Turn the Stars Upside Down: The Last Days and Tragic Death of Crazy Horse by Terry C. Johnston

Turn the Stars Upside Down: The Last Days and Tragic Death of Crazy Horse by Terry C. Johnston

Author:Terry C. Johnston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Wasutun Wi

MOON WHEN ALL THINGS RIPEN, 1877

BY TELEGRAPH

News from the Indian War.

WASHINGTON.

General Sherman’s Report: Pittsburgh Wants a Garrison.

WASHINGTON, August 4.—General Sherman, in a letter to the secretary of war, says: “With the new post at the fork of Big and Little Horn rivers and that at the mouth of the Tongue river, occupied by enterprising garrisons, the Sioux Indians can never regain that country, and they can be forced to remain at their agency or take refuge in the British possessions. The country west of the new post has good country and will rapidly fill up with emigrants, who will, in the next ten years, build up a country as strong and as capable of self defense as Colorado…”

“What are those two fat wasicus calling me?” Crazy Horse asked his second wife, as he gazed at the two big-bellied white men waving to him from behind a half-dozen young warriors who stood barring the visitors’ way.

There weren’t so many of the Hunkpatila who had remained with him in this village anymore. So many had followed He Dog, moving their lodges across the river to camp near Red Cloud’s people, just as the White Hat had ordered them to. Like He Dog, he thought, they must fear that trouble is coming soon … and they don’t want to be near me when trouble shows up.

“These men are calling you a name used for important soldier chiefs,” Nellie Laravie explained.

“What is that word? Say it in the tongue of the white man.”

“General,” she said and he began to silently try out the term. “They’re calling you General Crazy Horse. One of them just called you Mister,” and she said that last word in the white man’s language as well.

“Are both of those words good talk?”

She flashed him her dark, liquid eyes while Black Shawl came up to stand near them in the morning shade beside the lodge. “Yes,” Nellie said. “You are the only leader they want to have sit for them and take your … your—”

“These are more of the men who bring the shadow boxes?” he demanded, flushing with irritation.

“Yes,” she answered, refusing to look at Black Shawl’s face. “You see those two horses they brought with them? They have their shadow boxes tied on the horses. These white men are ready to capture your image.”

“No!” he growled. “The white man takes everything from me. He has taken my country. And he’s taken my freedom—”

“It is just a picture of you,” Nellie cooed. “So you can see how others see you.”

He fingered the long scar on the left side of his face and said, “I can peek into a woman’s looking glass to see my face. I do not need these wasicus to make a picture of me. No. They have taken almost everything from me. Their sickness took my daughter.… Then their bullets took my brother too.”

“Let me go explain it to them,” Nellie suggested, taking hold of her husband’s hand. “Someone should tell them why you don’t want this.



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