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.Whatever this attack hadbeen, and wherever it had come from, it was now over, at least for the timebeing.While the warriors held the soldiers at bay in the distant grove of pines,the people remaining alive in the camp crawled out from their hidingplaces and began to survey the carnage.Wounded horses lay screamingand writhing.Teepees were tipped over or smoldering.In the maternitylodge, which had been set up a few paces away from the camp, a woman laydead with her newborn in her arms, its skull crushed and bloody frombeing smashed by a rifle butt or a soldier s boot.All through the campsite there was horror beyond anyone s imagining.A wail rose up from the women loud enough to be heard by the barricadedsoldiers far up on the distant hill.Slowly, numbly, the survivors began to clear the camp.People draggedtheir relatives to the creek bank and pushed dirt over them to bury themas best they could.In the hollows they found old women mothers andgrandmothers lying lifeless in pools of blood.Little boys and girls, hold-ing shattered arms and oozing blood from bullet wounds, wanderedwhimpering through the camp, looking for parents who were lying stilland empty-eyed on the earth near their lodges.Dolls, cooking pots, cloth-ing all lay scattered.Some of the dead lay in the smoldering camas pits,where their flesh burned and baked with the roots that had been cookingthere since the previous night.With the assistance of some of the young boys, Joseph brought the re-maining horses down from the distant hillside.By running up to the herd In a Dream Last Night I Saw Myself Killed 151at the first chance during the fighting, he and No Heart and the youngboys had kept the soldiers from stampeding the pack animals during theconfusion.Now he needed to get the people packed and moving beforethe soldiers broke through and attacked again.But many were toostunned to move.They simply sat, empty-eyed and moaning, looking attheir butchered friends and children and staring at the bodies floating inthe blood-filled stream.But Joseph knew there was no time for grieving.The warriors could nothold back the soldiers forever, and others might be coming up from behind.The dead had to be buried as quickly as possible, and such belongings as re-mained had to be gathered and packed.Perhaps there would be time tocome back later for proper burials.But now, the people had to be saved.Slowly, as the sun rose higher and the smoke drifted up into the grow-ing morning light, he assisted the decimated and traumatized remnant inloading their few remaining belongings onto the backs of horses and help-ing into their saddles the wounded who could still ride.Those too injuredto stand were tied into blankets and placed on hastily constructed travoislitters made from the lodge poles the women had cut the day before.Thenthe weeping, wounded survivors picked their way through the bodies oftheir horses and dogs and hastily buried wives and husbands and parentsand children and rode aimlessly and hopelessly toward the mountains farto the south.Above them on the hill, they could see the remaining warriors trying toset the grass on fire to burn into the trees where the soldiers lay hiding.Per-haps these soldiers might soon know some of the same horror and agonythat they had visited on a people who had meant them no harm and whowanted nothing more than to find a place where they could raise their fam-ilies in peace.As if in a dream, the stunned people, led by Joseph and White Bird, movedacross the cruel emptiness of the sweltering August Big Hole plain.Thetravois pole ends bumped harshly across the uneven ground, causing theinjured to cry out in agony.Wounds broke open, shattered bones groundagainst each other, bullet holes stuffed with pieces of cloth oozed bloodonto the grass and dust.Joseph was like a man no longer living.His wife was wounded; his new-born infant daughter clung desperately to life in the relentless summer 152Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perceheat.Yet, as a camp chief, he could not focus on his own concerns and sor-rows; it was his sacred duty to care for all the people and to do his best tocalm their fears.While a thin cordon of remaining warriors protected the perimeter ofthe moving procession, he moved among the injured and dying, offeringsuch comfort as he could.As the wounded died, he assisted in their buri-als, standing by while the relatives sang death songs over the shallowgraves.He then made sure the horse herd was driven over the ground sothe graves could not be found and dug up by soldiers or Indian scoutsintent upon scalping or thieving or desecrating the bodies [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.Whatever this attack hadbeen, and wherever it had come from, it was now over, at least for the timebeing.While the warriors held the soldiers at bay in the distant grove of pines,the people remaining alive in the camp crawled out from their hidingplaces and began to survey the carnage.Wounded horses lay screamingand writhing.Teepees were tipped over or smoldering.In the maternitylodge, which had been set up a few paces away from the camp, a woman laydead with her newborn in her arms, its skull crushed and bloody frombeing smashed by a rifle butt or a soldier s boot.All through the campsite there was horror beyond anyone s imagining.A wail rose up from the women loud enough to be heard by the barricadedsoldiers far up on the distant hill.Slowly, numbly, the survivors began to clear the camp.People draggedtheir relatives to the creek bank and pushed dirt over them to bury themas best they could.In the hollows they found old women mothers andgrandmothers lying lifeless in pools of blood.Little boys and girls, hold-ing shattered arms and oozing blood from bullet wounds, wanderedwhimpering through the camp, looking for parents who were lying stilland empty-eyed on the earth near their lodges.Dolls, cooking pots, cloth-ing all lay scattered.Some of the dead lay in the smoldering camas pits,where their flesh burned and baked with the roots that had been cookingthere since the previous night.With the assistance of some of the young boys, Joseph brought the re-maining horses down from the distant hillside.By running up to the herd In a Dream Last Night I Saw Myself Killed 151at the first chance during the fighting, he and No Heart and the youngboys had kept the soldiers from stampeding the pack animals during theconfusion.Now he needed to get the people packed and moving beforethe soldiers broke through and attacked again.But many were toostunned to move.They simply sat, empty-eyed and moaning, looking attheir butchered friends and children and staring at the bodies floating inthe blood-filled stream.But Joseph knew there was no time for grieving.The warriors could nothold back the soldiers forever, and others might be coming up from behind.The dead had to be buried as quickly as possible, and such belongings as re-mained had to be gathered and packed.Perhaps there would be time tocome back later for proper burials.But now, the people had to be saved.Slowly, as the sun rose higher and the smoke drifted up into the grow-ing morning light, he assisted the decimated and traumatized remnant inloading their few remaining belongings onto the backs of horses and help-ing into their saddles the wounded who could still ride.Those too injuredto stand were tied into blankets and placed on hastily constructed travoislitters made from the lodge poles the women had cut the day before.Thenthe weeping, wounded survivors picked their way through the bodies oftheir horses and dogs and hastily buried wives and husbands and parentsand children and rode aimlessly and hopelessly toward the mountains farto the south.Above them on the hill, they could see the remaining warriors trying toset the grass on fire to burn into the trees where the soldiers lay hiding.Per-haps these soldiers might soon know some of the same horror and agonythat they had visited on a people who had meant them no harm and whowanted nothing more than to find a place where they could raise their fam-ilies in peace.As if in a dream, the stunned people, led by Joseph and White Bird, movedacross the cruel emptiness of the sweltering August Big Hole plain.Thetravois pole ends bumped harshly across the uneven ground, causing theinjured to cry out in agony.Wounds broke open, shattered bones groundagainst each other, bullet holes stuffed with pieces of cloth oozed bloodonto the grass and dust.Joseph was like a man no longer living.His wife was wounded; his new-born infant daughter clung desperately to life in the relentless summer 152Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perceheat.Yet, as a camp chief, he could not focus on his own concerns and sor-rows; it was his sacred duty to care for all the people and to do his best tocalm their fears.While a thin cordon of remaining warriors protected the perimeter ofthe moving procession, he moved among the injured and dying, offeringsuch comfort as he could.As the wounded died, he assisted in their buri-als, standing by while the relatives sang death songs over the shallowgraves.He then made sure the horse herd was driven over the ground sothe graves could not be found and dug up by soldiers or Indian scoutsintent upon scalping or thieving or desecrating the bodies [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]