The Native American Experience

by Dee Brown

  That was the summer they followed a great buffalo herd from the Powder River country down to the North Platte, and it was the summer that Dane met Red Cloud of the Oglala Sioux. The Oglalas followed the same herd, and they camped nearby the Cheyennes all through the Moon of Red Cherries. Both tribes ran short of ammunition, and a dozen or so young men from each camp, including Dane and Red Cloud, decided to travel to Fort Laramie for gunpowder and musket balls. They were three days on the journey and they made of it a summer pleasure outing—that is, until they reached Fort Laramie. There they were told quite firmly by the licensed trader that he was forbidden by the U.S. Army to trade either guns or ammunition to “hostile” Indians.

  They were angered by such treatment. After all, they had been dealing with traders most of their lives, giving double value for half value in most cases, and now to be suddenly denied the use of firearms they took as a gross insult. Dane at last calmed them down by suggesting that they ride on another two days to Fort Carrothers.

  On this part of the journey, Dane spent most of his time with Red Cloud, learning Lakota words, and teaching English words to his companion. The future leader of the Oglalas was then in his late twenties, a few years younger than Dane, and when he learned of Dane’s origins he began plying him with numerous questions about the White Nation in the East, expressing a desire to visit there sometime to see the great villages.

  After they turned into the trail along the Platte, they met several long wagon trains. Red Cloud’s reaction was somewhat the same as Jim Carrothers’s when he and Dane were traveling to Westport Landing—that the numerous white emigrants must be leaving the East empty of people. “Count the blades of grass on these plains,” Dane said to him, “and you will know the numbers of the whites.”

  Traveling on toward Fort Carrothers, Red Cloud was dismayed by the overgrazed prairies that were already beginning to erode, by the destruction of cottonwood groves where his people had wintered when he was a boy, and by the total absence of wild game where it had once been so plentiful. When they reached the Lodge-pole Creek camping site, it was Dane’s turn to express disgust. The friendly willows had all been cut away and the once pure waters of the creek were fouled by dead oxen, broken wagons, discarded kegs, harness, tins, boxes, and other offscourings of the passing whites.

  “They are worse than summer locusts,” Red Cloud said, “like maggots eating at the heart of our land.”

  At Fort Carrothers, Jotham and the others were delighted to see Dane again, although they seemed to be wary of his fierce and demanding companions. Jotham also had been ordered to trade no arms or ammunition to “hostile” Indians, but as Dane was a “civilized” Cherokee and therefore not “hostile,” a sale of a considerable quantity was made to him. They left under the cover of night, their saddlepacks filled with powder and lead.

  All the way to their camps on the North Platte, Red Cloud and Dane discussed the lengthening shadow over their way of life, agreeing that the only hope of survival for their people was to keep the whites from invading the north—the valleys of the Powder, Tongue, and Yellowstone, and the sacred Black Hills.

  34

  “I HAVE MET FEW men, Indian or white, as strong in purpose as Red Cloud was then,” Dane said. “He would get a thought in his head and let it grow there. When the troubles came he knew what to do, and the other chiefs listened and followed him. Red Cloud won many victories, but in the end he had to compromise to survive and the spirit went out of him. I went to see him the last time I visited Pine Ridge. He’s almost blind, hair whiter than mine, but still a man whose face is pleasing to look upon.

  “He brought presents to our camp on the Powder when he heard a daughter had been born to Sweet Medicine Woman. Blankets and bear-claw necklaces and earrings. Most of the young Cheyenne women in our camp gathered around just to look at this handsome young man from the Oglalas. At that time in his life, Red Cloud was always getting into trouble over women, other men’s wives, because he was so handsome and showy.

  “That day on the Powder he ignored the young women, though. He had other things on his mind. After he gave Sweet Medicine Woman the presents, he asked what name she was going to call our first girl child. ‘Amayi,’ she told him, ‘Dane wants her named for his grandmother.’

  “ ‘Amayi. That is not a Cheyenne name,’ he said.

  “ ‘Muskogean,’ I explained, ‘Creek.’

  “ ‘It has a good sound in my ears,’ he said, and then grasped my arm. ‘I want to talk with you. Let’s go where there are not so many gabbling girls.’

