The Drums of Change (8 page)

Night after night they gathered around the campfire and heard more stories from the Black Book. Still the chief was held back, not pushing his people for a decision. Some were ready to accept the words. Others had grave doubts. “That is the white man’s god,” they argued. “We have Mother Earth and the Sun God. They have always cared for our people.”

Running Fawn was torn between a desire to accept the words as truth and a fear that they might be wrong. What if she accepted them and the Sun God became angry? She shivered at the very thought.

For days a cloud of acrid smoke hung over the sheltered valley. The villagers did not need to be told the meaning. Somewhere there was a fire.

Scouts were sent out. Each time they returned with the same report. There seemed to be no fire near enough to them to threaten the camp.

But the dark, murky cloud persisted in drifting into the camp on every wind that blew their way.

At last one brave brought back a different story. It was the plain. The whole plain had been swept by fierce monster fires. Tribes had needed to flee to the north or to the mountains. Panicked into trying to outrun the flame, the buffalo had stampeded south. It was the most widespread destruction of the prairies by fire that any of the chiefs could remember. There would be no food, no game on the burned-out grasslands. Only the fish in the streams had survived the fiery onslaught. It would be a long, bleak winter until the coming again of spring. It struck fear in every heart.

“They will return. Come spring, the buffalo will return,” comforted Chief Calls Through The Night.

The words of their wise chief were enough to put their minds at ease.

Spring did come again, and preparation was made to leave the winter campground and go in the search of buffalo. Dried pemmican and fresh venison or rabbit had gotten them through the long winter, but now the camp was in need of buffalo. Buffalo roasts for cooking pots, buffalo meat for the pemmican strips, buffalo skins for robes and new tent skins, buffalo bones for utensils. So they once again set off on the trail of the mighty beast.

When they reached the plains after many days of hard travel, they were met by other nomadic bands. Always the word was the same. There were no buffalo in sight. All of the mighty beasts had vacated the plains before the fire. All had crossed the border into Montana. They were now being hunted by the brothers in the south.

Through the long, hot days of summer, the small band hunted for game. There was never enough to fill the empty bellies. Women and children grew weaker and weaker. Many died, among them the chief’s sickly daughter. It was enough. The chief announced that they would follow the Blood Nation into Montana Territory where the great beasts could still be found.

It was a long, arduous journey. Running Fawn had not known that the world was so big. It stretched mile after mile, and always when one climbed a hill there was another hill beyond. She was sure they would never make it. Her mother became ill and could no longer walk. Running Fawn and her sister Little Brook had to shoulder extra bundles as room was cleared on the travois to make a place for their sick mother and little brother. The heavier loads soon had shoulders drooping with fatigue, but no complaint was voiced. Running Fawn even managed a smile and a cheerful comment for Bright Star on occasion, as he waved to her from his perch beside their mother.

Day after day they tramped on. Surely they would all be dead before they could reach their destination.

The white man stayed with them. Daily he went out with the hunting parties. His original wearing apparel had become so tattered that he had long since thrown them away and dressed in buckskins—but even they were showing the wear of the trail. He was weak from malnutrition and browned from the burning sun, but still he refused to leave the staggering band and take refuge in one of the small settlements of other white people along the trail.

Around the campfire at night, he still pulled out his Black Book and shared stories of great men and women who had lived in the first beginnings. The stories were a diversion to tired bodies and weary minds. But the people seemed to see them as only that. Stories. Amusing tales to distract them from their grim circumstance. Running Fawn wasn’t sure, but she thought they were more than mere stories to him.

But eventually even the white man’s eyes reflected the same despair as in the faces of her people. Would they be able to endure? Would they all be lost? Did his fervent prayers really do any good?

Then one day, they struggled slowly up one more hill—and there they were. A small but very welcome herd of rangy buffalo, feeding on the brown prairie grass or lying contently and chewing their cud in the heat of the afternoon sun.

