In what is now a tradition, we present for Thanksgiving the death prayer of Old Lodge Skins, which comes at the close of Little Big Man by Thomas Berger (who himself died in 2014).

Then he commenced to pray to the Everywhere Spirit in the same stentorian voice, never sniveling but bold and free. “Thank you for making me a Human Being! Thank you for helping me become a warrior! Thank you for all my victories and for all my defeats. Thank you for my vision, and for the blindness in which I saw further. “I have killed many men and loved many women and eaten much meat. I have also been hungry, and I thank you for that and for the added sweetness that food has when you receive it after such a time. “You make all things and direct them in their ways, O Grandfather, and now you have decided that the Human Beings will soon have to walk a new road. Thank you for letting us win once before that happened. Even if my people must eventually pass from the face of the earth, they will live on in whatever men are fierce and strong. So that when women see a man who is proud and brave and vengeful, even if he has a white face, they will cry: ‘That is a Human Being!’…” I stood there in awe and Old Lodge Skins started to sing, and when the cloud arrived overhead, the rain started to patter across his uplifted face, mixing with the tears of joy there. It might have been ten minutes or an hour, and when it stopped and the sun’s setting rays cut through, he give his final thanks and last request. “Take care of my son here,” he says, “and see that he does not go crazy.” He laid down then on the damp rocks and died right away. I descended to the treeline, fetched back some poles, and built him a scaffold. Wrapped him in the red blanket and laid him thereon. Then after a while I started down the mountain in the fading light.

Eschew the movie made from the book, which shares only the title and the names of a few characters from the book, a book which is the moral and historical opposite of the politically correct film. It makes me weep to think of the liberties the director took, which if had done to a woman, would have landed him a thirty-year sentence.

The book itself contains no anachronisms, which itself a matter of great celebration. Nowhere in Berger’s masterpiece does any character look to future and something sickeningly asinine like “Some day we won’t let racial differences influence us.” The movie is saturated in syrup like that, as well as being stridently anti-white.

Also highly recommended (as historical orientation) is the classic The Fighting Cheyennes by George Bird Grinnell, who was born in 1849 and who wrote the book in 1915 (it’s still in print). It is a non-patronizing, non-romantic look at the battles the Cheyenne fought, in, as much as was possible, their own words.

Berger wrote Little Big Man at a time (1964) when white boys still wanted to run off and be Indians. Nearly twenty years later, the TV show Grizzly Adams fulfilled the same escapist function. What little boys want to be now they had best keep quiet about or out come the pills (or awards).

Old Lodge Skins was Little Big Man’s adoptive grandfather. The scene takes place shortly after the Battle of Little Big Horn, which the Cheyenne called the Battle at the Greasy Grass. This being the Current Year, I have to remind the reader this is when General Custer and his small army was wiped out by the Indians, the last real victory they were to have in the Plains wars.

There is much in Old Lodge Skin’s prayer that still works. Men, remember to offer it or one like it as Thanksgiving today.

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