“Wagh! ef we didn’t, and give an owgh-owgh longside of thar darned screechin’, I’m a niggur. This child doesn’t let an Injun count a coup on his cavyard always. They come mighty nigh rubbin’ me out tother side of Spanish Peaks—woke up in the mornin’ jist afore day, the devils yellin’ like mad. I grabs my knife, keels one, an’ made for timber, with four of thar cussed arrows in my meatbag. The ’Paches took my beaver—five pack of the prettiest in the mountains—an’ two mules, but my traps was hid in the creek. Sez I, hyar’s a gone coon if they keep my gun. So I follers that trail an’ at night crawls into camp, an’ socks my big knife up to the Green River, first dig. I takes tother Injun by the har and makes meat of him too. Maybe thar wasn’t coups counted an’ a bug dance on hand ef I was alone. I got old bull-thrower, my rifle, made medicine over him, an’ no darned niggur kin draw bead with him since.”
Lover Boy of the Prairies
Including
THE SAGA OF PINE LEAF, THE INDIAN AMAZON
By his own account Jim Beckwourth was the greatest lover ever to arouse yearning in the hearts of dusky Indian maidens (and not a few white married ladies). He also claimed to be the mightiest of all Indian fighters—greater than Daniel Boone, Kit Carson, and Old Gabe Bridger rolled into one. Those who knew him called Beckwourth “the biggest liar west of the Mississippi” and pronounced his fanciful stories “unbelievable and unverifiable.” Jim dictated his “autobiography” to Thomas Bonner, a journalist from San Francisco. When the book was published, in 1856, a group of denizens in a Colorado mining camp appointed from among them one illiterate old codger to procure a copy. He returned, not with Beckwourth’s autobiography, but with a Bible. One of the miners eagerly opened the book and began to read at random: “Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.… And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.” At this point one irate listener could stand it no longer, and shouted, “Hold it right thar, I’d knowed that for one of Jim Beckwourth’s damn lies anywhar!”
Jim was, if one is to believe him, the son of a Virginia gentleman who had been an officer in General Washington’s army and one of his slaves, a beautiful “high-yaller” girl. He was born in 1798, at Fredericksburg, one of thirteen children. The family moved, en masse, to Missouri. Young Jim was apprenticed to a blacksmith. “Among other indiscretions,” Jim acknowledged later, “I became enamored of a young damsel, which, leading me into habits that my boss disapproved of, resulted finally in a difficulty between us.” The difficulty was twofold: (1) the damsel was the blacksmith’s daughter, and (2) she was soon “wearing her apron high.” The blacksmith got into the habit of throwing hammers at the adolescent Casanova, who promptly fired them back at his master’s head. Jim decided to quit before somebody got killed, particularly since his amatory adventures got him into trouble with the law and also because the prospect of fatherhood did not appeal to him.
Jim found in Papa Beckwourth an understanding father who in his own youth had been caught in a similar predicament. The old man gave Jim a horse, a rifle, and a handful of dollars, telling him to make tracks. Jim did.
In 1823 the young reprobate hired himself out to General Ashley, as body servant, groom, and blacksmith, setting out for the Rockies to trap beaver in company with such famous Plains characters as Jedediah Smith and Thomas Fitzpatrick, thus beginning his career as a mountain man. He soon bragged of being a great killer of Indians as well as also being a peerless athlete. He told of having set out with a certain “Black Harris,” a free trapper of “great leg” who was said to be able to outwalk, outrun, and outlast every other two-legged creature. He also had the evil reputation of abandoning any companion who could not keep up with him. Jim and Harris ran out of food and were starving. It was Harris who weakened and could not go on. “Oh, Jim,” he pleaded, “don’t leave me here to die! For God’s sake, don’t let the red divils get my skulp!” Summoning up his last ounce of strength, iron-willed Jim managed to crawl to the nearest fort to organize a rescue party.
