“AmerIndian 2192” by J. Scott Garibay
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Chapter 01
“The Injuns will catch you while crossing the Plains. They'll kill you, and scalp you, and beat out your brains. Uncle Sam ought to throw them all over the fence, so there'll be no Red Injuns a hundred years hence.”
A popular settler campfire refrain, nineteenth century, Earth.
1972 - The Black Hills of South Dakota
John “Bear” Vajo opened the lid of the army green case. He brushed away straw and pulled one of the six M-16's out of the case, inspected it. The slide of the fully automatic weapon moved with a smooth, fluid action. Smacking a full magazine into the M-16, he walked to the spot he had prepared for testing the weapon. At one hundred meters he sent three tin cans spinning off a low sitting boulder. The weapon's report rang clear and loud over the dry, hard packed hills and echoed back. This did not worry Bear. The only people who might hear the noise would certainly not call local law enforcement.
“Never been fired. They were one truck away from getting shipped to ‘Nam.” The thin sallow man flicked a butt and let the smoke roll out of his mouth as he talked. “Three grand, cash, right now for this case. I can supply one case every three weeks.”
Bear looked at the smoking butt lying on the sacred ground. “Two grand cash now and two grand more for every case you can get me before July Third.” Bear leaned the rifle over his shoulder and headed back to where his battered pick-up broiled under the high sun.
The thin sallow man cursed under his breath. “You know how hard…”
Bear stopped suddenly and wheeled on the thin man. He thrust the rifle into his hands. “You told me you had four cases and you come with one. Two thousand now and I will ignore the fact that you are a lying cheat like the rest of your pale race.”
The man backed up a step, startled by the quiet AmerIndian's quick rush of anger. He held the weapon and turned his eyes away from Bear's hard glare. “Don't get all Injun on me, man.” He drew a breath, short and shallow with lungs weak from three decades of hard smoking. “And you shouldn't be handing a loaded gun to a man you're calling a liar.”
With a grin the man leveled the rifle and snapped off the safety. His thumb was rising off the metal switch when Bear disappeared. In the half second it took him to look down, Bear had dropped forward and swept his long leg around in a wide, fast circle. It connected with the thin man's ankle sweeping him to the ground. As the thin man fell, Bear rose.
Just before the thin man landed clumsily in a rising cloud of dust, the rifle let out a quick startling burst. With speed and accuracy born from necessity, Bear snatched the rifle from the thin man's hands.
The thin man coughed from the dust kicked up in the turmoil. He began to sit up. His eyes opened just in time to see the butt of the rifle slamming into his forehead.
The eighty kilometers back to the Wantabi reservation rolled by quickly. Bear turned up the truck's stereo, trying to let Zeppelin's latest drown out his thoughts. The plans that ran through his mind were already set into motion. The next two weeks would only be execution.
Sunset was approaching when he pulled his pick-up in near the sweat lodge that had been erected for the meeting tonight. Bear could see the lodge, packed with the figures of tribe Elders. Small, one story, four room reservation houses spread out across the wind swept land a few hundred meters away.
A slim, feminine AmerIndian silhouetted in gold by the dipping sun approached. “How'd it go?” Ashai brushed poker straight strands of black away from her eyes.
“Six units.”
Ashai's face turned from concern to anger. “Six! We need twenty-four!”
“Six is all we're getting through Greven. We'll have to go through your Los Angeles contact. Good news is, the six we got cost nothing and there was enough magazines in what he brought to comprise another three round of spares for every M-16 we currently have.” Without ceremony, he handed a manila envelope, fat with rumpled, rubber-banded twenties, to her.
“How'd that happen?”
Two AmerIndian youths were now carefully hauling the case of weapons off the bed of the pick-up. They hustled off toward the houses.
“You don't want to know.” He placed his hands on his hips, exhaled. “We are two weeks away from target date. I don't know if…”
Ashai's anger evaporated and she stood on her tiptoes to kiss him softly. “Don't worry. We planned. We worked hard toward this. No obstacle will stop us because our cause is pure. We are strengthened and watched over by the Grandfathers.”
She was quiet and Bear became aware again of the AmerIndians around them busily preparing the area for the gathering of four tribes that night. Ashai hugged him. “The Elders wish you to join them in the wickiup.”
Bear glanced toward the steam house. Ashai smiled reassuringly and gripped his hand tight before letting him go.
Bear walked to the steam house and stripped off his clothes. He wrapped a long swath of buckskin around him and ducked inside. The wet heat hit him like a soft blow to his entire body.
He squeezed in between One Who Harvests Early and Winosha. Conaqua, Okala, and Sheldoc were across from Bear. None of the Elders acknowledged him. They rocked back and forth in a flowing, steady rhythm as Okala hummed almost inaudibly.
