Black Elk Speaks
The Compelling Fear
When the grasses were showing their tender faces again, two families
of us started for our own country where we used to be happy. We
had only five horses among us, because all the others had died in
the cold, and we traveled on foot. It was a very rainy time. After
awhile we came to All-Gone-Tree Creek. We came there in the afternoon
and camped, and I thought I would take the horses out to eat where
the grass was good. But when I had gone only a little way, all of
a sudden the queer feeling came again, and I heard a voice that
said: "Be careful and watch! Something you shall see!"
The voice was so clear that I looked around to see who was there,
and nobody was there. So I staked the horses right there not far
from the camp, and sat down to think about it. There was a tall
bluff a little way from the camp, and it had two points on it. So
I went over there and climbed to one of the tops where there were
some big rocks scattered around. I lay down in those rocks and looked
all around, but I could see nothing, and I began to wonder if I
was only queer in thinking I had heard a voice.
Then I looked over to the other point of the bluff not far away,
and there were two men crawling up toward the top on their bellies.
I knew they were enemies, and I thought they were Crows; but later
I learned that they were Blackfeet. I lay as flat as I could and
peeped around a rock at the two men. They were so near that I could
have thrown a rock over there, and I thought if I only had my gun
I could kill them both. They stopped near the top, and one crawled
a little farther and peeped over at our tepees in the valley where
the women were having a hard time to get the fires started with
wet wood. Then the first one motioned to the second, and they both
looked over. I could hear them talking now, and I knew they were
planning how to attack us. After a little while they crawled down
backwards a short way, then got up and ran downhill and disappeared.
When they were gone, I crawled to the other side of the bluff and
went down. When I reached the bottom, I sat down and thought of
my vision and began to pray to the spirits. I said: "Grandfathers,
something may happen to me. But I will depend on the power you have
given me. Hear me and help me!" Then I ran over to our tepees
and told the people we must flee at once, because I had seen enemies
planning to attack.
We were so small a party that we did not dare wait to take our
tepees down, so we started right away and traveled very fast. We
had to cross All-Gone-Tree Creek and it was bank-full and roaring
with the big rains. So two of us boys swam across with rawhide ropes,
which the old women fastened around them under their arms, and we
pulled them across through the deep water. They nearly drowned before
we could drag them out, because the water was swift. Our horses
swam across, and we went fast, with the old people on the horses.
As we fled east, a thunder cloud came from the west behind us,
and I knew it was coming to protect us. I could hear the thunder
beings crying " Hey hey!" to me. The cloud stood over
us and did not rain much, but it was full of lightning and of voices.
We had not gone so very far, and it was growing dark, when we heard
shooting behind us in the direction of our deserted camp, and we
thought the enemies were shooting into the tepees, thinking that
we might be in there yet.
It grew very dark, for the thunder cloud with the many voices hung
over us, and we traveled fast all night. Then after awhile the cloud
broke, and it was daybreak. We camped to eat and sleep.
I knew better than ever now that I really had power, for I had
prayed for help from the Grandfathers and they had heard me and
sent the thunder beings to hide us and watch over us while we fled.
When we had eaten and slept, we started again and came to a camp
of Minneconjous. After that we traveled with our relatives to the
mouth of the Poplar River and crossed over the Missouri on a fire-boat
that was there. Then after we had hunted awhile, we went to the
Soldiers' Town at the mouth of Tongue River and camped there with
others of our people who had wandered away from the reservations
into our old country.
The soldiers took our guns away from us and most of our horses,
leaving us only two horses for every tepee.
There in the Moon of Making Fat we had a sun dance, and after this
it seemed I could think of nothing but my vision. I was sixteen
years old and more, and I had not yet done anything the Grandfathers
wanted me to do, but they had been helping me. I did not know how
to do what they wanted me to do.
A terrible time began for me then, and I could not tell anybody,
not even my father and mother. I was afraid to see a cloud coming
up; and whenever one did, I could hear the thunder beings calling
to me: "Behold your Grandfathers! Make haste!" I could
understand the birds when they sang, and they were always saying:
"It is time! It is time!" The crows in the day and the
coyotes at night all called and called to me: "It is time!
It is time! It is time!"
Time to do what? I did not know. Whenever I awoke before daybreak
and went out of the tepee because I was afraid of the stillness
when everyone was sleeping, there were many low voices talking together
in the east, and the daybreak star would sing this song in the silence:
"In a sacred manner you shall walk!
Your nation shall behold you!"
I could not get along with people now, and I would take my horse
and go far out from camp alone and compare everything on the earth
and in the sky with my vision. Crows would see me and shout to each
other as though they were making fun of me: "Behold him! Behold
him!"
When the frosts began I was glad, because there would not be any
more thunder storms for a long while, and I was more and more afraid
of them all the time, for always there would be the voices crying:
"Oo oohey! It is time! It is time!"
The fear was not so great all the while in the winter, but sometimes
it was bad. Sometimes the crying of coyotes out in the cold made
me so afraid that I would run out of one tepee into another, and
I would do this until I was worn out and fell asleep. I wondered
if maybe I was only crazy; and my father and mother worried a great
deal about me. They said: "It is the strange sickness he had
that time when we gave the horse to Whirlwind Chaser for curing
him; and he is not cured." I could not tell them what was the
matter, for then they would only think I was queerer than ever.
I was seventeen years old that winter.
When the grasses were beginning to show their tender faces again,
my father and mother asked an old medicine man by the name of Black
Road to come over and see what he could do for me. Black Road was
in a tepee all alone with me, and he asked me to tell him if I had
seen something that troubled me. By now I was so afraid of being
afraid of everything that I told him about my vision, and when I
was through he looked long at me and said: "Ah-h-h-h!,"
meaning that he was much surprised. Then he said to me: "Nephew,
I know now what the trouble is! You must do what the bay horse in
your vision wanted you to do. You must do your duty and perform
this vision for your people upon earth. You must have the horse
dance first for the people to see. Then the fear will leave you;
but if you do not do this, something very bad will happen to you."
So we began to get ready for the horse dance.
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Native American Legends A-B