Centennial

by James A. Michener

  The battle now degenerated into a confused melee, with the invaders retaining a slight advantage, but Never-Death had not yet made an appearance. Then came a small body of Comanche led by a large dark man riding a black horse. This was Never-Death, and his arrival so inspirited his allies that they launched a counterthrust against the Cheyenne, gambling that if they could terrorize these warriors, Our People would flee automatically.

  But on this day Never-Death was not to have his accustomed effect, for as he was preparing to spread terror among the Cheyenne, Lame Beaver and his five companions rode speedily at him, and a violent scuffle ensued, highlighted by wild battle cries from the exhausted Cheyenne, who anticipated a fine brawl. Never-Death was as powerful as he had been depicted, but did not panic the six warriors. Our People drove steadily against him, but the wild Cheyenne, reveling in battle, sped in and out of the fight until Never-Death’s followers unleashed a flood of arrows at them, killing one.

  Never-Death supposed that this would discourage the others, and he made a dash for the main battle, but again Lame Beaver intercepted him, while the two remaining Cheyenne, ignoring arrows, slashed at him with their clubs. Never-Death now commanded his troop to evade the pestilential attackers by a wide running sweep, and this would have succeeded except that Lame Beaver spurred his own horse to a gallop, smashed into the heart of Never-Death’s group, clubbed him over the head, then dived at him, knocking him from his horse and sprawling him on the ground.

  As the two warriors fell, Lame Beaver discovered for himself that Never-Death really was different from other men. His body seemed not human but to be made of iron, and when he struck the earth, with Lame Beaver atop him, he rattled. He was a terrifying creature, and Lame Beaver expected Never-Death to destroy him in some magic way.

  Lame Beaver had lost his club and felt powerless to hurt this terrible Comanche, but as Never-Death collected his strength and prepared to kill Lame Beaver, the latter remembered the caution of Gray Wolf: “Only the rocks live forever,” and he determined that he would fight this Comanche to the death. Doubling his two hands into one powerful fist, he cocked his elbows and brought that fist against the face of Never-Death. The Comanche, stunned by this unexpected blow, fell back, and Lame Beaver struck him again and again. He heard bones breaking in the Comanche’s head, and after one final blow he saw that head lying at an impossible angle to the body. He would have fainted, except that his two Cheyenne companions rode up shouting and laughing and proclaiming victory. Kneeling in the dust, he pointed at his fallen adversary and said in sign language, “Powerful medicine. No more.” The Cheyenne cheered.

  Next morning the defeated Comanche and Apache chiefs sought pow-wow with the Cheyenne, who insisted that Our People participate too. The losers proposed that all prisoners be released, and this was done. They said that they would overlook the destruction of the two camps, and the Cheyenne council members nodded. They said they were offering the Cheyenne twenty horses in exchange for the iron shirt which their great chieftain had worn for so long and which two Cheyenne had stripped from his dead body.

  The shirt was produced for all to marvel at, a cuirass made centuries ago in Spain of iron and silver, exhumed from the grave of a Spanish explorer who had died in these alien lands in 1542, and long the treasure of the Comanche. Deep Water, a Comanche chief, said in sign language, “For your warriors this would be nothing. For us it is the great medicine of our tribe.”

  There was a moment of hesitation, which Lame Beaver broke by signaling without authorization, “Sixty horses,” and without a second’s pause Deep Water shouted and signaled, “Eighty horses,” and the trade was completed.

  In this great battle, which stabilized the southern frontier for nearly forty years and was therefore the outstanding Indian battle of half a century, 113 Comanche and 67 Apache fought 92 Cheyenne and 39 Our People. The southern confederacy lost 28 men, including Never-Death; the northern 16, including Gray Wolf.

  The victors returned home with the eighty horses from the Comanche, plus another nineteen captured from the Apache. Coups were counted for many nights, none so notable as the one Lame Beaver gained when he grappled barehanded with Never-Death and disclosed the secret of his powerful medicine.

