The Chapel on the Hill in the Badlands

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Amy has wondered what the story is behind this painting.



Steve, it turns out, knew much about it, and he wrote this in answer to her request for a tale.

This picture shows of a church where a mass murder/suicide had taken place. Native American Indians protested the building of the church because it was on sacred ground. The tree had been used for many centuries as a place of worship. Every fall they would migrate to the tree to perform the sacred prairie dog dance. This dance symbolizes life and death of the human race. We emerge from the earth, scurry about our lives and return to the dusty earth. The indians had warned the monks that built the church that they will perish for building on the site. Years and decades went by and nothing happened and the monks forgot all about what the indians had said. Until that fateful day....

Without warning a band of redfoot indians stormed the church and scalped all within. After all the monks were dead, the indians stabbed themselves in the heart. The birds seen in the picture are the souls of those indians watching over the site.

Yes indeed. Steve, it appears, is another seeker of esoteric knowledge, but he’s only given you half of the story.

This is the rest of the story...

In those days the Redfoot tribe of the South Dakota Badlands were arrogant and violent, having recently conquered the mighty Geshimash tribe who were known for being giants and magicians. The Redfoot chief, an old blooded war priest called Green Snake Man, was expanding his growing empire by moving south into the white settlements of Nebraska.

There was no border Green Snake Man would not cross, and no man did he fear, so when he and his raiding party first came upon this newly-built monastery on the sacred hill where the Redfoot had first performed the Prairie Dog Dance (it sounds more dignified in Redfoot), Green Snake Man was enraged into madness. He sent his raiders to slaughter the monks, and watched in grim happiness as his fighting men galloped up the hill, magnificent in their war paint and bone armor, whooping and screaming their battle cries and calling out prayers to the spirits, demanding victory and spoils to honor their tribe. Their war ponies were lathered and their lances leveled and steady; tomahawks whirling and rifles primed to fire, and Green Snake Man rejoiced at his power.

For any other monastic order, this would have meant a horrible slaughter and a bloody and messy end. But Green Snake Man didn't know that this monastery was built and populated by members of the Hatcherite Brotherhood, and the Hatcherites were anything but pacifists.

As the Redfoot rode in at full gallop, a volley of heavy slugs slammed into them from the repeating rifles of the monks, who were more than prepared to deal with any enemy. A dozen red warriors were cut down in the first seconds of the battle, and the Redfoot, being consummate guerilla fighters, broke off their attack and strategically withdrew from the field. They regrouped in the forest at the bottom of the hill, and their chieftains went to work on a new plan.

In the following days the Redfoot found, much to their dismay, that they simply couldn’t wipe out the Hatcherites. The monks foresaw their every move; countered the Indians’ every attempt to penetrate the fortress. No tactic worked; the strategies that had succeeded against the Geshimash and the Lakota and the Animal People were batted away with contemptuous ease by the superior warrior monks of Hatcher. Even the iconic spirits and totems had abandoned Green Snake Man, and no prayer or sacrifice by he or his council of shaman could call up a numenous boon to defeat the monks.

A chief of his stature could not let this stand, for his very authority rests in his ability to lead his men to victory. In a feat of desperation, he sallied forth to the sacred mounds of the Others, to the vile lodge of the sultry witch Asalaninah, who wore a skirt made out of tanned and dyed skins of children and a poncho studded in copper coins, her hair red as blood and eyes black as sin, her teeth filed to razor sharp points. In the dead of the night she taught him the vilest of rites, and prepared him to summon and bind the dark Manitous of her people. The knowledge he gained made him crazy, it seems, and it was a different man who rode from her tepee.

Three days later, a sallow-faced, yet resolved Green Snake Man rode alone and unarmed to the front of the monastery. He carried no lance, no tomahawk, and no rifle. He held only a hollowed-out ram’s horn filled with a smoking and flaming bundle of ironwood shavings and sage and dried mushrooms coated with bear grease. A red clay jar filled with the heart’s blood of giants and sacrificed priests hung around his wide neck; the focus of his unholy power.

The monks of Hatcher were waiting, rifles at the ready, steely-eyed and prepared to do battle. Yet they were forgiving and kind and men willing to live in peace with the Redfoot, though each man knew in his heart there could be no peace but the peace of victory.

The head of the monks, the theorist Gabriel Chavez, met the Redfoot chief in the field of wildflowers. Chavez was no fool and was armed to the hilt, and protected from even the power of the spirits by his faith and his knowledge of things the modern world has forgotten.

Green Snake Man knew now how to defeat this monk, yet he knew it would cost him someday, but there was no stopping now; he’d come too far.

In the light of the springtime noon, Green Snake Man summoned up all of his power, and called in all of the favors he was owed by the totems and the spirits of his people for his hard work and sacrifice in their names. With the power of the dark Manitous at his back, he cursed the very ground of the monastery. He slashed his hands with his knife and bled on the soil, so that he could tune the earth with the anger of his soul.

He cursed the land, he cursed the monks, and he cursed the families each man might have someday. He blighted the fields so the crops would not grow, and drove the game far from the place so the monks would starve. He stole away the happiness of these men, that they might forever feel the pain in his soul.

Though Chavez couldn't understand the language, he knew from the cadence and the thunderous tone that Green Snake Man was calling up forces That Man Should Not Deal With. The skies darkened, the ground vibrated with unholy power, the birds in the sky and the dogs in the ground went wild, possessed suddenly with the malevolent, jealous, unliving manitous.

