She had bundled her heavy buffalo robe around him but still he shook with chills. The small boy beside her coughed again, his thin face flushed with fever. In her heart she knew they spoke the truth. Freedom Woman had heard the Old Ones saying there would be no fresh meat and none of the white man's medicines for starving and sick Cheyenne. They had seen nothing but bug-ridden hardtack and corn mush thus far. The Pawnee scout who spoke for the Blue Coats had promised them food and medicine from the government. But Vanishing Grass was dead and she had followed the custom of his people, so wild in her grief that she did not even feel the bite of the knife.įour days ago the Long Knives had ridden through their village at daybreak, burning the lodges with their dearly garnered winter meat supplies, and killing all the men who resisted. Her arms and legs were crusted with dried blood. The Cheyenne stood around it, stoically waiting as the Blue Coat leader greeted another officer.įreedom Woman watched them, her heart hammering wildly in her chest, her mouth gone dry in spite of the fine sleet that peppered her face. They were all herded through the wide stockade gates into the center of a bleak parade ground where the striped flag of the Great White Father snapped in the wind. Babies wailed and old men sang their death chants while small children clung to their mothers' skirts. An ugly adobe fort sat, squat and forbidding, directly ahead of them. The Blue Coat leader raised his hand and signaled. The soldiers harried them, and the trails to California and Oregon became safe for the white men but dangerous for the red. Treaties were signed and then broken and the vast trackless hunting grounds of the Cheyenne, stretching from the sacred Black Hills in the north to the staked plains of the Comanche in the south, were no longer theirs to roam. The buffalo herds had begun to shrink and the People learned hunger.Ĭlashes between emigrant wagon trains and Cheyenne hunters brought the Long Knives who spoke of peace but made war.
But now they were followed by an ever-widening stream of miners and settlers, who scarred the sacred soil with their wagon trails and gouged it with picks and plows. For several generations trappers and traders who were friends of the People had come in small numbers, never disturbing the mother earth. The trouble had begun only a few years ago, but it seemed like a lifetime now. None knew what would become of them after that. Soon they would reach the white man's fort. On foot, the Cheyenne leaned into its teeth, their thin blankets and ragged buffalo hide coverings whipping around their knees. Soldiers huddled on their horses, drawing heavy overcoats close against the bite of the wind. Freezing air seared the brown buffalo grass, striking it down and flattening it all around them. Even the vegetation begged for mercy against the relentless elements, but the People did not. A thin veneer of ice glittered like scattered diamonds on the desolate earth, a sparkling mockery beneath low pewter clouds.
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The blood dried and blackened on their skin in the cold November wind that swept across the plains. The wives, mothers and sisters had slashed their arms and legs in mourning as was the custom of the Cheyenne.
There were far more women and children left than men. The People trudged in resignation, herded between the soldiers' horses in a long straggling line. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means without the written permission of the author.
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