We cannot steal all the horses we have lost. ”

“ The women on the hill over by the sun have seen, and you can hear them mourning. It is like a little wind high up in pine trees. Now our own women have seen, and they are crying and mourning. I am crying too—because I want to kill Wasichus and I cannot. ”