Black Elk Speaks (48 page)

15
.
‘three stars’ was the Lakota name given to Gen. Crook. See the depiction in Short Man’s winter count pictograph for 1889 (Walker, Lakota Society).

† General Crook.
¹⁵

16
. Following the failure of the winter campaign, the army planned a three-pronged assault on the Lakotas and Cheyennes. Brig. Gen. George Crook would moue northward from Fort Fetterman in Wyoming, Gen. John Gibbon would come east ward from Fort Ellis in Montana, and Brig. Gen. Alfred H. Terry would march westward from Fort Abraham Lincoln in Dakota. Crook’s column, numbering 47 officers and one thousand men, followed the old Bozeman Trail and established a base camp on Goose Creek, at the site of present Sheridan, Wyoming. There he was joined by more than 250 Crow and Shoshone scouts. On June 17 Crook’s command engaged the Lakotas and Cheyennes in battle on the Rosebud River, then returned to their base camp to await reinforcements. See Utley, Frontier Regulars, 253–56; Vaughan, With Crook on the Rosebud. For Indian perspectives, see Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 2:994–1002. For White Bull’s eyewitness account, see Vestal, Warpath, 85–90, and Howard, The Warrior Who Killed Custer, 48–50.

17
. Héhé! A man’s expletive expressing resignation
.

18
. The Lakotas called the first African Americans they met
‘black white men’; later they used the term hásapa ‘black skins.’

19
. It was customary to scalp fallen enemies. The scalp of a single individual could be divided among several men. A scalp was scraped clean, frequentIy stretched on a small hoop, and attached to the end of a pole. When a war party returned home, a man gave the scalps he took to a female relative to carry in the Victory Dance. See Densmore, Teton Sioux Music, 360; Hassrick, The Sioux, 83–84, 99
.

1
. The first two paragraphs are Neihardt’s. Gen. Terry sent Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer at the head of the Seventh Cavalry to drive the Lakotas and Cheyennes down the Little Big Horn toward Gen. Gibbon’s troops. Discovering the great village on June 25, Custer divided his forces, sending a detachment under Capt. Frederick W. Benteen to circle around to the south and west to prevent the Indians from escaping. Meanwhile, Maj. Marcus A. Reno’s detachment would attack the village from the south while Custer’s troops would attack from the north. See Utley, Frontier Regulars, 257–61. Gray, Centennial Campaign, is a useful summary. For Indian perspectives and a guide to Indian sources, see Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 2:1009–30, 1138. Participant accounts include Red Horse in Mallery, Picture-Writing of the American Indians, 563–66 and pl. 39–48; Graham, The Custer Myth, 45–100; White Bull in Vestal, War path, 191–205 and in Howard, The Warrior Who Killed Custer, 51–62, 69–70; Bad Heart Bull in Blish, A Pictographic History of the Oglala Sioux, 212–72; Hammer, Custerin ’76: Walter Camp’s Notes on the Custer Fight; Hardorff, Lakota Recollections of the Custer Fight and Cheyenne Memories of the Custer Fight; Michno, Lakota Noon: The Indian Narrative of Custer’s Defeat
.

2
. Standing Bear sketched a map of the camp (preserved in the Neihardt Collection) that shows six camp circles, the Sans Arcs and Blackfoot Sioux, together with the Two Kettles forming a single camp circle. All are shown near the Little Big Horn River except for the Oglala camp, which is located farther west of the others, away from the river. Indian accounts report varying numbers of camps. Wooden Leg, the Cheyenne, also reports six camp circles but notes that there were also stragglers from various bands whose lodges were not arranged in formal camp circles (Marquis, A Warrior Who FoughtCuster, 208). Bad Heart BuII’s drawing depicts only five camps, omitting the Santees and Yanktonais (Blish, A Pictographic History of the Oglala Sioux, 215). Gray, Centennial Campaign, 346–47, estimates the village at “no more than a thousand lodges.”

3
. Here, Black Elk is enlisted by Hairy Chin, a Hunkpapa medicine man, to participate in the Bear ceremony. Black Elk said to Neihardt, “Maybe this medicine man knew that I had this power, so this is why he brought me over” (Sixth Grandfather, 178). Lakotas believed that the power to heal wounds was given to men in visions by the Bear spirit. Those who had such visions, as well as others who were healed by Bear medicine men, formed the Bear Society. See George Sword and Thomas Tyon in Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 91–82, 157–59. Also see Wissler, “Societies and Ceremonial Associations in the Oglala Division of the Teton Dakota,” 88–90; and Densmore, Teton Sioux Music, 195–97
.

4
. The transcript has “eagle plumes” (Sixth Grandfather, 179), that is, the downy feathers from under the bird’s tail
.

5
. Again the transcript reads “sister” (sixth Grandfather, 181)
.

6
. In the transcript, Black Elk does not mention Gall; this seems to have been Neihardt’s addition. For the life of Gall, see Larson, Gall: Lakota War Chief
.

