Heartsong Read online

  “This is a novel that Robert Louis Stevenson would have approved of.” The Herald

  “An amply rewarding read.” Kirkus Review

  “What James Welch has produced, ultimately, is a novel with an expansiveness of heart and mind, an intimate analogue of Indian estrangement worthy of any readerly voyage.” Chicago Sun Times

  “Utterly engrossing.” The List

  “An engaging, pointed, heartfelt examination of culture clash and the debilitating effects of otherness.” San Fransisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle

  I just finished reading Heartsong. I think Jim Welch has written a masterpiece.” Leslie Marmon Silko, author of Ceremony

  “This moving portrait of an Oglala Sioux . . . has a slow, brooding power that builds majestically . . . a brilliant representation of clashing cultures.” Andrea Barrett, author of The Voyage of the Norwahl and Ship Fever

  HEARTSONG

  JAMES WELCH is the author of four previous novels, including Winter in the Blood (1974) and Fools Crow (1986) which won the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award. He attended schools on the Blackfoot and Fort Belknap reservations in Montana, and studied writing at the University of Montana. He lives in Missoula, Montana and is considered to be one of America’s most gifted literary writers from the Native American tradition.

  “One of the year’s best works of fiction, a novel that is universal in its emotional and intellectual implications . . . By the last hundred pages I found myself in something like an altered state, reading as fast as I could while at the same time holding on to the hope that the book would never end.” Chicago Tribune

  “A stirring tale of a man’s triumph over circumstances, a griping story of solid literary merit and surprising emotional clout.” Publishers Weekly

  “Welch has a natural story-telling ability, equally capable of fine focus and overview.” The Independent

  “Unbearably moving. Charging Elk is a magnificently imagined and understood character, and his soaring heartsong sounds, in its finest moments, much like an American Les Miserables.” Boston Globe

  ‘Already acclaimed as a classic in the US, Welch’s book looks set to become one here in the United Kingdom too.” The Big Issue in the North

  First published in the UK in 2001 by Canongate Books Ltd,

  14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE.

  This digital edition first published in 2013 by Canongate Books.

  First published in the US in 2000 as The Heartdong of Charging Elk by

  Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, events,

  establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to give

  the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. Other names, characters,

  and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are

  used fictitiously, as are those fictionalized events and incidents that

  involve real persons.

  Copyright © 2000 James Welch

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

  British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on request

  from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 84195 229 1

  Book design by Chris Welch

  www.canongate.tv

  FOR LOIS

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  It wad early in the Moon of the Shedding Ponies, less than a year after the fight with the longknives on the Greasy Grass, and the people looked down in the valley and they saw the white man’s fort and several of the women wept. The leaders were dressed up and rode ahead of the braves. The women and children and old ones followed, some walking, others riding on the bundles of lodge covers and furniture on the travois. He Dog, Big Road, Little Big Man, and Little Hawk wore their eagle-feather bonnets, their fringed buckskins, their beaded gloves and quillwork moccasins. Their gaunt faces were painted as if for war, but there was no fight left in them.

  The leaders stopped on the brow of the hill and watched the two riders gallop up toward them. One was a soldier chief in a blue uniform, much like the ones the people had taken from the bodies on the hills above the Greasy Grass. A couple of the young men even now wore the faded wool tunics above their ragged leggings. It was a hot day and the tunics itched against their bare skin but it was all the finery they possessed.

  The other rider was an Indian who had seen many winters, and the leaders recognized him at once. They had ridden with him when he led the campaign to close down the forts along the Medicine Trail. His name was Red Cloud and he had been a great war chief then. Now he was a reservation Indian and had been one for ten years. Now he took his orders from white chiefs, like the one beside him in the large white hat. Still, in his clean buckskins, with his headdress that flowed over his horse’s rump, his thin hawkish face now lined with deep-cut crows-feet, he looked as dignified and powerful as ever—a chief.

  But the leaders did not register any recognition when the two riders slowed, then stopped less than ten feet before them. Both parties sat their horses for a moment, Red Cloud glancing beyond the leaders to the people behind. He recognized many of them, for they were Oglalas, as he was, and he had been their chief once.

  Red Cloud looked back at the leaders and said each name with a small nod. Instead of a greeting, he seemed to be identifying them to the soldier chief. The soldier chief nodded at each leader’s name but his face remained expressionless. Finally, Red Cloud looked into the eyes of a man who sat patiently on a small horse just behind the leaders. He was a slight man with light, almost sandy hair which was braided and wrapped in fur. A single golden eagle feather was his only headdress. His buckskin shirt was dirty and without decoration. The repeating rifle across his lap had no brass studs on the stock or feathers tied to the barrel. His eyes were fixed on the pale horizon beyond the valley.

