I Didn't Ask to Be Born

by Bill Cosby

  Another thing I’ve wondered about when watching Westerns is whether or not the settlers had to practice pulling their wagons into a circle. You never see them practice anything in the movies, but when the Native Americans come riding down the hill, the settlers all seem to know what to do. It is my belief—although I’ve never seen it in the movies—they had to have practiced. I can imagine the leader, whose name is Pathfinder, standing in front of all these settlers and their covered wagons.

  Pathfinder: All right, ladies and gentlemen, here we go, pots and pans and everything, pull them in. And we are going to be in a straight line and when you hear me yell, “Pork chop,” then Sarge will ride quickly down yelling “Indians, Indians, Indians.”

  (Sarge is not really in the army or anything anymore; his name is just Sarge.)

  Pathfinder: The drivers will quickly move around to form a circle. I will count, and what we’re looking for is no longer than eight seconds to make the full circle. The women, those who want to, will grab a rifle and go under the wagons alongside the men. Children will stay in the wagons behind the bags of flour, which, hopefully, will block the bullets. Stay down, remember that. Take all the water, which is very valuable, and put it inside if you can. And if you can’t cover yourself behind the bags of flour, then use the water because whatever they shoot may not penetrate the water jugs. Remember, folks, this all must be done by the count of eight. All right? Now, don’t forget, no cheating. We’re staying calm, just looking around, looking at trees and things.

  And I can imagine Pathfinder riding back and forth to make sure everybody’s doing what they’re supposed to do. Also, at the end of the line, there’s somebody named Leonard, who is the pickup man. What he does is, he walks along to pick up things that have fallen off of wagons.

  At some point, Pathfinder yells:

  Pathfinder: Pork chop!

  And then Sarge rides up very fast.

  Sarge: Indians, Indians, Indians, Indians!

  Pathfinder: Okay, now! Here we go! Just stay calm! One, two, three, four!

  And they start. The drivers all make a right turn. But this is the first time they ever did it, and since nobody gave them exact instructions, the first wagon made a right turn and the last wagon made a left turn, and they wound up with the last wagon being out there by itself.

  Pathfinder: We’ve got to stop this! Now, everybody, here we go, everybody listen carefully. When we say Indians, everybody follow the first wagon until we make a complete circle. Okay, now, here we go, everybody in a single line.

  And I can hear the music from Gunsmoke or something playing. The first driver is a little fast—he pulls out yelling “yah, yah, yah”—and the wagons are all going but the only problem is everybody is moving fast and the last wagon can’t catch up with the first wagon.

  Pathfinder: Okay! Everybody stop—we got to figure this out! Lead wagon will take off first and the others will follow, and you will not stop until you get to the last wagon, and that will make the circle. This is very, very difficult to do because if the first wagon moves fast while the other wagons are moving along slowly, the trailing wagons probably will not catch up to the lead wagon, and instead of a circle, we’ll have a U or a C. Okay, here we go again. We’ll do it three times.

  So maybe the first time isn’t so good, but the second time the first wagon catches up to the last wagon but there’s a huge gap. Then the third time is pretty good, but even as Pathfinder continues to direct the wagons, there still is a little bit of a gap.

  Pathfinder: Now, let’s close this up. We have to close this up and come around. Okay, now everybody jump out with your rifles. Here we go. And point. Now form a circle, five, six, seven, eight, we have a perfect circle. Everybody under the wagons! Eleven, twelve. Now… stop!

  Pathfinder gets off his horse and looks around.

  Pathfinder: What is wrong with this situation? Can anybody tell me? You’re all there, you’ve got the rifles in your hands and you’re pointing. What is wrong with this picture?

  Settler: Uh, we’re really pointing at each other.

  Pathfinder: Exactly! So let’s do this. They’re coming from this side, so what do you do?

  Settler: Well, we’d turn around.

  Pathfinder: Exactly! You turn around so you’re all pointing in the same direction. At them. So whatever direction they’re coming in, shoot out.