In 1825 Jim took part in his first mountain man rendezvous on the Green River, a meeting of a thousand untamed savages, white and red, wallowing in an orgy of wenching, begetting, fighting, gambling, cheating, swapping squaws and lies, wolfing down mountains of buffalo meat and, above all, downing oceans of Uncle Sam’s “Oh, be joyful.” It was not long before Jim, following in his father’s footsteps, had sired a number of little black, white, and red papooses. Jim credited himself with rescuing Ashley, who could not swim, out of a raging whirlpool; of saving a fellow trapper from an equally raging grizzly; and of single-handedly saving the whole expedition from destruction. Upon Ashley’s return to St. Louis, all engaged in a three-day spree with many lasses, among them one Eliza who, probably with good reason, believed herself engaged to Jim, who promised to marry her but went back to the mountains and never thought of her again.
After another trapping season Jim, amorous as well as practical, took on as a “servant” the widow of a companion who had been “rubbed out” by a party of Blackfeet. “She was of light complexion, smart, trim, and active, and never tired in her efforts to please me. She seemed to think that she belonged to me for the rest of her life,” a mistake made by many. Thus began Jim’s career as the “West’s Greatest Squaw Man.”
Some women are drawn to macho males who treat them rough. This might help to explain Jim’s luck with masochistic ladies. When a trading post was established in Blackfoot country, the tribesmen were highly pleased. As Jim put it, “I soon rose to be a great man among them, and the chief offered me his daughter for a wife.” Jim accepted avidly and “without any superfluous ceremony” became the son of the head chief. Profit was the aim, “more than hymeneal enjoyments.” His trade prospered greatly as he obtained prime beaver plews in exchange for worthless baubles. After a few days of married bliss, “he had a slight difficulty in his family affairs.” A party of braves rode into camp with a number of white men’s topknots. This was the occasion for a scalp dance. Jim’s wife told him that she wished to take part in the festivity. Jim objected: “No; these scalps belonged to my people; my heart is crying for their death; you must not rejoice when my heart cries; you must not dance when I grieve.” The wife went anyhow and outdanced them all.
Jim decided to teach her a lesson. He jumped into the dance circle and gave his disobedient wife a tremendous clout on the head with his battle-ax. She slumped to the ground as if hit by lightning. He dragged her to his tepee and left her there for dead. Her friends and relatives were aroused. They surrounded Jim’s lodge, shouting, “Kill him! Kill him!” It was his father-in-law who came to his rescue, crying out loudly: “Stop! Hold! Warriors! Listen to your chief!” He turned to Jim: “My son, you have done right. That woman I gave you had no sense; her ears were stopped up. You had a right to kill her. But I have another. She is more beautiful. She has good sense and good ears. You may have her in place of the bad one.”
“Well,” thought Jim, “this is getting married again before I have even had time to mourn.”
While Jim was busy consummating his new marriage, he heard loud sobbing at the door. It was the first wife, who had only been stunned and had regained consciousness after a few hours. Promising henceforth to be a good and obedient wife, she crept under the blanket with the other two, thus starting a ménage à trois.
Over the years, Beckwourth “married” eighteen “official” wives, beside amusing himself with numberless “unofficial” one-night stands. He once kept seven wives at the same time. Being a man of some delicacy, he kept them, together with their respective offspring, in seven separate tepees.
During one trapping excursion Jim Beckwourth visited a village of Crow Indians. One of his fellow trappers, almost as big a liar as Jim himself, told the Indians that Beckwourth was a member of their tribe, a long-lost brother, abducted as a child by Cheyenne warriors. White trappers, the man explained, had bought Jim to
raise him as a mountain man. The gullible Crows believed the fanciful tale. An ancient couple among them at once recognized in Jim their own son, long mourned as dead. Admiring the many scalps dangling from his belt, they promptly named him the “Great Brave.” Thus he became a member of the Crow tribe. As such he had to have a good-looking wife. He was asked to pick one from among the three daughters of a mighty chief. Their names were Still Water, Black Fish, and Three Roads. Jim chose Still Water because she was the prettiest. The two scorned ones wailed with disappointment. Being a compassionate fellow who could not stand seeing women weep, Jim married them also. The triple wedding was celebrated with song, dancing, feasting, and the drinking up of the trappers’ store of firewater.
Jim became not only a mighty man of war among the Crows, but was soon elevated to the rank of chief. After a battle against the Sioux, a fourteen-year-old girl became part of his war booty. What could the poor man do but marry her? His harem grew.
