Free Crow Dog : Four Generations of Sioux Medicine Men (9780062200143) by Leonard C. Dog Page B

that way—just like an eagle. I had big eagle wings with feathers from my shoulders down to my fingertips and an eagle’s head and beak hiding my face. They all came to see Crow Dog dancing. A soaring song. The eagle has to soar, to fly high. I could crawl into the mind of an eagle. An eagle spirit took over my body.” My father’s dance was a prayer, a sacredness.
    Old Henry didn’t have much of the white man’s learning, but whatever he learned he made good use of. He always said that he got his education from the spirit. He knew the old ways better than any man alive now. He could put it all together. He thought deeply about things. He wrestled with his thoughts. He was a teacher. He taught my sisters how to bead. His hands were always busy—making a feather bustle, a headdress, or painting a picture with a spiritual message in it. He was one of the first members of the Native American church in our tribe, the peyote church. He made a fire place for it at Crow Dog’s Paradise. He made our place into a spiritual center where our old ceremonieswere being performed. He and I never talked much to each other. We didn’t have to. We understood each other without words, in our minds.
    Henry Crow Dog was born on September 2, 1899. He died in the winter of 1985. He was still in very good shape for his age. It was night. The snow was deep. It was very cold. He went to visit my sister Diane who lives only about half a mile from us. We didn’t notice him going out. We had a crowd of relatives staying over that night. He didn’t know that Diane had gone out and that her door was locked. They found him lying at her doorstep. He might have had a heart attack, or simply frozen to death, or both. It was as he always had said: “I am the last real Sioux left.”
    We don’t have men like him anymore.

eight

A STRONG-HEARTED WOMAN
    My mother was a good woman.
    She took good care of us.
    Her life was hard,
    but she never complained.
    She stood up under whatever came down.
    Leonard Crow Dog
    My mother, Mary Gertrude, was like her husband, full-blood and traditional. Her life was sad—of her twelve children only myself and my sisters Diane and Christine are still alive. She lost so many of her children, but she was strong enough to carry on, to take on the burden. She was born in 1900. She married my father in June 1921. Sixty years later you could still see them walking hand in hand. My mother took good care of us, in the old Indian way. She was a member of the Native American Church and one of the first to sing during meetings. Up to then only the men did the singing. She sang well.
    On my mother’s side they don’t use peyote, only the pipe. They are the Left Hand Bulls. They are related to many medicine men, to Chips and Moves Camps. They come from White River, on the Rosebud reservation, some thirty miles north of Crow Dog’s Paradise. When my mother married Dad people told her, “You are going to carry a heavy load. You’re going to lead a hard life,because the Crow Dogs live by themselves in the old way out on the prairie. When you marry Henry, you’ll carry a heavy burden.” She didn’t mind. She had a broad back. She stood up for us and protected us always.
    My mother had a broad, full-blood face, with black sparkling eyes and a determined mouth. She was always busy cooking, beading, or making moccasins. She spent hours bending over her old Singer sewing machine, the kind you work with your foot, because, until 1965, we had no electric light, just kerosene lamps with big reflectors. We had no running water and no indoor plumbing. So life for my mother was not easy. People liked her arts and crafts, and she earned money with it. She taught beading to her daughters and grandchildren. Doing so much work with tiny beads and thread so fine it was almost invisible made her shortsighted. Even though she wore glasses, she was bending so low over her work that her nose almost touched her hand holding the needle.
    My father