According to the legends, the other captive, Maria Weichell, married one of the army medics. When she left the Fort Sedgewick hospital with him on August 4, 1869, she disappeared into the pages of history forever.
The Kansas woman who hid in the water and thus escaped capture, Mrs. Kine, never quite recovered from her mental stress and ended up in an asylum for the insane at Leavenworth.
There are two marble monuments on the Summit Springs site, one telling the details of the battle, the other dedicated to the bravery of a Cheyenne boy about fifteen years old who was on guard at the horse herd when the soldiers approached. According to witnesses, the boy sacrificed his own life by galloping back to warn his people of the approaching danger.
The sketch book actually exists, although no one knows which Cheyenne drew the pictures. The ledger was picked up after the battle by a soldier as it lay abandoned in the rain. It was indeed a pictorial history of all the battles of the past several years. Today the book is on exhibit at the historical museum in downtown Denver, along with many other fascinating items of Western history.
No soldiers were killed at Summit Springs, but at least one Pawnee scout got a Congressional Medal of Honor, our country’s highest award for bravery. The official records show the medal was awarded to Mad Bear, Co-rux-te-chod-ish. But Luther North, who should know, always said there was a mistake and that it was actually meant for and awarded to Traveling Bear, Co-rux-a-kah-wadde, for his bravery at Summit Springs.
Yes, there really was a white teacher named Elvira Platt who took a group of mostly orphaned Pawnee children and tried to turn them into little white children. In my intensive research, I found a rather sanctimonious article by her called “A Teacher Among the Pawnees,” written in 1900, long after she had retired.
It may surprise some of my younger readers to know that the incidence of syphilis was once comparable to today’s AIDS epidemic. Over the centuries, it killed or took the sanity of millions of people. There was no cure for it until the development of penicillin about the time of World War II. You’d think mankind would finally learn that irresponsible sex can be deadly, whatever the time period.
Frank North, the Pawnees’ beloved Pani Le-shar, only lived to be forty-five, dying in 1885. He had never been in good health and was badly injured in 1884 in a freak accident while riding in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show.
Luther North would outlive Frank by fifty years and Buffalo Bill by seventeen. He managed to go see his old Pawnee scouts one last time just a few years before he died in 1935. Frank and Luther’s father did freeze to death in a Nebraska blizzard, as I told you.
After the Indian trouble of 1869, the Pawnee scouts would be called into action only one more time, seven years later, to help track down the Cheyenne and Sioux who had just wiped out Custer and the Seventh Cavalry.
In the meantime, in 1873, their old enemies, the Sioux, caught the tribe out on a buffalo hunt and slaughtered hundreds of them. This massacre, plus pressure from greedy Nebraska farmers who wanted the land the Pawnees occupied, finally led to the tribe’s accepting a reservation in northern Oklahoma in 1874.
Many of their descendants are still there, near the town of Pawnee, county seat of Pawnee County, about fifty miles northwest of Tulsa. One of the largest free powwows in the country takes place there every summer. Check with the Chamber of Commerce for exact dates if you decide to attend.
The Pawnee were traditional enemies of the Cheyenne and Sioux. I have already told you of the death of KiriKuks, Johnny’s father, in my first Zebra Heartfire book, Cheyenne Captive. At the moment, that book has sold out its printing, but if the editor gets enough requests, I’m sure it will finally be reprinted. Some of you have written to ask if I have extra copies and I’m sorry to say I don’t. Certainly if any of us had dreamed the book would be such a hit, Zebra would have printed more.
That bestseller also won awards from both Romantic Times Magazine and Affaire De Coeur Magazine. Captive was the first book of my Panorama of the Old West series, which may take dozens of books to complete as I attempt to tell much of the history of the Old West.
My second book, Cheyenne Princess, Heartfire #2176-3, was also a bestseller about the Great Plains’ Indian Outbreak of 1864.
The rest of the series have all been Zebra Holograms. Book four concerned Colonel McKinzie’s 1873 raid into Mexico against the warring Kickapoo, Mescalero, and Lipan Apache. That book was called Bandit’s Embrace, #2596-3.
