THE KILLING SPIRIT: A Gathering of Dreamers (89)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A GATHERING OF DREAMERS



They rode like young warriors, side by side, grandfather, Jerico and his mother, low in the saddle, like an eastern wind that blows out the old and brings in the new, cleansing the land and preparing the way of change.

Three generations of Lakota on spotted ponies coasted over open fields of grass, still wet with morning dew, summoning the animal spirits and drawing the eyes of the ancestors. A sky bright with great white clouds, they rode over rolling hills where the buffalo roamed, where the white wolf hunted, where the Great Plains tribes migrated, where every man and woman were free until the wagon trains of greed, moving like slugs on sand, rolled over these sacred lands, marking them with endless lines of destruction.

They rode along creek beds and through the breaks where a young Crazy Horse once followed a trail of Cheyenne and Lakota blood, fresh from their wounds in the Fetterman massacre. In the eyes of the riders, the blood was still fresh and the wounds still open.

The land beneath their horse’s hooves did not belong to them. They belonged to the land. Theirs was the blood of the earth, their flesh its soil. Their dreams were a view from the mountains and their sweat was the rivers and streams that gave the land life and washed away generations of suffering.

The Lakota know better than all other peoples that all things are related. It is built into their psyches and sewn into their souls. When one dies, all die. When one suffers, all suffer. When his own Lakota brothers betrayed him out of jealousy or pride, no one suffered more shame than Crazy Horse himself. One shame all.

Jerico felt both the pride and shame of his people, the life and death struggle, the sense of belonging to the land and all that it endured. The wind in his hair was the breath of his ancestors, whispering prayers and informing his wisdom. Every mountain and stone, every tree and bush, every creature was both his inheritance and his fold.

Jerico died with Crazy Horse but he also killed him. He was the brightest hope of his people and its darkest sin. He was every man and every woman, of every color and creed. He was all of human kind, good and evil, darkness and light, and knowing this, he was strong.

He did not fear.

The riders settled on an overlook, gazing out at Bear Butte, a stone monolith towering over the North Country where the wild Indians of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse once reigned as the last warriors of the free tribes. When the agency handouts ran dry or the blue coats went on a rampage, it was where the friendly Indians went for refuge. It was where the Brule, Santee, Oglala, Blackfoot and Cheyenne united to defeat Custer.

They looked out across the land and shared a vision of the Sun Dance, the Ghost Dance and the Massacre of Wounded Knee. They looked out and saw the rivers running red with native blood. They saw the spirits of the fallen on the long ascending trail to the great beyond. They saw the brothers and sisters of AIM in the siege of not forgetting. They saw Leonard Peltier in chains, ankles to wrists, behind bars for the white man’s lies. They looked out on the land and the land spoke to them of broken promises and broken spirits.

In the shadow of the Black Hills, their feet planted on the earth, they looked out and remembered who they were. They looked out and let their tears breathe new life into the soil beneath their feet. They looked out in rage and looked in with renewed pride. The Lakota nation never died.

They wiped the tears from their faces and rode west into a forest of spruce, pine and cottonwood. They rode without speaking through Buffalo Gap and refused to look up at the wasichu monument to the great white fathers, a curse upon the holy land and a reminder, carved in sacred stone, of the white man’s arrogance and profound mendacity.

They rode until they reached the Lakota answer to the white man’s heresy: a yet unfinished monument to Crazy Horse. The granite likeness on his mount, eyes piercing the silent soul, looking outward, over tall stone mountains and deep canyons, his outstretched arm pointing to an unseen truth, was a towering enigma. In thirty-two years on the earth, Crazy Horse never allowed his likeness to be recorded in any way. There were no portraits, no drawings or photographs yet here he was in all his people’s glory, a likeness so bold it dwarfed the faces of Rushmore and proclaimed the land forever Lakota.

What would Crazy Horse have thought? Unlike Red Cloud and so many others, he was a man who turned his back on the spotlight, who never wanted acknowledgement, who never acted for personal gain, who could not be seduced by promises of recognition or reward. He was a man who preferred to walk alone on the common soil of solitude and humility. He never wore the headdress of a chief. He was a workingman’s warrior, a man of the people.

What would Crazy Horse think of this: a tribute in his name that would outlast the seven ages of the human race?

The answer was it was not his likeness. It was a composite of Lakota warriors but it was not the greatest among them. The elders who guided the project were not fools. They would design a tribute to all Lakota and they would honor the one who never bowed down but they would not betray his vision.

