Journey of the Spirit Read online

  He thought about leaving, as they told him he could, but he had the same problem when he’d first arrived at the village. With no place to go or anyone to go to, if he left, he’d have to travel hundreds of miles through Indians to get to the whites. The next Indians he ran into might not be as friendly. Although young, he knew he wouldn’t be able to travel in this country without someone spotting him.

  Indian boys always wrestled and they forced him to join in. The older ones singled him out, especially Coyote. Bigger than Andy, he’d talk and gather a crowd. He’d crouch and circle. Andy tried to copy his movements, but the bigger boy would lunge and he’d find himself on his stomach and Coyote would wrench his arm behind him, as the others laughed.

  When Coyote let him up, others would take turns at him, too.

  One morning as Coyote gathered his followers, surrounding Andy, something his father taught him popped into his head. He knew if he didn’t stop them soon, they’d continue until they hurt him. With Coyote crouched, ready to spring, Andy got into a boxer’s stance. The older Indian straightened, not knowing what to do. The others egged him on and he lunged at Andy.

  Andy sidestepped and jabbed with his right fist, hitting Coyote in the nose. As blood spurted, the Indian straightened with a shocked expression. Satisfaction surged through Andy when his fist made contact. They’d laughed, taunted, and physically hurt him because he was different.

  The crowd around them became quiet. Coyote crouched again and lunged at Andy. This time he stepped the other way and jabbed, connecting with his right fist. His frustration, loneliness, and guilt boiled to the surface as he stepped the other way and swung a left hook that hit Coyote in the jaw.

  Andy’s foe hit the dust on his back, stunned. No one in the crowd uttered a word. They seemed to be as shocked as Coyote.The Indian heaved himself from the ground, not willing to quit, but not knowing what to do. He attempted to get into a stance like Andy had, but tripped and fell on his face when he lunged.

  Andy sat on Coyote’s back, pulled his arm up with the Indian’s hand touching the back of his head. His shoulder popped, but Coyote would not utter a word. At last, Andy, feeling sorry for the Indian, let him up. Arm dangling at his side, he staggered away, his friends leaving with him.

  From that point on, the other Indians did not try to wrestle with him. Several acted like they wanted to, but when he got in his boxer stance, they’d back off. Andy didn’t know at the time that the Lakota considered it a huge insult to strike another person in the face with a hand.

  He didn’t have anyone to play with or talk to, and most of the people his age ignored him. Some would approach him and talk fast, and he could tell by their facial expressions and hand gestures that their words weren’t good, but it didn’t upset him because he didn’t have a clue what they said. At last, they stopped doing this. Maybe they didn’t think it was worth it since he just stood and looked at them. What could he do?

  Over time, he began to learn the sign talk and the spoken words. Slow at first, the speech that sounded like fast singing began to roll off his tongue. He learned the language by talking to the people in his lodge. At first, this was difficult. He learned a lot of things he shouldn’t do, but not the reasons why.

  The first night, Andy followed the boys into their lodge. When the youngest boy sat, Andy did the same, facing him. This brought on angry, fast, singing talk from the person known as Crazy Horse. He not only talked, but gestured. Andy got the impression he wanted him to stand, and he did. Crazy Horse motioned for him to sit by the little brother, whom they called Little Hawk. The conversation returned to normal, which meant he couldn’t understand a word.

  A couple of days later, he sat where he shouldn’t. Again, the rough talk, and gesturing from Crazy Horse, and it dawned on him that he could only sit a few places in the lodge, but he didn’t know why. He decided to do what Little Hawk and Curly did. Later, he found out the lodge was well organized, everything had a certain place, and everyone had a specific place to sit. Crazy Horse, the head of the lodge, always sat opposite of the opening, the boys sat to the left of the opening, the girls and women to the right. Visitors who came, and there were many, always sat facing Crazy Horse with their backs to the opening.

  The comfort of the lodge surprised him the most. They’d stacked soft buffalo robes on the ground and it was like sleeping on clouds compared to the blanket and hard ground he’d slept on during the wagon trip.

