CHAPTER 36

Tommy “Eagle Feather” Crow

Good wombs have borne bad sons. -The Tempest, act 1, scene 2

 Heaven will direct it.  -Hamlet, act 1, scene 4

Judge the worth and the character of a person by what he or she does in life. Don’t judge a person by who or what that person is, what they have done, or what they are about to become. Live your own life according to the portion of faith God has given to you, and all will play itself out in the final scene.

 I have asked each person I interviewed for this project to give me their interpretation of a Shakespearean quote I thought somehow related to them. I was amazed at the responses I received, just as I was amazed by the response I gave. Truly, this project was blessed from its inception. With only five questions poised to each interviewee, I’m astounded and thankful for the heartfelt responses I was given.

Since this is my project, with the approval of Matlin, I will be the first to sit in the hot seat and answer my own questions. It’s only fair for me to do this.

Frank Fools Crow handed me a sacred ornament. It consisted of a leather star tinged with blue, and from the center of the star hung a strip of hide from the breast of a buffalo, together with a feather from the wing of an eagle. The ornament was suspended from a leather hoop to be placed around the neck. This was how Frank Fools Crow explained the sacred ornament to me: “Here you see the Morning Star. Who sees the Morning Star shall see more, for he shall be wise.”

Then lifting the eagle feather, he said, “This means Wakan Tanka [the Great Mysterious One], and it also means that our thoughts should rise high as the eagles do.” Then, lifting the strip of buffalo hide, he said, “This means all the good things of this world—food and shelter.” Handing the ornament to me, he said, “My friend, my son, I wish you all these things. Wear it around your neck.” (Hang tight to the end of Matt’s story. In volume 5 book 10, this story comes alive again as I give this sacred ornament to a great man. Find out who that man is and how the Morning Star comes into play.)

I am often asked, “What side are you on? The side of the white man or the side of the Indian?” My answer is always “I am on the side of truth.” Here is my story.

My name is Tommy Crow. I knew in my spirit before leaving the warmth of my mother’s womb that I would have a special journey in life. I felt the beat of the drums within the rhythm of my heart as I danced within the womb. My mother had a hard pregnancy, I was told, probably because I had so much to do in life I wanted to get an early start. I already saw the world with the eyes of my heart, because I knew I would never look at it with the eyes of my face.

I was born Tommy Crow on June 23, 1970. My father, I never knew. He was probably one of Dick Wilson’s men who raped and plundered my people to keep them in submission. My mother never talked about how I was conceived. She was probably one of his victims. Therefore, I was probably conceived in violence. I have no proof of that today, and I had none before she abandoned me when I was five years old. Mine is an amazing story, just as Matlin’s is.

Rosebud was where I was born. Rosebud is located in South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The streets, dirty alleys, and an occasional old shack I called home for the first five years of my life. I was determined in my spirit from the beginning to escape from what mankind had provided me and look somewhere else for that escape to freedom. How was I going to do it? I didn’t know. I was just a child.

I claim to be a full-blooded Oglala Lakota Sioux. There are no records of my birth, no documentation of my existence. Again, I was probably born in a dirty alley somewhere in Rosebud, conceived out of horror. You may ask how I know this much. My mother left a note pinned to me when she left.

My name is Tommy Crow. I am a full-blooded Oglala Lakota Sioux Indian born in Rosebud, South Dakota, on June 23, 1970.

I still have this note today. The note continues:

The necklace around your neck was given to you by a man who fought at Wounded Knee in 1973. I don’t know his name. You were three years old when he gave it to you. He also had a vision for you, and this is it: “You are seen sitting on top of a mountain of stone at the right hand of a great man. You have come to save his soul from destruction.” That’s it. He gave you the name Eagle Feather and left.

A feather was pinned to me along with the note. I am still in awe that my mother didn’t take the necklace and sell it. Through the violence and horror of my birth, she, my mother, retained a sense of decency. That only proves to me that a mother’s love for her child is stronger than the hate of this world and her fellow man.

For how long I sat on that bench, I don’t know. I waited for my mother to return. I knew she wouldn’t forget me. I never saw her again, but still I had hope. I remember sleeping on the bench all night, waiting, scared, and waiting. Maybe my mother was killed. It was my spirit who spoke to me in the night and said a man would pick me up in the morning. I fell asleep.

There was an old man nudging me to wake up. The sun had come up. He was a very old man. His wrinkled face had surely seen many moons and winters. Even though his face was hard with years, he was soft in his spirit. He held me by the hand and took me home.

I called him great-grandfather because I thought he was. His name was Frank Fools Crow. My name is Tommy Crow. We were related, I thought. We weren’t. We just had the same last names, I thought. I was later to find out he gave me his name in celebration of becoming his grandson. He was honored when I called him Great Grandfather. It showed respect.

Fools Crow and his wife raised me. Fools Crow was a medicine man and a holy man. He taught me his way of life even though I was not called to be a holy man or a medicine man. I learned how to respect Grandmother Earth and Grandfather Sky. I learned the plants with healing powers, and I learned the old ways of my people. Fools Crow, I later learned, was born around 1890. He was eighty-five when he found me on that bench.

He taught me to be proud of my Lakota blood. He told me stories about our people that had been handed down from generation to generation. I would sit for hours listening to the stories Great Grandfather would tell. As I remembered these stories, I wrote them down. One story I remember in particular was that of Ptesan Win, the sacred White Buffalo Woman.