The dancer knew that what lay ahead would bring no joy.  Shame and regret always attended the violence.  But Squaw Killer had to die.

​

Wisps of dust rose as his feet shuffled, while fevered dreams and visions advanced and retreated behind closed eyes.  He saw the first man he had ever killed, and as the old misgivings returned, he concentrated to regain control of his thoughts—to avoid distraction.

 

He saw himself playing the game painyankapi, wands and hoops, with the other boys and later as a man.  It had originated centuries before, during a time of famine, when a young man had received the game in a vision.  The hoop he made, the first hoop thrown, had circled the lodge, summoning the buffalo and ending the starvation—all as he had predicted.

​

Now this dancer sought his own vision and deliverance of the people from destruction.

​

Other tableaus, his first war party and the faces of his mother and father acknowledging him as a man, emerged from the darkness.

In his mind’s eye he perceived manifestations of the harmony in nature, the face of the first woman he had ever loved and the spectacle he beheld, looking down from the sacred Black Hills, where, closer to The Maker of All Things, he sought his first vision.

 

Of the world outside his mind, only the sound of the ancient song of the Sundance Ceremony, to which he contributed his dance, entered his thoughts.

​

The singers, warmed by a fire, sat beside a sacred cottonwood tree, harvested and re-erected on this flat piece of ground, steadily rapping on a buffalo-skin drum.  Lashed near the top of this tree, a buffalo skull, the nose stuffed with prairie grass, hung facing west.  Cottonwood posts, set vertically in the ground and encircling the sacred tree at their center, were hung with buffalo hides upon which the chief’s shadow danced.  Many of his people sat along the enclosure’s perimeter.  Thousands more waited outside under the stars.

​

He recalled that, during his childhood, the arrival of the first newcomers almost passed without notice.  The first white man he had ever seen was out of place in this country, but the wasi’chu soon adapted, trapping furs and hunting to live.

​

Sadly, the story of their coming did not end there and the alien incursion brought discord to the land.  Early on, he learned that where there is one white man, more are sure to follow.  And when they gather in large numbers, insanity reigns.

​

Presently, thousands of buffalo carcasses rotted, un-eaten, on the prairie.  As a result of the white man’s savagery, every breath now carried the smell of death.

​

Like a prairie fire, the blue-coated soldiers arrived, come to punish the Lakota for living the only life they had ever known.

Though exhausted, the rage in his heart grew as his recollections continued.

 

Having grown in the eyes of his people and seeing the white man’s depravity, he tried to warn them.  But, by nature generous, many of the elders talked peace with them.

​

Now he saw the face of Black Kettle, a peace chief, who made his people dependent on the whites’ flour and bacon for their winter survival.  The old man, overwhelmed as whites flooded over the land, blinded himself to their savagery.

 

Now, Black Kettle and his people were no more, murdered along the Washita by Squaw Killer and his soldiers.  Even the ponies were slain.

​

The amber light of dawn raced across the prairie.  And, although he was exhausted, the rage quickened in his heart and the racing images multiplied.

​

The chief remembered how, pride swelling in his chest, he followed Red Cloud and led raiding parties that drove the whites off of the land.  Victorious, Chief Red Cloud took back the sacred Black Hills from the wasi’chus and extracted their promise to stay out of them forever.

​

The dancer’s fury was focused on the one white man to whom the people had given many names; Squaw Killer, Creeping Panther, and Long hair.  Among the whites, he was known as, General George Armstrong Custer.  It was Long Hair who, ignoring the terms of Red Cloud’s treaty, led his army back into the Black Hills—proving the promises of the wasi’chus worthless.

​

And still he danced.  The pain in his back, knees and thighs intensified, becoming one with his exhaustion.  The mystic leader of the Hunkpapa Lakota willed himself forward for the sake of his people.

​

Now he caught himself sleeping and briefly opened his eyes.

​

The images returned.

​

As if to rub salt into the wounds of the Lakota, two continuous tracks of iron were nailed to the ground, dividing north from south, upon which the Iron Horse rumbled, belching black smoke and leaving the stench of buffalo carcasses in its wake.

 

His legs stiffened as the sun approached its zenith.

