Little Big Man

by Thomas Berger

  The site of Denver was on their old hunting grounds, but they didn’t cause trouble over it. In fact, I recall once in the early days a chief called Little Raven rode over from the Indian camp and gave a speech to an assemblage of white citizenry. Actually, he come twice: the first day his interpreter fell down drunk, so they had to postpone until the next morning, when the chief returned and give a long speech after the mode of Old Lodge Skins, which amused some people but burned up others, for they was anxious to get back to panning gold rather than listening to the wind of some dirty old Indian. Little Raven was a broad-faced, wide-built fellow, with big brass earrings and his hair hanging free. The gist of his remarks, after the lard was melted out, was as follows:

  “The Arapaho welcome the white men to this place, which has belonged to the Arapaho since the time that …” (a long account of how much the spirits love the tribe, with various examples of history of the mythic variety).

  “The Arapaho like white men and think of them as brothers” (an account of this, largely to do with getting free coffee with lots of sugar in it).

  “The Arapaho are made happy to see the white men getting the yellow metal, if the yellow metal is what pleases them so much. Our mother the earth provides all things for all men, and each people has a part of the land which it calls home, a part which it has watered with its own blood. You white men are now camped upon such a place, and the Arapaho to whom it belongs welcome you in peace and friendship. They hope you do nothing bad. They also hope you will not stay too long.”

  They gave Little Raven a cigar, and a meal which he ate with a knife and fork, and then he went back to his camp. Not long after that the Arapaho warriors rode off west to fight the Ute, and in their absence a bunch of drunken miners went over to the Indian village and raped several women. The Arapaho made some angry talk when they got back, but never did anything concrete about it.

  Now I had not heretofore been a great admirer of civilization, but I figured that was because I had no hand in building such of it as I had come in contact with. I didn’t care much for Missouri, if you recall, couldn’t see it made sense. It was different with Denver, which growed before your very eyes. There was a real town there by the following summer, for people kept arriving from across the plains and while not many of them struck significant gold, and others got busted, by God, and went on home, there was a good deal who stayed, too, and permanent buildings replaced canvas and a newspaper begun to publish, and it wasn’t long before they stuck up a church—whose pastor, I might mention, I done my best to avoid along with the Indians, but in them days you had to have a church to make a real town.

  So it didn’t look like we was going to leave as soon as Little Raven hoped. Speaking for the person I had turned into, what with being a partner in business and making enough money to buy me bright clothes and take a turn with the Spanish girls in Santa Fe, I thought it swell that white enterprise was reclaiming the Indian wastes. You take the sorriest cabin, it was a triumph over the empty wilderness.

  That was what I thought at that time, anyway.

  During the next year or so, I would hear news from time to time of the Cheyenne, though I never sought it, for it was plumb through the lands of the southern part of the tribe that them gold-rushers had to pass coming from the east, and then those that was busted went trooping back through the same region on their way home. You can imagine what this movement would do to the buffalo herds on which the Indians depended for the necessities of life. There was also now a regular stagecoach line which followed the Republican River through this same country, and I think I have mentioned how a regular thing, with a schedule, will upset an Indian.

  But with this provocation there was fewer incidents than you might think: for all his wildness, maybe because of it, a redskin is a patient cuss and always tolerant at first of anything unusual. The Cheyenne thought the people rushing west for gold was insane, and didn’t bother them much for that reason. Once in a while the young men might steal a white person’s horses, and it was standard practice when sighting a wagon drove by civilians for the Indians to come up and get coffee or tobacco, and they didn’t so much beg for it as they had used to but sort of threatened. They did the latter because it seemed to work with white people better than expecting hospitality. But if the emigrants stood up to them, the Indians generally would not do them harm. One of the reasons for which being that the Cheyenne was never well armed. If they got hold of a few modern rifles, then they never had powder or lead. Even iron arrowheads wasn’t easy for them to procure: they had to get the makings, a barrel hoop or whatnot, from the white man.

  I mention these facts because of the rot you’d hear in Denver. Indians would never have been popular in that city unless they all decided to commit mass suicide, I reckon. Now I have told you I got a white taste for building a community where previous only “the savage and beast had aimlessly wandered,” which is to quote from the old type of journalism, and as a result I found them local Arapaho uninspiring. But they wasn’t doing any harm except to stink and carry lice—which was also true of a good many of the early white citizenry of Colorado, I might add. Still, there was always talk of wiping them out, and the way I remember is that this was less said by the prosperous than by them who had had no luck at finding gold. If you sold all your belongings to go West for fortune and ended up busted, why, it seemed like the fault of the Indians.

  But to get back to my affairs: owing to rival commercial operations coming out of Missouri, Bolt, Ramirez, and me found ourselves getting undercut on prices, on account of goods cost more for us to buy in Santa Fe than they did in the eastern settlements, for much of them had to come overland from Missouri in the first place, and the trip down to New Mexico while shorter was more arduous owing to mountains, deserts, and lack of water than that across the plains. It was at this time that Bolt and Ramirez got the idea for me to make the journey to Westport, Missouri, what is now Kansas City, and come back with a pack train of supplies that would be more “competitively priced,” as they put it, being both of them great for business.

