The Native American Experience

by Dee Brown

  He turned his head away but not before I saw the shine of moisture in his eyes. “It’s strange how a man views life in a different way when he discovers that his existence is necessary to other persons. I don’t know why I never felt that way about Jerusha and Pleasant. Maybe I was too young. Maybe it was because they were so much a part of the white man’s world that I was not necessary to them.

  “You see, in those days there were always two levels in the world of the Cheyennes. We did not consider the world of hunting or hide curing or arrow and moccasin making, or any of those things as the real world. The real world was a place of magic, of dreams wherein we became spirits. I lived with the Cheyennes a long time before I learned how to cross into the real world, and all that time my wife and children could do this and they were puzzled because I could not join them there. By fasting for long periods of time and through the ceremony of the Medicine Lodge, I was finally able to find my way into the real world with my family. I discovered mysterious powers within my memory and learned that when you pray for others to become strong you become strong, too, because that connects you with everything else. You become a part of everything and that is how I knew that I was necessary to my family and they were necessary to me.”

  “What was the ceremony of the Medicine Lodge?” I asked.

  “Oh, that was the Cheyennes’ Sun Dance. The Sioux borrowed part of the ceremony from the Cheyennes and called it a Sun Dance. It’s a renewal of life. When the white men penned us on the reservations they forbade the ceremonies among all the tribes. The missionaries could not stand the sight of us putting roped skewers through incisions in our breasts and then tearing the flesh loose by dancing and pulling at the ropes fastened to the Medicine Lodge pole. Maybe that was our way of baptizing. We never tried to stop the missionaries from baptizing or any of their other practices that seemed barbaric to us.” He unbuttoned his shirt and showed the old yellow scars on his pectoral muscles, then rolled up his sleeve to another scar. “No more damaging to me than this smallpox vaccination mark that a dirty-fingered contract surgeon forced on me when we came back here from Canada.”

  “What is it like, the real world?” I asked.

  He remained silent for a while and then spoke slowly. “Being a man who loves words, I’ve often thought about that. But some things cannot be put into words. The closest I ever came was one English word. Shimmering.”

  “Shimmering?”

  “Yes, like swimming in moonlight.” He grinned at me, and I was not certain whether he was teasing or being serious.

  “The Cheyenne way of life as you’ve described it seems idyllic,” I said. “Was it really?”

  “Idyllic?” he repeated. “Pleasing, picturesque, romantic, I think the word means. I suppose it was all of those things, especially to an outsider like me. Oh, we killed and were killed. We had our quarrels, accidents, pestilences, deaths. But most of our diseases came from the whites. Mainly it was a balanced world that we lived in. We were in harmony with the animals and plants, the forests and waters. When the white men came they destroyed the balance and almost destroyed us. They are still at it. One day there will be only coyotes here.”

  “Did any of you foresee what was coming?”

  “I thought of it more than the others, I suppose because I had seen it happen to the Cherokees. Red Cloud of the Oglala Sioux saw it coming, and later on so did Sitting Bull of the Uncpapas. But none of us dreamed how quickly the storm would sweep over us.”

  “Was any effort made to unite the tribes in the way that Tecumseh tried in the East?”

  “Red Cloud brought all the Sioux, Cheyennes, and Arapaho together, but his world was that paradise along the Yellowstone. The Black Hills, and the valleys of the Powder, the Tongue, and the Little Bighorn. That was his vision of an Indian Nation. But as more and more white men came surging across the Plains, the tribes began to come together in a kind of natural response. Tribes that had long been enemies met in councils and made peace.

  “One of the keenest memories of my early time with Big Star’s people was a council we held one summer with the Kiowas and Comanches near Bent’s Fort. Many years in the past the Cheyennes and Sioux drove those tribes out of the northern paradise into the Southern Plains. For a while the Kiowas and Comanches fought each other over territorial rights, but when they found there was room enough for both they became staunch allies. Now they wanted to be allies with their old enemies the Cheyennes, and so we held council with them. They were fierce, proud, and handsome people, the Kiowas and Comanches, rich in fine horses.

