Iron Hawk Speaks:
I am a Hunkpapa, and, as I told you before, I was fourteen years
old. The sun was overhead and more, but I was eating my first
meal that day, because I had been sleeping. While I was eating I
heard the crier saying: “The chargers are coming.” I jumped up
and rushed out to our horses. They were grazing close to camp.
I roped one, and the others stampeded, but my older brother
had caught his horse already and headed the others off.. When
I got on my horse with the rope hitched around his nose, the
soldiers were shooting up there and people were running and
men and boys were catching their horses that were scared because
of the shooting and yelling. I saw little children running
up from the river where they had been swimming; and all the
women and children were running down the valley.
Our horses stampeded down toward the Minneconjous, but
we rounded them up again and brought them back. By now
warriors were running toward the soldiers, and getting on the
ponies, and many of the Hunkpapas were gathering in the brush
and timber near the place where the soldiers had stopped and
got off their horses. I rode past a very old man who was shouting:
“Boys, take courage! Would you see these little children taken
away from me like dogs?”
I went into our tepee and got dressed for war as fast as I could;
but I could hear bullets whizzing outside, and I was so shaky
that it took me a long time to braid an eagle feather into my
hair. Also, I had to hold my pony’s rope all the time, and he
kept jerking me and trying to get away. While I was doing this,
crowds of warriors on horses were roaring by up stream,yelling:
“Hoka hey!” Then I rubbed red paint all over my face and
took my bow and arrows and got on my horse. I did not have a
gun, only a bow and arrows.
When I was on my horse, the fight upstream seemed to be
over, because everybody was starting back downstream and yelling
“It’s a good day to die!” Soldiers were coming at the other
end of the village, and nobody knew how many were down there.
A man by the name of Little Bear rode up to me on a pinto horse,
and he had a very pretty saddle blanket. He said: “Take
courage, boy! The earth is all that lasts!” So I rode fast with
him and the others downstream, and many of us Hunkpapas
gathered on the east side of the river at the foot of a gulch that
led back up the hill where the second soldier band was.[Custer’s]
There was a very brave Shyela with us, and I heard someone say:
“He is going!” I looked, and it was this Shyela. He had on a spotted
war bonnet and a spotted robe made of some animal’s skin and
this was fastened with a spotted belt. He was going up the hill
alone and we all followed part way. There were soldiers along
the ridge up there and they were on foot holding their horses.
The Shyela rode right close to them in a circle several times and
all the soldiers shot at him. Then he rode back to where we had
stopped at the head of the gulch. He was saying: “Ah, ah!”
Someone said: “Shyela friend, what is the matter?” He began
undoing his spotted belt, and when he shook it, bullets dropped out.
He was very sacred and the soldiers could not hurt him.
He was a fine looking man.”
Excerpted from “Black Elk Speaks”,
as told through John G. Niehardt, author.
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London.
Islander.