The Search for White Man's Freedom

"This is the pasture I take Iktomi to every morning," Thunder Spirit said. She had followed Crazy Bull to the clearing she thought no one else knew about. "I have never seen you here."

"That is because I chose not to be seen."

"What do you do here?"

At this, Crazy Bull hesitated. "I watch you," he said after a moment.

"What?" Thunder turned her head toward him and narrowed her eyes in confusion.

Crazy smiled. "After battling and going on raids or even just hunting, it is good to watch a pretty squaw talk to her horse."

Thunder's face felt warm. "Don't speak to me as if all I am is a woman."

"You are more than that?" Crazy was teasing Thunder, but it only made her more passionate.

"Much more!" she yelled. "I am a warrior, just like you."

"Tell me, Wakinyan," Crazy said. "What battles have you been a part of? How many men have you killed? How many heads have you scalped?"

Thunder Spirit glared angrily at the trees, collecting herself. "It is not by my ruling that women are not participants in war."

The two stood in silence, the wind playing with Thunder's hair. She looked out at the sea of grass, suddenly missing Iktomi. Her beautiful white stallion. She hadn't taken him out that morning. Without a word, she walked to the path that would lead her home. As far as she knew or cared, Crazy Bull did not follow her.

Thunder Spirit staved off tears as she walked. Even so, they welled in her eyes and blurred her vision. She had always wanted to go into battle, ever since she was little. She would make war cries and had even torn apart other little girls' dolls as practice. "Wakinyan," her mother would say to her. "You have been given a gift, my daughter, from the Great Spirit. I am afraid you will not find it easy to have your gifts accepted by your people."

Thunder would ask her mother why.

"Sometimes things are not easily accepted when those things are different from what everyone knows to be 'the way'."

She would nod her head and turn the other direction, ready to play battle again. She never fully understood what her mother had told her until recently. The way of her people was woven into their very existence. It had always been the way. There was no other way. But then, why had the Great Spirit make her this way?

The sun creeped through the canopies as Thunder walked. She brought up her hand as a shield and then felt the earth fall beneath her. Thunder let out a yell of surprise as she dropped into what she hoped was not an old Sioux trap, filled with sharpened branches. She landed on a hard rock surface, her ankles screaming with pain. She had tried to land on her feet, but the fall was too long. She sat and winced as she rubbed her legs. She pulled up her hide pants, revealing her already-swollen ankles.

Thunder felt like yelling to release her frustration but decided she didn't want to attract the attention of anything potentially harmful in the cave she had unknowingly discovered. Instead, she sighed and slowly pulled herself up on her feet. She gritted her teeth and started to look for something to help her out of the cave.

She soon realized that the opening she had fallen from was not going to be her way out unless her ankles healed into even greater ankles. Ones that would help her jump ten feet straight up into the air.

Or if someone came by and pulled her out with a rope. But that seemed unlikely to happen anytime soon, and she needed the chief medicine man to see her wounds before it was too late and they became useless.

She walked away from the opening and looked further into the pitch black of the seemingly endless caverns. She sighed and limped on in hopes of finding an exit.

When the darkness had first enveloped Thunder, she became irrationally fearful of her surroundings and imagined horrible things blocking her path. She even felt as if the spider-spirit she had named her horse after was following her. She remembered Running Waters, her tribe's storyteller, gathering the little ones for a telling of Wakinyan, the primordial thunderstorm, and Iktomi. She had been a little frightened but usually tossed the thoughts aside, letting them linger untouched at the bottom of her mind.

Until now. All of a sudden, she saw faces in shadows and eyes in darkness. She knew she was imagining things, but her lack of mobility made it hard for her to remain rational. She creeped along the cold, slimy wall of the cavern, hoping the Great Spirit would make a way for her. Her breathing was loud, but instead of stifling it, she allowed herself this in rebellion to the dark thoughts clouding her head.

Eventually, she saw a light. She breathed a sigh of relief and muttered a thanks to the Great Spirit. Slowly, she reached the end. At first, the sun blinded her until she cleared the tunnel and saw what she had found. It was beautiful.