Episode 66

The air, once alive with the sharp scent of pine and the earthy perfume of damp soil, now carried the acrid tang of woodsmoke and something else—a metallic, unsettling odor that clung to the wind. Kicking Bear, his gaze fixed on the distant tremor of hooves and wheels, felt a familiar unease deepen into a cold dread. The trails, once worn smooth by the passage of his people, the Lakota, and their ancestors, were now being gouged by the relentless passage of iron-shod wagons. He had seen them before, these white faces and their strange conveyances, but never in such numbers. They were a persistent stream, a river of humanity flowing across lands that had always belonged to the earth, to the spirits, and to his people.

He remembered the elders’ hushed warnings, the stories of distant lands and peoples who knew nothing of the balance, of the respect that bound them to the natural world. Now, those distant peoples were here, their presence a physical weight pressing down on the land. He watched as a group of them, their faces ruddy and their movements hurried, set up camp near a stream that was sacred to his people, a place where they performed rituals and sought spiritual guidance. They did not seem to notice the ancient stones arranged in a pattern that spoke of generations of communion. They simply unrolled their blankets, built their fires, and began to kill the game that wandered too close, their wastefulness a sharp sting to Kicking Bear’s warrior heart.

He saw a young man, barely more than a boy, hacking at a downed buffalo with a knife, not for sustenance or immediate need, but seemingly for the sport of it, his laughter echoing unnervingly in the vast silence. The hide was left to rot, the meat scattered and untouched. It was a desecration, a profound disrespect that went against everything Kicking Bear understood about life and death, about taking only what was needed and honoring what was given.