  Food was another story, and he had a hard time adjusting to the smells and flavors. His mother had always cooked with salt and other seasonings, but the Indians didn’t have these. The food was good, but different.

  As he began to learn the language, the children included him in their play. Most of the boys played, laughed, and joked around like white boys, but he noticed that Curly was different. Although he joined in, laughed, and joked, most of the time he was serious. He spent time staring into space, so deep in thought that people spoke to him and he didn’t hear them. When this happened, the person speaking to Curly would shake his head, mumble how strange he was, and leave him alone.

  Curly’s speech patterns also differed. He was the quietest person Andy had ever seen and seemed uncomfortable talking. He seldom finished a full sentence without pausing in the middle, almost as if he forced himself to finish.

  All the boys, no matter their age, carried bows and arrows. If they could walk, they had one. Younger boys had arrows with blunt tips and he assumed this stopped them from shooting someone. He soon learned it also stopped them from hurting themselves.

  He’d been in the village for several months—the Indians called them moons—when Curly gave him a bow and a quiver of arrows with blunt tips.

  “Thank you. Where did you get these?” he asked.

  With a funny expression, Curly said, “I made…them.”

  “Can I go shoot it, now?”

  “I’ll go with you…show you how.”

  Little Hawk and a friend of Curly’s named He Dog saw them and followed, snickering amongst themselves. Andy didn’t get the joke.

  “Do you know what to do?” Curly asked.

  “Sure. I’ve watched the others. Why do the arrows have blunt tips?”

  The three boys laughed at his question.

  “You’ll see,” Curly said.

  Andy placed an arrow in the bow and pulled it back to shoot. He had it almost back when the arrow went off by itself, striking the ground beside his foot. As he stood looking at the arrow for a few moments, the boys stopped laughing.

  “What’d I do wrong?”

  This brought on another fit of laughter. Curly told him with laugh tears running down his cheeks that he held the bow with the wrong hand.

  “I’m holding the bow with my right hand. Why is that the wrong hand?”

  “You should be holding the bow with your weak hand…pulling the bow string back with your strong hand,” he said.

  “But my right hand is my weak hand. I’m left-handed.” He tried to explain with his limited use of their language, but couldn’t make them understand what left-handed meant.

  They tried to get him to shoot the bow holding it in his left hand, but he had trouble pulling it back and releasing the arrow because he wasn’t coordinated with his right fingers, and this always caused them to laugh.

  After a couple of these sessions, he began to sneak off by himself. The boys kept insisting he had to hold the bow with his left hand, but he practiced by himself holding it with his right hand, and shot well.

  One day, when they went out to shoot, he shot it his way and it hit the target almost every time.

  “Ayiee,” said He Dog. “He needs a Lakota name, and we can call him Wrong Hand.”

  The boys agreed Wrong Hand was the right name for him, although Andy wouldn’t have chosen this name for himself.

  “You can’t hunt buffalo…with the way you hold the bow,” Curly said.

  Little Hawk and He Dog looked up at him when he said this.

  “
Why not?” Andy asked.

  “Horses are trained to run…on the right side of the buffalo,” Curly said.

  “Why does it matter?” He Dog asked before Andy could.

  “We have to hold the bow…in the left hand when we’re on the right side of the buffalo,” Curly said.

  “Did not think of that,” Little Hawk said.

  With a puzzled look, Andy asked, “Why does it make a difference?”

  He Dog answered, “You can’t hold the bow in your right hand and shoot to the left. Try it and you’ll see.”

  Andy tried, but he couldn’t do it. He nodded. “I’ll have to train Charcoal to ride on the left side of the buffalo.”

  “You had better…not miss,” Curly said.

  “Why?”

  Laughing, He Dog said, “If you miss, you’re going to make some people mad. Everyone else will be on the right of the buffalo avoiding your stray arrows.”

  With laugh tears rolling down their cheeks, the boys straddled make believe horses, riding along beside a herd, with their heads bobbing and tilting like they dodged Andy’s wayward arrows.