  When Red Cloud said his name, the soldier chief glanced quickly at the old chief to see if they were looking at the same person. “Crazy Horse,” Red Cloud said again.

  Then the leaders on both sides talked briefly, all but Crazy Horse, who seemed to be impatient in a mild way. As they talked, a troop of mounted soldiers circled behind the band of Indians. They moved without words, but all the Indians watched them and heard the clanking of sabers and squeaking of leather, the hard plops of the shod hooves on the crumbly earth. The troop split in two, half of them taking up stations behind the Indians, the other half moving back to the horse herd.

  A boy of eleven winters sat on the edge of a pony drag and watched the soldiers moving to the rear of the horse herd. It was a big herd, a thousand animals, and it took the soldiers some time. The boy watched them get smaller. Then he looked down at his younger brother and sister, who were huddled in the contours of the bundled-up lodge covering. “Don’t cry,” he said. “You are Oglalas. Don’t cry.”

  Then the horse herd was moving down off the side of the hill toward a large cottonwood bottom. The sold
iers drove them slowly, but some of the horses were nervous and shied and whinnied. They were not used to the smell of these white men.

  The boy felt the pony drag jerk, then start to slide forward, the poles making a hissing sound as they gouged trails in the dirt. He slid off and trotted up to the side of the horse his mother rode. The horse was a big roan and it pulled the travois without effort. He looked up at his mother and he saw that her cheeks were wet. He had wanted her to lift him up behind her, but when he saw the tears, he stopped. Although the long journey from the Powder River country had been hard, he had not really thought about what it meant. Now, he understood. He understood that these wasichus had made his sister and brother and his mother cry. He understood that his father and the other men would not fight anymore. He understood that his people would not be allowed to go back to the buffalo ranges. They were prisoners. What he didn’t know was what would become of them.

  As he looked around him at the people moving forward, some riding, some walking, some young, some old, many horses of many colors, the dust kicked up by the hooves and the travois poles powdering the air, he felt very small and he wanted to cry too. And just as he had decided to let himself go, his ears picked up a strange, small sound. It came from the front of the band, from the leaders. And he recognized the sound. Soon the braves began to sing. And gradually the people around him began to sing.

  He ran forward and caught up with his mother. He looked up and saw her lips moving and suddenly his heart jumped up. It was a peace song they were singing, but to the boy it sounded more like a victory song. As he walked down the hill he could feel every pebble, every clump of grass, through his thin moccasins and he could feel the hot sun on his bare shoulders, but now he was singing.

  He looked down at the fort, at the log buildings, at the red and white and blue flag of America that hung listlessly from a pole, at the rows of soldiers with their rifles with steel knives tight against their shoulders, at the thousands of Indians who ringed the open field, and he wasn’t afraid anymore. The Indians who awaited them were alive—and they were singing. The whole valley was alive with the peace song. It was a song the boy would not forget for the rest of his life.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Charging Elk opened hid eyes and he saw nothing but darkness. He had been dreaming and he looked at the darkness and for a moment thought he hadn’t come back. But from where? And where was he now?

  He was lying on his back in the dark and he remembered that he had eaten soup twice during daylight. He had awoken and a pale woman in a white face covering had fed him soup. Then he awoke again and another woman with her face similarly covered gave him more soup. It was clear soup and it was good but he couldn’t eat much of it. But the second time the woman gave him a glass of orange juice and he recognized it and drank it down. He liked the orange juice, but when he asked the woman for another glassful, she just looked at him above the face covering and shrugged her shoulders and said something in a language he didn’t know. Then he fell back into sleep.

  Now he propped himself up on his elbows and turned toward a light that entered the side of his eye. From its distant yellow glow he could tell that he was in a long room. He blinked his eyes to try to see better. Where was he? And why did the women cover their faces here? Gradually, his eyes grew stronger and he saw, between his eyes and the distant light, several lumpy shapes on platforms. He heard a harsh cough on the other side of him and he fell back and slowed his breathing. When the coughing stopped he pushed the covering that lay over him to one side and looked again toward the light. And he began to remember.

  He didn’t remember much at first, just the two women who fed him soup. But now he remembered the room he was in. He hadn’t seen much of the room because he had been on his back on one of the white men’s sleeping beds. It was a big high-ceilinged room with a row of glass globes lit by yellow wires. There were high windows on the wall opposite his sleeping bed. Through one window he could see the bare limbs of a tree, but the others were full of gray sky.

  He remembered waking up once sometime and a man in a white coat was bending over him, his face also covered with a mask. He was pushing something small and cold against Charging Elk’s chest. He didn’t look at Charging Elk but Charging Elk glanced at him for just a second and he saw pieces of silver metal disappear into the man’s ears. He became afraid and closed his eyes and let the man touch his body with the cold object.

