the coulee upstream unannounced and raided our camp—I crawl behind the rocks where I had stood my weapons, wanting only the head of their leader, Long Locks, who years ago kidnapped fair Mo-nah-se-tah and forced his baby inside her and though I have spoken to her only through the open flaps of her teepee, I love her and have wished in my best heart to walk with her under a courting blanket and make her my wife, but she has rejected me because I said I would even welcome her bastard blond boy, the one they say twins Long Locks’s likeness, so last night I sang the suicide song and I danced till the drums and my heart were one and I came out here to war with no belief I would ever return alive to my tribe, and since I cannot find the man I want, that coward and rapist, I will, in his stead, have the head of another, so I blast from his saddle the first pink man who rides through the cottonwood trees and the water weighs down the buckskin clothes he wears to hide his hairy body but he rises from the river like Great Medicine itself, his voice growling like a wolf as it eats—one brave white man at last—I freeze and let him fire his bullets but they will not have me—they fly by whistling like notes played through an eagle-bone flute—and so he charges and I put my next shot straight through his skull and shrill and take my hatchet for a coup, hoping some Sioux will later tell Mo-nah-se-tah of my courage.
Like a lover, his half-Sioux traitor collects him in his arms and I drop my rifle and I catch by its mane the dead man’s pinto and spring to its back and heft my hatchet high and holler the war cry Crazy Horse has taught us to live by: Hoka hey, I shout, hoka hey: it is a good day to die, but an even better day to kill.
Mitch Bouyer, 39,
Custer’s Chief of Scouts, Half French & Half Sioux
When Custer went down, I hopped from my rack-of-bones pony and ran in after him, my heart tight as a fist in my throat, yet fore I could reach him he rose and charged into the hornets’ nest and still I followed and the warrior stood awfully still with clumps of earth and prairie grass clinging to his skin like Wakantanka’s own revenge—bullets and dogs are everywhere and Custer’s head explodes against my face, a chip of bone blinding my right eye, and I catch his falling corpse and some bastard calls to me, Let him go, you goddamn half-breed, and kicks me loose and takes him away—the earth under the water trembles as the braves thunder by on horseback, routing the whites who scatter like blackbirds, and I am kneeling half blind in the water when a chill-shadow covers me, a silhouette horse rearing, its stockinged hooves thrashing, and I make out its belly and chest and neck and giant head, and I know I should not be here and I know I should not have befriended Custer. I should not have translated the Blue Coat treaties, which I knew to be lies and, because they came from my lips, became my lies too. I should have stayed with Magpie as she suckled our newborn and I should have chased our children about the teepee, laughing, and I should have roasted them rabbits on spits as the moon crested the hills and the ponies whinnied in the distance. I should have made clear to Custer that Sioux and buffalo are not two but one and that slaughter of the animal is slaughter of the man. I should have killed Custer in his sleep. I should have braided my horse’s mane with feathers and colored twine, put my blue clay handprint on its haunch and ridden alongside this warrior here who now sets his pinto down, the man rising in sight like something come over the horizon, yet he remains only a shadow, a shade, with his hatchet held high.
I put my arms across my bloody face as if to block a brilliant light but then drop them by my sides and rise to my feet and raise my chin and say in my purest Lakota, Go ahead, tanhanši, and try to cleave me in two any more than I already am.
Fiesta de Semana Santa: Fuego v. Lopez y Avaloz
During the Fifth Corrida de Toros of Easter Sunday in Granada, Spain,
March 27, 1932
Sueño de Fuego, 5, 584 Kilos,
Miura Bull from La Ganadería Miura Lineage
Scratch and snort and huff and puff and put my hoof-print in this earth—this my place and this my time and here I’ve come to fuck or fight—here I find no cow nor steer to my delight, so stomp and spit and huff and thrust and put my rut in this beast here—six legs, it has, three arms, two heads—has it come to muscle me, to make a morsel out of me—but truth be told, I want it more, so I drive my horn straight through its torso, and even as it barbs my hide, I lift it from the earth, shift my hump and dump it rump-wise and tear its insides out—I stomp and bellow, grumble and dig and suffer as it dies.
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