Little Big Rivalry

The mystery sweeps across these desolate grasslands like a cold, haunting wind.

For nearly 70 years, it has been a consistent drumbeat of cluttered life in the biggest village on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

The streets here have no names. The houses have no numbers. Some residents use faded blankets for window panes, splintered outhouses for relief.

The mystery dances through it all, coming to rest in an old aluminum warehouse in the middle of town, in a picture frame that holds a face both beautiful and sad.

Some say this is where the mystery mourns.

Her name was Sue Anne Big Crow.

Seven years ago, she was the best girls’ basketball player in the state of South Dakota, scored 39 points a game for Pine Ridge High.

Today, her large senior basketball photograph hangs in a youth center, lovely and radiant.

“And bruised,” says her mother Chick, clenching and unclenching her fists. “Look at the bruises.”

Look closely, and you will notice Sue Anne’s left cheek and right leg are discolored.

“See what they did?” her mother says.

Shortly before the photo was taken, Sue Anne was in a fistfight with a girl from neighboring Red Cloud High. They rolled around a parking lot of the convenience store hangout, kicking and screaming and punching.

The girls were eventually separated, but so was the town. Again.

Because of that fight, Pine Ridge and Red Cloud stopped scheduling each other in girls’ and boys’ basketball. Again.

Four months later, Sue Anne Big Crow died in a single-car crash that some Pine Ridge people blamed on Red Cloud’s alleged practicing of bad medicine.

The schools have not scheduled each other since, extending one of the strangest, and most bitter, sports rivalries in the United States.

“It’s so bad,” Robert Yellow Hair, former vice president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, says as he huddles over a cup of coffee in that convenience store hangout. “It’s so unhealthy.”

Red Cloud High and Pine Ridge High are only five miles apart, virtual next-door neighbors in this remote, 4,500-person corner of the Lakota Sioux Nation.

The next nearest high school is a 52-mile drive away, along two-lane roads through expanses of nothing.

Yet Red Cloud and Pine Ridge haven’t scheduled each other in boys’ and girls’ basketball for any extended period since they began playing each other in the 1920s.

The teams play only when they are forced to, seeded against each other in preseason tournaments or district championships. This is usually no more than once a year and rarely within 100 miles of their passionate fans’ reach.

“We’re like Duke and North Carolina,” says Mark Prezquez, former Red Cloud player. “Only they play a lot more than we play.”

The mystery is, why?

“Why do we have to drive at least 60 miles to play every game when we can drive right down the street?” asks George Bettelyoun, former Pine Ridge star. “The point is, it’s ridiculous.”

They are of one tribe, the Oglala Sioux, known for its strong community ties.

They are of one heart, it appears, with seemingly everyone in the village proudly claiming to be related to everyone else.

“But there’s been so much hate,” Chick Big Crow says.

Over the years, the games have featured fans brawling in the stands, throwing liquor bottles at one another, chasing others out onto the court.

Before one game, fans from Pine Ridge stoned players from Red Cloud as they were riding through town in the back of a truck.

After another game, a handful of players from each team battled with screwdrivers.

When the teams play in Rapid City, the major town two hours north, there have been fistfights in the lobby of the Civic Center and later in hotel bars.

Winning teams in this rivalry have had the windows of their buses broken. Losing teams have been jeered and taunted on village streets.

“The word ‘Lakota’ means allies. . . . This shows how far we’ve degenerated,” Yellow Hair says. “We talk about Lakota values, but, in reality, we don’t practice them.”

The rivalry is so old, so deep, that it has bounced far beyond the simple confines of the reservation’s most revered game.

Jobs here are sometimes handed out by tribal officials on the basis of where the prospective employee attended school.

“Red Cloud people won’t give jobs to Pine Ridge people that quickly, and vice versa,” Yellow Hair says.

Families sometimes spend the winter feuding if high school loyalties are split.

When hospital worker Larry Eagle Bull went against family tradition recently by transferring son Toby from Pine Ridge to Red Cloud for “academic reasons,” he did so at his own peril.