  “Red Cloud wanted to talk about a great council that was to be held soon at Fort Laramie. Broken Hand Fitzpatrick, an agent for the United States, had been visiting the tribes between the Missouri River and the Arkansas, inviting them to this council, promising many valuable presents to all who would attend. Most of the Indians liked Broken Hand. He and Jim Carrothers had come west together to trap for pelts and like Carrothers he had an Indian wife and family. But our leaders were suspicious of this council.

  “ ‘What do you think they want, the Wasicus?’ Red Cloud used the Lakota word for white men.

  “ ‘They want our land,’ I said, and told him how the Wasicus had wormed their way into Cherokee lands by first beguiling the chiefs into letting them build roads and trading posts and forts.

  “Sure enough, when we all went down to Fort Laramie, in the Drying-Grass Moon, the first thing the agents from Washington asked for was a promise from all the chiefs to protect travelers along the Oregon Trail and on any other roads that might be built through our country. That council at Laramie was the greatest gathering of Indians in our people’s history, more than were on the Little Bighorn when Custer foolishly attacked us. So many came that the agents had to move us several miles down to Horse Creek so there would be enough grass for the horses that numbered in the thousands, and room for the tipis that stretched as far as the eye could reach. The remarkable thing was that half the tribes there were old enemies of the other half—Sioux and Arikara, Cheyenne and Crow, Arapaho and Shoshone, as well as Assiniboin, Hidatsa, and Mandan. For almost a moon we camped together with only a few dragoons in fancy blue uniforms to keep us apart. If we’d wanted to fight each other, those dragoons would’ve been run over and trampled into the ground.

  “As it was, the only trouble we had was caused by a hot-tempered dragoon officer. One day, at the request of the agents, Lean Bear led his Dog Soldiers in a mock battle, using only hand signals to control the movements of his horsed warriors in fast turns and charges while they pretended to fight with their guns, lances, and bows and arrows. After the show ended, Lean Bear rode up to the big tent where the council meetings were held. He dismounted and bowed to the agents and army officers, who were clapping their hands. He was leading his horse off to make room for a parade of Oglala warriors when he passed a buggy in which a dragoon officer was sitting with his wife. This woman’s hand was dangling over the side of the buggy and on one of her fingers was a ring that sparkled bright in the sunlight—a diamond, I suppose. Now, Lean Bear was always attracted to beautiful things. He had quite a collection of jewels—bracelets, rings, necklaces. Impulsively he reached for the woman’s hand to examine the glittering ring, probably to compliment her, but she screamed. Her husband grabbed his buggy whip and slashed Lean Bear across the neck and shoulder. Lean Bear might’ve killed that officer on the spot if several dragoons had not moved in on him. Without a word then, he mounted, rode back to our Cheyenne camp, and painted his face black and white. He was riding through the tipis, summoning his Dog Soldiers to battle against the dragoons to avenge the insult, when Big Star, his uncle, came from the council tent to try to calm him down. Finally Broken Hand Fitzpatrick settled the matter by arranging for the dragoon officer to present Lean Bear with a fine blanket and offer an apology.

  “As I have said, what the government agents wanted us there for was to make a treaty—which meant take some of our land—and to do this they insisted that each trib
e be represented by a chief. The Cheyennes of course did not have one chief. We had many chiefs, of many small bands. Little Wolf and Dull Knife were from the Rosebud country and Black Kettle was from the Arkansas River country hundreds of miles to the south. Big Star’s people moved back and forth. And there were many others. At last we settled on old Wannesahta, keeper of the Cheyennes’ sacred medicine arrows. Wannesahta was no more a chief than I was, and did not want to be a chief, but he went to the council meetings as our chief.

  “Because I spoke English and Cheyenne, I was chosen to be the tribe’s interpreter, and so I had an inside view of how clever the white agents were at cheating the Indians through treaties. First they talked about the Oregon Trail being only a narrow piece of ground no wider than two wagon wheels, but the way they worded the treaty they were taking the whole Platte Valley for miles across. They talked about the vast areas in which each of the tribes would live free of white intrusion, but at the same time they introduced provisions for more roads, with forts to protect them, wherever the whites might wish to build roads.

