The Native American Experience

by Dee Brown

  “When Big Star understood what was to happen to Little Cloud and Spotted Shield he had a hard time controlling his anger and his words. He unrolled the treaty and showed it to Major Easterwood. ‘On this paper are the names of your soldier chiefs and agents of the Great Father,’ he said. ‘The name of Wannesahta, keeper of our sacred medicine arrows, is there for the Cheyennes. The white man’s writing promised us land from the North Platte to the Arkansas, from the Great Mountains to the fork of the Platte, for hunting and traveling over as our fathers hunted and traveled over this country before the white men came here. Now you tell us we must live in the barren land below Sand Creek where there is nothing for us to eat. We want only to go away from you, to the north, where we can live in peace. Why do you not let my people go?’

  “Easterwood’s face showed the shame he felt in his heart. He shook his head. ‘I know nothing of these things,’ he said bitterly. ‘I am only a messenger, a simple soldier from the East.’ He looked at me, then quickly turned his eyes away. ‘With your permission, my men will take that howitzer over there beyond the willow brush,’ he said.

  “ ‘When you give us our two young boys, you can take the big gun,’ Big Star told him.

  “Easterwood drew in his breath, sighed, and spread his hands. ‘You are making a grave mistake,’ he said. ‘Colonel Belcourt…’ Without finishing what he was going to say, he turned and limped back to his horse and mounted. ‘If your people don’t start for Sand Creek,’ he called to me, ‘I fear for the lives of all of you.’ ”

  45

  THE DUST OF MAJOR Easterwood’s departing squad had scarcely disappeared on the horizon when Pleasant McAlpin and a dozen Dog Soldiers rode out of the Ghost Timbers in the opposite direction. After splashing through the shallow waters of the Platte, they followed a winding tributary, a small stream that eventually cut across the stagecoach road. No bridge had been built over this broad sandy crossing which rarely ran deep enough to wet the spokes of passing vehicles. Stagecoach drivers usually stopped briefly at the ford to let their teams drink before continuing the long run to the next station.

  Fringing this crooked stream were growths of sand-grass, turning in late summer from green to gold, reaching higher than a man’s head. Here the Dog Soldiers dismounted, two of them leading the ponies upstream until they were out of sight of the road. Pleasant and the remaining warriors then concealed themselves in the high grass and waited for the overland stage from the east.

  The stagecoach was behind schedule that day, and it approached the ford with such speed that Pleasant feared it might not stop. Through his shield of grass he watched the driver anxiously, was relieved when he saw the man pull back on his lines, yelling whoa at the six-horse team. The stage was crowded, four men seated on the top, a woman beside the driver.

  Pleasant waited until the driver dismounted. The man’s black boots splashed in the water. He loosened the lines and unbitted the horses, patting their necks as they bent to drink. Sounding a shrill whistle, Pleasant stepped out in front of the team, his Springfield aimed at the driver. At the same moment five Dog Soldiers appeared on each side of the coach, one springing upon the top to knock a pistol from the hands of a startled male passenger, and to seize a rifle from another before either could be brought into action. During their raids against the invading Veheos in Kansas, these Dog Soldiers had learned from Lean Bear the value of surprise.

  “We’re carrying nothing but passengers,” the driver said calmly to Pleasant. “Nothing you bucks would want.”

  Pleasant walked to the coach and jerked the door open, motioning the passengers to get out. Above him on the driver’s seat, the woman began screaming. Two well-dressed men, a soldier with his arm in a sling, and three younger passengers stepped down on the wet sand. Pleasant studied the faces of the three young people. One was a boy of sixteen or seventeen; another a freckled red-haired boy about ten, and a blonde curly-haired little girl, perhaps seven or eight, who made him think for just a flash of his mother, Jerusha.

  The oldest of the three was trembling with fright. The red-haired boy’s eyes were big, but he was grinning with the delight that dangerous excitement sometimes brings to the young. The little girl spoke first: “Are you going to rob us?”

  “No,” Pleasant said. With his rifle barrel, he pushed the two younger children toward the farther bank of the stream. “Go and stand over there,” he ordered.

  “You ain’t no Indian,” the red-haired boy said.

  Pleasant felt his anger rising. He was listening for the concealed ponies, but the woman in the driver’s seat kept screaming. He shouted up at her: “Be quiet and no harm will come to your children.”

