“He counted coup upon Rude Water,” a narrator related, “and upon the warrior who pierced his leg and upon the one who stabbed him through the arm. With his captured lance he counted coup on the Pawnee with the torn shirt and on the Pawnee with the brown horse. He tried to count coup on the warrior who stabbed him through the back, but in this he failed.”
The great chiefs nodded. Thanks to the heroism of Lame Beaver, their eastern flank was secured for a few more years. Not soon would the Pawnee want to invade Arapaho lands after such a defeat. They would be back, of course, in time. The Pawnee would think of some way to retaliate, but for the present the Arapaho could direct their attention to the coming winter. This year they would camp at Rattlesnake Buttes.
While the Arapaho chiefs were awarding Lame Beaver his final set of coups, a gathering destined to have more lasting consequences took place among the ashes of the desolated Pawnee village. In burying their great chief Rude Water, someone discovered that he had been killed by a golden bullet, and then it was found that the lesser chief, too, had been slain by a bullet of gold, and since the Pawnee, because of their trading with whites, knew the value of gold, the discovery caused a sensation.
The bullets were sent with two knowing white men down the Missouri River to the trading post at Saint Louis and there delivered to a dealer who was stunned by their purity and the apparent size of the nuggets from which they had been formed. The white men pestered the Pawnee with repeated questions, but all they could tell was, “Lame Beaver, big chief of the Arapaho, he fired the bullets.”
In this way the legend was launched that an Arapaho chief named Lame Beaver had discovered a deposit of pure gold from which he made bullets for shooting bison. “Search the bison bones and you may find his golden bullets. Better still find out where he had his gold mine and you’ll have wealth untold.” A thousand men would tramp the plains and probe the hills, searching for the lost mine of Lame Beaver the Indian who used gold bullets, and none would have believed the truth: that he shot those bullets without knowing what they were.
In the Arapaho camp a darker side of Indian custom was about to manifest itself, the hideous side that later apologists would want to forget or deny. Because Blue Leaf was no longer the wife of a warrior and co-head of a family, she had no right to a tipi of her own, and women from all parts of the camp now descended upon it to tear it apart for their own use. The two special poles which operated the upper vent through which the smoke escaped went first. They were grabbed by a woman whose husband had long envied them.
The three key-poles which Lame Beaver had cut in Blue Valley went next. They were ripped out of the ground and torn from their bison covering, which caused the rest of the tipi to collapse. The lesser poles went quickly, for it was known that Lame Beaver had the best in camp.
The bison skin was not a prize; it was old and would soon have to be replaced, but the parfleches that Lame Beaver had made were sturdy and much desired. Two women fell into a fight over the larger, and one suffered a cut hand, but the brawling did not stop for that. Quickly the clay basket vanished.
The bed on which Lame Beaver had spent so much of his life passed into the hands of a young wife who had long wanted its painted backrest for her warrior husband, and the beautiful bison rug, covered with paintings of Lame Beaver’s many coups, vanished. No one would remember where it went.
Slowly the tipi was ground into the dust of cruel indifference, and at the end of the day Blue Leaf was left with no possessions in the world save what she was wearing. Her daughter Clay Basket had little more, but she at least was assured of a place to sleep at the home of an uncle. Blue Leaf did not even have that for the law of the plains was clear and immutable: elderly widows who had no man to care for them had expended their usefulness, and the tribe would not allow itself to be impeded by them. For an older woman like Blue Leaf, with no son to protect her and no brother willing to invite her into his tipi, there was no home and there could be none.
That night the first heavy snow fell. Blue Leaf survived the snow by finding a place among the horses, the next day Clay Basket, seeing her pitiful condition, wanted to bring her into the tipi where she had found refuge, but her uncle, Blue Leaf’s brother, who had deprived Lame Beaver of the pinto, refused.
On the third night a blizzard struck, and Blue Leaf could find no shelter except among the shivering horses. She had not eaten that day and was extremely weak, but as she crept closer to the horses and they to her, she did not complain. Lame Beaver and she had anticipated that this must be the consequence of his suicide. This had been the fate of her mother and her aunts, and she had expected nothing better.
In the morning she was found frozen to death. In this practical manner the Arapaho living at Rattlesnake Buttes were freed from the encumbrance of an old woman who had outlived her usefulness.
CAUTION TO US EDITORS. You have three basic considerations to keep in mind when you introduce any material on Indians in Colorado.
First, although the plains Indians were the most spectacular tribes in American history, they were also the least interesting intrinsically. The Arapaho and Cheyenne arrived very late on the scene. They occupied land which wiser Indians like the Pawnee and more indigenous ones like the Ute had inspected for several centuries and found unproductive. More important, their previous wanderings from east of the Mississippi and north of the Missouri to the arid plains had deprived them of most of their cultural heritage, which they had been forced to leave behind as so much unnecessary baggage. They were cultural nomads whose quality was uplifted by the horse. They must not be depicted in either your illustrations or your text as typical American Indians. Almost any other of the major tribes would serve that purpose more appropriately.