  “Every night I talked about this with Big Star, who as a little chief was allowed to attend the councils. ‘Why would the whites want to build a road and forts through our country?’ he would ask. ‘There is no gold beyond the Yellowstone.’

  “ ‘Someday they may find gold there, or something else they want,’ I would say. ‘If they come into our country they will never leave.’

  “Red Cloud saw the treaty the way I did, but there was nothing he could do about it then. The agents named Brave Bear, a Brule, as chief of all the Sioux, although the Oglalas far outnumbered the Brules. Red Cloud’s uncle, Old Smoke, and Whirlwind and Red Water attended the council only as little chiefs of the Oglalas. All that Red Cloud could do was fume about Brave Bear being a trading-post loafer who would do whatever the agents wanted him to do.

  “The way they divided up the land for the different tribes satisfied no one. The Sioux were given the Black Hills, although that was sacred Cheyenne Territory. The Crows were given land from the Bighorns to Powder River, although that was Sioux and Cheyenne hunting grounds. The Cheyennes’ northern boundary was the North Platte, although most of our northern cousins lived far above that river. The white agents solved that difficulty by saying that any tribe could hunt where it pleased so long as its people lived in its assigned home area. Red Cloud and I had a good laugh about that.

  “For nine days the chiefs and the agents argued and harangued and then the treaty was laid out on a table, just about the way the agents had written it before the council began. The agents did agree to let us trade for arms and ammunition to be used for hunting, but we could not hunt in the Platte Valley or anywhere near where other roads might be built. After this was settled, the chiefs came up and marked their X’s and we interpreters wrote their names beside the X’s. Then each chief was marched into a small tent to be presented special presents. These were dragoon uniforms, light blue trousers and dark blue frock coats with gold buttons and epaulets. They were also given big medals to wear around their necks and handwritten copies of the treaty with a wax seal and scarlet ribbon. The medals had clasped hands on one side and an engraving of President Millard Fillmore on the other.

  “The chiefs were told to put on the uniforms and medals and stand together outside the tent with the dragoon officers while an artist from Washington sketched their portraits. The chiefs looked very ill at ease, but most of them were proud of those uniforms. Big Star kept his for several years, wearing it only for important occasions, one of them being the day the soldiers killed him.

  “After the artist finished his sketches, a dragoon fired off a little cannon that stood beside the tent, and a train of wagons loaded with bolts of calico and bags of flour, sugar, and coffee rolled into the grounds. The soldiers dumped all these presents out on the ground and the chiefs spent the rest of the day dividing them up. The treaty promised us similar presents every year for fifteen years, but in later years the government agents kept most of the goods themselves and sold them secretly to traders.

  “In that time of our prosperity none of us really needed the things they gave us at Horse Creek. We could have obtained enough buffalo hides in one day’s hunt in the Powder River country to trade for all those goods. Another fool thing the government agents did—they slaughtered about a hundred beef cattle they’d driven all the way from Westport Landing, and invited us to a barbecue along the creek. A few of us went down there, but the meat was stringy and tasted too sweet. We left most of the carcasses to the flies. After living on white man’s food through the Drying-Grass Moon, we were ready for some buffalo tongues and beaver tails. And so in a day the thousands of tipis were struck, ending the first big land-steal in the West.”

  35

  DURING THE WINTER FOLLOWING the treaty council at Fort Laramie, Dane’s second daughter was born while they were camped in the Ghost Timbers. Sweet Medicine Woman named her Susa, and shortly afterward Dane took his family over to Fort Carrothers for a celebration with Jotham and Griffa’s family. During the several days they were all together, Sweet Medicine Woman lost much of her shyness with her husband’s Sanaki relatives. She became especially fond of seventeen-year-old Pleasant because he spent so much time romping with his half brothers, Swift Eagle and Little Cloud, carrying them about for hours on his back. She told Pleasant that she was adopting him as a son, and he bragged about this to everybody who would listen.

