47 pages • 1 hour read
Joseph M. Marshall IIIThe Lakota Way: Stories and Lessons in Living
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 9-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary: “Bravery/Woohitike”
The author’s grandmother told him about a boy named Hoka, the badger. Hoka is skilled with a bow and arrow, and his uncle suggests bringing him along on a hunt in which the men kill two elk. They leave Hoka behind to guard the elk and their skins and to watch over the village when they go out hunting the next day.
Hoka guards the village and sees nothing but magpies. Returning to the camp with water, however, he sees the print of a large animal like a bear and hears rustling in the bushes. He prepares to kill the animal with his bow and arrow and wonders whether it is a cat or bear. He clambers up a tree and lets an arrow fly at the animal, who he sees is a bear. The animal grunts and then is silent, and the boy doesn’t know what happened to it. When he finally climbs down from the tree, he sees blood on the grass. When the hunters return, he finds out that they killed in elk but that his uncle was injured and is bleeding. He does not say anything to the hunters about the bear but says that they should continue to guard the elk meat from bears.
Hoka grew into a fine warrior and married and had a daughter. He was given the name “Naicinji,” or “Defender” (141). When his uncle visited Hoka’s daughter, he gave her an arrow and told Hoka and his wife that a bear had given it to him long ago. The bear said that it belonged to one of the bravest men he had ever met. The uncle gives it to the infant with the hope that she will raise brave hunters.
Story Summary: “Being Brave”
Bravery does not have to occur on a field of battle. In 1951, a 5-year-old boy on the Rosebud Reservation had to walk at night to bring a bag of fresh meat to his nearby relatives. He did not scare at the sound of screech owls and coyotes, but when he swung the bag backwards, he noticed that it touched something. He swung it backward as hard as he could, in a show of bravery, only to discover his dog was following him.
In the same year, Sergeant Mitchell Red Cloud of the Winnebago tribe of eastern Nebraska was involved in a firefight in Korea with North Korean troops. When his unit was forced to retreat, he held the rearguard action and allowed his squad to reach safety. He was killed in the process and posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
In the 1950s and 1960s, another challenge faced Indians on reservations, as the Bureau of Indian Affairs instituted a relocation program. Its goal was to help Indians move to cities to learn trades to support their families. Most of those who were relocated did not meet with success, and they returned home by hitchhiking. Marshall writes that relocation “was the bear that attacked our camp” (153).
The author writes of others who were brave, including Elsie Flood, known as the Turtle Lady. She kept a turtle in her bag and, like a turtle, walked across South Dakota to visit people. Others worried about her, as Indians were often the targets of violence, but she kept on walking. Mac Cash was another person the author knew. He went to the same high school as the author and was one of the author’s students. He was a fine student and football player and maintained his courage and dignity before dying of leukemia at age 22. The author’s father, Joseph Marshall II, was a brave man who fought in Okinawa in mop-up operations in 1945 and who later fought against and defeated alcoholism before dying of cancer in 2001.
The author explains that warriors had to find ash wood to make bows. They cut down the ash tree and let the wood dry and cure for five years. Sometimes, however, they found wood that had already been dried and cured by lightning. These were the strongest bows, similar to people who have suffered and survived.
The author concludes the chapter with the story of a grandmother who takes her granddaughter out to the field of battle as the Lakota and Sahiyela (Northern Cheyenne) fight soldiers in blue (US Army soldiers) near the Greasy Grass River. This was during the Battle of Little Bighorn. The grandmother stands and sings a song of courage and dances as the Indians return, victorious. One places a red sash over her, and others from the Crazy Dog Warrior group do the same, until she is covered with their sashes. Her granddaughter told this story to the author when she was an old woman and wore red strips of cloth from the sashes wound in her hair.
Chapter 10 Summary: “Fortitude/Cantewasake”
Story Summary: “The Story of the Old Woman’s Dog”
Forgets Nothing, a young woman, is part of a summer gathering in the open land west of the Great Muddy River. She prepares porcupine quills to be dyed, which is a painstaking process that requires great patience. An older woman leading a handsome dog on a rope approaches Forgets Nothing, and Forgets Nothing urges her to sit down and rest and to have some stew and tea. The older woman, who is named Good Voice, says that she must press on in her journey to deliver medicine herbs to relatives, and she asks Forgets Nothing to watch her dog while she is away. She reminds Forgets Nothing that the dog “is all I have in the world” (161).
Forgets Nothing names the dog, who has been nameless, Wolf Eyes, as his grandmother was a wolf. Wolf Eyes becomes a very good dog for Forgets Nothing. One day, a man named Long Walker approaches with a limp and says he was wounded in battle. He wants to trade two elk hides and two bear skins for the dog, but she refuses, saying that the dog’s owner will return for the dog. Long Walker tells her: “Your stubbornness will get you nowhere in life!” (163). Later, Forgets Nothing’s mother tells her that man is a warrior and is used to getting what he wants.
