A Long Shot

When she was five, her parents told her to always stay close. Protecting the family was a job for the men, a job she need not worry about. Nandita had no problem with this, and she ran off to play in the tipi.

When she was eight, tears threatened to fall down her face as the chief announced the news to her clan. She saw a mixture of reactions from around the group, ranging from shock to immense pain to nausea. But Nandita remained stony-faced and still. She would not cry. If she cried, her older brother would probably make fun of her. Wait, she remembered. He can’t make fun of me. He’s dead.

When she was ten, Nandita learned that her name meant “happiness”. How ironic, she thought. She had not felt happiness in two years. Though she was surrounded by people who called themselves her family, she knew her real family was long gone-- merely dust in the wind.

When she was thirteen, Nandita had her first encounter with the white man. She had been hammering wooden poles into the dry earth, preparing the first of many tipis to be built in the surrounding area. The rest of her band was hunting buffalo, and she was one of the few who remained to watch over their camp.

She heard them long before she saw them-- the screaming wagon wheels, the clomping hooves of the oxen, the rustling giant white canvas. They were sounds Nandita had never heard before, and decided immediately that she would be just fine never hearing them again. On the horizon, peering into the sun, she finally saw it: the Snake. Snakes were common in the plains she called home, but she had never seen one like this before. This Snake was composed of about thirty individual sections, with each section consisting of a large white tent that moved (Nandita later learned this was a wagon) and several tannish objects trudging beside it. The Snake slowly trekked across the horizon, moving from east to west. Nandita was both fascinated and horrified. These were the things that killed her family-- how could they be so sluggish? She watched them disappear, hoping to never see them again.

When she was fifteen, her chief told her to go and never look back. He lifted her up onto a dirt-colored, muscly horse and slapped its rump, immediately sending the animal careening off into the distance. Nandita knew that running away was her only chance at surviving, but that fact did not help. The truth was, her camp was to be destroyed within half an hour by the white men-- her clan would be killed with guns, the jewelry and clothes and pelts they had accumulated would be stolen, and their tipis and farms would be wrecked. With tears once again threatening to race down her cheeks, she turned her head and watched her home fade into the distance.

When she was nineteen, Nandita hatched a plan.

After she escaped the annihilation of her clan, she had ridden Nahcomence (for that was what she named the horse, after the fierce winds carrying them across the plains) for several days, until, faint from heat and lack of food, they stumbled across another clan of the Cheyenne tribe. They were much smaller than her own, with fewer horses and smaller farms. They accepted Nandita with open arms.

Over the years since she left her clan, Nandita had learned about the white men who had ruined her life. She learned that they always traveled in Snakes, and that they were on a journey. She learned that they could be peaceful sometimes, and had been known to trade corn and pelts for buffalo meat and beads. She learned that they thought her people were savage and stupid, and often tried to scam them into making trades that only favored the white men. And she learned that the white men always moved from east to west: they followed the sun.

One day, a young man from another clan rode up to Nandita’s camp. Breathless, he introduced himself as Viho and claimed that he had been sent to warn every Cheyenne man, woman, and child about the Snake of white men heading their direction. This was the biggest Snake he had ever seen, Viho exclaimed with wide eyes. Over sixty wagons, and the white men all carried guns and looked angry. They were five days away. As Viho sped into the distance to warn the next clan, panic began to seep through the camp. The chief bleakly suggested that they fight the white men with spears and knives. Nandita had another idea.

“Listen,” she said in a soft voice, “we can make the white men go the other way.”

The chief turned to her, staring with a mix of bemusement and concern. Women didn’t typically speak up in this clan, especially a new member like Nandita. But he motioned for her to continue.

She explained how the white men followed the sun from east to west, and if they could convince Ma’heo’ to make the sun go from west to east, the Snake would go the other way and never come across their clan to begin with.

The chief looked skeptical at first, but slowly began to nod. Ma’heo’ was the being who created life as they knew it and could, on certain occasions, be persuaded to listen to prayers. If a season was especially dry, for example, and a clan was starving due to low a low crop harvest, Ma’heo’ might respond to a ceremony asking for heavy rainfall. It was a long shot to make the sun reverse directions, but it was worth a try-- after all, what other choice did they have?

Nandita and her clan worked for four days and four nights. They sang, danced, and smoked a ceremonial pipe. She had never seen the clan so unified-- nobody squabbled or argued about prestige and fame. In those moments, everyone was equal. Everyone wanted to save the clan from the Snake.

Finally, the fifth day arrived. Few members of Nandita’s clan slept the previous night; they were all watching the sky to see which direction the sun would rise from. As morning crept closer, Nandita found herself holding her breath. When she thought she could take the suspense no longer, she saw a faint light out of the corner of her eye. It was the beginnings of a sunrise, slowly warming the sky from the west.

A cheer rose across the clan. With any luck, the white men would follow the sun back across the sky to the east, leading them away from the camp. Nandita smiled.

When she was thirty-five, Nandita’s husband taught their two small boys how to make arrows from animal bones. Nandita watched them, a deep sense of peace flowing through her body. She had a family again.