“Everybody looked at me like a traitor. . . . They said my dad would turn over in his grave,” Eagle Bull says.

Even in death, the conflict does not diminish.

A woman who had attended Pine Ridge High recently railed against Red Cloud from the pulpit at her husband’s funeral.

Then there was the time, several years ago, the Red Cloud girls were leaving town to face the Pine Ridge girls in a district tournament championship game in Rapid City.

Red Cloud’s star player was pregnant and had been sent to jail for the duration of the tournament by a Pine Ridge judge after her grandmother had had her arrested for truancy.

But a Red Cloud judge intervened, ordering her release. Then a Red Cloud police officer stopped the team bus on the way out of town.

“He told us to take the back roads,” says Dusty LeBeau, former Red Cloud coach. “He said on the main roads, a Pine Ridge cop was waiting to stop us and take her back to jail.”

So LeBeau drove the bus along the bumpy back roads, reached Rapid City safely and his team took the floor in time for tipoff.

The Pine Ridge folks weren’t finished. They pleaded with the referee not to allow the star to play because she was pregnant.

The referees laughed. The teams played. Red Cloud won.

“You draw a line in that town,” says LeBeau, who now coaches elsewhere. “You are either on one side, or the other.”

LeBeau said he can’t explain it. He is not alone.

The only thing that everyone agrees on is that the mystery has become like the wind, strong and self-supporting and seemingly unstoppable.

In one corner are the Red Cloud Crusaders, the Catholic school tucked around a dark wooden church behind a hill on the outskirts of town, with an enrollment of about 150.

It is still remembered by some as a place where priests allegedly abused the Indian boarding students and still hold an air of superiority today.

“You know Catholics, they think they’re better than everyone else,” says Vince Brewer, a tribal elder and part-time judge. “At Red Cloud it’s like, ‘We’re right, you’re wrong, there’s no in between.’ ”

In the other corner are the Pine Ridge Thorpes, the colorfully painted government school in the center of town, with an enrollment of about 450.

It is viewed by some as a place that allows students to run wild, perpetuating the myth of the untamed reservation.

“Everybody says kids who want an education come to Red Cloud,” senior Rich Patton says. “They say kids who want no life, they go there.”

These feelings don’t fit easily into a basketball, the games summoning a warrior spirit in the descendants of some of this country’s greatest warriors.

It was the Sioux who had defeated Custer at Little Bighorn. One leader there, Crazy Horse, became a symbol of Indian independence and, after a lifetime battling incursions into the northern plains, was killed during a scuffle with U.S. troops at a government guardhouse.

That legacy lives today. Only the war here is no longer against outsiders.

“How can we talk about reconciliation with the rest of the country,” says Brian Brewer, Pine Ridge principal, “when we can’t even reconcile with a neighboring school?”

Not Just a Game, It’s a Battle

As usual, the teams played only once this season, in the first round of the Lakota Nation Invitational tournament at Rapid City in December.

“An interesting draw, wasn’t it?” says smiling principal Brewer, who runs the tournament and is trying to bring the schools back together.

Here’s how interesting:

Red Cloud takes the floor shaken from the previous week’s suicide of a freshman girl and suddenly without star guard Toby Eagle Bull, who disappears at tipoff.

Pine Ridge takes the floor missing three top players, each suspended for one game for breaking team rules.

In the first 30 seconds, Red Cloud’s BJ Brave Heart and Pine Ridge’s Muilozahe Berg exchange shoves and taunts, and a double technical foul is called.

“This is just a game,” Brave Heart shouts.

“No, this is a battle,” Berg shouts.

By the end of the first half, there have been five technical fouls and several near fights, and Red Cloud trails, 37-28.

“What in the hell is wrong with you guys!” Will Garnier, Red Cloud coach, yells in the tiny locker room at halftime. “No more technicals! This is just a game.”

The sweaty players, mostly small and mostly young, shake their heads. They no longer believe him.

There are no more fights in the second half, but the game stays rough, with players hustling over each other into the stands for loose balls long after Pine Ridge has clinched an eventual 75-60 victory.