  One day Bibbs and his Seminole-Negro wife brought in a rocking horse they had made of strong blacksmith’s iron, carved wood, and blanket cloth, as a birth present for Susa. Wewoka had painted the horse in brilliant reds and yellows, and everyone exclaimed over its beauty. Three-year-old Amayi thought the horse was meant for her, and Dane told her that she could ride it until she was old enough for a live pony, and then she must give the make-believe horse to Susa.

  On the morning that Dane was preparing to return to the Timbers with his family, Pleasant sought him out in the corral. “Is it because of my pale skin that you don’t like me as well as your Cheyenne sons?” he asked.

  Dane was startled by the question. “I like you equally as well as my other children,” he said.

  “Then why do I not live with you?”

  “I thought you were happier here,” Dane replied, although he admitted to himself that he had never considered the matter.

  “Sweet Medicine Woman told me of the good times you have every summer in the north. I think she would like me to come with you this year.”

  “Then by all means come,” Dane said. “It is different from any life you have ever known. You may not like it, but a summer of buffalo hunting under the sun will darken that pale skin you worry about.”

  And so that spring, Pleasant rode north with the Cheyennes. He would not wear a breechclout because he did not want too much of his pale skin to show, but Dane found him a pair of old buckskin trousers and a long-sleeved shirt made of bighorn skin and he seemed satisfied.

  Although Dane was apprehensive that Pleasant might not be accepted, the boy quickly won the approval of almost all of Big Star’s Cheyennes. The girls liked his tawny hair and blue eyes, and the young men admired the reckless way in which he hunted buffalo. Then Lean Bear took him under his tutelage, helping him with Cheyenne ways and ceremonies. One day after they made a permanent camp on the North Platte, Lean Bear came to Dane and announced that the Dog Soldiers were planning a horse raid against the Shoshones. He wanted to take Pleasant along as a guest.

  “We promised the treaty agents at Laramie,” Dane reminded him, “that we would remain at peace with our old enemies.”

  “Oh, we are not going to war with the Shoshones,” Lean Bear answered. “We will merely capture some of their horses. They have more than they need. Where else would we get horses if not from the Shoshones and Crows?”

  Dane laughed. “All right. You may take my son along if you promise to look after him and curb his recklessness.”

  “I will
treat him as my own son,” Lean Bear promised.

  Lean Bear and his Dog Soldiers found a Shoshone camp with many horses over on the Sweetwater. The raid ended up in a running fight, with each side inflicting minor wounds on the other. Lean Bear cleverly maneuvered the foray so that the choicest pair of horses, Appaloosas with beautiful symmetrical markings on their rumps, fell into Pleasant’s hands. Pleasant got his ropes on them in a flash and raced off with all the coolness of a veteran raider.

  The attitudes of the other Dog Soldiers toward the good fortune of their young guest varied from envy to admiration, but if any of them suspected that Pleasant’s luck was largely the result of Lean Bear’s maneuvering, they said nothing of it.

  Soon after they broke away from the pursuing Shoshones, they came upon a temporary camp of Arapahos who had ventured up the Sweetwater for the same purpose as the Cheyennes. Lean Bear decided to spend the night with the Arapahos for added support in case the Shoshones managed to enlarge their forces for a renewal of the chase.

  The captured horse herd immediately attracted the Arapahos, and Pleasant’s Appaloosas became the center of attention. Several warriors were eager to trade for one or both of the mottled horses. At first Pleasant declined all their offers, and then one of the older Arapahos brought out a parfleche container, unlaced the rawhide fastenings, and removed two strange glittering objects. One was a Spanish coat of mail, the other a metal headpiece with a flap to protect the wearer’s neck. The Arapaho had obtained these things from a Mexican many years before, trading ponies for them. He had kept them well, burnishing away any evidence of rust whenever it appeared. But now he was ready to exchange them for a Palouse. All his life he had wanted a Palouse. He would trade the iron shirt and headpiece for Pleasant’s two Appaloosas.

  Pleasant examined the coat of mail carefully. It was made of small metal rings and scales closely interwoven and then sewed upon a shirt of thick goatskin. He put it on and found that it reached to his waist, suiting his small frame as well as it fit the Spaniard who had brought it to America two centuries before. In the end, Pleasant got the coat in exchange for one of his horses. He had no use, he said, for the iron hat.