“A little girl, who had often asked me to marry her, came to me one day, and with every importunity insisted upon my accepting her as my wife. I said: ‘You are a very pretty girl, but you are only a child, when you are older I will talk to you about it.’ But she was not to be put off.… The little innocent used such powerful appeals that, notwithstanding I had already seven wives and a lodge for each, I told her she might be my wife.” Jim just could not say no.
The ever-victorious Jim won so many fights against Sioux, Blackfeet, Cheyennes, and Assiniboines that he was made the head chief of all Absarokas, as the Crows called themselves. His many triumphs were ascribed not only to his prowess but also to an all-powerful protective medicine—a perforated magic bullet and two large, oblong, rainbow-colored beads that he wore in a bundle around his neck. As chief, he was invested with the magic name of Medicine Calf. He had finally arrived, as he put it, “at the pinnacle of his fame.” His seven (or eight) wives outdid each other in cooking, tanning, quilling, beading, and sewing for him. They fed him succulent boudins, tender meat of plump puppies, buffalo tongues, and well-aged smoked bear paws. They fought each other for a place under his blanket. But there can be too much of a good thing. Jim got bored. He bemoaned having wasted twelve years of his life among heathen savages. He was about to return to civilization when a woman named Pine Leaf came into his life—an enchantress who drove him to madness because she would not be his.
Pine Leaf was the queen of Indian amazons, a woman with the strength of a buffalo, the ferocity of a wildcat, the fleetness of a deer, and the courage of a mountain lion. Her beauty and sensuous feline way of moving drove the great lover into a frenzy of desire. When Pine Leaf was twelve years old, her twin brother had been killed by the Blackfeet and she swore never to marry until she had killed one hundred enemies to avenge him.
Jim was obsessed with the desire to add the doughty amazon to his harem. He implored her to be his wife: “She flashed her dark eyes upon mine: ‘You have too many already!’ ” As he laid siege to her, day after day, she told him she would be his “when pine needles turn yellow.” It occurred to him that pine needles remain forever green. She said, “I shall be yours when I come across a redheaded Indian.” This too was little comfort. She assured him: “I shall take no other man but you for my husband if I should ever wish to marry.” This also was not very encouraging. During a raid upon a Sioux village Pine Leaf took two pretty Lakota girls prisoner and offered them to Jim as a substitute for herself. He added them to his seraglio, but still yearned for her. During a scrimmage with an enemy war party, Jim was about to be “rubbed out” by a gigantic Cheyenne warrior when Pine Leaf came up at a dead run, pinning Jim’s opponent to the ground with her lance, calling out cheerfully, “Ride on, friend, I have him safe now!”
For a short period only, Jim was temporarily distracted by a surpassingly beautiful girl called Red Cherry. Unfortunately, she was already married to Big Rain, a dour warrior chief jealous of his possessions, whether horses or women. As Jim recalled: “Big Rain possessed the most beautiful squaw in the whole village; she was the admiration of every young brave, and all were plotting (myself among the rest) to win her away from her proud lord.”
Jim crept into her lodge one night when her husband was away, but she resisted him, saying, “I am the wife of a big chief. He will kill you.” But Jim was a most persistent fellow and kept at it until the comely Red Cherry succumbed. Big Rain found out and exacted the customary penalty. As Jim related it: “I was seized by Big Rain, supported by a dozen of his relatives, all armed with whips, and they administered a most unmerciful beating.” They took from Jim his entire horse herd—eighty fine animals—and stripped him of all he owned, except his weapons. He thought it “a pretty stiff price for a pretty woman.”
In spite of a sore back, Jim went on seeing Red Cherry and had to run the gauntlet—again and again. It was Big Rain who finally tired of the game and sold his wife to Jim for the consideration of one war-horse, ten guns, ten chiefs’ coats, scarlet cloth, ten pairs of new leggings, and the same number of moccasins. He now had the exclusive rights to Red Cherry without fear of further whippings, but forbidden fruits taste better than those grown in one’s own garden and he soon tired of her as he resumed wooing the untouchable Pine Leaf. Years went by. The heroic amazon was now minus two fingers. One had been shot off during a battle, the other she had cut off herself in mourning for a fallen comrade. Fighting a party of Blackfeet, she was severely wounded, a bullet passing through her left breast, touching the heart, and coming out through the shoulder blade. Her face had been scarred by knife and tomahawk. She bore the scars of a hundred fights. Suddenly, she made up her mind to call it quits and marry while she still retained some of her good looks.