“I’m just glad it’s over,” says Bill Pourier, Pine Ridge coach.

Afterward, there is no fighting among fans, perhaps because there aren’t that many fans, this being a weeknight game two hours from home.

The story, instead, is in the Red Cloud locker room, where Toby Eagle Bull’s early absence is destined to become another bit of rivalry lore.

He showed up for the game with his hair dyed bright blue in honor of school colors.

“A warrior,” he said.

But the referee wouldn’t let him play looking like that.

So for most of the first half, the Red Cloud leader was standing in line at a nearby Cost Cutters barber shop waiting for somebody to shave his head.

“Haircut cost me nine bucks, but what was I going to do?” Eagle Bull says. “This is crazy. These games, they’re always crazy.”

On the Road to a Mystery

The search for the mystery begins with a search for something else.

You hear about a heartwarming little sports program on the prairie. You call Bob Brave Heart, the Red Cloud principal, to ask him.

He tells you about his basketball team, how it is consistently one of the best in the state, despite hours of bus travel in winter conditions to play a simple game.

“Where’s the nearest school?” you ask.

“Oh, right up the road, Pine Ridge High School,” he says.

“So don’t you play them?” you ask.

“Well, no,” he says.

“Why not?”

“Long story,” he says.

So you fly to Denver, change to a smaller plane, fly to Rapid City, drive two hours south past Mount Rushmore, nearly hit a buffalo along a deserted, unlit road and pull into one of the respectable hotels closest to Pine Ridge.

Sixty miles away.

The next day you drive along a thin strip of deserted highway among miles of swaying hills of grass, into the unannounced border of the second-largest reservation in the United States, past a gleaming gaming facility, past various encampments of hovels and shacks.

The road rises, then dips into what appears to be nothing more than a litter-strewn stop along a lost road. The side streets are filled with roaming dogs, hollowed-out cars, crusted paper plates, dirty diaper bags.

It is Pine Ridge, the center of arguably the poorest county in America, where 70% of those under 18 are living below the poverty level.

You pull into the gas station-deli in the center of town to make a toll-free call.

It costs 35 cents.

You get back in the car, turn down a dirt road and reach a small aluminum home belonging to tribal elder Joe Blue Horse.

And into a story.

Several years ago, Blue Horse was running for tribal councilman.

He did well in the primary and expected to win the regular election.

But he is a longtime Red Cloud supporter. Just before his big day, he sat in the middle of the Crusader cheering section during a district basketball tournament game between Pine Ridge and Red Cloud.

And promptly lost the election.

“There ain’t no in-between around here,” Blue Horse says. “Once you’ve gone one way, you’ve gone that way forever.”

You leave, and using landmark directions--remember, the streets have no names here--you find Pine Ridge High.

And another story.

It is about 7 p.m., the Pine Ridge boys’ basketball team is beginning practice, darkness has settled outside, there seems to be no one else around for miles.

Yet Pourier, the coach, puts strips of paper over the windows of the gym doors so nobody can watch.

Then he hangs a paper sign that reads, “Players and managers only.”

“You never know who is going to be out there,” Pourier says.

Like, maybe, Coach Will Garnier of Red Cloud? Like, you guys haven’t talked before? Like, every day?

A couple of surprising aspects of the current rivalry are that Red Cloud’s Garnier works under Pine Ridge’s Pourier at the hospital, and while Garnier attended Pine Ridge, Pourier attended Red Cloud.

Again you ask, why the conflict? Why the deep animosity between people who sometimes are rarely more than five miles apart for their entire lives?

“Can’t exactly say,” Pourier says.

The next morning, you return to the reservation, only this time stopping at the edge of town, at the tidy cluster of buildings that is Red Cloud.

You walk into a Native American gift shop, meet a frail-looking man with a scraggly beard, the school’s unofficial curator and keeper of the records.

If anybody can unlock the mystery, you figure, it is Brother C.M. Simon.

“Records?” he says. “What records?”

It turns out, there are few written records of games between the schools.

Nobody knows how many times they’ve played, or how many times they haven’t, or who has won more.