The book you hold in your hands is book six. You can order any of the above books from your bookstore or directly from Zebra. Follow the instructions in this book for ordering. Send the author’s name, the title, the ISBN number, and a check or money order for cost plus 50¢ postage.
I’m getting a lot of mail wanting to know about Georgina Gentry. No, I’m not Indian but my husband is a mixed-blood Choctaw and my brother-in-law is a well-known Chickasaw. I’m a petite blonde with pale blue eyes, I’m left-handed, and my sign is Virgo.
My husband, “Murph,” and I have three children, two girls and a boy. All have been active in 4H and Future Farmers of America. We live among the blackjack oak trees in the old Cross Timbers area of central Oklahoma.
I personally answer all mail and send bookmarks. If you want to write me, send your letter in care of Zebra and my editor will forward it. Please include a long, stamped, self-addressed envelope and be patient. It may take several months, both to receive and to answer if I’m at work on a new book.
Some of you have asked about unfinished stories I left dangling in other books. Believe me, I haven’t forgotten those characters. Everyone wants to know when Iron Knife and Summer Sky and their children will re-enter this saga. Depending on what my editor thinks, they may make a small appearance in the next book. In subsequent novels, Iron Knife will eventually find his missing sister, Cimarron, and we will also follow the lives of each of his children.
I will try to do two books a year, all with either an Indian or a Western title. The Panorama of the Old West is probably the longest series ever written by one author and will take many books to complete. Sooner or later, I will pick up all those unfinished story lines and weave them together like threads in a Indian blanket.
I am telling my stories the way the Cheyenne do when they gather around their campfires at night. An Ancient One will stand and tell a legend, and when he finishes, he will say, “That is my tale. Can anyone tie another to it?”
Then someone will tie a story to his and end by saying, “That, too, is my story, can someone tie another to it?”
Oh yes, Old One, this daughter of Oklahoma has heard your stories told by the flickering campfires. I can tell a tale and tie endless others to it, as long as there is an audience out there who listen with their hearts.
For my seventh tale, I’m going to tell Colorado’s most beloved legend. The Coloradoans among you will know exactly what I mean. There are many variations of this old story that dates back to the Civil War; I’m going to tell you my version.
In that state, there is a magnificent mountain near the ghost towns of Alma and Buckskin Joe. This mountain has an unusual name and is surely the only one in the world named for a saloon girl. Ah, she was a great beauty, this laughing girl with silky hair and soft eyes! A shy, mixed-blood Cherokee miner loved this dancing girl from a distance. Afraid she might scorn him, he didn’t voice his love. Instead he gave her a pair of shoes with real silver heels made from ore from his own mine. But then the Civil War started, and . . .
Well, I’d like to tell you what happened, but you’ll have to wait for my next book, coming in a few months. Join me for a thrilling story of the Rocky Mountains, Indians, and action, but most of all, for a tale of eternal love and devotion. It’s my version of the old Colorado legend of a saloon girl called Silver Heels!
And for those of you who read my novels and listen with your hearts, I say to you . . .
Hahoo naa ne-mehotatse,
Georgina Gentry
As always, I put
an enormous amount of research into my books. Here are just a few of the many sources I used that you may find at your public library.
THE FIGHTING CHEYENNE
by George B. Grinnell, University of Oklahoma Press
MAN OF THE PLAINS, The Recollections of Luther North
Intro. by George B. Grinnell, University of Nebraska Press
PAWNEE, BLACKFOOT, AND CHEYENNE
by George B. Grinnell, Charles Scribner’s Sons
THE PAWNEE INDIANS
by George E. Hyde, University of Oklahoma Press
WOLVES FOR THE BLUE SOLDIERS
by Thomas W. Dunlay, University of Nebraska Press
Zebra Books
are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
475 Park Avenue South
New York, NY 10016
Copyright ©1990 by Lynne Murphy
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
ISBN: 978-0-8217-2864-2
Cheyenne Caress Page 39