Bear closed his eyes and drank in the heavy heat and the cramped solitude of the steam house. His head fell forward slightly from his exhaustion and he felt himself rock back again without effort as though he were carried by the momentum of the men next to him. Forward and back, the weight of his body melted away.
Forward and back, the soft hum of Okala became louder in his ears. As if carried and twisted by wind, the voice of the Elder became the piercing cry of an eagle as he sang on. Bear lost consciousness of the hours passing outside the steam house, unaware of the hundreds of AmerIndians waiting outside for the Elders and him.
The spell ended abruptly. Bear suddenly felt the press of the men next to him. Each Elder opened his eyes and realized that night had fallen. The men crawled out of the steam house. AmerIndians helped each Elder and wrapped them in clean, cool blankets. The various activities of the gathered AmerIndians ceased and the crowd of hundreds shuffled closer to the sweat lodge. Bear felt crowded and backed away. He had heard what each of the Elders had heard and his heart ached. He reeled from the impact of the knowledge.
Bear placed his hands on his knees and rested before looking up to the night sky, breathed in fresh air. The stars above were crisp and brilliant. The young blinked at their intensity and shook his head to clear the uncomfortable sense of closeness to those distant points of lights. He saw patterns there, patterns forming and just at the edge of recognition. He looked over toward the Elders who leaving him behind and pulled himself from the coalescing message he was trying not to write upon his heart and mind.
Two AmerIndians clothed in the vibrant colors of the shamans led Elder Okala toward the crowd and seated him on a flat, black rock. Bear realized Okala was still in the trance, still listening to the voice of the eagle. He understood as Okala started to talk that he would now hear in words what he had known in spirit in the lodge, what was now being cried out in brilliance by the stars themselves.
Okala's voice floated from him and covered the crowd of AmerIndians around him like a light rain. “Brothers and guardians, we are joyous that you come to us, that you seek our wisdom. We understand your questions. We know of your efforts to return the land of your forefathers to its guardian, to the People who live and love her with gentle respect.
“But we will not bless your plans on this day. Your attempts to wrest the land from the White Man, from the nation of beautiful, strong thieves, will fail. Re
turn the weapons you have gathered. Turn back from the path you are prepared to follow. Now is not the time. The White Man will crush you because the White Buffalo is not among you.
“The time will come when the land will be yours again, when the White Man will fall, decimated by your unstoppable might, when the Grandfathers will serve you as invincible warriors. Watch for the signs of that time.
“The White Buffalo will walk among you in his four leg form and his two leg form. The White Buffalo will lead the people to the Homeland, a land where they will remember how the simple life of their forefathers strengthened them, where the new shaman will be truly mighty. In this land the sun, the moon and the stars will be blocked from sight day and night and yet the sky will sparkle like gold dust.
“After this Homeland has been taken and the blood price paid, there will be a season when the people will prosper like never before. The Homeland will call to the shamans and they will ache to kiss the ground where the ancestors are buried, where their magic has no limit.
“Then the true war will begin. A time of devastation for both the Red Man and the White Man. But this time, the White Buffalo will not be with the Red Man. After the White Buffalo leads them to the Homeland he will be sent away from the Red Man in shame, cast out for as long as the winds blow and rivers flow. The battle for the Sacred Grounds will shatter all that has come before and forge a new way of life for all men.”
Okala became quiet, his speech dropping off abruptly, like something going over a cliff. Silence blanketed the crowd. AmerIndians shook their heads.
Bear struggled to remain standing. For three years he had led a network of AmerIndians across the Mid West, making intricate protracted plans. He had developed and crafted a large guerrilla strike; a military blow to the established White Man's system of land ownership and debt based slavery. Bear thought of that system, oppression through blatant and masked prejudice.
His military movement had started with college students then spread to be blessed by the Elders of over two dozen tribes. The rebellion he had planned would spill the blood of hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. Bear's goal; to return the sacred Black Hills to the AmerIndians. The Black Hills were intended to be a foothold for the start of a war that would return thousands of square kilometers of Midwest land to the tribes.
Bear had been certain that now, with the United States of America, dedicating vast resources to the Vietnam War, their attention split and harried, now would be the time to undo some of the injustice done to his people. He had felt certain that now would be the time to build a nation of AmerIndians on the land that was sacred to them.
Bear's grief became a physical weight. His body slumped to the ground. All his work was for nothing. Young tribe members huddled around him, lifted him, and carried him away from the crowd. The Grandfather spirits were forsaking Bear and all his efforts for his people. The Grandfathers told Bear to wait for another time. He had thought the time was now. His people had waited for five centuries. Wasn't that long enough?
Young AmerIndians whisked Bear away from the other tribe members. Bear felt the arms of the young men who respected him, believed in him, who had served him. He thanked the Grandfathers at least that these young AmerIndians would not let the tribes see him weep like a child.