Joseph M. Marshall III Read Online Free Page A

was propped within easy reach. Sleep was mostly what he did, bound snugly inside the portable cradle. And even after the boy began to venture beyond the cradleboard and his mother’s immediate reach, his older sister hovered closely by watching over him like a hawk. Beyond her were the women and girls of the community, the second line of mothers and grandmothers for all the children. So the boy, like all Lakota children, grew with the reassuring knowledge that someone would always be there to see to his needs, even if it was only to take him by the hand and guide him back to his mother’s lodge. Just as important, because his mother and all the women in his immediate environment nurtured him with gentleness, it was one of the first virtues he learned.
    The boy also learned patience. Most of his whims and impulses were indulged as he explored the limits of his environment more and more, driven by his childish curiosity and inquisitiveness. Except to keep him from harming himself, the others did not dissuade him from any path he chose. Consequently he learned small but important lessons: the prairie cactus grew sharp thorns and therefore must be avoided; it was impossible to climb the side of a tipi; all grandmothers were good for at least one handful of freshly washed chokecherries; and so on.
    The longer and stronger his legs grew, the wider he roamed in the village, and his world broadened. He played among the meat-drying racks and watched the women scraping hides stretched out on the ground, or he helped a grandmother carry firewood to her lodge. Curiosity drew him toward the horse herd often grazing just beyond the outskirts of the village, and he was more than a few times warned away by an older boy posted to watch the herd. Or he played the Keep-the-Hoop game where he joined a noisy gaggle of boys rolling a large willow hoop with long sticks, trying to keep it away from everyone else as long as possible. Fun was the obvious reward, but of course the game also developed quickness and coordination as well as determination. It also taught each participant to depend on himself. Thus the son of Crazy Horse and Rattling Blanket Woman was no different than any Lakota child, except in one way.
    Every Lakota baby was born with thick, shiny black hair that stayed black for most of adulthood. But the hair of the son of Crazy Horse seemed to grow lighter even as he lost his baby fat, which happened to him quicker than in most children. To his mother and the other women in his life it was an endearing characteristic, although they worried that it would prove to be troublesome for him later in life. Outside the reach of his sharp ears he was referred to as Jiji Kin, or “The Light-Haired One.”
    “ Jiji Kin wanlaka he? ” someone would ask. “Have you seen the Light-Haired One?”
    To his face he was simply called Jiji, or Light Hair.
    “Huyu we, Jiji, wanna inunkin kte,” his mother or sister would say. “Come, Light Hair, you will go to bed now.”
    Brown hair was not unknown among the Lakota, though it was much more common for girls. But when a boy had brown hair and the color of his skin was also lighter than usual, it did mean trouble. By giving him a name that called attention to an obvious physical characteristic, Light Hair’s mother wisely made it less of an issue for him to face as an older child.
    Four winters came and went in those first and formative years—a time as carefree as the adults in Light Hair’s world could make it. In spring the people moved from sheltered winter camps to find good grazing to fatten the horses after a winter of thin, snow-covered grass. Summers brought several villages together. So the Hunkpatila winter camp of twenty families, about a hundred people, grew to nearly a hundred families and about four hundred people in summer. For Light Hair those factors were not important, only that the number of his playmates increased as well as the number of doting mothers, aunts, and