Read Online Crow Dog : Four Generations of Sioux Medicine Men (9780062200143) by Leonard C. Dog - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Leonard C. Dog
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grandfather had learned the old way. They could still use the bow. They could make a fire with flint and tinder. They still had all the survival skills. If the dogs start to bark, or even if they are too silent, what does it mean? You had to be trained. You had to exercise, to be able to run a long distance. Goa long time without food or water. But not too long, for then you get weak. If you don’t learn those things, you gamble with your life. If you don’t learn the signs on the ground, or the sounds in the air, or some tiny movement someplace, you could have an arrow or a bullet in your gut. And you had to learn the herbs, the hunting medicine, so you wouldn’t be easy to target at.
“Well that’s the kind of education my father and grandfather got, but not me. When I was a kid most everybody had horses. We learned to ride almost before we could walk. Now there aren’t enough horses left to go around. I’m over eighty, but I still ride, I still drag wood behind my horse. You’ve got to breathe into a horse’s nostril, let him smell under your armpit to make him know you. You got to know how to gentle a horse, how to break him nicely without spooking him, without force. In the old days you depended on your pony.
“Everybody was afraid of school. In my grandparents’ days they took the kids all the way to Carlisle, Pennsylvania. They took them by horse and buggy to the railroad station, some fifty miles away, and there put them on the train. Their parents and relatives went along by wagon, or on horseback, to the station. Then they watched the train disappear with their children. The little boys and girls in the carriages wept, and their families, left behind along the tracks, wept too. You can imagine the shock it must have been for those kids, who had come from tipis and tiny log cabins out on the prairie, to find themselves on that rattling, smoking, whistling train, being carried away at a terrifying speed. And the shock at the many stops along the way, in the ant-heap cities, with a thousand faces of curious wasichus looking at them, gaping at those ‘cute little savages.’ My uncle Jake Left Hand Bull had to stay at Carlisle for seven years without being allowed to go home or see his folks, not even on Christmas. They cut his hair real short, just like stubble. He had to wear a dark, heavy uniform with a stiff collar, like being a soldier in the army, and heavy shoes going up over his ankles. They hurt so that he could hardly walk. The kids were beaten for every little thing. Theyweren’t told to become doctors, or lawyers, or teachers, but to be carpenters, or shoe repair men.
“I had trouble in school. I didn’t speak a word of English, and the teacher didn’t speak a word of Sioux, so how could we learn? We were not allowed to speak Indian, or pray Indian, or sing Indian. They treat us bad, hit us if we speak our language. I didn’t care for their kind of food, either. Also they went only to the fourth grade, so I was in fourth grade for a few years. There were white kids and mixbloods and they harass me all the time. So I fight back. Then they say, ‘That Indian boy’s always fighting.’ It was never the white boy’s fault. Then the school superintendent said, ‘Crow Dog’s always fighting. So we better send him away as far as we can.’ So they sent me to Pierre, a hundred miles from home.
“My father taught me everything I need to know. He didn’t talk much. He just did it and made a motion—you saw me doing this, now you try it. He taught me how to use white man’s tools, saws, drills, crowbars. I worked for a while for the railroad, laying track. From 1934 to 1950 I worked in Nebraska harvesting grain, digging spuds, and picking beets. I made two or three dollars a day. They call it migrant labor now. I was camping near Saint Francis doing WPA work, but the priests heard me having an Indian ceremony, heard the drumming and singing, and chased me away. On our allotment there was
“Well that’s the kind of education my father and grandfather got, but not me. When I was a kid most everybody had horses. We learned to ride almost before we could walk. Now there aren’t enough horses left to go around. I’m over eighty, but I still ride, I still drag wood behind my horse. You’ve got to breathe into a horse’s nostril, let him smell under your armpit to make him know you. You got to know how to gentle a horse, how to break him nicely without spooking him, without force. In the old days you depended on your pony.
“Everybody was afraid of school. In my grandparents’ days they took the kids all the way to Carlisle, Pennsylvania. They took them by horse and buggy to the railroad station, some fifty miles away, and there put them on the train. Their parents and relatives went along by wagon, or on horseback, to the station. Then they watched the train disappear with their children. The little boys and girls in the carriages wept, and their families, left behind along the tracks, wept too. You can imagine the shock it must have been for those kids, who had come from tipis and tiny log cabins out on the prairie, to find themselves on that rattling, smoking, whistling train, being carried away at a terrifying speed. And the shock at the many stops along the way, in the ant-heap cities, with a thousand faces of curious wasichus looking at them, gaping at those ‘cute little savages.’ My uncle Jake Left Hand Bull had to stay at Carlisle for seven years without being allowed to go home or see his folks, not even on Christmas. They cut his hair real short, just like stubble. He had to wear a dark, heavy uniform with a stiff collar, like being a soldier in the army, and heavy shoes going up over his ankles. They hurt so that he could hardly walk. The kids were beaten for every little thing. Theyweren’t told to become doctors, or lawyers, or teachers, but to be carpenters, or shoe repair men.
“I had trouble in school. I didn’t speak a word of English, and the teacher didn’t speak a word of Sioux, so how could we learn? We were not allowed to speak Indian, or pray Indian, or sing Indian. They treat us bad, hit us if we speak our language. I didn’t care for their kind of food, either. Also they went only to the fourth grade, so I was in fourth grade for a few years. There were white kids and mixbloods and they harass me all the time. So I fight back. Then they say, ‘That Indian boy’s always fighting.’ It was never the white boy’s fault. Then the school superintendent said, ‘Crow Dog’s always fighting. So we better send him away as far as we can.’ So they sent me to Pierre, a hundred miles from home.
“My father taught me everything I need to know. He didn’t talk much. He just did it and made a motion—you saw me doing this, now you try it. He taught me how to use white man’s tools, saws, drills, crowbars. I worked for a while for the railroad, laying track. From 1934 to 1950 I worked in Nebraska harvesting grain, digging spuds, and picking beets. I made two or three dollars a day. They call it migrant labor now. I was camping near Saint Francis doing WPA work, but the priests heard me having an Indian ceremony, heard the drumming and singing, and chased me away. On our allotment there was
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