Except that David Douglas hadn’t been on his last leg when he had gone east. He hadn’t looked any different than he had looked all his life. A tall man, lean, white-haired, aging, still handsome with his extreme dignity, eyes that seemed to see and know everything and understand. He had been healthy all his life. He had constantly endured the rigors of travel. He had lived among the warriors of the Sioux nation, and he had withstood tests of endurance with the heartiest of them. Of course, that had been many years ago. But still, when he had left here, he had seemed fine.
I should have gone with him!Hawk thought, pain and guilt returning to tug upon his heart.I couldn’t have gone, not the way that matters, between the army and the Indians have been escalating here.
But this…could it be real? Legal?
Hawk closed his eyes tightly. He’d been a brave warrior to the Sioux, a courageous soldier in the Union army in the recent War of the Southern Rebellion.
But he couldn’t fight away the future.
He knew it. His father had known it.
For a moment, he saw a faraway time when the Black Hills had belonged to the Indians. The Sioux hadn’t actually lived there then. The land had been sacred, a place to hunt, a holy place, and a shelter when it was needed. The Sioux were nomads, already pushed westward from the Mississippi by the flow of the white men. There were many Sioux: the Sans Arc, the Brule, the Oglala, the Two Kettles, the Hunkpapa, and theBlackfoot Sioux. And among those many Sioux, there were even more bands. Any warrior or family could break away as they chose. The Sioux were a free people, respected for the lives they must lead as individuals. It was a virtue among them.
And yet, as the whites encroached upon them, this independence became a danger as well. It made them divisible and vulnerable.
As a small boy, he had grown up in his mother’s world. He had lain in his cradle board, seen the buffalo skins of the tipi as his first walls.
He had been loved. The Sioux valued their children. He was treated gently not only by his mother, but by Flying Sparrow, his mother’s brothers, and his grandfather, the peace chief, Sitting Hawk. He was never struck. He called all men of the tribe “father,” all women “mother.” He was welcomed in any tipi. A Sioux boy must learn two things: to be a good hunter and to be a good warrior. Both meant life for his people.
Until his eleventh birthday, he knew very little of the white world. He knew now that until the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848, the Americans—who had gained the plains through the Louisiana Purchase—had considered them the Great American Desert, a permanent Indian border. But with the land gains made after the war, America’s western boundary was thrown open to the Pacific. In 1851, he had gone with his mother’s people, a small band of Oglala Sioux, to Fort Laramie, on the North Platte River. It was the largest gathering of Indians he had ever seen—many of the Sioux bands were present along with Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Shoshone, Crow, Assiniboine, Arikara, and others. It was agreed that the Indians were to be paid each year to make peace with the white immigrants—many traveling through to the new gold finds in California—and among themselves. The white men chose to call certain men “head chiefs.” The Indians were told that they couldn’t makewar among themselves, but that was impossible because warring against one another was a way of life. The treaty was doomed from the time the whites first had their so-called head chiefs “touch the pen”—or put their hands upon it before white men signed their names for them in the white language.
From that day on, the whites began to come, but they didn’t much influence his life. Yet.
He had been Little Sparrow then. He had remained Little Sparrow until a few months after his twelfth birthday. Then he had counted coup against one of his Crow enemies, slapping the warrior on the cheek before they engaged in hand-to-hand combat with their knives. Counting coup—striking an enemy face-to-face rather than killing him from a distance—granted a warrior honor.
It had weighed heavily on him that he had taken a life, even though he had fought the Crow with a deep-seated fury. A Crow warrior had led a war party into their Sioux village when their own warriors had been hunting. He had seized three young women, taken two for his own, and given one to a friend, Snake-in-the-Tree. Snake-in-the-Tree had abused his young captive so thoroughly that she had taken her own life. The young woman, Dancing Cloud, had been his grandfather’s great-grandchild, and he had known that he must avenge her death to prove his worth.