Later, a family in mourning has a young daughter of 8 whose name is In a Hurry because she was born early. Leaf, the girl’s mother, says that her daughter has been hit hard by the loss of her grandmother and that she would like to get the dog for In a Hurry. In a Hurry plays with the dog, but Forgets Nothing says that she cannot give the dog away.
Then, a powerful medicine man named Flying By visits Forgets Nothing and her mother, Corn Woman. He says he needs a dog to boil for a ceremony called Thunder Dreamers. The dog he uses must have the fine qualities of Wolf Eyes. However, Forgets Nothing refuses the medicine man’s request.
Good Voice returns, and she finds out the In a Hurry has been in mourning for her grandmother. She takes a puppy out of her bundle and gives it to In a Hurry with the hope that she will never forget her grandmother. Good Voice appreciates that although a warrior, a heartbroken girl, and a medicine man asked Forgets Nothing for the dog, she resisted them. She gives Forgets Nothing a salve for her crooked foot. Good Voice and her dog leave.
As Forgets Nothing watches other people dance, she stays on the side, self-conscious about her limp. She wishes Good Voice had brought her a husband in her bundle. Then, a young man comes with a deer and asks Forgets Nothing to cook it for him. He also walks with a slight limp caused by a thorn in his foot. His name turns out to be Wolf Eyes.
Story Summary: “Walking on Grandmother’s Road”
Marshall writes about the critical role that grandmothers play in sustaining Native American culture, including Lakota culture, and in practicing fortitude. He writes that the Native American practice of nomadic hunting came to an abrupt end because of the extinction of the bison, or “tatanka,” and the encroachment of whites on Native American land. Marshall explains that at the same time, “our spiritual beliefs were ridiculed and reviled” (171). The only choice, he maintains, was “to walk Grandmother’s Road,” (172) or to practice fortitude. The period from 1890 to 1940 was a time of change, but the role of women in sustaining Native Americans during this time has been overlooked. Women continued during this time to sustain their families, as they always had, which was critical during an era when children were often sent to boarding schools and told not to speak Lakota. One woman gave the advice “whisper” (172) to her daughter. Native Americans learned to resist quietly. For example, when the Sun Dance was outlawed, they danced where they couldn’t be seen. They went to Church but still went to the sweat lodge.
The author recalls that his grandparents showed this sense of fortitude during the winter of 1951-52, when several large blizzards hit. His grandmother, Annie, continued to bead and speak about his uncle and mother to comfort him. He remembers walking along a river bottom with his grandfather on another occasion and seeing oak trees that bent with the wind but didn’t break. Strength comes, he writes, from bending in the wind. He calls Grandmother Blanche Marshall finding out in 1979 that her oldest son had died by accident; she accepted the news with quiet fortitude.
Marshall tells the story of the animals on the Great Plains who held a race long ago to determine who was the fastest. They were supposed to make four laps along the “Paha Sapa,” or Black Hills. The animals began to sweat blood, which is why the land there is red today. The wolf was in the lead when the simple white magpie surpassed him in the final lap. Today, animals look up at the magpie in acknowledgement of his victory.
Marshall writes of Dr. Lorenzo Stars, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe who managed to become a doctor in spite of obstacles. Sometimes, he had to drop out of school for lack of money, but he persisted. Success, the author writes, is not often achieved all at once but is the result of small steps. He writes of the time in which he and his grandparents had to save their garden from an infestation of grasshoppers that came in a dark cloud. They lit fires and were able to save half of the garden, but neither of his grandparents, who had fortitude, complained.
Chapters 9-10 Analysis
The author connects the virtues he discusses in these chapters, bravery and fortitude, to modern Lakota history. In so doing, he speaks about these virtues in different ways than the way most people tend of think of them.
For example, the author states that Native Americans who were forced to relocate to cities in the 1950s and 1960s were brave. In these cities, they were supposed to earn trades, but the program did not always work out as expected. Instead, Native Americans felt isolated and culturally lost. These kinds of cultural shocks and dislocations took a toll on the Native Americans forced to endure them, and it was bravery that sustained them in these situations.
In the chapter on fortitude, the author connects this virtue to the strong but quiet reserves of the elders, particularly women, who have long sustained Native American culture. He writes in particular of the years from 1890 to 1940 and states that it was the fortitude of grandmothers who kept the tribes going. They showed a kind of quiet dignity that many people might not recognize as fortitude, but Marshall believes that they were the force that sustained the Lakota and other Native American culture during this time period.
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By Joseph M. Marshall III
