When the tree flowered : $b An authentic tale of the old Sioux worldNeihardt, John G.
History
When the tree flowered : $b An authentic tale of the old Sioux world
Neihardt, John G.
Historical fiction; Oglala Indians -- Fiction
“So Against the Clouds and his woman were riding along slowly where the
trail left the creek and began to climb towards a pass in the sharp
buttes. These buttes stand tall in a row that is bent like a great bow
with the arrow aimed at the sunset; and that is the way the two were
going. The man was ahead of the drag-horse and the woman came last.
When they were not far from the pass, the woman said, ‘Look! Look over
there! Somebody has died here since we came through with the young
grass.’ So Against the Clouds stopped his horse and looked. ‘It is
so,’ he said; for yonder high up on the side of the butte, not very
far away, was a new scaffold. And the woman said, ‘I wonder if it is
somebody we know.’ The man looked hard awhile, then he said, ‘Do you
see how the crows are doing? They fly around but do not come close.
Something is scaring them.’ And the woman said, ‘There is something
sitting on the scaffold. Maybe it is a buzzard.’ And when the man had
looked hard for a while longer, he said, ‘That does not look like any
buzzard I ever saw sitting. Let us go and see.’
“So they left the drag-horse grazing by the trail and rode over a
little way to see what was sitting yonder on the scaffold. All at once
the woman cried out and stopped her horse. It surely was not a buzzard
up there. ‘Let us get away from here!’ she said, and she could hardly
make the words, she was so frightened. But Against the Clouds just sat
still on his horse, looking and listening, with his woman behind him,
looking and listening. It was the bundle that was sitting up there with
its face turned the other way--a little bundle! And as they stared with
their mouths open, hardly breathing, there came a thin sound like a
sick child crying and whimpering. Then the man said, ‘Nobody is dead
here. I think they put somebody up there too soon. I will go and see.’
So he did, while the woman waited, for she was still frightened. And
when the man had looked, he called to his woman. ‘Come here quick and
do not be afraid! It is a sick child, and it may die if we do not hurry
to help it.’ Then the woman was not afraid any more, and she went in a
hurry to help.
“So that is how the little girl who died came back to this world again.
And when the two old people had unwrapped her, they made a camp by a
spring that ran cool among pines just beyond the pass. And there they
washed the little girl very carefully with warm water. Also they made
some broth and put it in her mouth a few drops at a time, for she was
still more in the spirit world than here.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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