A cheer would have gone up—but throats were parched and muscles were aching and no one wanted to even whisper, lest the herd vanish like a mirage before their very eyes. Silently they withdrew to the shadows of the hills and wearily set up another camp.

The kill the next day brought great relief and rejoicing. Running Fawn was among the women who followed the hunters. They sang as they skinned the shaggy beasts, their sharp knives making quick work of the task before them. She was not yet strong enough for the initial skinning, but she helped cut up the meat.

That evening the smoke from the campfires was seasoned with the warm, rich odor of roasting flesh. Fresh skins hung over poles or lay in heaped bundles. People called good-naturedly to one another. Heavy shoulders lifted and aching muscles were forgotten.

Where there were buffalo, there was plenty. Soon too-lean bodies would be fleshed out again and strength would return to weakened arms and legs. Tent skins could be replaced, so that the harsh prairie wind could be kept beyond the entrance flap. Bone needles and coarse thread could be made for stitching tents and clothing and moccasins. Yes, the buffalo meant life and health and a future to Running Fawn’s people.

Chapter Six

Loss

The Reverend Martin Forbes stretched comfortably before his own worn tent. His back ached, his arms felt weighted, but he smiled softly to himself as he remembered the feast and enjoyed the feeling of a satisfied stomach. God had answered prayer. The people had been saved from sure disaster. There was food for the body.

He bowed his head in deep gratitude to God who had provided—then added to his prayer a further petition.

“Lord, may they soon be as interested in food for their souls.”

During the summer that followed, they were forced to break camp often in order to follow the small herds, but they did not mind the travel. As long as they had buffalo, their world was secure. And so they stayed south of the border, even through the winter, the next spring, and another summer.

But many other small Indian bands had made the same arduous trek. And each one knew that beyond the hills were other hunters. The Peigans, the Bloods, and Sarcee from beyond the border had crossed to hunt, joining the tribes that already counted the Montana plains as their hunting grounds. Running Fawn heard the elders’ concerns that the buffalo were being depleted too quickly.

There were a few minor skirmishes as hunters contested the hunting rights, but no major confrontations took place. Each band knew that the herds were vanishing. That the few buffalo that remained would not last for long. It brought both anxiety and a strange generosity. Underlying the tensions of past wars and hatred for enemy tribes was a common bond of unity. They were of one skin. They were brothers. They must all live—or die—together.

So they eyed with mutual suspicion and distaste the wood-frame settlements and the scattered white dwellers who plowed under the prairie grasses and fenced the land with sharp barbed wire.

It was no wonder that the settlers’ steers disappeared from rangelands, even though beef, having less flavor than the wild meat, was not the Indians’ preference.

It was
their
land. Had always been their land. Theirs to hunt. Theirs to dispute. Theirs to fight over until the strong forced out the weak. It had always been so.

But now they were helpless to show their strength. Enemy guns, carried by blue-coated soldiers, outnumbered their own weapons. Striking out at the conquering would only bring deadly reprisal.

And so they moved in a daze through the heated months of summer, following the diminishing herds, pretending in their hearts that the buffalo would always be there, that the
mother
herd was just over the next rise of hills.

But it was not to be. By the time the autumn breezes were bending low the browned prairie grasses, the last of the buffalo had been slaughtered. The great herds were no more.

Around the campfires, impassioned discussions concluded that surely there were still buffalo to be hunted. They might be just beyond the camp, just beyond that row of hills. But hunting scouts returned from far afield bringing the disturbing news that no buffalo were to be seen.

Perhaps the animals had gone back north across the border. But eventually word came that no animals were seen across the vast Canadian plains either.

A few wise elders came to the conclusion that the Sun God, angry that the tribes had let in the white settlers to desecrate the land, had made a huge hole in the ground and had run the large herds into the bowels of the earth. Their source of food and clothing and livelihood had been totally consumed. The people were stunned. Lost. Bewildered. Had their gods forsaken them? The nightly ceremonies and dancing seemed to go unanswered. They were a people set adrift in an unknown, uncaring world.