  5. Nine Horses Lost

  In the year 1782, when Lame Beaver was thirty-five years old, a major imbalance developed on the plains, one which threatened Indian stability until it was corrected. The arrival of the horse was the only other phenomenon which approached it in importance.

  That year the Pawnee acquired a substantial supply of guns and for a while dominated all tribes to the west. There had been guns before, isolated examples of some lucky Indian’s obtaining a rifle and three or four lead bullets with just enough powder to fire them; but after that explosive celebration, in which his own fingers were liable to be shot off, or his friend’s head, only the barren rifle remained. In the end it was used as a club.

  But in 1782 the Pawnee got the rifle in earnest through trading with Saint Louis, and acquired the skill to use it. They set forth immediately to impose upon the Platte a Pax Pawnee, and for a while succeeded. Set free from the necessity of riding down their bison by brute strength and shooting them with bow and arrow, they could now stand well back and gun them down at leisure. A war party of six could roam from the Missouri to the Colorado mountains, and move in safety, assured that if trouble did develop with Our People or the Ute, their guns would defend them.

  The more remote tribes, learning of the appalling advantage now enjoyed by the Pawnee, had only one desire—to get guns for themselves. But since they had not yet begun to trade with white men, they remained without modern arms. Their world was moving away from them and they were unable to catch up.

  “I told you the Pawnee were the cleverest,” Jumping Snake repeated so often and so dolefully that the others wanted to silence him, but he was a senior chief with many coups and his lamentations continued.

  Obviously, many councils were held and raids against the Pawnee were planned, but as Jumping Snake reiterated, “If we got the black-sticks-that-speak-death, we wouldn’t know what to do with them. What is their great medicine? Who can tell?”

  A number of Our People were then encamped near Rattlesnake Buttes, and early one morning a boy of ten ran up to Jumping Snake and reported, “A Pawnee war party in the cottonwoods f The chiefs immediately dispatched scouts to see if this report was true, and they returned with ominous news: “Fifteen Pawnee. Good horses. Four black sticks.”

  The council had to assume that the Pawnee intended trouble, and some advised that the camp be evacuated immediately and reestablished at some point on the other side of the North Platte, and this counsel prevailed. But Lame Beaver and seven of the middle group of warriors were given permission to stay behind to lure the Pawnee on, in hopes of somehow gaining possession of at least one of the rifles.

  “We shall need some horses to use as bait,” Lame Beaver said, so they were given sixteen, which included their own mounts, and eight of these they allowed to roam as lures in the direction of the South Platte.

  The Pawnee were not marching westward arrogantly, even though they had guns. They kept scouts properly posted, and in time one of them, on a reconnoiter to the north, spotted the horses. He was not so stupid as to imagine that the animals were unattended, and since no men were visible, he concluded that they must be a trap. Soon the other Pawnee were in position to study the situation. Obviously this was a trap, but there was a good chance that whoever had set it knew nothing of guns. This would be a good opportunity to make them permanently afraid of the Pawnee and to get some good mounts at the same time. They laid their plans to snare the horses and terrify their owners.

  But as they were doing so, Lame Beaver and his men were constructing contrary plans, and it was obvious that the two must come into violent conflict. The battle started when the fifteen Pawnee fanned out to drive the grazing horses into the river. Lame Beaver allowed this maneuver to develop, because it dilu
ted the force of the enemy, and when the spread was at its greatest, he and Cottonwood Knee made a determined charge at its apex.

  They broke through, but now they were encircled by the enemy. This was not accidental; it was an act of special courage, for it distracted the attention of the Pawnee,” allowing the other warriors from Our People to attack the two flanks.

  Confusion resulted. At first the Pawnee leader thought he might be able to dispose of the two intruders without using his guns, but Lame Beaver and Cottonwood Knee were so wild in their passage, and so disruptive, that ordinary tactics could not contain them and he signaled one of his men bearing a gun to fire.

