Babies wailed and old men sang their death chants while small children clung to their mothers' skirts. An ugly adobe fort sat, squat and forbidding, directly ahead of them. The Blue Coat leader raised his hand and signaled. The soldiers harried them, and the trails to California and Oregon became safe for the white men but dangerous for the red. Treaties were signed and then broken and the vast trackless hunting grounds of the Cheyenne, stretching from the sacred Black Hills in the north to the staked plains of the Comanche in the south, were no longer theirs to roam. The buffalo herds had begun to shrink and the People learned hunger.Ĭlashes between emigrant wagon trains and Cheyenne hunters brought the Long Knives who spoke of peace but made war. But now they were followed by an ever-widening stream of miners and settlers, who scarred the sacred soil with their wagon trails and gouged it with picks and plows. For several generations trappers and traders who were friends of the People had come in small numbers, never disturbing the mother earth. The trouble had begun only a few years ago, but it seemed like a lifetime now.

None knew what would become of them after that. Soon they would reach the white man's fort. On foot, the Cheyenne leaned into its teeth, their thin blankets and ragged buffalo hide coverings whipping around their knees. Soldiers huddled on their horses, drawing heavy overcoats close against the bite of the wind. Freezing air seared the brown buffalo grass, striking it down and flattening it all around them. Even the vegetation begged for mercy against the relentless elements, but the People did not. A thin veneer of ice glittered like scattered diamonds on the desolate earth, a sparkling mockery beneath low pewter clouds. The blood dried and blackened on their skin in the cold November wind that swept across the plains. The wives, mothers and sisters had slashed their arms and legs in mourning as was the custom of the Cheyenne. There were far more women and children left than men. The People trudged in resignation, herded between the soldiers' horses in a long straggling line. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means without the written permission of the author.

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