  * * * *

  Change swept through the young white boy—not like a stampeding herd, but gentle and gradual like trees leafing out in the spring. Andy learned the language and made friends. Customs began to make sense—habits formed, developing into a way of thinking, as well as acting. Over time, Andy came to believe the Indian camp was his home, and the people he shared a lodge with were his family.

  As the moon of colored leaves, September, drifted in, the night air became colder. The sun still heated the day, but when it fell from the sky, they could see their breath, and night ice formed at the river’s edge.

  The crier, a messenger who ran through the camp announcing arrivals or important happenings, swept through declaring another move, this time to a winter camp. Their village evaporated in a hurry. With a lot to pack, the women, in anticipation of the move, had started packing things three suns before. Although the women grumbled about all the meat and hides they had to pack from the successful hunt, Little Hawk told Andy they would also grumble if they didn’t have meat in their parfleches. They stored their dried meat in these boxes made with dried willow branches, tied together with strips of rawhide, and covered with skins.

  Happiness prevailed over the village because even the elderly had overflowing food containers. Curly had seen to it, giving the old and the women with no man in their lodges most of his kills. Talk spread that one day he’d be a great leader. All the other young men and older warriors strutted and boasted of their kills, giving out small scraps to the helpless like they fed the dogs, but not the strange one.

  While the others paraded around camp and boasted of how much they gave, he was thoughtful of others and didn’t seek or want praise for his enormous generosity.

  As the camp came apart, the women’s effortlessness and orderliness in getting their belongings together amazed Andy. When the boys returned with the horse herd, only bare lodge poles stood. The women had everything out of the lodge, and without anyone telling him, Little Hawk shimmied up the center pole and unhooked the pin, and in no time, they had eight of the lodge poles hooked to four horses, two per horse.

  After the boys tied the lodge skins between the poles, the women went about placing the entire lodge’s contents on the travois and tying them down with leather ropes. Horses pulled the V-shaped sleds, leaving two drag marks behind in the dirt. On many occasions, the Lakota put extra robes on it and strapped elderly, sick, or wounded people onto the travois.

  At first, the move of the village excited Andy, but his enthusiasm soon drifted away. With sadness, he remembered the wagon train’s slow movement and his parents.

  Andy had another problem. Boys his age rode their horses on the outer fringes, playing, laughing, and having fun, but he couldn’t join in. He still couldn’t get on Charcoal by himself, and no one would help him. They seemed to think if he wasn’t tall enough to get on his horse, he wasn’t old enough to ride one. Humiliated, Andy had to walk with the women and babies.

  Most of the smaller children even rode. Their mothers tied them on the back of gentle horses and Andy walked beside the small, mounted kids.

  Like white women, the Lakotas assigned under-foot children all the little chores they didn’t want to do. Little Hawk and the others thundered across the open prairie laughing at Andy and his chores. The other boys had small, quick horses, not tall like Charcoal. They had no problems mounting theirs.

  A few days after the move started, an idea struck. Andy couldn’t get on his horse, but he could mount Little Hawk’s horse. Before the village started to move, he led the black stallion beside Little Hawk’s horse, mounted him, and jumped on Charcoal’s back. The boys laughed, but he didn’t care. He had discovered a way of joining in the fun, and getting away from the women.

  Little Hawk, Spotted Elk, and Andy rode off to the sides, racing, playing games, and shooting their bows. They killed several rabbits, and Spotted Elk killed a small deer which they startled, but they didn’t did see any others.

  The Lakota, or the people, traveled for most of the day and the scouts would guide everyone into camp before darkness. Little Hawk and Andy gathered wood for the cook fires while the women prepared the evening meal.

  Their mother removed large chunks of the dried buffalo from the parfleche. After cutting the meat into small chunks, she added wild onions and turnips along with sweet grass and several other herbs. She served the aromatic stew in large buffalo horns.

  Andy grew accustomed to the food but still longed for his mother’s corn pone and butter.

  Later, they positioned their sleeping robes around the fire, as they did in the lodge, in the permitted order.

