Grandfather, Great Spirit, Once More Behold Me

You Remember That My Great Vision Came To Me When I Was Only Nine Years Old, And You Have Seen That I Was Not Much Good For Anything Until After I Had Performed The Horse Dance Near The Mouth Of The Tongue River During My Eighteenth Summer.

I Did Not Know Then How Much Was Ended. When I Look Back Now From This High Hill Of My Old Age, I Can Still See The Butchered Women And Children Lying Heaped And Scattered All Along The Crooked Gulch As Plain As When I Saw Them With Eyes Still Young. And I Can See That Something Else Died There In The Bloody Mud, And Was Buried In The Blizzard. A People's Dream Died There. It Was A Beautiful Dream.

They Told Me I Had Been Sick Twelve Days, Lying Like Dead All The While, And That Whirlwind Chaser, Who Was Standing Bear's Uncle And A Medicine Man, Had Brought Me Back To Life.

Grown Men May Learn From Very Little Children, For The Hearts Of Little Children Are Pure, And, Therefore, The Great Spirit May Show To Them Many Things Which Older People Miss.

And If The Great Fear Had Not Come Upon Me, As It Did, And Forced Me To Do My Duty, I Might Have Been Less Good To The People Than Some Man Who Had Never Dreamed At All, Even With The Memory Of So Great A Vision In Me.