Second, in preparing my notes I fought constantly, though perhaps unsuccessfully, against the temptation to attribute too many consequences to the Indian’s obtaining the horse. Everything I say is true, but I sometimes have doubts as to what it means. I think the best precaution is to keep in mind that the arrival of the horse within a tribe like the Arapaho changed not one degree the basic attitudes which the Arapaho had developed over the preceding two thousand years. They were already nomads; the horse merely increased their range. They already had the travois; the horse could merely lug a bigger load. They were already tied to the bison; the horse allowed them to get to him more swiftly and to kill him in a less wasteful way. They already had a society constructed around coup and war party; the horse merely encouraged them to engage in raids which covered more territory. (I am impressed by the fact that with the horse the Arapaho engaged in not one battle which took them into any area which they had not previously penetrated on foot!) The horse merely intensified customs already in existence. There was, however, one minor change which may have been effectuated by the horse: an improved status for women. The burdens they had to carry became smaller; they could accompany the tribe on its farthest excursions; and some women did get horses of their own, which they rode on migrations or to the bison butchering. If Indian men loved their horses, Indian women must have adored them.
Third, you must not depict the plains Indians as having been for any great length of time in the locations where the white men discovered them. I have our branch of the Arapaho arriving in the land between the two Plattes in 1756. Virginia Trenholm, a leading expert on the Arapaho, claims they didn’t get that far south until 1790, which is highly significant, because this would put them there somewhat after the first French and English fur trappers! I’ve looked at all the evidence and have concluded that they must have been there somewhat earlier than that; perhaps 1756 is premature, but I think not. If your own researches indicate a later date for their arrival, I do not object. But please do not fall into the error of writing about white men intruding onto areas which the Indians had held from time immemorial ... at least not on the Colorado plains. The Pawnee had lived in eastern Nebraska for centuries, but in the western areas where Lame Beaver operated they were latecomers. The U
te had lived in the Rockies but had never established any kind of firm foothold in the area around Centennial. In the period before they had horses, the Comanche were a miserably poor mountain tribe; they moved rather late into position along the Arkansas. The limited area you are dealing with appears to have been devoid of permanently settled human beings from about 6000 B.C. to about A.D. 1750. You are dealing with a very young area, culturally, and it was certainly not one which the Indians had occupied for very long.
Visual images. In depicting the Indian background do not commit these traditional errors:
Do not show them on war parties in full regalia. I judge from what I have read that Indians in their everyday occupations looked pretty much like students at the Boulder campus of Colorado University today, except that the Indians may have been somewhat cleaner.
On the other hand, don’t overdo the cleanliness bit. When I was discussing the Arapaho tipi with an old expert, he listened to my favorable description, then grunted and said, “You’ve left out the one thing you could be sure of in an Arapaho tipi.” When I asked what this was, he said, “If you sat on the chief’s bed with that handsome backrest, the one thing you could be sure of catching was lice.”
In the pre-white-man war parties and set battles, few members were engaged and few deaths occurred. The massed charges of western paintings did not occur.
For the pre-white-man era, the paintings of George Catlin are still the best ones to rely on.
For the white-man era, I much prefer the paintings of Charles M. Russell. The Frederic Remington paintings are authentic as depictions of the white man at work on the prairies, but I do not find them sensitive to the Indian.
Don’t, for God’s sake, perpetuate either in word or illustration or map the legend that the Indians got their horses from the chance descendants of two horses, one stallion, one mare, which escaped from Coronado’s excursion and bred like crazy, producing hundreds of colts, all of whom bred just as single-mindedly. Sorry. Coronado had stallions, none of which escaped. The Indians got their mounts either while they were working for Spaniards, or in warfare, or by the time-honored process of after-dark theft, at which they were masters.
If you have your own artist to do the illustrations, remember that by the time the Indians got them, horses were much diminished in size and were called ponies, which meant small, compact horses, and the preferred coloring was pinto.
Moral problem. You are then left with the most difficult problem of all. Only when I finished the report did I realize that I had come close to depicting the Arapaho in the late 1700s as the noble savage of Rousseau. I did not intend to do so. I have endeavored at every point to introduce qualifying material by stressing the limitations of his mind, the primitiveness of his social order, the constriction of his language, his harsh treatment of women and his limited horizon. I bring this contradiction to your attention now because it will haunt both you and me during the life of this project. We shall have to make up our minds precisely where we stand on the inherent nobility of the Indian, because the problem will arise later when we least anticipate it. We have got to have our minds clear. To be specific: some ninety percent of American college and university students in 1976 will believe without question, and will vote in accordance with that belief, that the Indians who roamed the west in 1776 had solved all problems of group living and had attained the ecological balance that ought to exist between man and his environment. Will they be justified? Do not try to solve this enigma now. Wait till all the evidence is in. But in the end, you will have to check everything you say or illustrate about the Indian in light of this overriding problem: Was he, in his natural state, inherently superior? In this chapter I have given you as faithful a portrait of one Indian in the closing years of the eighteenth century as I could. That I liked the man and would have loved going hunting with him is obvious. That I have done him abstract historical justice, I do not claim.