  I made the trip to Missouri alone, with a pack horse, without incident, carrying quite a bundle of money with which to buy goods. I figured to hire mule drivers in Westport for the return, and that’s what I did, and got the supplies and animals and wagons, and we set out for Colorado within a couple weeks.

  One day towards the end of August we was taking our noontime rest along a stretch of the Arkansas River in west Kansas that was treeless for miles, and I had crawled under a wagon for a bit of shade, laying there on a rolled saddle blanket and puffing at a short pipe I had lately took up as a vice. Maybe I had even started to nap, which would have been logical, when a sense of sudden quiet made itself known. I wasn’t on unusually good terms with them skinners, who resented being hired by a kid, and had had to be fairly obvious about my Colt’s Dragoon.

  Well, now I got a suspicion they was about to jump me nonetheless, and it jerked me from my dream, gun in hand.

  But what I saw from beneath the wagon was fringed leggings and a pair of moccasins with a little strip of blue and red beading across the instep and an interrupted band of white running from ankle to toe. I had once set and watched Shooting Star apply them beads, strung on sinew and stitched with a bone needle.

  They belonged to Burns Red in the Sun, who must be wearing them at this moment though I could see him only as high as the waist from where I lay. He wasn’t alone, but accompanied by some fifteen or twenty other pairs of moccasins. And there was something about them feet and legs that didn’t look too friendly.

  You may be interested to hear what it was. Well, from down that low I couldn’t see the butts of anybody’s weapons. Which meant they was holding them in a usable position.

  CHAPTER 13 Cheyenne Homecoming

  I WASN’T in no particular hurry to come on out of there; and when I did issue forth I did not care to do so at the feet of them Indians. As to the latter, I had no choice, however, for they was on t
he other side of the wagon also and at both ends.

  So I crawled out and stood up soon as I cleared the edge of the wagon box, and it was sure enough the face of Burns Red in the Sun that I looked into. Painted heavily, it went without saying, and just as well for otherwise I should not have recognized him.

  I oughtn’t to omit to say that while I was rising, two other Indians seized my arms and lifted my pistol and knife. This bunch was not on a friendly mission. They continued to pinion me, and without making a fuss over it I was able to observe that my company of mule skinners stood or lay all around in various states of captivity, though it was not apparent that any struggle had took place.

  Even with my credentials I found this a delicate moment. Burns Red was not being exactly quick to make me out. I had forgot, too, that if you encounter it of a sudden, face paint will scare hell out of you.

  I had dropped my sombrero, so Burns had a fair shot at my features. I had got a year or so older since we had last been together and I had the beginnings of a mustache, though they wasn’t enough to put off anybody.

  Still, he was right cold when he spoke. His eyes showed unsympathetic out at me over vermilion cheeks and on either side of a nose with a white line down the bridge. He wore a full bonnet of eagle feathers tipped with down.

  “Why,” he asks, of course in Cheyenne, “did you steal my father’s horse?”

  It was then I noticed that nearby another Indian was holding the halter of that pinto I had bought in Denver. This man was an old acquaintance, Shadow That Comes in Sight, who had led my first raid against the Crow, you might recall, on which I had made that name for myself. However he was looking sullen at present.

  “Brother,” I says to Burns with some urgency, “don’t you know me?”

  You would have thought he might consider how I happened to speak fluent Cheyenne. Not him.

  “You white men,” he said in great disgust. “We took you in and fed you when you were hungry and lost because dreams of the yellow dust had made you crazy. Then you steal our horses. You are all very bad men, and we don’t want to make a treaty with you.”

  The others roundabout muttered peevishly in agreement with them sentiments. I couldn’t make head nor tail of his complaints, however, so I just explained where and how I had got the pony and said that regardless of that, he could have him on general principles, being my brother.

  I had now used the word “brother” a couple times, and it was beginning to penetrate Burns’s eagle feathers and the thick skull thereunder. So after denouncing white men some more and gesturing in an unpleasant way with his rifle—on which occasions them two holding my arms would give me a good agitating and the rest of the Indians would glower and mutter at my mule skinners, who though ordinarily the typical, uncouth, foul-mouthed swaggering bunch that follows that profession, was now paralyzed in fear—after a long time, during which I almost give up hope, for even though you’ve lived with Indians for five years they can be quite damaging to your peace of mind, he at last said in personal irritation, as contrasted with the racial charges he had been making:

  “Why do you keep calling me ‘brother’? I want you to stop doing that. I am not your brother. I am a Human Being.”

  And the swarthy fellow holding my right arm, who wore a belt full of scalps one of which was blond as corn and never come from no Pawnee, said: “I think we should kill him first and then talk.” I did not know this man, but among the others I recognized Bird Bear and Lean Man and Rolling Bull, the latter restraining my left arm.

