Chapter 4

Elizabeth awoke with a smile as she felt the kicking of small legs against her stomach and the flinging of arms against her breasts.

Looking down at her new son in the early light of dawn, she smiled and thanked God once again for this blessing He sent into their lives.

Raif had been up for an hour and had a good roaring fire going in the big stove up front to chase the night chill from the large building. Now the heat began to slowly make its way through the open door to the living quarters in the back of the post.

Elizabeth changed the diaper on her son, hugged him to her body and kissed his cheek before she placed him beside the young girl in bed with them.

Elizabeth opened the oversized nightshirt she had let the girl sleep in and exposed a swollen breast for her son to receive his morning meal.

Smiling at the sight before her and choking back a sob of emotion, she smiled at the two of them and went to help Raif as he started breakfast.

The time was coming for heavy trading as the trappers from the mountains in the north and the west, and the hide skinners from the plains would be coming here to trade their bounties in exchange for money and supplies for the next year. Soon there would be wagons lined up behind the trading post to carry the hides and furs to markets in the east.

“Raif, we need to name our son, and we need to ask the girl for her name, don’t you think?” She asked her husband as she hugged him and kissed him passionately.

“Yes, I was thinking the same thing this morning, we have a lot of things to plan for and many changes to be made as well. Have you thought of any names we might call him? He needs a name that will go before him, that people will recognize as soon as they hear it.”

“I agree, and I was thinking too, since it is very evident he has Indian blood in him, he will need a name for all the Sioux to know him by,” she said.

“That my dear is a very good idea and so thoughtful to include our friends of the Sioux Nation in our future, we’ll ask them for names of their choice and then pick from the ones we get.”

That very morning some of the elders and medicine men from the various camps of the Sioux came to the post after hearing the news of the Eagle Boy. Raif took the time to show them their son and ask them to suggest a Sioux name for him to carry with him as he grows up near the Sioux Nation.

The elders and medicine men gave thanks to Raif and his woman for allowing them the honor of naming their son so the people of the Sioux would know him by his name and not some white man name that none could speak.

The next morning at daybreak Raif opened the doors of the post to bring in more wood and found the elders and the medicine men sitting on his porch waiting for him. They had a name for his son.

“TUPI EL MAHPIYA.” Born in Sky.

“Elizabeth hurry, bring our son out here please” Raif called loudly through the door.

Elizabeth came running out with her son in her arms to see what Raif was shouting to her about. The elders and the medicine men all stood and raised their hands in praise of the boy as his mother came out on the porch.

Raif took the boy from her arms and opened his blankets so the Sioux could see him and see the mark of the eagle across his small chest.

The elder medicine man took the boy from Raif and held him up high over his head, as he and the others chanted.

“TUPIYA EL MAHPIYA, TUPIYA EL MAHPIYA,” they chanted over and over as they beheld the sight of the boy that came from the sky.

“Raif, what does that mean and why are they chanting like this?”

“TUPI EL MAHPIYA means ‘born in sky, ‘ they have chosen Sky as his Sioux name.”

“Oh my, that’s a beautiful name, we’ll name him Sky also, can you tell them so they’ll understand that his white man’s name will also be Sky?” Elizabeth asked as her eyes filled with tears.

Raif explained that his woman wanted to name the boy Sky, the same as the Sioux had. The Sioux were very pleased knowing that they had named him for both the Sioux and the white man.

Each of the Sioux men came then to look upon the boys face and as they each traced the mark of the eagle on his chest chanting his name, smiling proudly as he reached and opened his hands toward them as they spoke his name.

After the naming of the boy child, the Sioux were through with their mission to the post and went to the outer property and sat on the ground, facing the east, to smoke their tobacco in the long pipe and chant the name of the boy as the sun rose above the horizon.

“Raif, if you’re in agreement we’ll name our son Tomas Sky Crenshaw. Tomas after your grandfather, Sky for the Sioux and your family name Crenshaw. I know the Sioux will call him Sky and probably all who come here will as well.”

After the chiefs, elders and the medicine men of the Sioux had gathered to smoke the long pipe, Elizabeth took the young Indian girl and Sky with her to the house to get her clothes and find more diapers for the baby.

The willow bark basket bounced empty in the back of the buggy and fell to the dusty trail where it was whipped off to the side by the stiff breeze.

Hanging against a small bush that had just started to bud and bloom, the basket flipped over. Before it hit the ground, there was a large shadow loom over head and the basket was gone in a flash.

Beth and Raif searched for days wondering how it could just disappear. The basket was never seen, until many years later.

In a matter of weeks the trading post was bustling with traders from all over, many came for the first time after hearing about the Eagle Boy. After dealing with Mr. Raif, they all swore to come here again because he treated them fair and made no attempt to beat them out of their hard earned furs and hides.

Raif had made the decision not to sell alcohol in his trading post, knowing that it could only cause trouble and the government frowned upon supplying whiskey to the Indians. Raif knew too that the trappers and skinners could get rowdy enough, without a belly full of whiskey.

Wagons came empty and left loaded with furs and hides, sometimes they came six and eight at a time as the skinners and trappers kept coming in an endless line from the north and west.

