Warrior

ART6

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Warrior

Where am I? Where am I in this mysterious world of trees and endless plains and men and horses and war? I am a child and I know not of such things. I know nothing of anything but I know how to laugh and I know how to cry when I hurt myself, and I know that my mother is near me all of the time. I know that I have a duty, and that is to grow, but I don’t know what I must grow to be.

The days are flying past, through the suns and the moons and the cold, bitter winter, and I am growing as I must. I am learning, but I know not what I am learning. I know my father, and I know now that he is a great warrior in a nation of brave warriors. I have seen him come to my mother when he has wounds and have seen her tending him. I have looked from the shelter of our tepee at the council fires and seen the warriors dancing and I have wondered. I have seen my father standing proud and solemn before the shaman and before the people, raising his spear in the air and shouting “Aye, I have killed. I have killed the enemy of the Sioux. I have their horses and I have their women and as long as the gods allow me I will lead the Sioux to victory over any enemy yet imagined by a man.”

I didn’t understand. We are comfortable and secure here in our trees beside the river. Who must we kill? Who are they that threaten us so that my father must ride out and fight them? I love my father. Why must he risk his life for us?

Oh but the dawn of understanding comes slow, and I am beginning to learn. I play with the other boys of the village, and we have learned how to use the war bow and the knife and the tomahawk but on what? I can now place an arrow exactly into the centre of a leaf placed by one of the warriors, but I am still nor sure what use that is.

I am beginning to understand. I see the war parties ride out in their war paint. Warriors who have earned their place by their bravery and their skill. These are men as I must one day such a man must be. These are the men that define the pinnacle of courage and selflessness that I must aspire to.

So, it is to be tomorrow. My mother weeps as she accepts that I must begin my initiation. Tomorrow I start to prove to my tribe that I can be a brave of the Ogallala Sioux. I don’t know if I can do it. I must suffer pain and hardship, and I must not flinch or show any reaction. They will send me out into the wilderness alone with nothing but my blade and a breechclout, and I must survive. And if I do, then they will subject me to more pain in front of the whole village, and they will measure me by my fixed stare and my refusal to flinch. I am afraid, but I have decided. I will not flinch. I will become a warrior of the greatest of all of the Indian nations.

It is done. My body is streaked with blood and my heart cries out from the pain. My mother has cried piteously, but my father placed his hand on my shoulder and said “Now you are worthy to be my son.” They have gathered around me, the warriors I have admired for so many moons, and they have admitted me into their circle as one of them. Now the blood courses in my veins, hot with pride. I am a warrior of the Ogallala Sioux, and I will ride with the war parties and I will count coup over our enemies. I will make my father proud of me in his old age, and he will speak at the council fire of my deeds.

I have learned so much. I have ridden with brave men against our enemies, but now, by some bewildering twist of fate or the whims of the gods, we seem to have a new enemy. His skin is pale, white like the moon. He is weak. He cannot run beside his pony all day and fight a battle before the sun sets. He has no skill with the war bow or the tomahawk or the blade, yet there seem to be many of him like a tornado sweeping over the plains. He has a fire stick. It is almost like a pipe of peace. He places it to his shoulder and there is a puff of smoke. Why should we fear that? Because every time he does it one of our warriors dies.

Now the people are looking to me for the answer for I am Crazy Horse, war chief of the Ogallala Sioux.

I have meditated, and I have consulted our shaman, and I know that if we are to defeat this new enemy then we must change. We must obtain and learn to use his weapons, and we must learn to use his tactics. No longer can we simply raid, steal a few horses and perhaps a few women and then go home. This new enemy does not fight like us. He does not recognise the night when the gods do not watch. His warriors are of less use than the dung of the buffalo but they are so many and they never stop coming. Worse, his warriors bring his people and they seem to be even more abundant. They ride into our lands with their strange rolling carts, carving deep gouges into the unresisting soil, killing our game, killing the buffalo for no apparent reason other than the desire to kill.

Now we have learned about a new threat from the pale people. Not only do they have fire sticks. They also have very large versions of them. They are mounted on things they call “wheels” and they can be drawn by a horse, and when they point them at us they discharge a hail of death. One of them can destroy half a village at a stroke. This is approaching disaster. What must I do?. How can I fight against something I do not understand?

I know what I must do. What do we have that they do not? We are strong. Our braves can run from sunrise to sunset and keep pace with a pony and still fight at the end of it. We can come upon an enemy before he has any idea that we are there. We can suffer pain and injury and still fight like the wild cat and never stop fighting until we are dead. I will speak to the tribes, the Comanche and the Kiowa and the tribes of the plains, and I will speak to them of our mother earth and how we must fight to defend her. The tribes must unite or we will die.

We have their weapons and now we understand them. We understand their guns and how to shoot them, and I have made my warriors practise until they can drop a man at one hundred paces. We have added that skill to our skill as cavalry so now we can ride and shoot and never miss. And now the Kiowa and the Comanche ride with us. But I still wonder why we are reduced to this when before the measure of a man was if he could place his coup stick on the head of the enemy and ride away unharmed, but that is how our world has evolved.

They have come upon us. They came with their big fire sticks and their cavalry. We knew they were coming, but we never believed they would keep coming. There were few of them and many of us, and to our astonishment they divided their warriors in to three. One group, it seemed under the leadership of a yellow haired moon face, rode straight towards our village. How many of them? A hundred or so perhaps? A hundred moon faces challenging a thousand of my best warriors?

They are all dead, every one of them. Did they fight like braves? No. Many of them ran and screamed and died under my warrior’s guns and knives and tomahawks, and it was more like hunting than war. But some of them died like men. A few. And we will honour them.

So now what do we do? They are like the wind that blows across the plains. Wherever they come from there are more to take the place of those we kill, and we are few. For every thousand warriors I can call to my side they seem to be able to call upon five thousand. We have tried to make an honourable peace with them but their word is meaningless. Whatever we agree with them they will renege upon the next day when it suits them. They tell us that this land is theirs, and they call it “America”, denying that this land was where we lived long before they came. They tell us it is their land, when we cannot conceive of how any man can own the land he walks upon.

I am war chief of the Ogallala Sioux. I am Crazy Horse. I am the last of the warrior line of my proud people.