Chapter 15: Home

Late 1879 - Montana Territory

The summer sun warmed the grasslands along the Tongue River, turning everything golden and green. Firebird stood outside the small cabin—rough-hewn logs, a dirt floor, nothing like the comfortable tipis of her youth—and looked out over the valley.

Home.

It wasn’t the home she’d been born to. It wasn’t even the home she’d known with Red Hawk and the free-roaming bands of Cheyenne who had followed the buffalo across endless plains. But it was home nonetheless.

The Tongue River Reservation. Established by executive order in November 1879, giving the Northern Cheyenne a permanent place in their homeland. Not all the land they’d once claimed—not even a fraction of it—but enough. Enough to breathe Montana air, to see the mountains in the distance, to hunt in familiar territory, to raise their children as Cheyenne.

It was a compromise. A small victory wrapped in larger defeat. But after Oklahoma, after the flight north, after Fort Robinson and all the death—it felt like a miracle.

“Mama!” Little Bird’s voice called from down by the river. “Come see what I found!”

Firebird smiled and made her way carefully down the slope. Her body was failing—she knew that, accepted it. The damaged muscles, the chronic digestive problems, the accumulated toll of years of hardship—all of it was catching up with her. She was forty-one years old and felt ancient.

But she was alive. And she could still walk to the river to see what her daughter had found.

Little Bird, sixteen now and beautiful despite the hardships, was kneeling by the water’s edge, examining something in the mud. When she looked up, her face was radiant.

“Otter tracks! A whole family, I think. They’re fresh—from this morning.” She pointed out the distinctive prints. “That means the fish are coming back. The river is healing.”

“That’s good,” Firebird said, lowering herself carefully to sit on a nearby rock. “We need the fish.”

They did. The reservation was poor in resources—the government rations were inadequate, as always, and the people supplemented them with whatever they could hunt, fish, or gather. Every bit of food mattered.

Little Bird came to sit beside her mother, and they watched the river flow for a while in comfortable silence.

“Do you ever regret it?” Little Bird asked eventually. “Coming north? All the suffering we went through to get here?”

“No,” Firebird said without hesitation. “Oklahoma was death. Slow, grinding death. At least here we’re alive. We’re Cheyenne. We’re home in the way that matters most.”

“I had a vision last night,” Little Bird said softly.

“Good or bad?”

“Neither. Just ... true.” Little Bird picked up a smooth stone and turned it over in her hands. “I saw you. Old. Gray-haired. Sitting by a fire with Morning Star, both of you ancient and content. Your grandchildren playing nearby. And you were happy. Really, truly happy.”

Firebird felt her throat tighten. “How old?”

“Very old. Seventy, maybe? I couldn’t tell exactly. But old enough to have lived a full life. Long enough to see Tall Elk married, to see me married, to see the next generation grow strong.”

“That’s a good vision,” Firebird said, though privately she doubted her damaged body would last that long. But visions were funny things—sometimes they showed what could be, not what would be. And maybe, just maybe, with Morning Star’s care and Montana’s clean air and the peace of having a home again—maybe she would survive long enough to become that gray-haired grandmother.

It was something to hope for, at least.

That evening, the family gathered for the evening meal—a tradition they’d maintained no matter how poor the food, no matter how hard the times.

Morning Star had prepared a stew from fish Little Bird had caught, wild onions she’d gathered, and a bit of the government flour made into dumplings. It wasn’t much, but it was warm and filling.

Tall Elk arrived late, as he often did these days. His duties as War Chief kept him busy—mediating disputes, organizing hunting parties, representing the young warriors in councils with the Indian Agent. At seventeen, he bore responsibilities that would have crushed a lesser man. But he bore them with grace and wisdom beyond his years.

“Sorry,” he said, ducking through the low doorway of their cabin. “Council ran long. The Agent wants us to send more children to the boarding school.”

Morning Star’s face darkened. The boarding schools—where Indian children were sent to “kill the Indian, save the man,” where they were forbidden to speak Cheyenne, forced to cut their hair, punished for practicing their culture—were a constant source of tension on the reservation.

“What did you tell him?” Firebird asked.

“That we’d discuss it with the families. That it’s their choice, not his.” Tall Elk sat down heavily. “But he’s threatening to withhold rations if we don’t send enough children. It’s the same pressure, different method.”

“Always pressure,” Morning Star said bitterly. “Always trying to make us something we’re not.”

“But we resist,” Little Bird said quietly. “Every day we speak Cheyenne, we resist. Every time we tell the old stories, we resist. Every time we teach our children who they are, we win. Even if they take some children, they can’t take all of us. And the children who go come back. Most of them, anyway. They come back and they remember who they are.”