Early man. As to the date for the arrival of man into the Americas, we know for certain only that Clovis man operated around Centennial about 12,000 years ago, because we have the projectile points he used and carbonized remnants of his fires.
I am convinced that within this century artifacts and sites will be found dating the North American ancestors of the Indians back to the land bridge of 40,000 years ago. I doubt that you ought to sponsor this date in your magazine but recommend that you do not lock yourself into some date like 10,000 B.C. simply because we have assured carbon dates to support it. Primitive man was in these areas for a much, much longer time than we once thought possible, and do not be surprised if the Calico site in the Mohave Desert northeast of Barstow, California, is confirmed one of these days, pushing the date back toward the year 100,000 B.C.
Spear points. My love for the Clovis point has not blinded me to the fact that there are two other types which some experts have found even more beautiful: the long, slim, beautifully finished Eden point, and the small, exquisitely fluted Folsom. It comes down to this. If you prefer the no-nonsense painting of Giotto and the stark, powerful lines of Romanesque architecture, as I do, you will prefer Clovis. If your taste runs to the more sophisticated beauty of Giorgione and Chartres cathedral, you will prefer Eden. And if you like the delicate arabesques of Watteau and the Sainte-Chapelle, you will choose Folsom. But what I say about the unsurpassed beauty of all these ancient artworks holds true, regardless of which you prefer.
Language. As to the fact that the Ute and the Aztec spoke languages derived from the same root-language, you might want to introduce your readers to glottochronology, the science of dating origins by language attrition. If you need a summary of the studies, I can provide it.
Chapter 5
THE YELLOW APRON
He was a coureur de bois, one who runs in the woods, and where he came from, no one knew.
He was a small, dark Frenchman who wore the red knitted cap of Quebec, and his name was Pasquinel. No Henri or Ba’tees or Pierre. No nickname, either. Just the three full syllables Pas-qui-nel.
He was a solitary trader with Indians, none better, and in his spacious canoe he carried beads from Paris, silver from Germany, blankets from Canada and bright cloth from New Orleans. With a knife, a gun and a hatchet for saplings, he was ready for work.
He dressed like an Indian, which was why men claimed he carried Indian blood: “Hidatsa, Assiniboin, mebbe Gros Ventre. He’s got Injun blood in there somewheres.” He wore trousers made of elk skin fringed along the seams, a buffalo-hide belt, a fringed jacket decorated with porcupine quills and deerskin moccasins—all made for him by some squaw.
As to where he came from, some claimed Montreal and the Mandan villages. Others said they had seen him in New Orleans in 1789. This was confirmed by a trader who worked the Missouri River: “I seen him in Saint Louis trading beaver in 17 and 89 and I asked him where he was from, and he said, ‘New Orleans.’ ” Both sides agreed that he was a man without fear.
Early in December of 1795, in his big birch-bark canoe which he had been paddling upstream for five weeks, he appeared at the confluence of the Platte and the Missouri, determined to try his luck along the former. (See Map 05 – The West 1795-1830)
The spot at which these rivers joined was one of the bleakest in North America. Mud flats deposited by the Platte reached halfway across the Missouri. Low trees obscured the shores, and swamps made it impossible for traders to erect a post. It was an ugly, forbidding place.
It was Pasquinel’s intention to paddle his canoe about five hundred miles up the Platte, reach there in midwinter, trade with whatever tribes he found, then bring the pelts down to the market in Saint Louis. It was a dangerous enterprise, one which required him to pass single-handed through Pawnee, Cheyenne and Arapaho country, going and coming. Chances for survival of a lone coureur were not great, but if he did succeed, rewards would be high, and that was the kind of gamble Pasquinel liked.
Pushing his red cap back on his head, he sang a song of his childhood as he entered the Platt
e:
“Nous étions trois capitaines
Nous étions trois capitaines
De la guerre revenant,
Brave, brave,
De la guerre revenant,
Bravement.”
He had paddled only a few miles when he realized that this river bore little resemblance to the Missouri. There progress depended solely upon strength of arm, but with the Platte he found himself often running out of water. Sandbars intruded and sometimes whole islands, which shifted when he touched them. Not only did he have to paddle; he had also to avoid being grounded on mud flats.
It’s only during the first part, he assured himself. Not enough current to scour the bottom.
But three days later the situation remained the same. He began to curse the river, setting a precedent for all who would follow. “Sale rivière,” he growled aloud in Montreal French. “Où a-t-elle passé?”
A cold spell came and what little water there was froze, and for some days he was immobilized, but this caused no fear. If he could not force his way upstream, he would look for Indians and trade for a few pelts.
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