Ever since he can remember, Floyd Rayfield has wanted to be a Native American. Abandoned by his family and raised in foster care, Floyd has never had a sense of who he was meant to be until the night he has the dream. He sees himself as a warrior of the Sioux Indians and knows that it is his destiny to make the dream come true. He dyes his hair black, instructs his teachers to call him Charly Black Crow, and learns everything he can about the people he admires so much. When the society he has rejected pushes back, Floyd has no other option but to run.
He takes refuge on the sprawling Pine Ridge Reservation. Living among actual Native Americans, Floyd learns more about their way of life than he could ever have imagined. By getting in touch with someone else’s identity, he hopes finally to discover his own.
Ever since he can remember, Floyd Rayfield has wanted to be a Native American. Abandoned by his family and raised in foster care, Floyd has never had a sense of who he was meant to be until the night he has the dream. He sees himself as a warrior of the Sioux Indians and knows that it is his destiny to make the dream come true. He dyes his hair black, instructs his teachers to call him Charly Black Crow, and learns everything he can about the people he admires so much. When the society he has rejected pushes back, Floyd has no other option but to run.
He takes refuge on the sprawling Pine Ridge Reservation. Living among actual Native Americans, Floyd learns more about their way of life than he could ever have imagined. By getting in touch with someone else’s identity, he hopes finally to discover his own.
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Overview
Ever since he can remember, Floyd Rayfield has wanted to be a Native American. Abandoned by his family and raised in foster care, Floyd has never had a sense of who he was meant to be until the night he has the dream. He sees himself as a warrior of the Sioux Indians and knows that it is his destiny to make the dream come true. He dyes his hair black, instructs his teachers to call him Charly Black Crow, and learns everything he can about the people he admires so much. When the society he has rejected pushes back, Floyd has no other option but to run.
He takes refuge on the sprawling Pine Ridge Reservation. Living among actual Native Americans, Floyd learns more about their way of life than he could ever have imagined. By getting in touch with someone else’s identity, he hopes finally to discover his own.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781497684027 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Media Teen & Tween |
| Publication date: | 04/07/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 183 |
| File size: | 850 KB |
| Age Range: | 12 - 16 Years |
About the Author
His 1995 novel, The Squared Circle, was named the year’s finest by English Journal and the Voice of Youth Advocates.
Bennett has served as a guest author at Miami Book Fair International, as a featured speaker at the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of the NCTE, and as a writer in residence (a program he established) for secondary schools in Illinois. He has also been the director for the Blooming Grove Writers Conference.
Read an Excerpt
Dakota Dream
By James W. Bennett
OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1994 James W. BennettAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4976-8402-7
CHAPTER 1
It was the early part of the afternoon when I got to the Pine Ridge Reservation, exhausted from walking the motorcycle more than two miles and not getting much sleep for the past forty-eight hours. But I didn't pay much attention to the fatigue, because it was such a relief to finally be at my destination. I just went in through the main entrance.
Since it was the first part of June, there was lots of tourist activity. I was standing in the middle of a big, congested parking lot, surrounded by Delta 88s and Airstream campers and a whole lot of other barge-type vehicles favored by Mr. and Mrs. Tourist. I could see a lot of trailers and campers spread out like a settlement along the base of these very rugged foothills. There were a few Indians around, but more tourists.
This commercial part of the reservation was not likely to get me too excited. I happened to know from my research that the Pine Ridge Reservation covers many hundred square miles; this part was only the tip of the iceberg, and the tip was probably the least authentic part.
Besides that, it wasn't smart for me to just hang out in the public eye. As soon as I had my bearings, I walked the Kawasaki down a gravel path that led to a semiprimitive campground along the river. There were tipis you could rent and brick grills for cooking, and even a shower house made of cinder block. I found a private, wooded spot by the river where I could stash the bike and my backpack.
I felt so gritty from the trip I went up to the shower house and took a shower, even though I hadn't paid a camping fee and was probably a trespasser according to the letter of the law. I put on my clean clothes, which consisted of my spare T-shirt and blue jeans.
