Clavin Thomas - The heart of everything that is: the untold story of Red Cloud, an American legend

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To the children of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation

MARGARET K. McELDERRY BOOKS

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Childrens Publishing Division

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2013 by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin

Young Readers Edition adaptation copyright 2017 by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin

Jacket illustration copyright 2017 by Donald F. Montileaux

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Drury, Bob, author. | Clavin, Tom, author.

Title: The heart of everything that is / Bob Drury and Tom Clavin.

Description: Young readers edition. | New York : Margaret K. McElderry Books, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016024628 | ISBN 978-1-4814-6460-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 978-1-4814-6462-8 (eBook)

Subjects: LCSH: Red Cloud, 18221909Juvenile literature. | Oglala IndiansKings and rulersBiographyJuvenile literature. | Red Clouds War, 18661867Juvenile literature. | Indians of North AmericaWarsWest (U.S.)Juvenile literature.

Classification: LCC E99.O3 D78 2017 | DDC 978.004/9752440092 [B]dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016024628

It was understood, at least by the whites, that the Indians would live in the eastern section and reserve the western section, the Powder River Country, as hunting grounds open to all tribes and bands. In the center of this tract, like a glittering jewel, lay the Black Hills. Paha Sapa. The Heart of Everything That Is.

Red Cloud

You will read many names of Indian tribes and bands in the following pages, including Sioux, Pawnee, Crow, and Cheyenne. This is because there are a large number of groups of Indians, all with different languages, cultures, and customs. As the United States expanded westward in the nineteenth century, many Americans failed to see any distinction between these very different groups of peoples.

The Sioux peoples comprise two major groups of Indians: the Eastern Dakota and the Western Lakota. Among the Lakota are seven bands of Indians: Brules, Oglalas, Hunkpapas, Sans Arcs, Miniconjous, Two Kettles, and Blackfeet. These bands can be further broken into smaller groups, such as the Kiyuska and the Bad Faces.

Red Cloud was an Oglala Lakota head man of the band of Siouux called Ite Sica, or Bad Faces.

1837, Nebraska

Red Clouds heart would not fail him today.

With the news of the death of his cousin in a failed battle against the Pawnee, Red Cloud knew that today, the day Old Smoke called upon his people to retaliate, was the day he would join his first raiding party. Red Cloud had just turned sixteen. It was time to disregard his mothers pleas that he was too young. He was not. He was ready to prove himself a true warrior.

As Red Cloud painted and dusted himself and his horses in preparation for battle, a shout rose among the mothers, wives, and sisters gathered about the fighters.

He is coming.

Who is coming? someone called.

Red Cloud, called another voice, and the crowd took up a chant. Red Cloud comes! Red Cloud comes!

Red Cloud appeared on his spotted pony, painted and feathered, leading a spare horse by a rope. Both his animals had ribbons entwined in their manes and tails. He was ready.

Within moments the Sioux departed. It took Red Cloud and the group ten days to reach the rough sand hills overlooking the Pawnee village.

On the eleventh day, they charged at dawn. The roaring sound of battle began as elk-bone whistles shrieked and high-pitched war whoops cut the air. Red Cloud steered his horse through the Pawnee camp, ducking as arrows and musket balls ripped through the blankets and skins hanging from the entrances to the earthen Pawnee lodges.

He was right. His heart would not fail him that day. The fierce fighting between the tribes ended, and when the Sioux returned home, four warriors paraded from lodge to lodge, lifting Pawnee scalps high on their spears in celebration. One of the four was Red Cloud. On his first raiding party, barely sixteen years old, he had proved himself worthy as a warrior. He had made his first kill.

I hope the Great Heavenly Father, who will look down upon us, will give all the tribes his blessing, that we may go forth in peace and live in peace all our days, and that He will look down upon our children and finally lift us above this earth.

Red Cloud

One quiet night on the plains of Nebraska, a glowing red meteor raced across the sky. Below it, a band of Brule Lakota Indians camped. Those who saw the meteor knew it was a sign of some kindwhether it was good or bad would be determined in the future. A few days later at the edge of the camp, a woman named Walks as She Thinks spread a brushed deerskin blanket over a bed of sand on the banks of Blue Water Creek and gave birth to her first son.

When the infants father, Lone Man, announced to the band that he had named the boy after the strange meteorological occurrence to appease the Great Spirit, the Brules agreed that he had done a wise thing.

This is how the child came to be called Makhpiya-luta, or Red Cloud.

When Red Cloud was only four years old, his father, Lone Man, died because of his addiction to what the white man called whiskey. In reality, the drink, sold or traded to the Indians, was a shuddering mixture of diluted alcohol, molasses, tobacco juice, and crushed red pepper. Native Americans of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had no more immunity to alcohol than to smallpox.

Lone Mans death left a lasting impression. Red Cloud hated the distilled mini wakan the water that makes men crazyfor the rest of his life.

After Lone Mans death Red Clouds mother, Walks as She Thinks, left the Brule camp and took him, his younger brother, Big Spider, and an infant sister back to her original Oglala Lakota band, which was led by Old Smoke. Old Smoke recognized her as a sister, a term that meant that she was either his true sibling or a close cousin with the same status as a sister. Although Old Smoke was by then in his early fifties, he was still a vibrant war leader; he had been a head man for close to two decades, and his band was the largest, strongest, and most influential of all the Oglala tribes, if not of the Sioux nation.

The Sioux instilled in their children a respect for reserve and poise. Another uncle, a warrior named White Hawk, taught the young Red Cloud to control what he called the boys unusually headstrong impulses. In the future, these impulses would help to establish Red Clouds reputation for vicious behavior in war.