  How long ago was that? Before the women fed him soup? As he looked toward the yellow glow at the far end of the room, he remembered burning up with heat, throwing off the covers, struggling to get up, feeling a sharp pain in his side, and the two or three white men who held him down. He remembered trying to bite the near one, the one with the hairy face who roared above him and struck him on the forehead. Once, he woke up and he was tied down. It was dark and he grew cold, so cold his teeth chattered and violent spasms coursed up and down his back. He was freezing to death, just as surely as if he had broken through the ice on a river. He had seen the river for an instant, just a quick flash of silver in the darkness, and it was lined with bare trees, and tan snowy hills rose up on either side of it. But when he came up out of the river, it was light and he was in the sleeping bed in the big room and his back and side ached from the sharp spasms.

  Charging Elk stared at the yellow light for a long time but he could remember nothing more because he could not think. He stared at the soft yellow light as though it were a fire he had looked into before, somewhere else, far away.

  When he awoke again he lifted his head and watched the gray light of dawn filtering through the windows. A bird swooped down with high-lifted wings and lit on a ledge of one of the windows and Charging Elk recognized it. He had seen this kind of bird before. Sometimes it walked, always with many others of its kind, on the paths and cobblestones of the cities he had been in. When it walked its head bobbed and it made strange lowing sounds deep in its throat. He remembered a child chasing a band of these birds and how quickly they flew up and flashed and circled in unison, only to land a short distance away.

  He had seen the big buildings of the cities—the houses that held many people, the holy places with the tall towers where people came to kneel and tell their beads, the big stores and small shops full of curious things. He had been inside a king’s stone house with many beds and pictures and chairs made of gold. And once, in Paris, he had accompanied a friend who had been injured badly to a house full of many beds.

  Charging Elk knew now that he was in a white man’s healing house. And he thought he must have been there for quite a long time but he had no idea how long. Sometimes when he had awakened it had been light; other times, it had been dark. He had no idea how many sleeps he had passed there.

  He was very weak—and hungry. He listened to his guts rumble and he wanted some meat and more of the orange juice. And some soup. He wanted sarvisberry soup, but he still didn’t know where it had been that he had tasted this soup, or even that it was made of sarvisberries. He only knew that he wanted the taste of something familiar.

  He heard a hollow clicking from a long way off, the only clear sound in an undercurrent of breathing, snoring, coughing, and moaning. As he listened to the clicking come nearer, he lifted himself up on his elbows and his body didn’t seem as heavy as it had been in the dark.

  The young woman glanced toward him, then stopped. Unlike the food women, she wore a stiff white cap with wings and an apron that came up over her shoulders. Beneath the apron, she had on a long gray dress with narrow sleeves. A flat gold cross hung from a chain around her neck. Charging Elk had seen this type of cross on other people and he almost knew where. He became interested in her.

  “Bonjour, monsieur,” she said, coming to stand at the side of his bed. He recognized the greeting but not the rest of the words she spoke as she reached behind him to slap his pillow. She helped him to move his body back against the pillow so he was almost sitting up. A sharp pain stabbed his side, then eased to a hard ach
e. She said more words to him and he saw that her eyes were blue and the hair that was swept up under the cap was the color of ocher.

  She made a gesture, clenching her hand like a claw and bringing it to her face mask. She repeated it a couple of times until he understood. He nodded rapidly as he had seen the white men do. Then she went away.

  From his sitting position he could see better. He could see a building out the window and its wall was golden. Above, he could see that the sky was turning from gray to blue. The bird that bobbed its head when it walked was gone. He looked around the room and he could see many beds lined up against both walls, and many bodies. Some were sitting up like him; others were sleeping under blankets on the beds. He could smell the damp, ashy odor of the bodies mixed with the sharp smell of wasicun medicine. They were all men, all white men. They too were in this house of sickness. But where was this house?

  The woman came back, carrying a glass of orange juice on a round tray. As he drank it down, he noticed crinkles in the corners of the woman’s eyes and he thought she might be smiling behind the face covering. He put the glass back on the tray, then pursed his fingers together and pointed them toward his mouth. The woman’s brows came down. He repeated the gesture and the brows shot up. She leaned forward and showed him a little timepiece pinned to her apron. She pointed to the timepiece and said something and he nodded. He knew about the wcuichus, timepiece. He pointed to his mouth again and the woman said, “Oui, oui,” then left.

  Charging Elk leaned against his pillow and waited for his food. He watched one of the men opposite him throw back the covers, sit up, and swing his legs over the side of the bed. He sat like that for a moment. His face was stubbly, not exactly a beard, but the black stubble made his face look as white as the wall behind him. The man stood, holding himself up by the iron headboard. He reached for a robe that was hanging from a hook on the wall. Charging Elk looked behind him to the side and he saw a similar garment by his own headboard. As he watched the man slip his bare feet into a pair of soft shoes, he wondered if he had some of those too.