  “When the time came for us to exchange presents, the Kiowa chief said that his people had more horses than they needed. ‘We do not wish any horses as presents,’ he said, ‘but we shall be pleased to receive any other gifts.’ And so we brought out our best blankets, making a pile on the ground higher than a man. In exchange the Kiowas and Comanches gave us horses, fast-footed little mustangs, so many that some of us received five or six.

  “Because Big Star felt the exchange was too much in our favor, he invited all the Kiowas and Comanches to a big feast. I think every kettle we owned was put to use. All the food we had traded for at Bent’s Fort was thrown into the kettles—cornmeal, dried apples, beans, and molasses. Our guests declared it to be the finest feast they had ever partaken of, and they must have meant it because they ate everything in the kettles. The next day, after they struck their tipis and moved off to the south, we went back to Bent’s Fort and traded some of the horses they had given us for a new supply of blankets, cornmeal, dried apples, beans, and molasses.” Laughing softly, Dane got up from his chair, took a long-stemmed pipe from the shelf above the fireplace, and thumbed a charge of shag tobacco into the bowl. After he lighted it with a live coal, he blew the first puff skyward and then compulsively pointed the stem toward the earth and the four directions before drawing more smoke.

  “Did you ever return again to the Cherokee Nation?” I asked. “To visit your own people?”

  “Oh, yes, a few times. I must tell you about Jotham and his trading post. Fort Carrothers. That changed all our lives. You remember I told you of meeting Jim Carrothers, the old fur trapper turned trader, at Fort Laramie. Well, after the U.S. Army took over the fort and made it a military station, old Jim built himself a trading post east of Laramie—between the Ghost Timbers and Laramie. He called his place Fort Carrothers. Moved his Arapaho wife and family down there and did a lot of trading with the Cheyennes and Sioux. We always stopped at Fort Carrothers going and coming from our winter camp at the Timbers.

  “When the Great Medicine Road—the Oregon Trail—got busy with wagons heading for the Far West and Mormons going to Utah, old Jim had more to do than he could handle. One spring when we stopped there on our way north, he asked me if I’d like to go to Independence with him, maybe travel on to St. Louis. ‘This old buffaler wants to get away from this place for a spell,’ he said. ‘From the all-fired figgerin’ and the old woman and the young-uns. I’m gettin’ on in years and I want to see what it’s like back there ’fore I lose my eyesight complete. Besides I can get double money on hides I deliver instead of sellin’ ’em to a wagon freighter. I got two wagons and need another driver.’

  “I thought about his offer all day, and that night made arrangements to go with him. An old French trapper who worked for Carrothers was to look after the place while he was gone, and Carrothers’s Arapaho wife promised me she’d take good care of my family. I helped Sweet Medicine Woman get our tipi fixed up behind the trading post, alongside a clean little stream. She did not want me to go. She cried through most of the night before Jim and I left for the East. I guess she thought I was deserting her.

  “Carrothers gave me trading credit for some white man’s clothes for the journey, and when Sweet Medicine Woman saw me dressed in broadcloth trousers, black boots, and a linen shirt, she turned her back on me and refused to say good-bye. After four years of wearing buckskins, I didn’t feel at ease myself in those clothes for several day
s.

  “But old Jim and I were like a pair of workhorses set free, with no cares except for the two wagonloads of hides and furs. Only thing that upset us was the constant stream of covered wagons we kept meeting on our way, long trains of wagons filled with men, women, and children. ‘Good God!’ Jim kept saying. ‘Looks like the whole damned white race is running after the western sun. Oughta be plenty room left back East for old Mountain Men and Indians.’

  “Well, there didn’t seem to be any shortage of people in the towns we saw springing up along the Missouri. A whole new town had been built west of Independence. They called the place Westport Landing, and it looked to us as if all the steamboats in the world were gathered in the river waiting to unload. I soon discovered that Mr. Louis Tessier had built a new warehouse at Westport Landing, and he generously offered Carrothers and me the use of one of his rooms for our quarters. Mr. Tessier said that William and Jotham still traded with him and he was expecting one or the other of them to arrive almost any day from the Cherokee Nation to buy supplies. I felt a wave of homesickness for the old family, just thinking about them.