7
. In battle, Lakota warriors used whistles made from the wing bone of an eagle. See Clark, Indian Sign Language, 402; Densmore, Teton Sioux Music, 388 and pl. 61
.

8
. The Minneconjou chief Red Horse, who witnessed this event, called this soldier the bravest man the Indians had ever fought. From Red Horse’s description, Dr. Charles E. McChesney, an army surgeon and later an acting Indian agent, identified him as Capt. Thomas H. French, who survived the battle. See Mallery, Picture-Writing of the American Indians, 564; Graham, The Custer Myth, 61, 341
.

9
. Neihardt substituted “brothers” for “brothers-in-law,” which was the first word of the song as Black Elk gave it (Sixth Grandfather, 183). Lakota women had a free, joking relationship with their brothers-in-law, whereas their relationship with their brothers was a formal one that prohibited direct communication between them. For a discussion of Lakota kin relationships, see DeMallie, “Kinship and Biology in Sioux Culture.” Neihardt apparently decided that, lacking an understanding of the behavioral patterns among relatives, readers would be puzzled by “brothers-in-law.”

10
. Rattling Hawk was an officer in the Kit Fox Society (thokhála okhólakichiye ‘kit fox friends-joined-together’). He had his society lance in front of him and sang a Kit Fox society song addressed to his fellow society members, whom he calls “friends” (kholá) (Sixth Grandfather, 184). See Densmore, Teton Sioux Music, 314–17; Wissler, “Societies and Ceremonial Associations in the Oglala Division of the Teton-Dakota,” 14–23. Again, by changing the first word to “brothers,“Neihardt speaks more directly to non-Indian readers. In the transcript, the song is not in the form of a question: “Friends, what you are doing, I cannot do.”

11
. The “red bird” (škelúta) is a Bullock’s oriole; males are black on top, with white stripes on the wings, and have a bright orange face and underside. The Lakota site frequently used them as head ormaments (waphégnake) (Buechel, Dictionary of the Teton Lakota Sioux Language, 464). On this occasion, Standing Bear depended on the bird as protective war medicine (wóthawe
).

12
. The Rees are more formally known as Arikaras; the Lakotas call them Phaláni. The dead man was identified as Lame White Man, chief of the Elkhorn Scraper Society of the Northern Cheyennes (Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 2:1028)
.

13
. This is the so-called weir advance, named after Capt. Thomas B. Weir. See Gray, Centennial Campaign, 180; Stewart, Custer’s Luck, 396–407
.

14
. White Bull identified this man as Long Road, a Sans Arc (Vestal, Warpath, 203)
.

15
. Nineteen soldiers volunteered to go for much-needed water. Four of them served as sharp-shooters to keep up a protective fire while the other fifteen made the trip down a ravine that led to the river. Over four hours they made trip after trip, filling canteens and kettles. One was killed and six were wounded. All received the Congressional Medal of Honor. See Brininstool, Troopers with Custer, 261–67; Gray. Centennial Campaign, 278, 294.

16
. This may have been Dog’s Backbone, a Minneconjou, although White Bull stated that he had been killed during the siege of Reno’s men the previous afternoon. See Vestal
, Warpath, 203,
and
Sitting Bull, 173–74.

17
. Neihardt might have misunderstood Black Elk’s meaning. In the interview transcript, Iron Hawk identifies the man’s shawl only as “the skin of an animal of some kind,” and the belt simply as “hairy” (Sixth Grandfather, 190–91). The Lakota designation wapháha glegléğa ‘striped warbonnet’ is sometimes translated as “spotted warbonnet.” It refers to a bonnet with alternating sections of red and white feathers. See Walker, Lakota Society, 146, and Lakota Belief and Ritual, 275 and war ingsignia plate 4). The identity of this Cheyenne warrior is not known. See Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 2:1024
.

18
. These were the horses of Company E. See Graham
, The Custer
Myth, x; Stewart
, Custer’s Luck, 449–50.

19
. Among the Lakotas, men who were kholá ‘friends’ to one another vowed to support one another, even to death
.

20
.
An expletive used by men, a snort or grunt used in anger or when facing danger
.

21
. The phrase is Neihardt’s; since the Lakota word t’é means both ‘to die’ and ‘to faint,’  this expression is appropriate
.

22
. The Weir advance
.

23
. In the Battle of the Little Big horn the army lost 263 men: 209 men died with Custer and 53 men of Reno’s command were killed. See Gray
, Centennial Campaign, 293–97.
Estimates of Indians killed vary widely. According to McChesney’s report, the Minneconjou chief Red Horse said that 136 Lakotas were killed in the battle; however, Red Horse’s pictographic record depicts 61 bodies (Mallery, Picture-Writing of the American Indians, 566; Viola, Little Big horn Remembered, 96–97). White Bull, also a Minneconjou, reported only 19 Lakotas killed at the Little Big Horn (Vestal, Warpath, 203–4). The number of Cheyenne deaths is put at six or seven (Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 2:1373n 15)
.

24
.
‘long hair
.’