  There was a loud blast, much smoke, and Cottonwood Knee was blown off his horse, his chest shattered. Lame Beaver, seeing the destruction of his friend and knowing from the spurting blood that he must be dead, wheeled his horse and rode hard at the Pawnee who had fired, and that warrior was so preoccupied with his gun that he could not protect himself. Lame Beaver, leaning far out of his saddle, grabbed at the smoking gun with both hands and wrested it from its owner. His momentum carried him out of the semicircle and back toward his own men.

  “I have it!” he shouted, waving the gun aloft.

  At this Our People on the left flank rallied and started a concerted drive on the Pawnee, who retreated slowly, firing another gun and taking the eight horses and Cottonwood Knee’s mount across the Platte with them.

  It was an inconclusive battle. Our People had lost nine good horses, which they could not afford, and Cottonwood Knee was dead, a courageous man with many coups to his credit. The Pawnee had been repulsed, leaving two of their men dead and surrendering one precious gun.

  Lame Beaver sent a messenger across the North Platte to inform the chiefs that it was safe to return to Rattlesnake Buttes, and while they waited for the tribe to come back and pitch their tipis, they studied the gun. They had seen iron before, and some had knives of it, but they had never seen it in such quantity or so handsomely molded. They found pebbles to run down the interior of the barrel and deduced that these became the deadly missiles.

  At this point they cut open Cottonwood Knee to find out what it was that had slain him, and the shape of the bullet confirmed their deductions. They could make nothing of the firing mechanism; its sophistication was quite beyond their understanding at the moment, but one brave did fit his finger against the trigger and conclude that this had something to do with the mystery. They had a gun. They didn’t know quite what to do with it, but they were no longer outside the pale.

  In this battle fifteen Pawnee faced eight of Our People, and when it came time to counting coups it was agreed that Lame Beaver had gained one, because he had touched the Pawnee who held the gun, but that evening he lost whatever honor he had gained, for as he was helping Blue Leaf raise their tipi he heard an ominous rattle, close to his wife.

  Looking frantically about, he saw to his horror a great rattlesnake, coiled and preparing to strike Blue Leaf. Acting instinctively, he leaped at the hideous thing and clubbed at it with the newly captured gun.

  He knocked the venomous creature to one side, but saw that it was still capable of striking, so he clubbed it again and again until it lay stretched on the sand beside the tipi.

  A crowd, hearing the fight against the snake, gathered, and a woman cried, “Lame Beaver has killed a great snake,” but a more observant boy said, “He’s broken the stick-that-speaks!”

  Hushed warriors gathered in the sunset to stare at Lame Beaver, who stood holding the gun by the end of its barrel, the stock and firing mechanism shattered.

  6. New Poles for the Tipi

  Our People, dependent upon the bison, had become like the bison. Just as those shaggy animals divided into two herds, one centering on the plains lying north of the North Platte, the other keeping pretty much to the plains south of the South Platte, so Our People were beginning to divide into two tribes, North and South, the former depending upon Flat-Pipe while the southern revered Sacred-Wheel.

  Lame Beaver and his small group, now led by Jumping Snake, belonged to the southern group, and although they sometimes ranged far north toward the land of the Crow, they returned always to that congenial land between the two Plattes to pitch their camp near Rattlesnake Buttes. It must not, however, be thought that they lived there. They were nomads, hunters who went where the bison went, and it was of no concern to them what type of land they lived on. In some years they might not camp within a hundred miles of Rattlesnake Buttes; in others they might move far south to the Arkansas. They had no home. They did have a predominant group of bison which they followed, and from time to time, elements of that herd wandered up to the good grass between the two Plattes and Our People followed them.