Because there is no newspaper in town, there are no detailed accounts of fights or vandalism.

The closer you get, the farther away you are.

“It’s just always been one of those them-versus-us things,” Simon says. “If you know precisely how it started, you tell me. I’ve been here 35 years and still haven’t figured it out.”

As with other traditions on the reservation, this one apparently has been passed down orally, through stories swapped at the town’s grocery store or the Pizza Hut that looks like a mobile home.

As with other traditions, this one is as old as the wailing chants and drumbeats that float daily from the reservation radio station.

Pine Ridge Boarding School opened its doors in 1879.

Red Cloud, also a boarding school before closing its dorms 20 years ago, opened as Holy Rosary Mission in 1888.

The first recorded basketball meeting between the schools occurred in 1929, when Holy Rosary defeated Pine Ridge in a tournament.

Like most government and church institutions of that era, the schools were trying to strip the Oglala Sioux of their heritage.

They forbade everything from speaking the Lakota language to wearing native dress.

Basketball became one of the few ways youngsters could emulate their forefathers in acts of bravery and skill.

Houses here might have holes underneath the front window and old tires for a porch, but around the back there will be a perfectly good basketball goal.

You find Bettelyoun, 28, the former South Dakota Mr. Basketball, standing near his goal. It is a sturdy backboard and rim nailed to a wilting tree in the front yard of a one-bathroom home he shares with nine people.

Bettelyoun was one of the few who earned a college scholarship, to a small NAIA school in South Dakota. But he has returned because he never felt comfortable on the outside.

“Basketball connects us to the bigger picture,” he says. “Many things sacred in our culture are round. The sun. The medicine wheel. Basketball is like that, sacred.”

If it is that important, why can’t the two schools be good sports about it?

“Maybe there are other things more important,” the Pine Ridge principal, Brewer, says one night while his basketball team practices down the hall. “Here, I’ve got somebody you should meet.”

Moments later you find yourself in a cozy dorm behind the school, with giggling teenage girls watching a video in a large living room.

There is a heavy-eyed woman watching the girls from behind a desk. Her name is Rita Buckman. She thinks she can solve the mystery.

She says the rivalry was fueled in the mid-1950s when the villagers’ children would escape the Red Cloud dormitories and tell their parents about abuse by the religious brothers.

Those children would then transfer to Pine Ridge.

“The priests and nuns, if you had black hair, they treated you like a dog,” says Buckman, a dorm assistant who lived at Red Cloud for six years.

She describes students being beaten with straps, of having their hair chopped off if they tried to escape.

She says she remembers once being forced to kneel at night in front of an open window during the winter for an hour after misbehaving.

“In their eyes, we were always bad,” she says.

Over the next couple of days, her stories are corroborated by several others, including tribal official Everette Tuttle, sitting in a tiny room atop a cramped city hall.

“There’s been years of buildup in older people over those problems with Red Cloud,” he says. “Lots of angry people who never dealt with it. Back then, there were no counselors, nobody to listen to it.”

Tuttle escaped from Holy Rosary in the fifth grade, spent all day hiding in the hills, but was caught and sent back by his parents.

He eventually graduated from Pine Ridge and cheers for that school today.

Back at Red Cloud, Brother Simon acknowledges the former impatience of young Jesuit teachers with the Native Americans.

“When you bring a person from a middle-class white city and plop them into what is essentially an urban ghetto, you have a challenge,” he says.

But Father Tom Merkel, school superintendent, adds, “The experience of a boarding school is mixed. . . . Some people are negative, others are positive. It’s important to keep balance in that.”

You stop by the Pizza Hut one night before leaving the reservation, and clerk Louis Pulliam tells you about balance.

“I had a Red Cloud booster club poster on the wall here,” he says. “Then some Pine Ridge people came in and told me I had to put up a Pine Ridge booster club poster.”

Pulliam, recently graduated from Pine Ridge, sighs.

“You know, I don’t think the kids realize how serious it is until they get out of high school,” he says.

You hear this and you remember a group that has been forgotten during the search for this mystery.