  Settler: Okay.

  Pathfinder: So here they come; they’re coming down. Everyone under their wagon; everyone face shooting out.

  Settler: I have a question. I’m under somebody’s horse and the horse is not standing still—it’s jumping. Is there a way to keep the horse still somehow?

  Pathfinder: No. You’ll just have to take your shot and aim around it.

  Of course, as is always the case, a child starts crying.

  Pathfinder: Can we try to keep the children quiet?

  Pathfinder is getting frustrated.

  Pathfinder: Can everybody get back in your wagons? And the lead wagon, we’ll form a straight line again, go back, that’s it, turn around, come on back, we have a straight line. Now, here we go, and that’s it, stay in a straight line, everybody stay relaxed.

  Once again, Sarge comes riding through.

  Sarge: Indians, Indians, Indians!

  And Pathfinder goes back to directing.

  Pathfinder: Six, seven, eight. Great! That’s a perfect circle!

  The settlers jump out, and now they’re all under their wagons. And they’re pointing the rifles. Pathfinder rides back and forth, inspecting.

  Pathfinder: That’s great, great, great! Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful! And okay, perfect. Now we just have to tighten up on the timing. If we can do this in eight seconds, we’ll be ready to go to Colorado.

  So now they’re all ready in the wagons, and according to the movies, there’s always a pregnant woman and the pans are clanking and the music is playing.

  Paw: Maw?

  Maw: Yes, Paw?

  Paw: Emmy Lou had that baby yet?

  Maw: Not yet, Paw, but just keep that water boiling. Could happen anytime.

  Then all of sudden we hear drums and the camera cuts to the hillside where there are all these white actors with wigs, made with hair from Pakistan and India. And they have painted faces. It was my belief, sitting in the Booker and the Astor and Jumbo for ten cents, that the actors were told to just make something sound Native American. Wahana! Oba! Sowerhani! And then thrust the spear forward.

  Now, in these movies, the Native Americans are always sitting way up on the hill and the wagons are coming through the valley or the pass. In fact, in every movie, the settlers always have to come through some narrow space between two mountains. And there’s about a thousand Native Americans up on the top of the hill who have been waiting for the settlers. I don’t know how long they’ve been waiting, but they’re always up there when the settlers come through. We can tell it’s cold because the settlers have long sleeves, long pants, and jackets. The women have bonnets. But the actors playing the Native Americans just have some beads on their chests and a piece of something to cover up the part that Adam and Eve didn’t want to show. I mean, these people are just about naked except for feathers. There’s no saddle on their horses, no reins. And they’re using bows and arrows as weapons.

  As far as I’m concerned, if you made this into an Olympic event, it would be the most difficult event ever. The rules would read something like this:

  While shooting at a target with a bow and arrow, the entrant will wear no clothes and will ride downhill very fast on a horse with no saddle, reins, or stirrups.

  And don’t forget, movies make you think that everything is smooth. You hardly ever see where a horse stepped in a hole and broke its leg. That may have happened, but that’s not shown. I know we must have lost many, many horses on both sides, stepping into gopher holes and gullies or whatever, but that’s not in the movie.

  When the Native Americans ride down the hill, how do they guide the hors
e? Well, they kick the horse on whatever side and the horse will make a turn that way. This is multitasking. So I feel that one can say Native Americans were the first multitaskers. Because in order to arrive at the right place when you get down the hill, you’ve got to point your horse in the right direction. At the same time, you’re also trying to take the arrow and put the notch of the arrow onto the string. (That notch is called the “nock.” I don’t know why they didn’t just call it the “notch.”) Once you get the arrow on the string and put it in there, you have to pull on the string. Meanwhile, the horse’s head is going up and down and up and down. So you have to do all this with a horse’s head bobbing in your face and at the same time kick your horse to make a right turn or a left turn. And don’t forget, the people are all under the wagons so you’ve got to bend to the left side of the horse in order to make your arrow go under the wagons.