  “What do you want of them?” she cried.

  “Your children will likely be in Denver sooner than you,” he answered roughly.

  Two Dog Soldiers were unhitching the stage team. Pleasant saw the holders bringing the Cheyenne ponies, their heads bobbing above the high grass. As soon as the ponies were in the road, the Dog Soldiers began mounting. Three of them led away pairs of the stagecoach team. Two others lifted the red-haired boy and the curly-haired little girl behind their saddles and started quickly off. The woman began screaming again.

  “You harm them children, half-breed,” the stagecoach driver said to Pleasant, “and you’ll have every man in Denver after your neck. They’re Tom Boyle’s brats.”

  Keeping their rifles on the horseless stagecoach, Pleasant and the remaining Dog Soldiers danced their ponies back from it, whirled, and galloped toward the Platte.

  When the Dog Soldiers returned to the Hinta Nagi, the two Veheo children they brought with them quickly attracted a crowd of Cheyennes. Big Star soon dispersed the adults, believing they might alarm the young hostages. “But they show no fear,” Bear Woman said. This was true. The red-haired boy was curious about the mountain howitzer. He asked Pleasant where the Cheyennes had obtained the cannon and if they had fired it at soldiers. The little girl examined the clothing of the Cheyenne children gathered around Big Star’s patchwork tipi and was puzzled because she could not understand what was said to her. Both she and the boy soon joined a playing circle for the suhkpakhit game. The children held hands with fingers interlocked, while one in the middle tried to break out of the circle. The red-haired boy volunteered to be locked in. He broke out with a loud whoop of triumph, but was quickly pursued and slapped to the ground, rolling and laughing in the leaves.

  The question of who was to take the offer of exchange to Fort Starke had to be settled by Big Star. Pleasant and Dane were equally determined to be the message-bearer. Pleasant argued that he and the Dog Soldiers had captured the children and that it was his right to arrange the exchange for Little Cloud and Spotted Shield. Dane declared that he was the older and that only he could count on Major Easterwood as an ally against Belcourt in the event the colonel was reluctant to cooperate. Aware of Pleasant’s quick temper, remembering his recklessness the day he helped bring the soldiers from Platte Bridge against the Cheyenne village, Big Star decided that Dane should go to Fort Starke.

  “We shall both go,” Pleasant insisted.

  “No.” Dane shook his head. “Those children are your responsibility. They can’t make themselves understood with their Veheo talk to anyone here but you.”

  Dane started to Fort Starke late in the night, riding slowly so that he would arrive there soon after sunrise. This was the first time he had seen the new fort, and except that it was much larger, it reminded him of the Tennessee stockade in which a quarter of a century before he and his Cherokee kinsmen had suffered and died. A rectangle of tall poles connected four massive blockhouses at each corner. From the upper walls of the blockhouses, barrels of swivel guns pointed from long narrow loopholes. Between the north side of the stockade and the South Fork was a large corral crowded with hundreds of horses, dozens of wagons, high stacks of bagged grain, and a tented smithy.

  As Dane approached, he wondered what mighty force Flattery Jack Belcourt was in dread
of. Who was it that he feared would raise up arms against him upon this lonely plain?

  From the guard post above the gate a sentry challenged. “I come to talk with Colonel Belcourt,” Dane called out. He heard voices inside, and then after several minutes the heavy gate slowly opened. Two guards held pistols pointed at him and told him to dismount. A third man searched him. He had come unarmed. The third man led his horse off toward the corral, while guards escorted him into a room at the base of the nearest blockhouse.

  Flattery Jack was seated at a table eating breakfast, his shell jacket unbuttoned, his gray hair uncombed. He wolfed down a large piece of ham and glared at Dane.

  “You! You again? Where have I seen you before, a long time ago. Why do you come to annoy me at breakfast time?”

  “I bring a message,” Dane said.

  “From who, from where?”

  “From Big Star of the Cheyennes.”

  Belcourt poured whiskey from a bottle into his china coffee cup. Dane could smell the fumes blending with the aroma of hot coffee.

  “Two white children are in the Cheyenne camp at the Ghost Timbers,” Dane said quietly. “They will be traded to you for the two young Cheyennes you hold in this fort.”

