On this day in 1979 the Sioux nation received $100 million in compensation for The Black Hills, South Dakota. Here is a poem written about The Black Hills by Peter Blue Cloud.
Crazy Horse Monument
Hailstones falling like sharp blue sky chips
howling winds the brown grass bends, while
buffalo paw and stamp and blow billowing steam,
and prairie wolves chorus the moon in morning.
The spotted snake of a village on the move
a silent file of horses rounding hills,
in a robe of gray, the sky chief clutches thunder
and winter seeks to find the strongest men.
Crazy Horse rides the circle of his people’s sleep,
from Little Big Horn to Wounded Knee,
Black Hills, their shadows are his only robe
dark breast feathers of a future storm.
Those of broken bodies piled in death,
of frozen blood upon the white of snow,
yours is now the sky chant of spirit making,
pacing the rhythm of Crazy Horse’s mount.
And he would cry in anger of a single death,
and dare the guns of mounted soldiers blue,
for his was the blood and pulse of rivers,
and mountains and plains taken in sacred trust.
Crazy Horse rides the circle of his people’s sleep,
from Little Big Horn to Wounded Knee,
Black Hills, their shadows are his only robe
dark breast feathers of a future storm.
And what would he think of the cold steel chisel,
and of dynamite blasting a mountain’s face,
what value the crumbled glories of Greece and Rome,
to a people made cold and hungry?
To capture in stone the essence of a man’s spirit,
to portray the love and respect of children and elders,
fashion instead the point of a hunting arrow sharp,
and leave to the elements the wearing-down of time.
Crazy Horse rides the circle of his people’s sleep,
from Little Big Horn to Wounded Knee,
Black Hills, their shadows are his only robe
dark breast feathers of a future storm.
By Peter Blue Cloud
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