At a victory dance that night, Little Sparrow had been given the name Thunder Hawk, for he had been as swift and strong as the bird of prey, as fierce as the thunder that could shake the plains.
Another year passed, and he danced the Sun Dance. The Sioux, the many factions and bands, met together once a year every year for the Sun Dance. It was the most important of the ceremonies prescribed to them by the White Buffalo Woman, who had come at the beginning to teach them their moralityand their way of life. It took place in June, the month of the chokecherries, and lasted twelve days, requiring great strength of body and mind.
At nearly fourteen, Thunder Hawk was a tall boy, almost six feet, taller than many of the grown warriors, though his height was not that unusual, since he knew a Miniconjou Sioux, Touch-the-Clouds, who was nearly seven feet and truly towered over other men. Thunder Hawk wanted to be both a great warrior and a wise one. He wanted the guidance of Wakan Tanka, the Great Mystery, so he danced with skewers piercing his back muscles, praying for his people and for strength against all his enemies until he fell. He was honored among his people as a young warrior who showed promise of greatness.
Then his father had suddenly come back into his life.
He hadn’t known the blond, green-eyed stranger who had come into their village, but he had known that something was different about him, and he had known that change was coming, and he had hated that change. He had feared it, but a boy who’d newly become a warrior with the name Thunder Hawk could not betray his fear.
The stranger who came to them was welcomed by the older warriors. He was an old friend who had lived among them before.
A white, who had danced the Sun Dance with the skewers through his chest, who had fought the Crow with them and counted coup.
He was still stunned to discover that the white man had come because his white wife had died—and because he wanted to make Flying Sparrow his wife now in his white world as well as in the Indian world. The Sioux did not think badly of him for having two wives—most Sioux warriors had more than one wife, though their wives were often sisters.
The man who came spoke the Sioux language very well. He was liked. He was called brother by the warriors. Thunder Hawk learned that the man had come here years before as a representative of the American government, as a man called a topographical engineer, a mapmaker. The Sioux had come upon him while scouting. He had fought bravely and been wounded. He had been taken captive, and Flying Sparrow had nursed him back to health. Then he had been the younger son of a wealthy British chief. Now he was no longer the younger son because illness had taken his brother. And now he wanted to make sure that his son by Flying Sparrow could be a legitimate heir to his vast estates. He had another son himself, an older son by his white wife. But that son did not mind having a brother.
Hawk minded. He didn’t want to leave the band. He had many friends who were just becoming men, who had also counted coup, killed their first buffalo, and killed their first enemies. He had a kola, or best friend, Dark Mountain, who planned strategies for the hunt with him.
He had gone to the foot of the hills for his vision quest. For a Sioux boy, the vision quest was the center of his life. In his vision, a Sioux touched something sacred. He learned what road he must follow, what path he must take.
After three days without food or water, Hawk had collapsed and his vision had come to him. He had ridden a black pony between a herd of buffalo to his left and a flight of eagles to his right. The animals had cried out to him, tried to tell him something, yet he could not understand. He had to ride harder and harder. Then he was able to understand the eagles while the buffalo could not, and likewise, he was able to understand the buffalo while the eagles could not. A rain of arrows had come over him as he had ridden, but no matter how close they came, he knew that he had to keep riding. In the end, he saw the sun, and he kept riding toward the blinding golden light of the sun,reaching then into the sky to collect the arrows and keep them from falling.
His dream had disturbed him, but Mile-High-Man, a respected holy man, had told him that he was indeed intended to be a warrior, one who would be wise and able to communicate with others and lead well.
If such was to be his role in life, then how could he leave his band and join the household of a white man?
Perhaps he needed to go, Mile-High-Man suggested, to learn the ways to communicate with both the buffalo and the eagles.
A whimper from the bed suddenly distracted him from his thoughts. He came around, staring down at the beautiful blonde woman lying on the bed. Her arms suddenly rose as if she were warding off a blow. He frowned, almost reaching out to wake her then, but her arms fell. She shuddered and went still.
