The Calvary's Attack- My Side of the Story

 My name is Akecheta. I live in a Lakota Tribe close to a river, and I don't have a specific owner to look after. I prefer to look after all of them, young and old. And here's why.

The day the White Men attacked is burned into my brain. I will never forget it as long as I live. Not only because it was a scene of total blood thirst and wreckage on both ends, but because I blame myself. I was, am, and always will be as cocky as anyone can be. I always thought nothing could get by me and no one was stronger. I had survived my first few months of life in the coldest, harshest winter we've ever seen in this area, so I thought I was pretty tough. But then, the dreadful day came.

It was just another normal day in the village. I was out hanging around on the edges of the village just messing around with a few of my friends. We were racing and showing off and things like that. Everything was peaceful as it always was when suddenly, I heard a sharp, loud sound followed by yelling and screaming. I snapped my head up and searched over the hills surrounding our village and I saw them. They were racing toward my home. White Men. I froze, anger and a little bit of fear locke dme into place. My eyesight turned a red color and it took a second for it to get back to normal. When it did, those stupid White Men were tearing down everyone's homes. I was stunned at how quickly they were tearing things apart. They had pulled down nearly half of the homes in less than a minute! I finally came to my senses and immediately charged into the village. I knocked over the first horse I laid my eyes on. He had that ugly, bulky, hard blanket most of the fancy horses have. He fell to the ground along with his white man and I stomped right beside the man. I went through the whole village like this: rider less and knocking down as many horses as I could. Sometimes I charged after White Men on foot knocking them down. A few pointed their loud sticks at me and once I felt a sharp pain on my side. Somewhere in all the fighting, I saw my wild stallion friend helping out. I also saw Rain, my other close friend with her human, Little Creek. I hoped they were doing fine, but didn't have much time to think about it at that current moment. I ran to the outskirts to catch my breath for a moment. I caught a fleeting glance at Rain and Little Creek by the river. One of the White Men pointed his stick at her and that loud noise came out. She fell into the river and before I could run to see if she was ok, the stallion jumped in after her. I made sure they resurfaced before running back into the fight. After a few minutes of knocking more of the same horses over (and making sure they wouldn’t get back up again), I felt someone jump onto me. I didn't really care until he led me away from the village. I thought he was running away and I was disgusted with him. That is, until I saw what we were running to. Two White Men had started to retreat and we were chasing them. Another horse and rider joined us, I didn't look to see who, and we chased those men for almost half an hour. I caught on quickly why our humans weren't shooting at them; we were following them to their small camp. We got there after a few  more minutes and I was thankful it was not the main camp I had heard about. (Even I knew we wouldn't've been able to do anything to that camp.) Then, since there were only two white men, we quickly wrecked the small camp leaving the two alive and quickly rushed back home.

When we got back my heart sank. My entire home was destroyed. My rider slipped off, patted my neck, and ran to his broken home to help set it back up. I walked around helping where ever they needed me. Every time I helped my side started hurting more and more. I pretended not to feel it because i thought it was just sore from hitting so many other horses and people. But then, I felt something trickling down my leg and someone noticed. I had gotten hit by one of the loud sticks and I was bleeding. The person who noticed it wrapped my side up and tied me to a tree so I couldn’t help anymore. I protested but they wouldn't pay me attention. Standing there thinking, I became more and more upset with myself and felt more and more useless. Sure I had helped defend our home and helped put some of it back together, but I should have never let it have gotten that far. I claimed to be better than everyone at everything so I should’ve been paying closer attention. Our camp had been attacked before so I should've known to be at least a little bit alert at all times and not recklessly goofing off. I hung my head in shame and decided right then and there to never let anybody destroy my home like that ever again.

Now, I am the self appointed tribe protector. I roam around always alert to what's happening. We have had a couple more attacks since that day, but we've won them all because I was there to warn everyone. I get cockier every time I help protect the humans, but that one failure will always stick out.