Free Lakota by G. Clifton Wisler

Their arms and faces were tanned from the summer sun, but legs and chests and trunks were pale as moonlight. They were strangely hairy, with brownish curls on their chests as on their faces. Two even grew hair on their backs.
    Hokala pulled some of this hair out by its roots, and a wasicun howled in pain. The Badger had thought it a medicine rite, decorating the body with hair like that.
    When all the men were stripped, Hinhan Hota ordered the warriors to start on the women and children. Now there was great fighting. The women were determined to keep clothes, or some of them. One woman had so many layers it was thought a great mystery must lay beneath. Tacante wrestled with one of them long and hard before baring her back. She then bit his hand, causing him to yelp with pain.
    The men were growing excited, too. No doubt the wasicuns imagined a terrifying fate lay ahead. In the end, one woman kept her undergarment, for it seemed painted to her hide and resisted every effort at removal. The other woman was allowed a dress, as she fought most bravely.
    The little ones, once assured by Tacante they would not be taken from their mothers, reluctantly undressed. They resembled plucked prairie chickens, with skin so pale as to appear sickly. Tacante thought Wakan Tanka showed great wisdom painting wasicun bodies with hair, for they were too humorous a sight naked. Some covering was surely needed.
    The final indignity befell the hairy-faced leader. Hinhan Hota ordered his hair cut so it no longer covered his ears. The wasicun remained stiff as a pine while knives clipped his hair.
    Hinhan Hota shouted loudly, and Tacante again translated.
    "He says now there is nothing to keep you from hearing!"
    The Lakotas raised a great howl as they tossed the garments they didn't want onto the fiery wagon shells. Then Hinhan Hota pointed the way toward Platte River and left the naked wasicuns to find their way there.
    It was a celebrated fight, for many mules and two horses were taken. The oxen were killed, and their meat cooked to make a feasting. All of the warriors had counted coups, and many stories were recounted around the fires of the hairy wasicuns. Itunkala sat beside Tacante and listened again and again to the tale of the woman with many dresses.
    "Soon he will be ready to hunt," Hinhan Hota said when Tacante carried the Mouse inside the lodge and set him in his blankets. "He'll need a bow, a small one, for hunting rabbits. It should be made by a brother."
    "I will do it, Ate," Tacante promised.
    "You did well today, my son," the Owl praised. "Before, I worried you passed too much time with Hinkpila, speaking the wasicun words, learning of the strange ways. Now I see there is great worth to it. Soon we may all need such knowledge."
    "These words are only needed to keep the wasicuns out," Tacante replied.
    "Can a man stop a flood with only his two hands? I send these back to warn the others, but not all will see. I've watched the wagon trains beside Platte River. The wasicuns are many, and we are few."
    "Wakan Tanka will give us brave hearts," Tacante declared.
    "Ah, my brother had a brave heart," Hinhan Hota reminded Tacante. "He walked the sacred path all his days, but he is dead. I make prayers, but who can say what road Wakan Tanka sets before our feet?"
    Tacante frowned as he lay upon his buffalo robes that night. Tasiyagnunpa spoke softly with the Owl, but Tacante couldn't hear the words. Wicatankala had gone to the women's lodge for the first time, and perhaps they spoke of this. Or maybe they wondered when Tacante would cut willow limbs and spread bunches of grass over them to make a wickiup as a young man did when he thought himself too old to remain in his father's lodge.
    That time is coming, Tacante told himself. Even now Hokala dwelled in such a lodge. Cehupa Maza remained with his mother and surviving brothers, for there was no man to look to their needs. Tacante told himself there was Itunkala to look after, but in truth he