“They are white children. But they are no longer our prisoners. We were raising them to be Shahiyena.”
Shad sighed, trying to contain his excitement at the news. “Six children. Yes. What do you wish in return for the six children?”
Turkey Leg looked up at the scout, then back at Frank North behind the table some ten yards away where the commissioners were debating points of their peace plan through the various interpreters.
“North’s scalped-heads captured two of our people at that Plum Creek fight. I want them back.”
“A boy of ten summers. And another.”
“An old woman.”
“That is all you want?” Shad asked, not believing his ears.
“We want nothing more for the six children.”
Sweete was stirred. “They must be important to you, Turkey Leg.”
With moist eyes, the old chief gazed up at the tall white man. “All my people are important to me.”
As much as Shad wanted to touch the old man at that moment, suddenly understanding, Shad did not.
“I will see that it is done with Major North,” he replied quietly at the old man’s ear. “I understand how a man must do what he can to protect his family. It is this way with my own—this worry I have for my own blood.”
And in the old, rheumy eyes, there came a new moistness telling Shad Sweete that Turkey Leg was thankful to the white scout for his understanding about the old woman, but that the Cheyenne chief in turn sympathized about the white man’s half-breed son.
“Yes, Indian-talker. A man must always do everything he can to protect his family.”
38
AT A RAILSIDE eating house in North Platte, Nebraska, the formal exchange of the prisoners took place. Three young women, two aged nineteen and one girl seventeen years old, along with six-year-old twin boys and an infant.
The Cheyenne boy of ten summers was returned to his joyous people, who promptly renamed him Pawnee in commemoration of his capture by North’s scouts. In the end, Turkey Leg’s aged mother walked slowly from that eating house in North Platte, gripping her son’s arm, tears dampening both of their winter-seamed faces.
That exchange was the only productive thing to come of three days of haggling between the chiefs and the peace commissioners. As Jonah Hook and the other army scouts listened, the white men had again expressed that the Indians would be required to remain on their reservations south of the Arkansas River or north of the Platte, where the bands would be expected to settle down and become farmers, every bit as much as those white settlers moving onto the plains with their plows and spotted buffalo.
In turn, the chiefs listened attentively, but refused to budge from their trust in the old life as lived by their people for as long as any old man’s memory—season by season following the migration of the buffalo.
But the problem was, said the chiefs, the white man was crossing the buffalo ground with the iron tracks for his smoking wagons. And the buffalo would no longer cross those tracks. Instead, the great herds that once roamed the extent of the central plains were now kept far to the south, while another herd stayed far to the north.
“Our people will starve if we cannot hunt the buffalo,” Spotted Tail told the peace commissioners.
“We will go where the buffalo are,” said Cut Nose.
“Even if the buffalo graze where the white man settles, cutting at the earth and raising his spotted buffalo,” Whistler added.
“No, you must stay far away from the white man and his settlements,” General Alfred Terry warned.
“Any time your young warriors steal or kill, the soldiers will follow,” said General William Tecumseh Sherman. “We will chase your villages and find them, wherever you hide.”
“You make life hard on us,” said Cold Face.
“Yes,” agreed Turkey Leg. “We must go where we can feed our families. Doesn’t the white man understand that? Doesn’t the white man now go where he goes to settle on this buffalo ground so that he can feed his family?”
“If our two peoples stay away from one another,” General John B. Sanborn said calmly, “we will not have reason to fight.”
Standing Elk took the speaking fan from Turkey Leg. It was his turn to add words so the peace-talkers might understand before war once more erupted. “All things are good for the white man. But our people were here first. You are not wanted here in our land. Go away, and all things will be better once more.”
“We will not be leaving,” Sherman sputtered. “You will have to make room for all the white families yet to come from the east. They are as plentiful as the stars in the sky. And if you do not move aside and allow them room, the army will round you up and put you on the reservations, where you will be forced to raise your crops—or starve. There will be no more buffalo when the white man finishes pacifying this land.”
Young Man Afraid rose, taking the speaking fan made from the wing of a golden eagle. It carried not only great power, but responsibility as well for the man who spoke while holding it. “We have never been like you white men. Ever since I was born, I have eaten wild meat. Not one bite have I taken of your spotted buffalo.”
“You will grow to like it, I am sure,” said General William S. Harney, smiling benevolently.
“I think not,” Young Man Afraid continued, his face taut as a hand drum at the white soldier’s rude interruption. “My father and his father, and his father before him all ate wild meat. It is not for me to change our way of life now. It was good for my ancestors. It is good for my children, and their children, and the children to come after them.”
“Times are changing,” Sanborn said. “We must all realize progress is coming to this new land.”
“I know nothing of this progress,” Young Man Afraid said. “All I know is the taste of buffalo in my mouth, the sweetness of cold water on my tongue, and the way the clouds touch the earth as I look far away at everything the Grandfather Above has placed here for his children. No! Listen and heed me—it will not be my generation that will give up to the greedy white man all that has been given us by the Grandfather Above!”
The discussions, debate, and heated exchanges droned on and on for most of three days in that tent on the outskirts of North Platte. In the end, the commissioners said they were calling an end to the inconclusive hearings, but were asking the bands to attend another treaty talk, scheduled for later that same month, near the end of the Falling Leaf Moon.
“There we can come to agreement on the terms of our new peace treaty,” explained General Terry as he disbanded the conference.
“You put too much hope in things changing between now and the next time we come together,” Turkey Leg said as the white men rose from their chairs behind the tables.
“I put a lot of hope in each of you tribal leaders doing what is best for your people,” General Harney said.
“That is for us to decide,” Pawnee Killer growled. “Not you white soldiers and peace-talkers.”
Sweete wondered … then caught himself hoping. It would be too great a gift, he figured, to find his half-breed son among those young men dippled along the hilltops, swirling away one by one on the off side of the knolls where the tall grass waved in the wind. Was he here? Shad wondered. Or was he still out with the Dog Soldiers of Tall Bull and White Horse, roaming and riding and raiding?
The old scout glanced at Jonah Hook riding beside him, finding the younger man most attentive to the distant spectacle, his eyes squinting into the bright autumn light this Indian summer day as the dried cottonwood leaves rattled in golden splendor, birds calling out in warning as the horsemen approached. Overhead a cloudless blue sky stretched everlasting to the far horizon in all directions. Sweete was adrift, as were these dark-skinned nomads he