  “The ambushers of my rifle wagons! Why should I set free a pair of murdering thieves? You go back and tell Big Star that if he is not out of the Timbers with his people and on his way to Sand Creek by sundown, I’ll exterminate every man, woman, and child in his tribe.” Belcourt took a long swallow of his whiskey and coffee. “Who are these white children? From where do they come?”

  “From Denver,” Dane replied. “I believe their name is Boyle.”

  “Boyles of Denver? How old? Boys, girls?”

  Dane described the red-haired boy and the blonde girl.

  “Tom Boyle’s younglings! Damn you! How in hell did—” Belcourt shouted at one of the guards standing in the doorway: “Corporal, get my adjutant in here!”

  After the arrival of the adjutant, a lean sour-faced officer, Dane was ordered out of Belcourt’s quarters. From where he stood, still under guard, he could see tents in the open space within the stockade. He also could smell meat cooking. Saliva flowed in his mouth. For two days he had shared the skimpy cold rations of the Cheyennes in the Timbers, and he felt an acute craving for food. While he waited he looked in every direction for Major Easterwood, wondering in what part of the fort he might be.

  Belcourt and the adjutant came out. “On second thought,” Belcourt was saying, “we’d better leave two companies here. You can’t tell when some bunch of crazy drunked-up hostiles might try to take this fort.” He turned to the guards. “Bring the redskin.” The guards fell in beside Dane and marched him behind Belcourt across to the opposite blockhouse. A sergeant saluted the colonel and led the way inside a short corridor where there were two facing doors locked by metal bolts. Belcourt slid one of the bolts back and opened the door. “Outside,” he said, and Little Cloud and Spotted Shield stepped cautiously into the corridor, their moccasins shuffling on the hard earthen floor, their eyes revealing uncertainty, searching for some meaning in the faces of those in front of them.

  Suddenly recognizing his father, Little Cloud moved toward Dane, but Belcourt kicked the boy sharply in the buttocks, so that he stumbled past the guards. Then with one of his huge fleshy hands Belcourt pushed Dane into the emptied cell and closed the iron-bolted door upon him. “It was you,” Belcourt shouted through the door, “who led the raid against my rifle wagons. And if you lied to me about the Boyle children, I’ll bring these boys back to be put on trial with you in Denver.”

  46

  “BEING LOCKED UP IN Fort Starke, I did not see the exchange,” Dane said, “but Red Bird Woman was there. She can tell about it. And what happened afterward.”

  Her dark eyes regarded me as though she were dubious of my loyalties. She did not quite trust me, the white stranger. “Belcourt was evil spirit,” she said slowly. “Some evil spirits have no fear, but that one was coward. He brought many Bluecoats close by Ghost Timbers, with two big guns on wheels. Then he sent his young men with stripes on sleeves to Big Star to talk about white children.”

  “Belcourt was afraid to come in himself?” I asked. “So he sent some enlisted men?”

  “Yes, the young men with stripes on sleeves kept riding back and forth between Big Star and Belcourt. Belcourt was way out on rising ground with Bluecoats all around him like he in great fear of us.

  “Then they brought doctor soldier. He said Belcourt want him to look at little girl to see if she been harmed. If she been harmed, Belcourt shoot one of our boys, Little Cloud or Spotted Shield, and trade his dead body for little girl. Doctor soldier took little girl in Big Star’s tipi. Bear Woman went in with them. She said little girl cried when doctor soldier took her clothes off and put his fingers on her san. Doctor soldier seem surprised no harm been done to her.

  “Soon after, Big Star and Pleasant and some other Dog Soldiers took children out to edge of Ghost Timbers, and Bluecoats with stripes on sleeves brought Little Cloud and Spotted Shield. Little boy with red hair not want to leave us. He kept on begging Pleasant to let him stay and live with us. Little girl was crying and would not let doctor soldier carry her. Two Bluecoats then come in with horses and dragged big gun away.

  “I thought Bluecoats go away after they trade us Little Cloud and Spotted Shield for children. They put children in wagon and it went along Platte in direction of ford, toward Denver. Then Bluecoats separated, some going one way, some another way, till Bluecoats around us in all four directions. Some more wagons come then from fort. They put up tent, and start feasting and singing. Pleasant told me tent was for Belcourt and one of wagons was filled with whiskey for Bluecoats to drink to drive away fear. I said it take much whiskey to make them not cowards, but I guess they had much whiskey.

