Prisoner

The Indians who captured the boy called themselves Lakota. The name originated from the combination of two words, da, which means considered, and koda, which means friend or friends. Considered-friends.
They also knew themselves as Ocetiyotipi Sakowin, meaning the Seven Council Fires, because they were a tribe divided into seven bands. These warriors belonged to the Titonwan, or the Camping on the Plains band, so-called because they were driven by the Algonquins from the forests of northern Minnesota to the prairies. The Titonwan, or Tetons, were further divided into seven kinship clans: the Sicangu, or Scorched Thighs, also called the Brulés; the Oohenonpa, Boiled Twice, also known as Two Kettles; the Minikanyewotupi, Plant-near-water, called Miniconjou; the Itazipco, No-bows, called Sans Arcs; the Sihasapa, Black-foot; the Hunkpapa, End-of-horn; and the Oglala, Cast-on-own.

The boy’s captors were Oglala and Brulé. They were mostly young men, filled with arrogance, longing to prove themselves, trained since boyhood in the use of horse and bow by a culture that viewed warfare as the crucible of manhood.
Except for horses, guns, and the iron from which they made arrowheads, there was little about the wasichú these Lakota coveted, nor could they imagine for themselves other than a free roaming life on the Plains, which they regarded as a right of birth.

Under their rules of kinship all Lakota were ankantu, superior, and all others ihukuya, considered-inferior. As far as these warriors were concerned the treatment the boy received was appropriate for a captive. His life was forfeit and the property of his captors to use as they pleased from moment to moment. The killing of the old man chief at Laramie had intensified the boy’s abuse, but the intercession of The Bear-That-Walks limited its effect; they would not intentionally kill him.

They were eight days on a serpentine route to their village on the White River in what is now northwest Nebraska. By the time they arrived the boy was barely able to walk. The warriors had given him occasional pieces of jerky to gnaw in the evenings, but the meager rations were insufficient to sustain him. His ragged clothes were filthy and the holes in his shirt revealed a shrinkage of flesh; pronounced ribcage outlines and sharp points on his shoulders augured his decline. He was dying.

In camp he collapsed next to a pile of kindling and lay there, unmoving, largely ignored by the Indians throughout the following day into the evening. Finally one of the wives of Bear-That-Walks noticed the boy as she built a cooking fire. She told her husband that the boy appeared to be dead, and asked if she could dispose of the body. The warrior approached the boy and spoke, prodding him with the toe of his moccasin. The boy did not respond, and finally the Bear poked him in the back with a piece of kindling. The boy moaned. When Bear-That-Walks did it a second time the boy stirred, and with a surprising burst of strength he reached out to grab the stick.
The Indian continued until the boy turned, feebly, to raise himself. Bear-That-Walks held him down with his foot and laughed and told his wife that the boy was alive, but had no more strength than a puppy, and perhaps they should put him in the pot and cook him. He bent low to ask the boy if he’d like that.

The boy spit in the warrior’s face.

The Bear grabbed the boy’s throat and struck him hard on the jaw. He drew his scalping knife and pressed it against the boy’s windpipe. He squeezed the thin, pale neck until he felt the bloodbeat and saw the veins swell; until he heard the boy’s breath come in rasps. He looked into the boy’s eyes, just as he had looked into the eyes of a dozen enemies as they died. But now these eyes did not reflect fear; this time what the Indian saw was defiance, and the Bear-That-Walks remembered that from the beginning this boy had not wept nor begged for mercy. The beatings and abuse had not broken him. Now the Indian recognized that in the last terrible moment of his life this wasichú boy would not surrender.

That moment saved the boy’s life. Bear-That-Walks released his grip. He rose and stared at the gasping boy.
Feed him, he said to his wife. Bring him a robe.

In the days that followed the boy survived by being useful. He gathered firewood, hauled water, and watched arrow makers and story tellers and healers at work, but the Indians made no attempt to bring him into the band. He ate what was provided and gradually gained the use of some words and signs as he listened to the conversations and observed the daily routines, but he remained isolated, sleeping on the ground outside the lodge of Bear-That-Walks, with only the old robe for comfort. He could have stolen a pony, but was unsure where he would go. These people, these lodges, were now his home; their sights, smells and sounds no less foreign than the alleyways and gutters of the communities in which he slept among the piled trash, like a thing thrown away.
His strength gradually returned.

Hostility toward whites ran high in the camp, especially after General Harney’s troops struck a Brulé village near the Bluewater, killing women and children and sending refugees to Bear-That-Walks’s camp. There were now seventy lodges, a sizable community for the Lakota, made up largely by the members of six families.
Initially the boy avoided confrontation, staying close to his sleeping robe. But trouble drew to him, like slat-ribbed camp dogs to cooking pots. There were young Lakota who held memories of relatives shot down and hacked with sabers; memories that burned like embers, requiring only a small reminding breeze to burst forth in flame. The boy’s presence was a whirlwind.

It happened one morning as he carried wood from the pine-filled draws skirting the buttes north of the White River. He was alone, moving quietly across a meadow that overlooked the river’s winding course, listening to younger boys haze the pony herds from the night pasture across the river.
Four boys his age waited in the blue shadows of a nearby gulley until he crossed in front of them. The weight of the wood across his shoulders bent his back so he couldn’t turn quickly or look up, but he heard them coming. He dropped the wood, simultaneously crouching and raising his arms to ward off the blows he knew were coming. The attackers carried stone-headed clubs, striking him as they ran past, whooping with each blow.
The first caught him in the small of the back. The second found his lower ribs, the third glanced off his left thigh. The fourth landed on his left elbow and was the most painful, striking the radial nerve, sending electric shocks to his fingertips.

They surrounded the boy, circling like wolves, taunting him, yelling insults, challenging him to fight. He grabbed a stick of firewood and swung it to keep them at a distance. He was clubbed from behind. He whirled and was struck again between the shoulders. He staggered and went down. More blows rained on him, sending dull thuds and slapping sounds into the early morning air.
He curled his body, his head wrapped in his arms, but knew he wouldn’t last long on the ground. In desperation he kicked out - and felt a snap as his heel struck a knee. One of the Lakota boys went down with a scream. The assailants hesitated.

It was the chance the boy needed.
He rolled to his feet, snatching up a length of kindling. From deep in his chest came a hoarse, coughing growl. Not a whoop or yelp, it was a murderous snarl, like the sound a bear makes on the attack. He exploded toward the nearest aggressor, swinging the wood with both hands. The blow landed on the side of the Lakota youth’s head. He went down, and the boy turned on the others, striking flesh again and again.

And then it was over. Two of the young Lakota were running, one cradling an injured arm. On the ground one of the boys rocked back and forth, moaning and holding his injured knee, while another lay twitching, eyes rolled back in his head, foam gathered at the corners of his mouth, a crimson trickle pooling in one ear.

Two days after the fight Bear-That-Walks came to the boy at dusk as he lay on his sleeping robe. The man looked at the boy for a long moment, then dropped an old trader knife on the ground next to the robe. Its blade was worn thin by many whetstones, and the short, wood handle was cracked and weathered, held together by yellowed strands of sinew. The warrior turned and walked away.

Summer passed, and the boy was not bothered again.