  This constant moving about, increased since obtaining the horse, had one unexpected consequence which caused Our People some trouble. The travois, that primitive but functional invention for hauling goods, was constructed always from two poles used otherwise to support the tipi, and as they dragged for mile after mile across rough terrain, the large ends were gradually abraded until the poles were no longer of sufficient length to use in making the tipi. The Pawnee might have used them, for they constructed low tipis, but Our People liked slim, towering ones, not too wide in circumference at the bottom and gracefully tapered at the top. Long poles were a necessity.

  But where to get them? Often Our People would spend eighteen months in the heart of the prairie, where never a tree was seen, not one. And when they did come to a place like Rattlesnake Buttes, all they found was cottonwood, which produced neither long nor straight trunks.

  They had to trade for their tipi poles. In the north there were Indians who would give a Pawnee nine short poles for one horse, but since Our People demanded longer poles and better, they received only seven for one horse. They considered this a fair trade, for to Our People the tipi was the center of life.

  In the year 1788, when Lame Beaver was forty-one years old and one of the wisest men of the tribe, he noticed with some dismay that the three key-poles of his tipi were so ground down at the butt ends that they no longer permitted the tipi to assume its lofty and dignified form. He was unhappy. For many years now, in fact, ever since his decision not to seek a high station in the tribe, he had found exceptional pleasure in his tipi. It was the most satisfactory in the camp, not the loftiest nor the most garish—for there were others more copiously decorated—but the most congenial. In all its proportions it was correct.

  At the end of a long trek he liked to lie back and watch his wife erect it, for she did this with skill and a certain grace, as if to do so were part of her religion. First she gathered the three key-poles and laid them on the ground where the tipi was to stand. Then she lashed the thin ends together with pliant antelope thongs, about three feet from the tips. Thus she had a tripod, which she set upright, the heavy ends of the three poles wedged into the ground, far enough apart to assure stability.

  Next she took about a dozen lesser poles, shorter and not so straight, and these she also wedged into the ground, propping them against the point where the key-poles were lashed together. She now had the skeleton of her tipi, its base securely settled on the ground, its top rising far into the air. Her next task was to throw over it the tanned bison hides that would form the covering, and this she did by climbing partway up to the junction of the key-poles and binding a segment of the skin to it.

  She allowed the skin to fall naturally, draping it evenly over the poles and making sure that the opening through which people would enter would face east. It was inconceivable that a tipi should be oriented in any other way.

  The tipi was now erected save for one other important feature which made it habitable. Taking two extra-long poles, she adroitly fitted their tips into the corners of the bison covering which rested on the very top of the tipi, and these poles she did not fasten in the earth. By swinging them to different positions about the tipi and at different angles, she could determine how much ventilation would co
me in at the top, or how much would go out if the flap were left open, and in this way ensure both a warm house and a healthy one. The air in her tipi was never suffocating.

  When she was finished, Lame Beaver would lift from the travois various parfleches, those boxlike carrying cases made of heavy partially tanned hide, closer to wood than to leather, and from them Blue Leaf would take the cots, her cooking gear And whatever mementos her husband had acquired in his hunting and fighting.

  Lame Beaver took charge of building his own cot, for he was proud of it and spent much of his life on it. It had a low wooden frame upon which he placed a mat made of carefully selected and smoothed willow sticks, each one pierced at the ends so that antelope sinews could be passed through, keeping the willow firm and in place. Over this he placed two bison blankets carefully tanned and pliable, and on the tipi wall behind, a medium-sized bison robe which had been worked to the consistency of parchment. On it Blue Leaf, using stick ends for brushes and a variety of pigments for coloring, had drawn memorable scenes from her husband’s life; the yellow which predominated came from the bile sac of the bison. She was not an outstanding artist, but she could depict bison and Pawnee and Ute, and these were the things which preoccupied her husband.

  The cot had this peculiarity: the willow-stick mat extended for several feet at each end, and these extensions were held in upright position by stout tripods, so as to form two backrests. The exposed wood was highly polished and some of the strands were colored, so that Lame Beaver’s cot constituted a kind of throne, with the painted skin behind it and the handsome backrests on either end.