Strikes Two Woman

This small story, told by Pretty Shield, a famous Crow shaman, is about Strikes Two, a powerful woman shaman and warrior who rode out bravely against Lakota tribesmen who attacked her village. I want to be her!

I saw Strikes Two, a woman sixty years old, riding around camp on a gray horse. She carried only her root-digger, and she was singing her medicine song as though Lakota bullets and arrows were not flying around her.

Then I heard her say, "Now all of you sing: 'They are whipped. They are running away.' Keep singing these words until I come back."

When the men, and even the women, began to sing as Strikes Two told them, she rode straight out at the Lakota waving her root-digger, and singing that song. I saw her, I heard her, and my heart swelled, because she was a woman.

The Lakota, afraid of her medicine, turned and ran away. The fight was won, and by a woman.