  “Late in day they start firing big guns at Hinta Nagi. Pieces of metal like hail tore leaves and bark from trees and stung our horses. All us except Big Star got into dugouts. Big Star was dressed in that Bluecoat uniform the Veheos gave him at Horse Creek. I thought Big Star’s medicine must be strong because pieces of metal flying everywhere but nothing could hit him. Bear Woman was with me in sandpit nearby and she kept on lifting up tree boughs to see if Big Star all right.

  “When daylight got like color of brown water in creek, just before dark, we heard bugles blowing all around us. The Bluecoats yelled all together, and then their horses started toward us from the four directions, their hoofbeats pounding, so many fast hoofbeats, like that time one summer we camped on the Nako and buffalo herd got scared of Thunderbird’s lightning and ran right through our village. Buffalo herd ran on us from one direction, but Bluecoats come from four directions, firing guns and screaming like wolves gone crazy. When they come in on us, children and most women stay down in sandpits and dugouts. Some women like me and Bear Woman and Rising Fawn, we have guns instead of children and like warriors we rise up to shoot.

  “Some of us got killed and bad wounded. Some of our children got frightened and tried to run and Bluecoats shot them like buffalo calves. I saw little girl not quite hid in sandpit. Two Bluecoats shot her with pistols and pulled her out of sand and dragged her. I saw woman trying to hide baby in her arms, but Bluecoat slashed it with saber and cut woman’s belly open. But I think what happened to us at Ghost Timbers not so bad as happened later on to our relatives at Black Kettle’s camp on Sand Creek. There Bluecoats waited till Black Kettle’s warriors went off to hunt buffalo, and then they come and killed many women and children and old men. Bluecoats cut up bodies, cut off private parts, and wore them on hats. If we all stayed at Sand Creek, same might of happened to us.

  “At Ghost Timbers we had warriors and good guns to fight with. Many Bluecoats so drunk they can’t shoot straight. They rode horses into sandpits and dugouts, hurting selves and horses and some of our people. Our warriors shot many Bluecoats. After Bluecoats rode once through our camp, they not come back again, not even
try to get their dead and wounded. Those Bluecoats scalps worthless, because such cowards nobody wanted scalps. But when we found Big Star lying dead in front of tipi, eyes open looking at sky, medal with white man’s hand shaking red man’s hand all covered with blood, and Big Star’s fingers froze around that treaty paper, we all became crazy, we women crazier than men, and so we went and killed all Bluecoat wounded and scalped them. One of wounded Bluecoats had a pistol and he shot Rising Fawn.”

  47

  THE FORT STARKE GUARDHOUSE room in which Dane was imprisoned was barely long enough for a man to lie on its earthen floor. No light or air entered except through an unchinked crack in the timbers, an opening that afforded him a narrow view of the south side of the fort. From time to time he saw squads of mounted soldiers hurrying around from the corral on the north side. For an hour or so he heard shouts and commands. Occasionally a bugle sounded, and he knew from all the activity that several companies of cavalry were moving out in the direction of the Ghost Timbers.

  Gradually the fort lapsed into quietness. Sometimes he could hear voices through a thin wall and he guessed it faced a room where the guards loafed while off duty. A bottle smashed with a tinkle of glass followed by drunken laughter. He remembered the time so long ago in the Tennessee stockade when the soldiers locked him in the pine-slab privy too small to lie down in, with the stench of excrement always in his nostrils. The same stench came from a sinkhole in one corner of the cell.

  In the dim light he could see that the timbers forming the base of the blockhouse were deep in the ground and knew that escape by digging would be a slow and difficult task. Nevertheless he began gouging at the hard dirt, using his fingers and then a small stone that he unearthed. The exertion made his head wound bleed, and intensified his thirst and hunger, but no food or water was brought him through the endless afternoon. At last the sun went down and the light coloring the peaceful plain to the south turned from yellow to rose to bronze, and then darkness came. The voices of the soldiers on the other side of the wall became quarrelsome. Two swore loudly at each other, their dispute ending in a drunken fight, the plank wall shaking when a body fell or was pushed against it.