Grandfather dismounted, drew a circle in the dirt, and pulled out his pipe.

“Come,” he said. “Let us smoke.”

They sat inside the circle and completed the round before he spoke.

“This sacred monument is a symbol of our people. It is the Lakota answer to the great white fathers. It honors us as we honor him. It bears the name of Crazy Horse, a name that fills the Lakota chest with pride. It builds in us our common ancestry, our beliefs and our way of being. We give thanks even as we bow our heads in humility.”

Jerico breathed in the pride of his people. It was not the false pride that the wasichu spirit feasted on, the pride that placed one over another, that turned brother against brother, sister against sister, tribe against tribe, that was bought, sold and traded like buffalo skins, but the kind of pride that was harbored in blood. It was Lakota pride, the pride of honor that could never be sold for gambling profits or a place on the tribal council.

They rode on as the sun descended in the western sky. Soon the Black Hills would earn the name. They emerged from a narrow pass on a high meadow of tall grass and wild flowers. It was the place of Jerico’s youth and his vision of the overworld. At the far end of the clearing, there was a camp of four teepees and a communal Inipi lodge.

“You are not the only one who has had visions,” his mother smiled.

Campfire flames danced in a spirit of kinship as four men and three women from all corners of the continent rose to greet them with solemn smiles. They had shared a vision of the sacred rituals and the seven spokes of Jerico’s wheel. They shared a vision of horror as well: Firebirds crashing into twin mountains of stone, the mountains erupting in flame, poisonous clouds spreading across the land and across the sea. They saw a Lakota warrior on a white Appaloosa emerge from the clouds and they heard the name of Jerico whispered on the wind.

When they heard the media stories of the lost boy, the assassin’s bullet and the miraculous recovery, one by one, they came to Pine Ridge where Jerico’s mother and grandfather took them in. They set up camp in the Black Hills in the weeks before Jerico’s return.

Jerico recognized a Lakota brother who grew up on the Rez. He went by the name of Joseph Little Hawk though he was raised as Joey Sheer. They had played on the same fields, rode through the same hills, swam in the same ponds, and vied for the attentions of the same girls. Like Jerico, Little Hawk was schooled in the old ways by his grandfather. They were good friends until Joey’s family moved away in search of a better life.

They embraced and Jerico wondered how long it had been. There were lines in a face he remembered unbroken. There were years of struggle and triumph in his eyes. He was a mirror to Jerico’s journey and the marks it left in tribute.

It took a moment for him to remember Mary White Cloud. She had traveled from her Cherokee home on the Natchez Trace in Mississippi with a yearning to repay an old debt. When last he had seen her, so long ago it seemed another life, she was a budding woman still recovering from near fatal wounds. She knew the killing spirit firsthand and owed her life to Jerico’s intervention.

She trembled as they embraced and tears flowed like the swells of a great river. She was a mother now, her child in the care of her grandmother, but all her adult life she wanted nothing more than to serve the man who saved her in a cause that belonged to all native peoples.

Jerico met the others for the first time. They were spiritual leaders of scattered tribes – Oneida, Chiricahua, Paiute, Nez Perce and Seminole. They were an odd gathering of varied ages, united by a vision and a belief that they were called to serve Jerico Whitehorse.

Jerico was unsettled with the realization that this was fertile ground for his enemy, the killing spirit.

“Tonight we feast,” said grandfather to a circle of smiling faces. “Tomorrow we have the telling.”

They celebrated as if they were warriors on the eve of a great battle. They told stories, sang, laughed and cried. They sought solace in each other’s arms and raged against the killing spirit. They spoke of hardships, triumphs, sorrow and joy, until at last the bonds they had formed with each other were formed to their spiritual core.

Somewhere in the distance, on the edge of sensory perception, thunder marked a coming storm and the moonlit sky dimmed. The people in the towns and villages below did not perceive a change beyond normal but the gathering of dreamers in the sacred mountains drew in their collective breath and listened with their souls.

Where life exists, there is sound. All life forms, from the mightiest beast to the smallest insect, from living planets, stars and galaxies to sub-atomic particles, emit waves of perceptible sound. Even in the deepest dark of night, the forest is a breathing, swarming, screaming cacophony of sound but for a moment on this night, the night of the gathering, there was silence.

The dreamers huddled together to acknowledge what they had witnessed: The killing spirit said hello.