The Trail
Of One Thousand Tears-With Val Kilmer’s Thunderheart In Mind
From The
Pen Of Frank Jackman
They were
waiting on a sign. That news had been given to them by an ancient tribal elder,
Sammy Eagle Feathers, before he passed to the next life, given to the
desperately spiritually poor (and every other which way too) Lakota Sioux who
were waiting, waiting on a sign that the avenger of ancient wrongs was to come
among them. Waiting for a few generations now impatiently for a leader, a
righteous shaman to take their hurts away. Waiting always in forlorn hope in the
rugged rural squalor of the reservation that they had been pieced off on by the
‘great white father. Always waiting sitting
in half-baked trailers and make-shift lean-tos. Places almost as primitive as
those ancient dream teepees and sweet peyote hogans. Old wrecks of automobiles
carelessly strewn around their sacred land like they were the new totem.
Waiting on the side of the road, fellahin waiting on their haunches, looking
for rides into town to buy the white man’s liquor (firewater for those addicted
to those old time black and white cowboy and injun movies), some cheap untaxed
cigarettes (useful for a little black market trade with the white man), and
some super-processed food to fill tired and worn-out stomachs. Waiting too at
Jimmy Two Feathers’ Gas Station for some major job to be finsihed on that broken down 1961
Chevy truck that needed to get a few thousand more miles on it. Waiting any way
you described it.
The list
of hurts in need of avenging, white man hurts, was endless from the time he set
foot on the sacred land but they were looking for more immediate revenge for
modern hurts, the killing of their tribal leaders, the jailing of their
militants, and the grinding down of their slender hopes into powered dust. And
always, always that unforgotten festering hurt of Wounded Knee told to every
child almost before he or she understood any other ways of the world. As so one
day Billy Three Crows came thundering into Red Cloud.That is a town in the nowhere
Western tablelands on the reservation just east of Rapid City in the
Dakotas, up in high Lakota Sioux country, country where the native population
made the white man cry his fill for a while, before he then took exterminating
angel revenge.
Billy
Three Crows came to town though not as the shaman avenger but just on a routine
job working for the dreaded Bureau of Indians Affairs. What did they call him
in the BIA office in Rapid City, oh yah, a cigar store Indian. Even he laughed
at that one, laughed to think that a quarter red skin would be able to solve
the civil wars going on among the tribal factions exploding on the scene now
that high grade shale, shale that sweet gas could be pulled out of making
everybody, even the injuns, rich just as long as they saw it the big company extractors’
way and granted the drilling rights to plunder the land once again (or somebody
granted the drilling rights, maybe Sammy Eagle’s Nest, one the white man’s
favorite kept Indians, and his confederates). And so Billy was to be the new
sheriff in town, if he lived long enough.
But a
funny thing happened to Billy once he got among his people, got to see that he
had denied his heritage for the white man’s pot of porridge, denied his Native
American heritage to say it properly these days, and little by little as he saw
and heard what had happened he went “native.” That turn of events came to a
point of no return one night, one moonless night, at the tribal dance of the
new moon, a most sacred rite in timeless lore. An old medicine man, a man who
had seen it all on the reservation since about Wounded Knee to hear the elders
tell it, slipped a couple of peyote button into the new sheriff’s coffee. And that was when he had his vision, his previously
denied connection to his past.
Now in
the time of Billy Three Crows, the time we are talking about, the late1970s,
these tribal dances were attended by all kind of people who were encouraged to
be there by the elders as source of revenue for the tribe, a big source then.
Especially at the summertime Dance of the New Moon which was held over several
days (until that new moon came). So the night in question along with most of
the Lakota Sioux who could get there, there were white garbacho tourists and a
slew of hippies who had deserted the cities to go back to nature living in rural
communes all over the West. And they, mainly young, as young will do, brought their
own instruments to play along with the tribal drums, beads and sticks. A couple
of guys, one calling himself Captain Midnight and the other Black Jack, had
flutes and fiddles. Everybody was gathering around the huge camp fire which had
an important symbolic presence in the dance as it lit up the canyon walls
behind the crowds.
Once the
tribal drums started, slowly and in synch at first, getting louder a little
later, some strange images started to appear to Bill Three Crow against the
multi-layered canyon walls. Strangely several others commented on them,
including Captain Midnight and Black Jack who started playing their
instruments, at first a little out of synch with the tribal drums but then
catching up. Billy Three Crows then got up, got up as if possessed, and
starting dancing like the images on the walls. As the music droned on those
images got clearer and one and all, one and all who wanted to see, could see
the outlines of some ancient warriors preparing for battle, getting their
courage up, getting their spiritual affairs in order before their ancestors by
a collective dance.
The music
picked up, and Billy went into a trance around the camp fire. The walls
appeared to become one great fire dance. Then a few moments later almost as
quickly as they had appeared the images vanished into the canyon night. Billy
kept on dancing for a bit, then suddenly stopped. At that moment he knew, knew
as the on-looking elders knew, that he was the avenging shaman that his people
had been warrior waiting for. And wherever that knowledge might lead, whatever
hell was ahead, just that moment Billy Three Crows knew what it was like when
fearless ancient warriors roamed those hills.
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