The knowledge of the ancients was Gabriel Chavez’ forte, and he recognized the unspeakable power at work. He could see the burning ram’s horn and the jar over Green Snake Man’s heart, and he knew to what purpose these were being used.

Chavez knew he had but moments to act, to save his men from a terrible Death Curse. So he drew his revolver, a big, handsome beast of a thing, blessed and engraved with prayers and the holy icons of his Order. In a flash of black powder, and an ear-splitting boom, he fired two shots that sounded as one. Each bullet sailed across the distance, finding its mark, and Green Snake Man suddenly knew the price of transacting with dark spirits.

The first bullet pierced the red clay jar against his chest, and blasted through it and into his heart. The jar shattered to pieces, the blood of giants and priests sprayed across his leathery skin and burned him.

The second bullet cut through Green Snake Man’s wide throat, and silenced his blasphemous prayers; he gagged on blood and magicks so horrid he could taste the fetid stain they left on his soul.

The deal wasn’t finished; the curse not yet complete. He had many foul prayers left to say. But the wound in his neck left him speechless, his voice ruined and he choked; his heart no longer pumping its life giving burden.

“Never call up That Which You Cannot Put Down,” said Gabriel to the dying chief. “The monsters take you and your foul sorceries to Hell. May your people be wiser than you, you foul thing. And may God have mercy on your soul.”

And so it happened, the dark Manitous of the Others wrenched Green Snake Man’s soul away from his meat; the curse left only half finished. His body smoldered, and was consumed from within by a frightful and malignant hellfire. In an eye-searing pyre, it took the chief and his pony right there among the colorful flowers, while his warriors at the foot of hill looked on in horror.

Gabriel stood there, waiting, while the Redfoot fled, and knew without a doubt this day would come back to haunt him. For he saw at the bottom, one young chieftan who remained, and shook his lance and his prayer sticks in anger. In English he vowed he’d be back someday, with a party of warrior magicians. He’d cut the monks' throats and take their hair, and burn the hated monastery to the ground in revenge for the death of his father.

Chavez raised his hand and acknowledged the threat, and knew someday he’d have to face it and he shuddered.

This leads us up to the unfortunate day ten years later when the Redfoot came back to get even.

Chavez had seen in his dreams some unfortunate things, and he saw all his men someday slaughtered. So he sent nearly all his men west, except for his most faithful acolytes, and they remained to scour the Redfoot from existence. With their books and their guns and their strange clockwork devices, they waited for the inevitable end.

Chavez was ready to die, and he’d prayed for his soul and those of his men, who all knew their time on Earth was done. But he knew the price the Redfoot chieftan had paid for his vengence, and by morning the evil tribe would no longer trouble mankind.

The son of Green Snake Man had learned ugly secrets from the Witch of the Others, and he knew how to sleaze past the Hatcherite defenses. In the night they struck, the doors gave way and a hundred howling Redfoot braves stormed into the building.

A fearsome battle raged for hours until the early light of dawn, when every Hatcherite was found dead or dying. The last was Old Chavez, kneeling in the courtyard, his body pierced with a dozen barbed lances.

The son of Green Snake Man smiled a sadistic evil smile, and drew his knife to take Gabriel’s hair. Chavez was ready and waited until the final instant, and he drew a silver bowie knife from under his black coat. The Redfoot chief was too close and too late to dodge, the big cleansing blade slashing through his flat belly. He dropped to his knees next to Gabriel. His entrails spilled to the ground and he groaned and looked up at the old monk who’d killed him with disbelief.

Gabriel smiled grimly and said, “These are the wages of sin, Boy. This closes the vulgar loop, and now we’re all dead. The Death Curse has consumed all it can, and now it’s over. Your men will burn at the side of your father. You, my boy, will suffer most. I prophesy this--you’ll live long enough to see your brethren eaten by the very powers you've called up in your hubris. My people will live and they will thrive far away, and our children will be legion in this land. Yours, I say, will rot from disease and famine and self-destruction, ‘til they’ve withered and turned into dust.”

Gabriel died right there with his men, while the Redfoot closed in and took their hair and thus sealed their own fate in the bargain. The son of Green Snake Man looked on in dread as his men whooped and hollered in joy at their hard-won victory. That is when the loop closed, the Death Curse fell all around them, and the dark Manitous swarmed close in the form of a murder of giant black crows. Ghostly talons ripped through the Redfoot warriors’ very souls, and the pain was too great for the warriors to bear.

To a man the braves fell, and sprawled in an agony of Hell, begging for death to release them. For hours and hours their souls were consumed piece by piece by the demonic Ghost Crows. Their suffering was too great for a mortal man to describe. The only way out was to end it, and end it they did; each one stabbing himself in the heart.

The son of Green Snake Man watched it all in silent anguish, his life ebbing away from the hideous wound of Gabriel’s knife. In his final dark moments he saw what death held for him, and his poor tortured mind couldn’t take it. He screamed for his lost soul and his father’s and friends’, and for the poor dead monks they should have left well alone.

So death took him and thrust him alone and tormented, into the empty nothingness he would face for eternity. He screams still today in a voice that can sometimes be heard, on certain nights on that hill when when the moon is full and the crows sleep.

So remember this warning, and hold it close to your heart. Never traffic in Things Man Was Not Meant To Know.

And what happened, you ask, to the Witch of the Others? Did she live a long wicked life, or did she die young, as the Redfoot she damned? That’s a fine question.

But she is an entirely different story.

The End.