  “Well,” I says boldly, “it seems the Human Beings cannot be trusted any more than the white men who did you wrong. Only two snows ago I was your brother, lived in Old Lodge Skins’s tepee, hunted and fought with the Human Beings and on one occasion at least almost died for them. I suppose you will say with your tongue-that-goes-two-ways that you never heard of Little Big Man.”

  Burns Red in the Sun said: “He rode beside me at the Battle of the Long Knives, where the white men did not know how to fight. He was killed there after rubbing out many bluecoats. But the white men did not get his body. He turned into a swallow and flew away across the bluffs.”

  “I tell you,” I cried, “that I am Little Big Man. How would I know about him otherwise?”

  “All people know of him,” said Burns Red in that stubborn redskin manner. “He is a great hero of the Human Beings. Everybody knows the Human Beings, so everybody would know of him. I shall not talk of this further.” He shifted his rifle to the left hand and put his right upon the handle of his scalping knife. “In addition to being a horse thief you are the biggest liar I have ever heard,” he went on. “And also a fool. I tell you I saw Little Big Man fall and turn into a bird. Therefore you cannot be he. Besides, you are a white man. Little Big Man was a Human Being.”

  “Look at me,” I said.

  “Oh,” said Burns Red, “Little Big Man may have had light skin, but that does not mean he was a white man. Besides, what you are showing me is you and not him.”

  Well, there you have it. There ain’t nothing in the world, not the most intractable mule, that is so obdurate as a goddam Indian. I figured I was a goner at this point, especially since Burns said he was going to cut out my tongue for telling lies, at which that especially mean fellow on my right arm was considerably cheered. He was no more than a kid, about my age when I killed the Crow. I have said I didn’t recognize him, but suddenly I did.

  He was Dirt on the Nose, growed up some from that young boy to whom I had give a pony after the exploit in which I got my adult name.

  Burns Red drawed his knife. I looked at Dirt on the Nose. Hell, it was worth a try.

  I asked him: “You still have that black I gave you up on the Powder River?”

  His ferocious look disappeared, and he answered: “No, the Pawnee stole him when we were camped at Old Woman Butte two snows ago.”

  “Did you hear that?” I asked Burns Red in the Sun.

  His face went blank, insofar as you could say behind that paint.

  “It is true,” he said, “that there is a thing here that I do not understand.”

  I proceeded to rapid-fire a number of other detailed reminiscences at him, but he was not further impressed. He put away his knife, though. It was that particular about the horse that saved my life, or at least my tongue. People came and went in them days, but horses was serious.

  So them Indians decided to take me to their camp and let the older men adjudicate the matter. I was no longer physically constrained, but neither had they reached the point of returning my weapons. They left a guard upon the mule skinners, who I told to accept this inconvenience in good grace; not that they had any choice.

  The Cheyenne party had left its own horses in a basin half a mile off in the charge of two younger braves. Shadow continued to lead that pinto, but I figured it would not be my place to mount the animal at this time; and my extra horse was back at the wagons.

  “What am I going to ride?” I asked Burns.

  That was a real problem for the poor devil. Now that his stubbornness had been challenged on the matter of my identity, he didn’t know quite what to think about anything.

  He looked at me with his face all screwed up.

  “There is a pain,” he said, “between my ears.” He reached back between the feathers of his bonnet and rubbed his scalp. It occurred to me then for the first time how dumb he was. As a boy I had thought Burns Red a brilliant fellow for his knowledge of the bow and arrow and riding, in which he trained me. I guess he knowed them things all right, but otherwise he was pretty stupid.

  “I won’t walk all the way,” I said. “I can tell you that.”

  You could see he was kind of wistful that he hadn’t been allowed to cut my tongue out, not because Burns was unusually cruel but rather because it would have kept this difficulty from arising.

  “Ride behind me,” said Dirt on the Nose, who trusted me about seven-eighths since mention of the horse I had give him. So I leaped up behind an
d took ahold of his belt, for I didn’t dare to dig those Spanish heels into the animal, and we moved off, going north for two hours, and fetching up along a tiny creek that for poverty of water didn’t have its match.

  There on the farther bank stood the tepees of Old Lodge Skins’s little band, which seemed about the size it had always been, but Jesus God, I thought, had they always been so seedy? And it is a queer thing that the stench affected me more now than it had as a boy of ten, entering that first encampment with my sister Caroline. To tell you how powerful this general smell was, even when diffused through the air in the smart wind that was blowing at the time, it overcome for me the personal odor of Dirt on the Nose, who was right strong on the nostrils being I was close to him.

  Up we go to the familiar tepee of the chief, which had been my home for five years, with its faded scratch-drawings and sewed-up places and tattered flaps. From the look of things I figured Old Lodge Skins must have been enduring another of his long runs of bad luck. The dirty kids come running and the barking dogs, and most of the adults in camp at the time was in cluster, for our party had returned as usual in bits and pieces, the firstcomers having apprised the other Indians of the matter at hand.

  I begun to get nervous then, for though among Americans you tend to find people the less frightening the better you know them, the same wasn’t true of Indians in my experience, with whom prolonged relations only led to the awareness that they was capable of anything. My knees had been steadier than when Dirt on the Nose and me dismounted.