After that, I went back to my private spot by the river and mellowed out against the trunk of this big cottonwood tree. I was real hungry, but I was even more tired. There was no room in my head for the seized-up bike, or Carl Hartenbower's stolen car, or the cops, or Mrs. Bluefish, or Mr. Saberhagen, or Mrs. Grice, or anything that might be a problem. I didn't pay attention to my aches and pains.
The sky was bluer than you could imagine. It was the big sky, as the Indians called it. The river was sparkling like a crystal, and the rocky buttes on the other shore were like a picture frame. I felt like I had roots growing out of my body right into the ground. I was on the reservation, among the Dakota, and I had a peaceful, easy feeling, as that old song by The Eagles puts it. I was in place.
And then I was sound asleep.
What woke me up was the noise made by this guy in a pickup truck. He was collecting trash from the campsites and replacing garbage can liners.
I sat up and rubbed my eyes and looked at the low sun. The pickup truck was an old green GMC junker with PRR painted on the door; the guy was clearly an Indian. Now that I was at the reservation I needed to make contact, so I went on over and introduced myself.
It turned out his name was Donny Thunderbird, age nineteen. He wasn't very tall, but he was wiry, which is the ideal Indian physique.
"Where are you staying?" he asked.
I took him over to my private spot in the woods to show him.
"You don't have to stay here," he said. "A lot of the tipis are empty."
"What I'd like to find is a more or less permanent place to stay on the reservation. I don't think I could afford one of the tipis because my money would run out. I only started out with forty bucks."
"Are you on your own?"
"I'm on my own."
He asked me how old I was. I told him, "Actually, I prefer to think of myself as sixteen."
"You prefer?"
"Well, I haven't had my sixteenth birthday yet, but one time about a year ago, I read this story of these young German soldiers in World War One, and at the end of the book, the main character gets killed in battle. The way the author put it was, 'He fell, in the autumn of his twentieth year.' The thing was, he was really only nineteen, but if you think about it, once you've had your nineteenth birthday, you're living in your twentieth year, just like once you've had your first birthday, you're living in your second year. From the time I read that book, I got in the habit of thinking of myself as a year older."
Donny Thunderbird said, "You're only fifteen but you're on your own? What about your parents and your family?"
"I don't have any parents or family. That's a big part of the total picture." I could tell Donny was a guy I could trust, so I told him about taking off from the group home and coming 800 miles until I finally got here. I told him how I held the Indians in high esteem, especially the Dakota.
"You said you want a permanent place on the reservation," said Donny. "I don't understand what you mean."
"I'm hoping someone at the reservation will help me," I answered. I decided I might as well just get down to it. "I want to be a Dakota," I said. "As a matter of fact, it's my destiny to become one."
Donny looked at me for a few moments without saying anything. He didn't look at me the way I've been looked at before, like I was an alien, he just looked at me the way you look at a person when you're really concentrating. After this long silence, he asked me, "Is that your bike?"
Now it was my turn to hesitate. "You might say I'm borrowing it." Even though I could tell Donny Thunderbird was a guy to trust, there were limits.
"The bike is down," I added. "I had to push it all the way out here from town."
"That's more than a mile," he said.
"Don't I know it."
He wanted to know what was the matter with it, so I told him. "It's seized up. It was burning oil, but I was only driving at night so I couldn't see. There I was in the middle of Iowa with a seized-up bike. I couldn't drive it and I couldn't just leave it behind. I didn't know what I was going to do."
"So what happened?"
"I ran into this guy named Carl Hartenbower at a truck stop. He was on his way to Dry Gulch, Wyoming, to start a new job as a professional cowboy. Dry Gulch is a tourist town, and Carl was hired to sit on a chair in front of the general store and trading post all day long, and look like a cowboy of the Old West. Can you believe it, just sit there and get paid for it? He was perfect for it, though, he was a real leathery-looking kind of a guy. Anyway, he said we could tie the bike down on top of his car. It was a big Pontiac Bonneville. So that's what we did."
"And he brought you the rest of the way."
"As far as the edge of town. The rest was up to me. Carl was a weird guy. About a hundred miles back, he told me the car was stolen. That made me nervous, because being more or less on the run myself, I didn't like the idea of being in a car the cops were looking for. And it was pretty conspicuous with the bike tied on top. Of course, since the car wasn't his, he didn't care if the roof got scratched or dented."
