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Zintkala Nuni was often ill, living in a White Man's world amongst the diseases and Bad Waters that her tiyospaye were not immune to. This, coupled with the separation from her true family and the bitter racism around her, led to nightmares from her earliest days. She was hunted and persecuted in her dreams. Giant eyes peered at her through her bedroom window. People mounted guns and hunted her, shooting at her just like so many of the Great Beasts killed for sport on the Plains.
In 1900, Zintka stayed with Clara's cousins in Wisconsin, the Popes, while Clara attended the International Women's Press Union in Detroit. By now, Clara was close to destitute. She was still married to Leonard Colby, who lived openly with his extravagant mistress Maud Miller in Beatrice. Plenty of money was spend for Maud's gaudy clothing, but next to nothing was given to support Clara or his children. Leaving Zintka with the Popes was a necessity.
The four Pope children were a rowdy group of kids. At first, Zintka led the fun, dirtying up every dress she wore in the hayloft and buildings on the farm. But soon, Zintka's nightmare turned into true, waking horrors. The Pope boys took Zintka off into a cornfield as a storm approached. Zintka couldnŐt find her way out. Amidst the thunder and lightning, Zintka cried to the heavens:
Leon gone! Roy gone! Henry gone! Everyone gone! Mother! Mother! Help me!
Clara left Zintka in the Popes' care for more months than she had planned, since she was almost broke. When she did arrive, Zintka had transformed into a wicked dream of her former self. She had stopped bathing or caring for her hygiene. She had yet another ear infection. Zintka may have suffered a nervous breakdown at that young age of 10. She threw herself against the walls, hoping that she could beat herself into oblivion.
The next year, Zintka was sent to Beatrice to live with Leonard. While playing with her cousins there, she again became the victim of verbal abuse, as the boys chanted:
Ha! Ha! Yer ma's a dirty squaw!
Zintka developed a technique for dealing with this cruelty, a temper change that became permanent. She jumped from a wagon seat where they were playing, directly onto the chest of one of her tormentors. Her cousin suffered severe internal bleeding. Leonard Colby broke up the display, and beat Zintka with a riding crop until she was almost motionless. As he threw the crop on her collapsed body, it seemed to Colby that his Battlefield Token had been exploited for all it was worth. Rarely would Colby ever be Zintka's father again.
Zintka's fear of the night sent her into the world after dark, sometimes sleeping on neighbors' porches instead of the haunted bed at her adopted father's house. Some days, Zintka would mount the carousel in the park. The citizens of Beatrice recalled the memory of the young girl riding the fantasy horses for hours, being drug back home by a pitiless father at nightfall.
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