They carried Pfc. Sheldon Hawk Eagle to the heart of all that is and laid him to rest Tuesday after a 24-hour outpouring of grief and pride that sent a message from the Lakota Nation to the nation at large.

Hawk Eagle, a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division, died in Iraq on Nov. 15 when two Army helicopters crashed. His homecoming to Eagle Butte and the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation was the occasion for an extraordinary display of a community’s sense of loss and a traditional sense of honor.

In a country that seems almost averse to facing up to the human cost of war, the ceremonies for the 21-year-old Hawk Eagle had a dignity and depth that were impossible to ignore. They began with a procession, led by a riderless horse, that took his coffin to the auditorium of the Cheyenne-Eagle Butte High School.

For the next 18 hours – including an overnight vigil – hundreds of tribal members listened to Christian and Lakota prayers, honor songs offered by tribal drum groups, and the words of dignitaries and tribal officials. There were giveaways, feasts and, at sunrise, a two-hour funeral followed by a three-hour procession that bore Hawk Eagle’s body 150 miles west to the Black Hills – the heart of all that is in Lakota tradition – for burial in the national cemetery near Sturgis, S.D.

It didn’t seem enough.

While the rest of the country may be agonizing over the ongoing carnage in Iraq and whether the war should have been avoided, the death of Sheldon Hawk Eagle brought forth older pains.

“When a tribe loses a member, all nations suffer,” said Army Sgt. Maj. Dennis Roy, an Ojibwe from Minnesota’s White Earth Reservation who coordinated the military services.

Roy asked half a dozen tribal members who are serving in the military to stand in front of Hawk Eagle’s flag-and-eagle-feather-covered coffin. Then he asked any veterans in the throng to come forward and lay hands on the young soldiers, to give them strength.

Almost 200 men came forward, in caps and eagle feathers, combat boots and camouflage, many with yellow ribbons pinned to their shoulders to signify that a loved one or relative is in Iraq.

“Their dedication and commitment is absolutely overwhelming,” said an astonished Brig. Gen. David Ralston, who made the long trip from the Pentagon to Eagle Butte to posthumously present a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart to Hawk Eagle. “We have not always dealt with them [Indian people] as we should, and I know they have some very meaningful issues with the government. But they have a willingness to set their own agendas aside for the good of the whole nation.

“I wish we would see more of that in the rest of the country.”

The issues are many and long-standing on Sioux reservations in South Dakota, including on the Cheyenne River Reservation, which counts among its members many descendants of the Big Foot band that was massacred in 1890— at Wounded Knee by the U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry (in what Indians believe was revenge for Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s defeat at Little Bighorn 14 years earlier).

Poverty is endemic on the reservation. It has a staggeringly high unemployment rate of 78 percent, and many young people join the military not only to serve their country, but also because they hope it will be a step out of poverty. It often doesn’t work out.

“They go in the military because they want to go to college and get a job, but a lot of them end up back on the reservation,” said Robert Pretty Boy, a veteran.

“We thought if we went, then the next guys won’t have to,” added another veteran, Richard Charging Eagle, whose adopted daughter, he said, is in Iraq. “But now these young kids have to go, too. I think there’s something in our nature that means we are meant to be warriors. We’re different.”

Barbara Blue Coat’s son, Wyatt, a second cousin of Sheldon Hawk Eagle, is a Marine who will be deployed to Iraq in February. “There’s nothing around here, on the reservation,” Blue Coat said. “No jobs, so we encourage our boys to go to the military for education. But now, war broke out and it’s a different story. I’ll be on pins and needles the whole time my son is in Iraq. . . . I don’t like our boys getting killed over there, and you hear about that every day.”

Pretty Boy and Charging Eagle were both wounded in Vietnam and belong to the Red Feather Society of the reservation’s Akicita, or soldiers, organization that served as an honor guard for Hawk Eagle’s wake and funeral.

When they came back from Vietnam, they say, they were given $150 by the tribe and then – as many Vietnam veterans believe – were ignored by the country at large. There are more than 500 Vietnam vets among the 14,000 enrolled members of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, and they have many “issues” with the government, Ralston acknowledged.

Still, they are proud of the next generation that has gone off to war – some 90 tribal members are under arms right now, including 30 deployed in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Why – given a history of treaties broken by the U.S. government, the Wounded Knee massacre and generations of neglect – do the Lakota still enlist in large numbers?

It’s simple, said Charging Eagle: “We defeated the 7th Cavalry and took their flag away from them. Now, that flag belongs to us.”

The U.S. flag was waving at half-staff from a hundred poles Tuesday in Eagle Butte, where the tribal council had declared a day of mourning.

“We love our country more than any other race,” tribal Chairman Harold Frazier told mourners Monday at Hawk Eagle’s wake. “Because we were here first.”

Statistics do show that American Indians serve in the military at a higher rate than any other ethnic group. Poverty and patriotism help explain why so many Indians enlist. But there’s another, deeper reason: pride.

“We come from a warrior people,” said Carol Little Wound, vice president of Si Tanka College (“Si Tanka” is Lakota for “Big Foot”). “As Lakota people, it is an honor to be a warrior and protect one’s homeland, one’s freedom, one’s family. We are deeply sorry that Sheldon has come home to us in a casket. But that does not dismiss the pride we feel in him.”

Little Wound bestowed an honorary college degree on Hawk Eagle, saying she believed that if he had lived, the gentle-looking soldier in glasses would have come home to study and to help his people by fighting another battle: “The battle to protect Indian sovereignty and Indian freedoms that continues today to be fought in courtrooms and government offices – a battle that we have to be armed with knowledge and degrees.”

Hawk Eagle was a heavy machine gunner in Iraq, and his weapon was meticulously maintained, Ralston told mourners. But he also had a knack for playing with children, whether in Iraq or in Eagle Butte. The United States may never know what it lost in the death of a young man from a remote Indian reservation who was eager to serve. But in Eagle Butte, the loss is keen.

A high school classmate, Winona Washburn, wrote a song to honor Hawk Eagle and sang it at his funeral Tuesday. “A Lakota warrior who laid down his life for us,” she sang, while mourners listened intently. “Today, an eagle soars with wings.”

Later, after the funeral procession, Sheldon Hawk Eagle was buried in the Black Hills, the land that Big Foot and Crazy Horse and many Lakota warriors died to save but that was taken away nonetheless.

Hawk Eagle’s traditional name, carved on the headstone that will mark his grave, was Wanbli Ohitika, or Brave Eagle.

As he was being buried, a Black Hawk helicopter – like the one in which he died – flew over the cemetery and lingered over the snowy hills. Then it flew into the heart of all that there is, and was gone.

— Originally posted Nov. 26, 2003

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