The Hunt

Things evened out for the boy following his fight with the young Lakota. Privileges were extended; he was given a pair of leggings and a simple buckskin shirt, and his meals came from the family cooking pot instead of the scraps thrown out for the dogs. He was even given a short bow and several blunt-tipped arrows, with which he practiced daily.

One morning he woke to find a fat gray travois pony hobbled next to him, a sign of permission to use the animal. He had not been invited to live in the lodge, but as the evenings cooled Bear’s oldest wife built him a wikiup brush shelter and gave him a newer robe on which to sleep.

He lived attached to the Lakota, but not with them. He was seldom spoken to. On occasion Bear-That-Walks addressed him as wablenica, the Lakota word for orphan, or akabhan, which means standing-on-the-outside. At any time he could have mounted the pony and ridden away, but he could not imagine where to go. Civilization was a term that held no meaning; he did not dream of tree-lined thoroughfares and leather shoes crowned with smiling faces. Among the Lakota he was allowed to live without bother. He gathered fuel for the fires and occasionally brought a rabbit or a prairie chicken for the pot, and that was enough.

Early in the fall, a time called Tree-leaves shaken-off moon, the councilors of the village, called big bellies, met and smoked together for several days. When they finished a crier rode a paint pony among the tipis calling out instructions. Early the next morning the lodges were pulled down and packed on travois along with the elderly and the smallest children. The people, horses and dogs began to move west along the White River, strung out in a long line over the broken prairie, some walking and some riding in the rising dust, faces chalked and vermilioned, hide shields and weapons visible, a few travelers adorned with scapulars of enemy fingers and more with shell earrings and bone necklaces, the young boys racing their wild ponies back and forth. And as the clan moved the members sang a traveling song exactly as it had been sung by generations long dead, the sound quivering across the humped and split ground, reaching as far as the watching outriders and beyond, lost in the massive vault of sky and earth.

They traveled all day and the next four without unpacking the travois, until somewhere far out on the baking plains they cut the north fork of the Platte River, and they erected lodges among the scattered cottonwoods and set about gathering fuel for the cooking pots. They unpacked only essential possessions, and the boy realized this camp was temporary.

Small parties of warriors were sent out long before sunrise dressed in wolf skins. Over the course of two days they stayed away until sundown, returning quietly without the tremolo chants and drumbeats common to war or raiding. At noon on the third day one of the sorties returned to smoke with the big bellies, and when word of the meeting was spoken the camp became a hive of preparation; whetstones put to arrowheads, lances and skinning knives; bows strung, dust sprinkled over the backs of ponies to ensure speed. For thousands of years bison herds had turned the grass into meat and shelter, sustaining the tribes as they arrived on the Plains, converting forest-dwelling root diggers into nomadic hunters. In the process the buffalo became a god, joined later by the horse, the god dog, shunka wakan.

Thus the Lakota conformed themselves as they set forth: just after dawn the painted hunters rode into the clear morning light carrying bows and lances, mounted on sleek ponies specially trained and decorated, the people singing strong-heart songs.
The boy was not invited to participate, yet he decided to follow the hunters on the little gray, his bow and worn skinning knife brought along for whatever purpose presented itself.

He rode until the ground beneath the gray’s hooves trembled and dust obscured the horizon and a rumbling thunder filled the air. The boy crested a rise where he saw the hunters disappear and there he saw the great herd as a torrent - an ocean of buffalo, dark ridges of hump meat moving like waves, the hunters ki-yi-ing within and around the roiling mass, shooting arrows and thrusting lances, swerving as panicked beasts whirled, horns hooking blindly against the current.

In the wake of the stampede the boy saw dark shapes moving on the torn ground: wounded buffalo were bellowing, kicking, attempting to rise and lose the smell of death. He rode down among them; viewing here and there a trampled calf, stomped shapeless amid crushed prickly pear and flattened yucca.

He heard a scream. In the distance a black pony coughed and stumbled, its saddle slipped down on its side, entrails hanging in uneven loops beneath its torn belly. From somewhere its rider limped up and drew a blade across its throat and the animal sank to its knees and rolled on its side, kicking twice.

Soon mountains of meat were carved and laid upon fresh-stripped hides as men, women and children worked the steaming carcasses, the children’s lips and chins gleaming with blood from mouthfuls of warm liver and sweetbreads spiced with drops of bile. Bones were cracked, ribs chopped, marrow scooped; humps, tongues, hooves, brains, horns and skulls were collected; stomachs and intestines emptied. All day the ponies bore loads back to camp, leaving behind piles of offal and dark red stains to mark the killing ground. No count of the quarry was taken or assumed. The killing had continued until arrows were gone, lances broken, ponies and hunters gored or used up.

Around the perimeter wolves, coyotes, ravens and magpies gathered. In this country there was no such thing as too much meat, and throughout the following week the Lakota gorged themselves in feasting.

By spring they would chew boiled hides.