Summer came and young Sky was crawling through the post on the rough floors. Fall was here and he was walking bow-legged across the floor with his first steps. In the spring of the next year when the snow was gone and the flowers were once again blooming, Sky was outside every chance he found an open door.

The Indians as well as the trappers and the skinners were always amused at his curiosity and his smiling face. He would squat on his haunches for hours on the porch of the trading post and listen to the tales of the men. He would squat down with the Indians and look from one to the other as if knowing what they were saying. Sky was always smiling as he sat with his friends.

As he squatted next to them, dressed only in his buckskin breeches and moccasins, he would reach out with his left hand and snatch a fly out of the air as it buzzed by.

The men would laugh at his attempts to catch the fast moving fly. Sky would open his hand and let the dead fly fall to the floor of the porch to the amazement of the Sioux as well as the white men of the plains.

No one had ever seen a small boy with such fast reflexes.

The Cheyenne came from the plains in the south and west and presented him with a beautiful Palomino stud and mare, both stood over eighteen hands. They also brought a head dress of Eagle feathers that Sky was so proud of.

The Nez Perce (fr. ney parsey) sent a beautiful Appaloosa stud and mare with markings like no other in all the plains, these too were big horses, as big or bigger than the Palomino’s. Sky went before the elders and asked the name for warm blanket. They told him OCOZE SINA, which he named his Appaloosa stud. He then asked the name for sister, TAKAWAYA they answered, and he called his mare SINA TAKAWAYA, sister blanket.

Sky grew up with his horses by his side, each day he would be out with them, walking underneath them and sitting cross legged just as the chiefs did as he watched the horses eat from the lush grasses of the plains. Raif bought hay from the farms to the south and stored in the barns for feed during the winter. Even at six years old Sky would be out in snow over his head, clearing a path to the barn so he could feed his horses.

In the spring of his sixth year, Sky rode his big Palomino Stud alone for the first time. Raif had taken the saddle presented to Sky by the Spaniards and shortened the stirrups. The big saddle was decorated with ornate silver inlays and latigo lacings, and the large saddle horn was decorated with silver too.

At six years old, Sky was almost four feet six inches tall and by the time he was twelve, he was almost six feet tall.

Sky was excited as he and Zizi Sukawaka (Blonde Horse) raced across the plains for the first time, the sunlight reflecting off the silver conchos and engraved plates of the Spanish saddle. His tapadero’s were also ornately decorated in silver conchos with latigo laces strung down the sides to blow back in ribbons as they raced across the plains.

Racing with the wind, they ran as wild as the horses of the plains and Sky felt as if he were part of the horse himself and they moved as one.

Sky wanted his hair long like his Sioux brothers and Beth let him do so. He wore it braided at times, but mostly it flew out in the wind as he rode his horses.

Raif taught him to care for his horses and keep them healthy by feeding them, grooming them and keeping their hooves trimmed and rounded. Sky became a master with the hooves by asking the elders of the Sioux questions until he got the answers he was searching for.

He also learned about horsemanship from the Sioux, asking questions and getting lessons in riding all out while shooting his arrows at a moving target as well as a still target. He learned to guide his horse with his knees and let the reins fall to the saddle horn as he rode.

There must have been a hundred long bows and well over a thousand arrows total from all the tribes. Each bow and the arrows from a tribe had decorative colors and symbols painted on them with colorful feathers tied to the bows and waxed sinew for bow strings.

Sky practiced for hours at a time with his many bows until he became a master archer, shooting with the best of those in the plains.

He would grab a bow and all the arrows he could fit into one of his leather quivers and take off for unknown places, sometimes gone until sundown, a time his mother had set for him to be home.

Sky never told anyone where he went on his journey’s alone across the plains. He had a special place that he had found on an outcropping of rocks, along a high bluff overlooking much of the southern plains of South Dakota Territory.

He would leave his horse at the base of the highest point of rocks and climb to the top to look out over the valleys below.

Sky felt as if he were to step off the edge, he would actually soar out from the bluffs as he had seen the eagles do many times, as he sat on his horse in the valley below and looked up.

The second time he made the climb to the top of the outcropping, he saw two eagles come swooping in to land, not fifty feet from where he stood.

Sky stood as if he were part of the tall rock and watched the large birds stretch their wings to catch the wind, slowly settling to the rocks. He stood still, watching as the magnificent birds picked at their talons with their beaks, then one turned its head to scratch at its back with its long hooked beak.

It was one of the times the eagle had turned its head toward its back that Sky knew the big bird had seen him.

The feathers ruffled and the two eagles turned to face him as he stood there by the rock. A screech that felt as if it were actually passing through his head again and again rang out and echoed back and forth across the heavens.

Without even moving they stood face to face. As the eagles looked into his eyes a shadow passed overhead.

Not moving his head, Sky glanced up to see a giant eagle circling the rocks. He could see the eagle’s head as it turned to look down at the smaller eagles and then saw its head jerk as it looked at Sky, standing next to the tall rock. This eagle was truly a giant among the large birds of prey.

Sky wasn’t scared, but he was disappointed that he had invaded the eagle’s space and gotten caught in the act. He was thinking they may leave this place of safety, now that they had been invaded by a man.