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    Hawk closed his eyes tightly. He'd been a brave warrior to
the Sioux, a courageous soldier in the Union Army in the recent War of the
Southern Rebellion.
    But he couldn't fight away the future.
    He knew it; his father had known it.
    For a moment, he saw a faraway time when the Black Hills had
belonged to the Indians. The Sioux hadn't actually lived there then; the land
had been sacred, a place to hunt, a holy place, and a shelter when it was
needed. The Sioux were nomads, already pushed westward from the Mississippi by
the flow of the white men. There were many Sioux: the Sans Arc, the Brule, the
Oglala, the Two Kettles, llunkpapa, and Blackfeet Sioux. And among those many
Sioux, there were even more bands. Any warrior or family could break away as
they chose. The Sioux were a free people, respected for the lives they must
lead as individuals. It was a virtue among them.
    And yet, as the whites encroached upon them, this independence
became a danger as well. It made them divisible and vulnerable.
    As a small boy, he had grown up in his mother's world. I le
had lain in his cradle board, seen the buffalo skins of I lie tipi as his first
walls.
    He had been loved. The Sioux valued their children. He was
treated gently not only by his mother, but by Flying Sparrow, his mother's
brothers, and his grandfather, the peace chief, Sitting Hawk. He was never
struck. He called all men of the tribe "father," all women
"mother." He was welcomed in any tipi. A Sioux boy must learn two
things: to be a good hunter and to be a good warrior. Both meant life for his
people.
    Until his eleventh birthday, he knew very little of the white
world. He knew now that until the Mexican- American War of 1846-1848, the
Americans—who had gained the plains through the Louisiana Purchase—had considered
them the Great American Desert, a permanent Indian border. But with the land
gains made after the war, America's western boundary was thrown open to the Pacific.
In 1851, he had gone with his mother's people, a small band of Oglala Sioux, to
Fort Laramie, on the North Platte River. It was the largest gathering of
Indians he had ever seen—many of the Sioux bands were present along with
Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Shoshones, Crows, Assini- boines, Arikaras, and others.
It was agreed that the Indians were to be paid each year to make peace with the
white emigrants—many traveling through to the new gold finds in California—and
among themselves. The white men chose to call certain men "head
chiefs." The Indians were told that they couldn't make war among themselves,
but that was impossible because warring against one another was a way of life.
The treaty was doomed from the time the whites first had their so-called head
chiefs "touch the pen"—or put their hands upon it before white men
signed their names for them in the white language.
    From that day on, the whites began to come, but they didn't
much influence his life. Yet.
    He had been Little Sparrow then. He had remained Little
Sparrow until a few months after his twelfth birthday. Then he had counted coup against one of his Crow enemies, slapping
the warrior on the cheek before they engaged in hand- to-hand combat with their
knives. Counting coup—striking an enemy face-to-face rather than killing him
from a distance—granted a warrior honor.
    It had weighed heavily on him that he had taken a life, even
though he had fought the Crow with a deep-seated fury. A Crow warrior had led a
war party into their Sioux village when their own warriors had been hunting. He
had seized three young women, taken two for his own, and given one to a friend,
Snake-in-the-Tree. Snake-in-the-Tree had abused his young captive so thoroughly
that she had taken her own life. The young woman, Dancing Cloud, had been his
grandfather's great-grandchild, and he had known that he must avenge her death
to prove his worth.
    At a victory dance that night, Little Sparrow had been given
the name Thunder Hawk, for he had been as