Report To Crazy Horse

All the Sioux were defeated.

Our clan got poor, but a few got richer.

They fought two wars.

I did not take part.

No one remembers your vision or even your real name.

Now the children go to town and like loud music.

I married a Christian.

Crazy Horse, it is not fair to hide a new vision from you.

In our schools we are learning to take aim when we talk, and we have found out our enemies.

They shift when words do; they even change and hide in every person.

A teacher here says hurt or scorned people are places where real enemies hide.

He says we should not hurt or scorn anyone, but help them.

And I will tell you in a brave way, the way Crazy Horse talked: that teacher is right.

I will tell you a strange thing: at the rodeo, close to the grandstand,

I saw a farm lady scared by a blown piece of paper; and at that place horses and policemen were no longer frightening, but suffering faces were, and the hunched-over backs of the old.

Crazy Horse, tell me if I am right: these are the things we thought we were doing something about.

In your life you saw many strange things, and I will tell you another: now I salute the white man's flag.

But when I salute I hold my hand alertly on the heartbeat and remember all of us and how we depend on a steady pulse together.

There are those who salute because they fear other flags or mean to use ours to chase them:

I must not allow my part of saluting to mean this.

All of our promises, our generous sayings to each other, our honorable intentions—those I affirm when I salute.

At these times it is like shutting my eyes and joining a religious colony at prayer in the gray dawn in the deep aisles of a church.

Now I have told you about new times.

Yes,

I know others will report different things.

They have been caught by weak ways.

I tell you straight the way it is now, and it is our way, the way we were trying to find.

The chokecherries along our valley still bear a bright fruit.

There is good pottery clay north of here.

I remember our old places.

When I pass the Musselshell I run my hand along those old grooves in the rock.