  The village traveled for many suns, crossed three rivers, and passed to the south of the huge rock looming over the prairie. At mid-afternoon, before reaching camp, Andy rode with Little Hawk, Black Sparrow, and Red Tail as the village slithered its way along. Hooves drummed behind them, and the four boys turned their horses as Good Weasel and He Dog loped toward them. Both boys, friends of Curly, spent most of their time with the scouts or guarding the horse herd.

  As they pulled up, Good Weasel issued a challenge they couldn’t refuse—a race. A small group of trees stood on the prairie about a half mile away, and made a good finish point for the contest. When they formed a line, Andy found himself between He Dog and Little Hawk. After a short argument to see who would start it, they decided He Dog would.

  As He Dog yelled go, the boys’ horses leaped forward, leaving Charcoal standing. Not used to racing, Charcoal started slow but seemed to understand he was in a race. Andy figured in a short race, the smaller, quicker horses would win, but in a distance race like this, he’d put his money on his horse any day.

  Charcoal laid his ears back and took off as if a bee had stung him. Andy lay low on the horse’s back like the other boys did. It wasn’t long before Charcoal’s long legs, churning up large divots of sod, trampling wildflowers and brush, streaked past the others and brought up even with He Dog’s horse, who led the pack. Rhythmic beating of the hooves echoed in his head, and an excited surge sped through Andy.

  Halfway to the finishing point, Charcoal zipped past He Dog’s horse as if he stood still.

  As he flew past the clump of tress, Andy turned his horse, an easy six lengths ahead of He Dog. A victory yell rose, but died as Good Weasel’s horse stumbled and went down.

  The boy flew over the back of the horse, smacked the ground stomach first, and slid twenty feet, plowing up grass and dirt.

  When Andy pulled up where Good Weasel took his spill, Little Hawk dismounted, turned him over and gasped. The boy’s bare chest and stomach, now missing most of the skin, had blood welling up from the grooves created by grass, dirt, and rocks.

  As they stood around, not knowing what to do, Good Weasel’s eyes snapped open.

  “Aug.” A loud groan escaped his lips.

  Everyone sat thei
r horses. With his attention fixed on the boy, Andy wasn’t aware of the loud whinnying coming from the horse behind them. As the sounds penetrated his thoughts, he turned. Good Weasel’s horse wallowed from side to side on the grass. His right front hoof pointed to the left, but his leg pointed right.

  Andy knew they had to kill the horse to put him out of his misery, but he turned his head when He Dog walked forward and slit the horse’s throat. Turning back after the terrible sounds stopped, Andy stared at the dead horse for several long minutes.

  He Dog, with Little Hawk’s help, put Good Weasel on He Dog’s horse, and they took it easy riding toward the village. Low moans escaped from Good Weasel with every step the horse took.

  The injury ended their racing for the day and took away from Andy’s victory, but he didn’t think about that then. Later, after Good Weasel got well, Andy teased him about jumping from the horse to keep from congratulating him.

  Three days later, the village arrived at a large bend in the Cheyenne River and started to set up winter camp.

  After Little Hawk shimmied up the lodge poles and put the pin in place, Ina sent Little Hawk and Andy to gather brush by the river.

  The women attached the lodge covers to the frame, and the boys stacked brush in a pile around the outside base of the tepee.

  With a frown, Andy asked Little Hawk, “Why are we piling brush outside the lodge?”

  Without stopping work, Little Hawk replied, “Keeps the lodge warm. Brush blocks the wind. When the snow comes, it piles up in the brush—keeps the heat in and the cold out.” When he told Andy this, long ago memories of his father piling brush around the bottom of their house in Missouri came to him.

  After they had the brush piled up, they trudged out to the tall grass on the prairie and started cutting. Andy copied what Little Hawk did. He bent over, caught clumps of grass in one hand, and cut it at the base with his stone knife. They stacked the cut grass in a pile, and continued cutting. Other boys joined them, doing the same thing, and most didn’t appear any more excited about it than Andy did.