War Songs

Even in my old age, I am a young girl again when I think of great-grandfather's stories, telling me of when his father rode against the 7th Cavalry, and the one called Long Hair, with those who lived in the sacred Black Hills. Who fought and overwhelmed the soldiers in their one great victory at the Little Big Horn, before the killings of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, until all fell to the wrath of the Great White Father that ended at Wounded Knee.  
 
Before then, it was as hot as any of the Elders could recall, and hard to remember a summer without any clouds in the sky.  As horse soldiers wound their way in pursuit of the tribes who, for the first and last time, had joined as one nation with one resolve, to stop the desecration of the land, and regain a way of life.  
 
It was at the great camp three miles long that we came together to prepare with war songs, sun dance visions and ceremonial smokes. The Arapaho, the Hunkpapa, the Lakota Sioux, the Brule, the Oglala, the Miniconjou, and Santee Dakota came from near and far.  
 
The lodge poles numbered like stars and the herds of ponies seen from distant ridges reminded the blue coat Crow scouts of worms in the grass. Rolling plains rippled in the heat, campfire smoke rose lazily by the river.  Men painted themselves with half-faces, hail stones and red lightning bolts.  
 
Women gathered children and struck camp as warriors rode off, horsetails and feathers waving. Eagles fly beyond sight into the dust of the enemy, where it is a good day to die.