You have not asked the children.

This is on your mind later, up in Rapid City, when you are standing in a hallway after Pine Ridge’s victory over Red Cloud.

An interesting thing happens to the players when the heated game ends. The bad feelings end. The aggression ends. They are friends again.

Yamni Jack, Pine Ridge’s star of the game, is wearing a funky cap that contains a long, braided wig.

Walking past him is Toby Eagle Bull, the Red Cloud boy who has just shaved his head.

Eagle Bull suddenly grabs the cap, puts it on his shiny dome, and laughs. There is a pause, then Jack begins laughing.

Soon, players from both teams have formed a nudging, smiling circle of kids from one tribe, one home.

Of course. You have not asked the children.

“It’s not about us, it’s about the adults,” said Red Cloud’s Prezquez, back on the reservation. “You walk off the floor talking with your buddies from the other team, then you look up in the stands and see people throwing punches.”

Even the adults acknowledge it.

“It’s the parents,” says John Steele, former tribal president, as he leaves a Red Cloud girls’ volleyball game. “You know how youth are. They listen to their parents. Even when their parents are not talking, they listen.”

Healing Power

The search for youth brings you, on the final day of your visit, back to where this story started.

To where the mystery mourns, and where some are convinced a resolution can begin.

It is a drafty old building that used to house a plastic factory.

Now it is the Sue Anne Big Crow Boys and Girls Club, built with the life savings of Chick Big Crow as a memorial to her daughter.

It has a snack bar, game room, study room and one room devoted to Sue Anne’s numerous trophies and highlight films.

Most important though, it is filled with students from both schools.

They are hanging out, Pine Ridge with Red Cloud, sharing stories and homework, acting the way the adults only wish they could act.

“Sue Anne was part of the rift,” Chick says. “Maybe this place can be part of the healing.”

Sue Anne healed many things when she played, a girl capable not only of winning a state championship with a turnaround jumper at the buzzer as a sophomore, but of dunking over stereotypes.

During introductions once at an out-of-state school where administrators had balked at hosting Native Americans, Sue Anne put on her warmups like a cape and danced around the gym.

She counseled troubled teens in town, urged them to shed the forlorn destiny that was carved for their ancestors, made them realize some things were just plain dumb.

Now they gather nightly under her roof, an inviting place considering the nearest major mall is two hours away and the nearest movie theater is an hour.

They can’t help but notice her picture, but this generation does not look at the bruises. This generation sees only the smile.

When somebody in the Red Cloud locker room before the Pine Ridge game tells Toby Eagle Bull to be a tough Catholic, he makes an announcement.

“I am not Catholic,” he says, wise beyond his sophomore year. “I am Lakota.”

It is that statement that maybe turns this into not so much of a mystery after all.

Maybe this conflict is simply about a great nation so overwhelmed by outside forces that have tried to turn it into Thorpes and Crusaders, it occasionally forgets it is simply Lakota.

Maybe this is about a strong, old man who needs his children to remind him how he became so strong, and so old.

“Our ancestors were warriors, fighting for the same thing,” Rich Patton of Red Cloud says. “We all want to be the same way. Fighting for the same thing.”

The adults have noticed.

Recently, Pine Ridge said it wants to start playing again.

“It is time we sat down,” principal Brewer says. “It is just time.”

Red Cloud, for the first time, will discuss the issue at its spring school board meeting.

“We should be loyal to one another as a Lakota people before we are loyal to our alma mater,” principal Brave Heart says. “We’ve got to end the hatred.”

To understand how it could work, look at the school’s track teams. Because there are not enough competitors at each school to have their own teams, they share one.

Shortly after her death, Sue Anne Big Crow’s spirit apparently sent a message to her mother.

“She told me to plant flowers at the school, because nothing is beautiful there,” Chick Big Crow says, her tired eyes reddening. “Because they fight all the time.”

So she did, on the thick lawn across from the plain homes that surround the school, beautiful multicolored flowers.

If you look hard enough, through the swirls of confusion and candy wrappers, you can still see those flowers today. If you look hard enough.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.