"He does sound weird, but I'd say it was pretty lucky you ran into him."
Then I smiled. "You could call it luck, I guess. But the thing is, once you get in touch with your destiny, you get out of the habit of thinking of things as lucky breaks. Not to get overly philosophical, but that's what a destiny means: It's supposed to happen. That's how it's altogether different from lucky breaks or something you wish for."
Donny offered me a piece of gum, which I accepted. "You keep saying that, but I don't know how to take it. No offense."
"No problem. You're hearing all of this with an open mind. I appreciate that. What it comes down to is, I had a vision; it came to me in a dream. I'm destined to be a Dakota. I think I was a Dakota a hundred years ago, so it might be just a matter of returning. Sometimes the way to your destiny is through your previous lives."
Donny was quiet again, hearing it all. I liked the way I could tell him these things and not feel selfconscious. He finally said, "Are you hungry?"
"As a matter of fact I'm starved. The food in my backpack is all dried out."
"Hop in the truck. We'll go up to the snack bar."
The snack bar where Donny took me was part of the tourist area near that parking lot where I came in earlier. In addition to ordinary stores like a grocery store and a Laundromat, there were lots of gift shops and souvenir shops and trading posts, loaded with tourists. You could buy almost any kind of Indian merchandise, all of it authentic. With the tourists, the most popular stuff seemed to be items from the Southwest tribes, such as Navajo blankets, turquoise jewelry, and so forth. The best stuff from the Plains tribes were ceremonial pipes and certain weapons, such as shields made from buffalo hide, and very quality bows made out of bone.
I could have looked at the Indian merchandise for the rest of the evening, but I was too hungry. I got two chili dogs with onion and a large Pepsi. Before I knew it, we were back in the truck and driving along some gravel road through the timber, far away from the beaten path. I was wolfing my food and trying to get my bearings, but it was too dark by this time.
We must have gone two miles at least. Our destination turned out to be some maintenance buildings where equipment was kept, such as a tractor, a couple of dump trucks, mowers, et cetera.
Donny was throwing trash in a big Dumpster while I finished my food. We sat in a mechanic's shop where some old Indian men were playing cards, smoking cigarettes, and drinking whiskey. Even though it was just a maintenance shed, I felt privileged being in a place no tourists would ever see.
A very old Indian named Delbert Bear, who was one of Donny's distant great-uncles, was doing most of the talking. He smoked his pipe and told numerous stories of the glorious past when the warrior Dakota were the feared enemy of the white man's army. I asked Donny how old Delbert Bear actually was, and he said, "Nobody knows, including him."
Anyway, Delbert told of all the famous battles in great detail, such as when Crazy Horse defeated General Crook in the Battle of the Rosebud, and the terrible Dakota defeat at the hands of the Seventh Cavalry at Wounded Knee. I know for a fact that the defeat at Wounded Knee happened in 1890, so I asked Donny if Delbert Bear could really remember it.
Donny smiled and said, "Nobody knows, including him."
I had my journal with me, and I was making a point of writing down most of what came out of Delbert Bear's mouth. Donny asked me if I did a lot of writing and I told him I did. "I like to write stories," I said. "Sometimes I just write down notes and ideas for stories later on. I've been making notes on the Stone Boy legend for a long time."
"You probably know more about the Stone Boy legend than I do," he said.
I needed to be humble. I said, "There are different versions of the legend. I've sort of been working on a version which combines all the similar parts. You know, the essential stuff. There are gaps and missing pieces, stuff that's gotten lost over time. What I'd really like to do is fill in the gaps and still be authentic to the basic meaning of the legend. It's not easy."
Donny took a look at me before he answered. "A writer can do a lot of good for Indians."
I asked him how.
"I know a guy by the name of Chips," said Donny. "He's a Dakota on another reservation, but I've met him a couple of times. He publishes a newsletter twice a month on Indian civil rights and legal rights. People from all over the country subscribe to it, and I don't mean just Indians."
"Can you think of any more?"