  If only Native Americans knew then what they know now…

  History (and the movies) tells us that once the Native Americans shot somebody, they would take the scalp.

  Before you start writing letters saying I’m being politically incorrect, let me explain that I’m just talking about what actually happened in those days. And thinking about that era of American history, I often wondered if Native Americans invented scalping or, if they didn’t, where did they get the idea to scalp people? So I looked up scalping and found out that Native Americans did not invent scalping. Archeologists found skeletons that showed evidence of scalping in 440 BC, so it goes way back. Herodotus, the Greek historian, wrote that the Scythians of Eurasia were the first scalpers.

  So the Scythians scalped. Why? Well, it was 440 BC. Obviously, nobody asked them. And there was scalping all over Europe in the ninth century, and there weren’t even any rock concerts then. I mean, everybody was scalping. The Anglo-Saxons were big on scalping back then. So were the Visigoths. When the Spaniards came to South America, they offered money to the Mexicans for the heads of Native Americans. But then somebody said:

  Look, everybody’s complaining. First of all, a head is a lot to carry. And you’ve got to put these heads on a horse, and a lot of the horses are bucking because they don’t know what you’re carrying. And there are flies.

  Not only was a head a lot to carry around, but it would frighten the children. You bring the head home and the eyeballs are still loose and the tongue is hanging out and there is still stuff from the neck. And it’s not like the ventriloquist where you can put your hand in there and move the mouth. Hello, Johnny! You like this?

  So they started asking for scalps instead. Scalps were easier to carry around.

  Wait a minute, we’ve got the Europeans—ladies and gentlemen, these are Europeans. But when I read about scalping, they separate the Spanish from the Europeans. Why? I have no idea. And the French in Canada were offering money for scalps of British soldiers. So it wasn’t just the Native Americans. It was the Europeans and the almost Europeans, the Spaniards, who loaned the money to Christopher Columbus, who was a European, to come here and discover this land.

  The Italians and the Portuguese are always arguing about whether Christopher Columbus was Italian or Portuguese. And some historians say that Columbus was Jewish, but I know for sure that Flip Wilson clarified history in his wonderful comedy routine telling us that if it wasn’t for Christopher Columbus there would be no Ray Charles. That’s something I read, although I don’t know what Howard Zinn is saying about that. This is Bill Cosby speaking, not Howard Zinn. Howard Zinn told the truthful history of the United States of America and people hated him. It’s like when I was saying things and people said, Why are you bringing up our dirty laundry?

  Even the settlers were scalping Native Americans. Just go up to Boscawen, New Hampshire. You’ll find a statue of a woman, Hannah Dustin, holding scalps. The way she got the scalps is this: After being captured by Native Americans, she escaped. But then she went back and killed ten Native American women and children before scalping them. And she gets a statue for doing that.

  So, in the movies, everybody is running around worrying about the “savages” scalping people, when other people were scalping the so-called savages.

  In the history of scalping, which was very dry reading, buried in the whole thing there’s a line that says something like: There doesn’t appear to be any evidence that the Eskimos scalped anybody. No explanation, just that. In thinking about the frozen north, one just could not see an Eskimo scalping anybody when you could freeze a person and feed him to the polar bear later or just leave him outside for the polar bear to find. One can’t even imagine an Eskimo spending time outside scalping people. It was just too cold and the heads were probably frozen.

  So whoever may have invented scalping, it is true that the Native Americans started practicing it at some point. I would imagine (or at least I would hope) that there must have been at least a couple of cavalry patrols with a major who was smart enough to realize that, given the value of scalps, if the patrol was outnumbered it would be wise to order everybody to shave their heads and ride with their hats off.