  “One morning I was down at the landing watching the steamboats unloading when I noticed a young boy doing the same thing a few yards in front of me. Something in his stance seemed familiar. His brown-streaked sandy hair sprayed out from beneath a round-topped hat that was too small for him. I was circling around to get a better look at the boy’s face when a voice came from right behind me. ‘That’s him all right, Dane. Except for his lighter skin and hair he could be you, back in Okelogee.’

  “I whirled around. ‘Jotham!’ I yelled, and after we’d embraced, pounded each other, and laughed wildly, he called Pleasant over to us. The boy shook hands and studied me with considerable curiosity. I could see Jerusha in his pale blue eyes, and I felt that old sense of something treasured lost forever.

  “Afterward Jotham told me that Pleasant had quarreled with his stepfather, the Reverend Crookes, and had run away from home. Jotham tracked him down and persuaded him to become an apprentice blacksmith. ‘He’s a good worker, and I don’t blame him for not wanting to live with old Crookes. I don’t know how Jerusha can endure that man.’

  “Jotham and Pleasant slept in their wagons behind Mr. Tessier’s warehouse, and during the next three or four days we spent a good deal of time together. Jim Carrothers and Jotham took a liking to each other, and one evening old Jim announced that he was going to sell Fort Carrothers to Jotham, and buy himself a spread of ground for a log cabin on one of the ridges above Westport Landing. ‘I’ll put two porches on it,’ he said. ‘One to set watchin’ the sun go down in the west and t’other to set watchin’ the steamboats in the river.’

  “I could see that Jotham was excited by the idea of owning his own trading post somewhere out West. He and Jim spent hours talking about prices and credits. However, I never thought anything would come of it. Carrothers didn’t seem to be the kind of man who would want to live near a crowded place like Westport Landing, and I knew Jotham did not have very much money. But the world is full of wonders, and the next spring a real surprise was waiting for me at Fort Carrothers.”

  33

  IN THE SPRING OF 1849, WHEN Big Star’s Cheyennes left their winter camp in the Ghost Timbers and started north, they noticed more than the customary activity on the Great Medicine Road. Wagons drawn by oxen and mules, and many men on horseback, moved along at a swifter pace than usual, and the Cheyennes wondered why the Veheos were in such a hurry.

  What Dane and his friends were witnessing was the first mad rush of white easterners toward the goldfields of California. This human flood was also a signal of doom for their way of life, but on that fine spring morning in the Moon When the Ponies Shed, the Cheyennes were unaware of the ominous meaning of the dust-clouded trail.

  They kept to the south side of the Platte, across from the wagon trains, until they sighted Fort Carrothers. There they crossed the river at a sandy-bottomed ford so shallow they did not have to unload the travois. Dane rode near the head of the column. Beside him was five-year-old Swift Eagle on a gentle gray pony. Little Cloud, still too young to ride horseback, was strapped on the travois behind Sweet Medicine Woman’s bay mount.

  As he swung around to the front of the trading post, Dane was annoyed to find a dozen Conestogas drawn up there, with white men, women, and children swarming in and out of the entrance and chattering like a flock of hungry birds. He had been looking forward to camping there for a day or so, making a few leisurely trades, and talking with old Jim Carrothers. But an overnight stop was out of the question because all the young grass for as far as he could see had been grazed to the roots by passing teams of mules and oxen.

  He glanced back and saw that Big Star’s face reflected the same feelings of disappointment and aversion. Dane noticed then that blacksmith equipment had been installed under an open shed beside the main building. To his amazement he recognized Bibbs, who was shoeing a horse, and Pleasant, who was assisting a big solemn-faced immigrant in resetting a wagon tire. Dane dropped off his horse in an instant, his eyes meeting those of the black man. “Holy Ghost!” Bibbs cried out. “Dane! They told me you’d turned into a wild Injun, and damn if you ain’t done it.” Bibbs dropped his tools on the ground and offered a sweaty hand. Pleasant quickly joined them, staring at his father’s Cheyenne clothing with intense interest.

