Ghosts of South Dakota Part 4

Of course on this night we are supposed to be asleep so Santa could come, but we hadn't been home from Midnight Mass very long, and the invigorating cold was not conducive to sleep. Even the hot chocolate did not do much to help sedate the excitement. We were hoping for sleds that year. The snow was perfect for sledding especially like we did it. We tied out sleds on behind the car or pick up and were pulled through the hills. We got our sleds. My dad and my uncle made them for us. No television and only in the late years were we allowed to use the radio. Batteries were to expensive for frivolous use. We spent many hours playing cards or games. I took time out and went to high school and college and got my teaching certificate. My aunt taught there only one year after the Federal Government turned the schools over to the local government. The last time I was back there the out buildings had been moved and Indian families were living in them. The school was dirty and unkept. Now the school is gone. The ancestors who once walked these dusty plains are gone. The Indians who were there when I was a child are gone. They are Ghosts. Ghosts whose faces can be seen in the clouds. Ghosts who still chop wood on those sub zero nights. And the drums we heard in the middle of the nights are still beating. They beat as strongly as the heart beats in a healthy body. The laughter of the children still echoes under the bridge. The life blood of a culture, of a nation grows thin. The Battle of Wounded Knee was the last battle to be fought between the white man and the Indian on the northern plains. It's cries still echo across the land. My foot prints in the creek did not last any longer than those they left in the dust. But in my memories, this mile and a half by three quarter mile haven still lives. And will live forever as a piece of unrecorded history.