The Endless Herd of Buffalo

It was prophesied for centuries that Raven would steal the light from the world and take it for himself, leaving all the colors to blend together and shroud everything in total blackness. They had tried to make us just like them for centuries as well, taking away our land, our traditions, and our culture and insisting that we take theirs to replace it. Perhaps that’s what makes us different. We knew the white man’s goal for centuries before, and we have been defiant to it through all the means they used to steal our souls, be they plague, war, or alcohol. While we had lost many, we had kept many more, and ended up in a steady, uneasy peace combining our culture and their modern appliances.

We were loved, if only for our endless stories and our loopholes through laws; be it gambling or abortion we pleased the white man with what was forbidden. We always had been a sharing people, for the earth is one with us all, something that the white man could never grasp.

Indeed came the day we all knew would come, the day that once again the white man would try to steal our souls to take and ruin our land with factories, pollution, and waste. I saw it right away, they were not just out to take the souls of us but of everyone in the land. And indeed the sun was eclipsed and the horrors began for all.

When Raven stole the light, nothing but blackness emerged as the colors bled into one horrid mass of darkness. When America stole the light, they covered the blackness with artificial light. He who stared at the concentrated light from an eclipse would become blind forever. We had heard it all before, but never like this. Never was the darkness so deep, never was the light of the corona so blinding, never were the rumblings so loud.

Yes, any of the People would know the rumblings of the endless herd that had provided us with all we needed for so long: food, shelter, clothing, weapons, and fuel for our fires. For years the white man had destroyed the sacred buffalo so we would starve and be forced to give in to their way of life. But now a new, evil breed of buffalo was upon us, one that had stolen something from everyone before them. This blind and mindless buffalo knew no better than to follow the herd across the plains and into the forests and mountains. From sea to shore the buffalo had consumed the country, and yet the only ones to stop it were also blind.

I did not believe the tale of this great eclipse at first, and I too stared at the corona with my sister. I felt the burning in my eyes, burning straight through until my spirit was ignited, soon to be burned into nothing but ashes, yet I saw and felt nothing. Nor did my sister as she blindly married, never to be seen again as the golden flashes of the corona took away more of my sight, my mind, my soul. I did not even see her leave as I stared at my hair, as yellow as the sun I stared at and worshipped.

And then I heard the herd rumbling again and the sun burned brighter as my hair more closely mimicked its rays, but before I could become one of the herd, forever trapped in Raven’s darkness and the white man’s box, a hunter struck down my sister. For a while I was too blind to see, did not understand why I was back on the reservation, did not feel sympathy, just mourning for my sister and anger that these strange, barbaric people were taking her body to be buried. My wisdom finally extinguished the fire in my soul and was slowly able to reverse and rebuild the damage, and I began to see again. I saw my father, a graying and old chief, not too far from the Great Spirit himself, mourning two daughters, my sister…and myself.

I looked at myself, and then realized that my sister became a spy because no one wanted her, too dark to be with the white man, too light to be with the dark men, so she stood at the fringe of the herd to be shot should any hunters approach them. I looked at myself and then at my friends, my family, my people.

“Not many return once they go blind,” my father said and then laid out my mission. “You know the maddened herd, so you must now hunt them, but do not waste. Use what you can and waste nothing, the buffalo is still sacred, so hunt them for what is needed for life here.” He spoke in metaphor to see if I could still understand, indeed a stronger test of mind than if he had spoken the entire edict in Sioux. But I understood, and through the years the corona glowed brighter and slowly it became impossible to avoid its beams. Indeed, the vandalized mountain could not even be seen by the blinded herd, and I found myself using the white man’s ignorance to nature’s beauty as a tool in and of itself to round up those who were to stray.

Years passed and I saw more and more become blinded and slowly grow and fade into the giant mass of the buffalo herd, taking on the spike heeled hooves, the long golden mane, and the excess weight that kept them plodding along their path, eyes locked on the corona of the eclipsed sky. Indeed we had become a united tribe, the only reservation left that combined all the once proud nations, Navajo, Cherokee, Apache, all the nations assuming the name of my tribe, the ever defiant Sioux. My hunting had proven effective after all, for those who I destroyed shed their heavy coats and became man once again. All this was while avoiding all the other traps the white man set, including the easiest poison to slay a stray buffalo, alcohol.

We never were stampeded by the herd. That was left to foreign countries and homosexuals, for those who led the herd believed that the rays of the sky were enough to bring down any of our kind. Then there were enough of us, including many new Seminoles, non-Indians who escaped the buffalo herd through our means, that the leader of the herd saw a threat outside his other reservation. The herd stampeded our village and again many survived, though many were once again blinded into the perverse golden buffalo, but then we saw her on the channel meant for the Israelites. She was transformed into the buffalo, but was more than the average herd member, her mane brighter, her hide smoother, her eyes empty as Raven's darkness. The prophecy had come true. Her name was Raven, and she was left in nothing but complete darkness as she refocused the eclipse full force onto the reservation to start a wildfire on the plains, one that would scorch the entire landscape and leave nothing but ashes and memories.

Her pull brought many a man and woman alike back to stare at the corona, leaving them blind and once again bound to the herd, but for the rest of us, it was a call for war. So we readied our troops once again and formed a great circle, and it was then I heard of a mythical spirit, a hunter out to kill all the buffalo, trapped in the pen of the white man’s useless on the coast of the Hudson. I knew her, knew the torture she felt and the pain that made her spirit nothing but cold steel that was unbreakable and unmeltable. I went to see her, but was greeted with nothing but the face of death. So I left her a weapon, and she took it to be my spirit. I was satisfied when I walked out and saw the picture of my sister’s corpse, only one of a few victims she photographed, slashed through five times. Every Sitting Bull needs their Crazy Horse. So the last stand for the daughter of the morning star came through a filming in the maddened state; a wolf in buffalo’s clothing was unwitting prey to my new Crazy Horse as the raven crashed into eternal darkness with one quick strike of the rifle, the white man's slave undone by the white man's gun.

It would not be needed, however. As I returned to the reservation, the eclipse had become even greater. The land was indeed again at war with itself and with that came agony and madness as more and more stared. And as at Wounded Knee, I needlessly stared again, with my daughter and husband by my side, at the familiar burning, the numbness, the blindness, the darkness, It was all there, and this time I calmly joined the herd as it led me to Oklahoma with almost everyone else. I was near the end of my usefulness as a woman and I was told by the herd to bear a child of the herd. With my oldest now grown, I joined a new mate and set forth and succeeded. A white child for a white woman. I was blind to my own child, for she was a Negro woman with a Negro child. This would not do. I saw her, she saw me finally, and then we saw everything. The light of the sun had thrown me into darkness, but her darkness had brought me back towards the light.

The raven tricked the chief by impregnating the chief’s daughter and growing up to have the chief show him the light.

Neither of us had borne children, our ties to the herd only a few fleeting months in length, and thus we returned to the reservation and commited a sin worse than homosexuality with great pride for who we were- Indians! Our reservation was larger than ever. A nation- no, greater, a gathering of many nations. True Americans, Native Americans, the First People. It was 2020 by this point, and I could see the eclipse lifting, and I once again went toward the Crazy Horse who had saved me twice. For it takes many to move the moon away from the sun.