  Soon they were all there, Jotham bounding excitedly about and running back inside to bring Griffa, who seemed uncertain as to whether she should embrace her old friend Dane or keep a respectful distance from what appeared to be a wild Indian in buckskins. Dane helped Sweet Medicine Woman dismount to shake hands shyly with her husband’s relatives. After that the children had to be shown, Swift Eagle and Little Cloud, and then Griffa quickly rounded up her and Jotham’s pair. They had named their boy Opothle after Jotham’s father, but called him Young Opothle. He was a year older than Swift Eagle. Meggi, the little girl, was only four, and she broke into screams of fright when Dane reached out his arms for her. “She has Grandmother Mary’s voice,” he said.

  “Ah, yes,” Jotham agreed proudly. “She is much like Akusa Amayi.”

  “I wish she were with us,” Dane said. “If William’s family and Prissie were here, all Mary’s blood would be together again.”

  Jotham laughed. “William and Prissie think I’m a madman for taking on this post in the wild West. I don’t know which of them is the worst old woman.”

  Meanwhile the whites had all come outside the trading post, gathering for mutual protection around their wagons. Most of their attention was upon Big Star and the Cheyennes, who had moved off about a hundred yards with their travois. The whites were gaping and pointing and murmuring among themselves.

  Jim Carrothers appeared suddenly out of the entrance. “Damn me!” he cried, “so it’s Big Star’s people caused all this commotion. Dane, old friend, me and Jotham been meanin’ to ride over to the Timbers, but every day we get crowds of these crazy fool gold hunters. I oughta be on the trail to Westport right now, but I can’t bring myself to forsake this greenhorn lad.” Carrothers blew out a breath of air that fluttered the ends of his drooping yellow mustache. “Now you’re here, old friend, you can take my place. Stay at Fort Carrothers and grow rich with your cousin. These daft gold hunters bound for Californ-i-a seem well supplied with money. They’ll pay three dollars a horse for shoein’, and if you’d largen my corral and stock it with good horses you could do right good at tradin’ for their wore-out animals.”

  “What I need right now,” Jotham broke in, “is a wagon man to bring supplies from Westport. We’re out of soap and brandy, getting low on gunpowder. I need you, Dane.”

  While they were talking, Sweet Medicine Woman had moved in close beside Dane, and when he felt her hand on his arm, he turned and saw the distress on her face. She had learned enough English from him to get the meaning of what Carrothers and Jotham were proposing. “E-have-se-va,” she whispered. “It is bad. Maka-eta, mon
ey. It is bad. I will not stay here. If you stay, I will go with my people.” He caught her hand in his, pressing it reassuringly.

  “Na-tsi-sta,” he said to Jotham, using the Cheyenne so that Sweet Medicine Woman would understand what he was saying. “I am Cheyenne now. Zes-tan. Cheyenne. Cherokee only by blood. This is not my life, Jotham.”

  “I told you, greenhorn,” Carrothers said, slapping Jotham on the back. “Your Cherokee cousin’s gone pure wild Indian.”

  Before the Cheyennes left Fort Carrothers, Dane met one more member of the “family” that had been transplanted so quickly from the Cherokee Nation. At the last minute, while Dane was tightening saddles and travois, Bibbs brought his new wife out to the horses. “Wewoka,” he said proudly. Wewoka was half Seminole, half black, a slave who had escaped from her Seminole owner and made her way across Indian Territory to the Cherokees, where Bibbs had met her. “Reverend Crookes, he married us, Dane, so we all proper and legal. Then Mr. William and Jotham made me a freedman and they say Wewoka is freedwoman, too.”

  Wewoka had strange luminous eyes with a violet sheen in them, but Dane could see fear in them, too, and it disturbed him when he realized that he and the Cheyennes were the objects of her fear. What tales, what lurid falsehoods had she heard of the savage tribes of the Plains that inspired her ill-concealed terror?

  Later that day, he was reminded of this again when they approached another of their favorite camping stops, a willow-shaded greensward along Lodgepole Creek. A number of covered wagons were already there, arranged in a semicircle, and when the outer guards saw the Cheyennes approaching, they arose with rifles at the ready. Dane heard Big Star’s exclamation of disgust as the chief raised an arm in a signal for his caravan to turn away. There was plenty of room along the creek for the Cheyennes to have camped there, too, but the white men feared them. The Cheyennes left the Oregon Trail and the Platte behind them and went into the sanctuary of the dry sandhills, camping at nightfall without water.