Bones Beneath a Granite Eagle Feather

16 the minnesota review Daniel Hill Bones Beneath a Granite Eagle Feather I am a red man....It is not necessary for eagles to be crows. 1 Another early morning raid: on April 8, 1953, Sitting Bull is unearthed and driven again, but not by men riding steeds. These troops step from dew-drizzled cars; they bear picks and rusty barrel-handled shovels. Their truck hoist yanks the concrete slab from Bull's grave, so Greyeagle can gather the bones Mobridge businessmen promise to rebury in native soil. The Sioux once placed burial shrouds in oblong nests beholding the world. On reservations they sealed shallow graves with storm-glass coffin lids. Downriver, retailers vacuum-pack the bones rubbed clean. The casket is lowered onto a platform girded by steel before cement trucks pour down their twenty tons. Across from the grove that marks a former town of nine saloons, I stand. The plaque facing me denies Greyeagle removed the bones North Dakota claims to safeguard. Hill 17 Driving south from Fort Yates, I'm guided by state highway signs profiling policeman Red Tomahawk, whose bullet dropped Bull. West of Mobridge, where backward running water from Oahe Dam has cut the old US 12 few tourists travelled, a billboard advertises two monuments. I park by Sacajawea's: phallic concrete pockmarked by a poor casting. I walk crunching the teeth of shattered beer bottles, seeking Bull's twice life-sized six-ton toppled bust near its barren flint granite stand. ...