  Custer cut his hair before Custer’s Last Stand. This is a fact. He had those long curls. But before he rode into battle for his last stand, he cut his hair. Some people say that it wasn’t unusual for him to cut his hair whenever he rode into battle, but I don’t think that’s true because there are drawings of him fighting with long hair. Anyway, he cut his hair before the last stand. How much, I don’t know. But it worked. In a battle where the cavalry severely suffered, everybody was scalped except Custer. Which proves my theory that had they all shaved their heads, they would have been of no value and the Native Americans would have given them a pass and said, Come back when you’ve grown hair.

  When I was a child, we played cowboys and Indians—that’s what we called it back then. Sometimes one of us would play the Lone Ranger and one of us would be Tonto. With the help of comic books and publicity pictures—the Lone Ranger was on cereals and syrups and things like that—we knew what he looked like. (I wrote about the Lone Ranger, his trusty steed, Silver, and Tonto in the book Cosbyology.)

  Besides comic books we had regular books. Very short books. See Tom run. The end. And then it went to another story: See the dog run. And then: The dog can run fast, which was a sequel.

  We didn’t have a TV. I don’t mean we didn’t have a TV in the house. I mean there was no TV. But I liked radio. Radio allowed me to form an image of the characters in my mind, to see them in my imagination, based on their voices. I remember how astonished I was when I first saw, in person, a fellow by the name of Uncle Wip. I had listened to his children’s programs on the radio for many years. Kids could write him letters and he would give them to Santa Claus. So one day I heard that Uncle Wip was going to be in the Thanksgiving Day Parade. Since I had never actually seen Uncle Wip, I was quite excited. But when I saw him on the float, he looked nothing like the person I pictured from the voice on the radio.

  So I listened to these radio shows, the all-time great shows that they now call classics. And there were all these people who were not your parents telling you stories on the radio. You see, your parents generally gave you a story after or before punishment. That’s why I don’t recall any great stories from my mother or father or aunt or uncle. I just don’t recall those stories because I knew punishment was coming and I had no time to really pay attention.

  So, yes, in a North Philadelphia housing project named after a black Episcopal bishop, Bishop Richard Allen, here we were playing cowboys and Indians. And the way we did it was quite inventive.

  Of course, when you play cowboys and Indians, you have to have a horse. So each kid—I have no idea who came up with the idea, I never saw it in a drawing, I never heard about it on the radio—I just know that in the projects we took our mother’s broom, stood it with the straw part up, took a rope, a rope maybe four feet long, might have even cut the rope she used to hang the wash on, brought the rope down through the middle of the straw, tied it around, and
that became the reins. Then we put the stick of the broom between our legs and we rode them. Those were our horses.

  Then we would take our fingers, make a fist, bring our index fingers straight out, leaving the other three fingers bent back, raise the thumb, and you’ve got yourself a gun. And we rode shooting at each other. I remember denying that a kid got me. He was hiding around the corner when I came riding with the stick between my legs, holding on to the reins of my mother’s broom, which was now my horse. I did not name my horse like the Lone Ranger did—he was just my horse. And I had all the moves those men had Saturdays at the matinee. I could turn my horse, I could wheel it, I could have my horse still moving, still prancing, while talking to the sheriff’s posse about which way we should go.

  What did we look like when grown people saw us? Five or six of us riding around on brooms. All I know is that there were people who looked out the window and there were always eyes, a thousand eyes, looking around, getting ready to squeal on us: Your son has your broom again.

  The problem was, mothers didn’t like their brooms out there upside down with the top part of it being worn as it was being dragged along the cement, so some of us wound up broomless. And it wasn’t as much fun without that broom for a horse. All we had were those brooms. So for some of us there was a sad day when we had no horse.

  As a matter of fact, I howled with laughter when I saw Monty Python, and how those fellows pretended that they were on horseback and they didn’t even have brooms. They were probably, as children, playing in the streets in lower economic areas, so I think the reason they didn’t have brooms was because even in England mothers didn’t like their brooms used as horses.

  So there we were, five or six of us, prancing in place while we tried to figure out who would be the cowboys and who would volunteer to be the Indians. Oddly, none of the Indians had a bow and arrow; they all had guns also. Handguns.