She addressed her friends: “Warriors, for many winters I have been on the warpath with you; I shall tread that path no more. I shall take up the needles and my beads. I said I would kill one hundred foes before I married any living man. I have more than kept my word. I have fought my last battle, and hurled my last lance. I am a warrior no more.” She went to Jim and told him: “And now, my friend, I am yours after you have so long been seeking me. Take me to your lodge.”
It was Jim’s last marriage among the Crows. The connubial bliss lasted exactly five weeks. Then James Beckwourth left to go back to the “white man’s diggings.” He never saw Pine Leaf again. He wreaked havoc among pale-faced lasses after learning how to deal with the impediment of crinolines. He impressed naive listeners with tales of being the only man to survive the storming of the Alamo. He claimed to have done great deeds in the Seminole War. Then, one last time, he gave in to a great yearning for the fleshpots of the Crow Nation. His old friends welcomed their great chief, Medicine Calf, with cries of jubilation. Many of his former wives, with numerous offspring, overwhelmed him with kindness and caresses. They mollycoddled him until he could stand it no longer and was ready to leave for good.
Jim Beckwourth had led a torrid life of romance. It was fitting that he should die a romantic death. When Jim told his Crow friends that he had to leave them forever, there was much weeping and lamenting. The chiefs and elders got together to smoke the pipe and take council. “He won’t come back,” they said. “He will take with him his great medicine, the rainbow-colored beads and the magic bullet. Then it will protect us no longer. This must not happen.” His wives and many pretty young squaws also came together to talk matters over. “He is fickle,” they said. “He will abandon us and our children. We love him so much, we’d rather see him dead than in the tipis of strange white or black women.” They all invited Jim to a great farewell feast. There was splendid fare—liver pudding, kidney pemmican, dog soup, buffalo ribs, antelope meat—but for the mighty Chief Medicine Calf they had prepared a special dish of the most tender and succulent buffalo calves’ tongues, garnished with fragrant, wonderfully tasting mushrooms. “This,” Jim’s wives told Jim, “is for you alone.” He filled his bowl, and filled it again, and filled it for the third time. “This is the best food I ever ate
,” he pronounced, smiling, licking his fingers. Then he fell asleep. The Crow men and women watched him slumber, knowing that he would wake up no more. The mushrooms were of the most poisonous kind. Thus died the Great Lover of the Western Plains. The Crows gave him a most splendid funeral, painting his face vermilion, dressing him in the finest ornamented chief’s coat, putting on his feet death moccasins with beaded soles, killing his great war-horse to serve him in the spirit land. They put him up on the lofty death scaffold, giving him to the wind and to the eagles. His wives cut off their hair and their little fingers in mourning, saying, “Now he is ours forever.”
Putrefactions
There are many American yarns about petrified humans, animals, and forests. This is the oldest one.
The darndest liar was Black Harris—for lies tumbled out of his mouth like boudins out of a buffler’s stomach. He was the child as saw the putrefied forest in the Black Hills. Black Harris came in from Laramie; he’d been trappin’ three year an’ more on Platte and on the other side; and, when he got into Liberty, he fixed himself right off like a Saint Louiy dandy. Well, he sat to dinner one day in the tavern, and a lady says to him—
“Well, Mister Harris, I hear you’re a great trav’ler.”
“Trav’ler, marm,” says Black Harris. “This nigger’s no trav’ler; I ar’ a trapper, marm, a mountain-man, wagh!”
“Well, Mister Harris, trappers are great trav’lers, and you goes over a sight of ground in your perishinations, I’ll be bound to say.”
“A sight, marm, this coon’s gone over, if that’s the way your stick floats. I’ve trapped beaver on Platte and Arkansa, and away up on Missoura and Yaller Stone; I’ve trapped on Columbia, on Lewis Fork, and Green River and the Hely. I’ve fought the Blackfoot, and damned bad Injuns they are; I’ve raised the hair of more than one Apach, and made a Rapaho ‘come’ afore now; I’ve trapped in heav’n, in airth, and hell; and scalp my old head, marm, but I’ve seen a putrified forest.”
Legends and Tales of the American West Page 16