​

The final indignity came when, during another peace conference, Custer arrogantly told the people where they would be allowed to live.

​

Did he believe that the land was his to give?

​

Then, he remembered with pride how the Lakota representatives, consumed with frustration and anger, answered that too many promises had been broken, and the next time they met, Long Hair would surely die.

​

Sitting Bull saw all of these things and more.

​

Recently he had summoned the people to gather, and his heart soared, as they streamed off of the reservations to join him.  Others shadowed the white soldiers emerging from their forts.

​

Three armies of blue-coated soldiers are riding against us, he thought.

​

The army coming from the south is closer than the others.  Crazy Horse, with five hundred warriors, will turn them back.  The army coming out of the west will not arrive for another twelve days.

​

As anticipated, Squaw Killer, arrogant in his impatience, was driving his soldiers to exhaustion.  And, coming out of the rising sun, they would appear first.  He will be here in ten days, the chief thought.  Long Hair, the time is at hand.  Now you will see how the Lakota and our brothers—the Cheyenne—value a promise.

.

He felt regret, that so many young men must accompany Long Hair to the great mystery, but a promise, once made, must be fulfilled.

 

He sensed the presence of that which he sought.  The sacrifices of flesh upon his arms and all of the prayers addressed to the Maker of All Things, brought him to this moment. 

​

His prayers were answered.

​

The sun at its zenith, the exhausted man stopped, gazing directly into the blazing disc. \

​

His mouth hanging open, he stood transfixed, shifting his gaze a little.  Leaning backward, the great chief collapsed and a stunned silence filled the enclosure.

​

He lay on the ground, still but for the rapid movement of his eyes darting from side to side beneath closed lids.  A small group of elders lifted their heads and looked into each other’s faces.  Standing, they walked to the fallen mystic and, cradling his head, lifted him.

​

 Their moccasins grating on the dirt floor the only sound in the enclosure, they carried him to a prepared bed of sage and lowered him onto it.  Sitting down, they encircled his quiet form.

​

Wisps of smoke from dying embers drifted skyward.

​

Sitting Bull’s eyes opened.  “I have seen it,” he said.  Moving with care, two men helped him to a sitting position.  Eager faces, eyes open in anticipation, appeared at the entrance to the enclosure.

​

The revered chief, his ashen face streaming with perspiration, gathered himself while his companions patiently awaited his words.

“I saw all of our people, gathered within one village and, from the sky, hundreds of the blue-coated soldiers rained, heads down, into our camp.

​

“I heard a voice of thunder, ‘These soldiers won’t listen.  They are given to you because they have no ears.  They are to die.  But you must not take their spoils.’”

​

Two days after Sitting Bull’s vision:

​

Crazy Horse and hundreds of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors, jubilant in their victory over Two Stars (General George Crook), rode west, just south of Rosebud Creek.

​

Their movements did not go unnoticed.

​

Several Crow and Arikara, in advance of Major Marcus Reno’s scouting expedition, lay deep down in the grass.  Shivering, the lead scout turned to a companion, his eyes wide open.  Disciplined as always, they waited until the dust cloud left in the rider’s wake had completely settled.  Crawling down the slope behind them, they recovered their ponies and rode back to the camp.

​

Awaiting the scout’s return with the remainder of his battalion, Major Marcus Reno sat under a shady tree, feeling uneasy.  Having exceeded his orders, he anticipated trouble, unless they brought news of where the Sioux were encamped.

​

Hearing a commotion in the camp, he stood and walked toward it.  Seeing the scouting party surrounded by the company commanders, he approached them.  “Did you see anything of them?” he asked.

​

The lead scout paused before answering, “Yes, a raiding party headed back to camp.  They were riding west.”

​

Glancing to his right, Reno said, “…So, the Little Bighorn, then.”

​

Nodding slowly the scout affirmed, “…Greasy Grass.”

​

The major turned and swept his eyes over the gathered commanders, before turning back to the lead scout.  “So, how many did you see?”

​

The lead scout surveyed the three hundred blue-coated soldiers around him, and calculating the odds, answered, “If they find us, the sun will not move very far in the sky before we are all dead.”