"There's a guy in Minnesota I've never met. He writes columns on Indian history and traditions. His column is published in newspapers all over. There are also publications on Indian education and agriculture. That's what I'm interested in."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"I just got done with my freshman year in junior college. I'm going to finish college and major in ag economics."
I said, "But aren't you happy now, doing what you're doing?"
"How do you mean?"
"Well," I said, "you've got your home, and your people, and your family. You have a job.
You have your place."
Donny smiled. "A reservation is a place from the past. The Indian way of life is mostly history. It's good that there are people like Delbert, and reservations, so we don't forget the old ways. But Indians need help to live in the modern world."
That was a letdown for me, hearing him talk like that. Being on the reservation had me so mellowed out that I couldn't imagine finding anything wrong with it. As far as it being something out of the past, that was the best thing about it as far as I could see.
Donny Thunderbird went on. "I've got lots of other relatives up in the hills. They live the old ways. They still hoe the corn with elk antlers and they make arrows by rubbing sticks between two stones; the arrows get sold in the souvenir shops. But my people can't improve themselves by living the old ways, because the rest of the world doesn't live the old ways. One way that Indians need to become modern in is agriculture, and I've always been interested in crops and farming."
I was still a little uneasy about what he was saying, I guess because of my background of no home and no family and knowing what my destiny was. It didn't seem right somehow to take reservation life for granted. Maybe living on the reservation all your life, you didn't appreciate it quite as much. I wasn't about to argue with him, though, because you could tell he'd put a lot of thought into it. Besides that, he could have been treating me like I was wholesale weird, but he wasn't.
We changed the subject to my situation and what to do about it. "I'm not sure what advice to give you," Donny said.
"I understand your hesitation," I said. Which was true.
"It's just that no one ever came to me before and said he wanted to become a Dakota," he went on. "What we get here are tourists."
"It's not just that I want to become a Dakota," I reminded him. "It's my destiny."
"Right." he said. "I'm not forgetting. I'm probably going to have to talk it over with my uncle.
He's the chief. Maybe he'll have some advice."
"Chief Bear-in-cave is your uncle?"
"How do you know his name?" Donny wanted to know.
"Didn't I tell you I've done research?"
He was smiling at me. "I guess you did. This gets better and better." Even though he was getting a grin out of it all, I knew he wasn't being disrespectful. I fully realized how fortunate I was to have him as my reservation contact; he could have been turning me in or calling the cops or something, but he wasn't, he was trying to help me.
"I'll take you back down to the campground," he said. "We'll find an empty tipi. It'll be on the house, no charge. You could use a night's sleep."
That was true. We drove on down and found an empty one. When he left, he said he'd see me in the morning.
I was too tired to move the bike, so I just left it stashed in the bushes. I brought my backpack to the tipi, looking at the sky full of stars and feeling mostly mellow. Then I stretched out on the tipi floor.
I felt somewhat bad about Barb, taking off on her like I did, and I felt some guilt about taking Nicky's bike. But he wouldn't miss it much; if it wasn't for me, it never would have been anything but down anyway. What I understood was, real important things, such as fulfilling your destiny, don't happen without a little pain. You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. That's just the way the world works, so you have to accept it.
Then I fell sound asleep like a stone.
CHAPTER 2The next morning, I woke up real refreshed. After I got showered and brushed my teeth, I washed my dirty clothes right there in the shower house sink.
Shortly after that, Donny Thunderbird came by in the green pickup. He was throwing chunks of firewood on the ground in the campsites. He said Chief Bear-in-cave would be happy to talk to me.
"You mean right now?" I was a little surprised.
"You might as well, if you can. I gave him a little background, and he says he's not busy."
"Let's go, then."
I made sure I had my backpack with me when I got in the truck. I had some very unusual emotions on the way over, at least unusual for me. As a rule, I'm pretty good at sloughing off the emotional side of most situations, but to tell the truth, I was a little scared. In fact, more than a little. I wasn't scared of the chief, but it seemed like there might be a lot at stake. I've known for at least a year that it was my destiny to become an Indian, but if you got right down to it, it probably couldn't happen without the help of a tribal chief. This visit seemed like the crunch.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Dakota Dream by James W. Bennett. Copyright © 1994 James W. Bennett. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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