Free Heartsong by James Welch

and furniture from the large eating tent, shut off the generators, and took down the lighting and the immense rolls of canvas backdrop painted with endless scenes of mountains and plains and rivers and villages and forts. They disassembled the booths and seemingly hundreds of other small structures and took it all by wagons to the train station. There they loaded up the thirty-eight big wagons of the special train with equipment and animals and human beings for the all-night trip.
    Some of the Indians complained because they had been to this side of the big water before and they knew that, unlike the white performers and crew, they were riding in third class, where the benches were harder and the wagons noisier and rougher. Charging Elk noticed that Rocky Bear was not among them. On this side of the water, the big bosses treated the chief well because the French people liked him better than the Americans had and considered him a noble leader. But the bosses didn’t hesitate tolodge the other Indians in the last wagon before the animals and equipment. Even Featherman, the iktome who joked, grumbled as he tried to stretch out on a bench.
    The show had reached Marseille an hour before first light and all the wagons were unloaded and the equipment was taken to the field to be set up. Charging Elk had been surprised to see the crowd of people watching the predawn activities.
    By then Charging Elk was a seasoned performer. The show had not only played in the American town of New York, but had played for close to seven moons in Paris. He was used to the curiosity of the big town people—in both New York and Paris, they had wandered among the lodges of the Indian village, watching the women cook or sew or repair beadwork. They stood over the squatting performers and watched them play dominoes or card games. Some even entered family lodges, as though the mother fixing dinner or the sleeping child in its cradleboard were part of the entertainment. Rocky Bear said that Buffalo Bill and the other bosses approved of this rudeness because it made the people hungry to see the Indians in the arena.
    At midmorning, the performers lined up to begin the parade. It was a cold, gray day, and Charging Elk, like the other Indians, wore his blanket over his shoulders. He was tired and sleepy and he wasn’t looking forward to performing that day.
    But when the Cowboy Band on their matching white horses broke into the song they called “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” a song he had heard hundreds of times, and the procession began to move slowly forward, Charging Elk folded his blanket and draped it over his horse’s shoulders. And by the time the Indians entered the street, and the crowd gasped and applauded, he felt a familiar shiver of excitement that made it difficult to sit his horse as calmly as he wanted. Nevertheless, he managed because he knew the French people wanted the Indians to be dignified. And too, theyoung Indians wished to be thought of as wichasa yatapika , men whom all praise, men who quietly demonstrate courage, wisdom, and generosity—like the old-time leaders.
    As Charging Elk rode his painted horse in the procession, he couldn’t help but think how fortunate he was. Instead of passing another cold, lonely winter at the Stronghold, or becoming a passive reservation Indian who planted potatoes and held out his hand for the government commodities, he was dressed in his finest clothes, riding a strong horse, preparing himself to thrill the crowds with a display of the old ways. Of course, he knew that it was all fake and that some of the elders back home disapproved of the young men going off to participate in the white man’s sham, but he no longer felt guilty about singing scalping songs or participating in scalp dances or sneak-up dances. He was proud to display some of the old ways to these French because they appreciated the Indians and seemed genuinely sympathetic. Rocky Bear had once told him,