Return of Little Big Man

by Thomas Berger

  “It’s a relief to have another man on hand,” Charlevoix told me. “There haven’t been enough of us to put anybody on the top floor, and without supervision the boys have had things their own way up here.” He raised his thin eyebrows and snickered sadly. “They’re probably not going to be pleased when they see you. But as I say, at least you can speak their language. They’re Cheyennes. None of the rest of us know theirs or in fact any other Indian languages.” He shrugged in exasperation. “But the Major doesn’t want the teachers to speak anything but English anyway. How else can the students learn English unless they are forced to use it? He had a point, but these boys haven’t learned a word, so far as I can see, and we can’t even find out what’s wrong. Aren’t we teaching the right way? Perhaps you’ll be able to find out.”

  I said I was thinking for the second time that I might of made a mistake in accepting this job without finding out more about it, but what he said appealed to my pride. It hadn’t been often in my life up to that time that anybody treated me as though I might know something of value to them, and here it looked like maybe I could help out both sides. Also I admit I wouldn’t of minded accomplishing something that might impress Amanda.

  So I put the contents of my carpet bag into the chest of drawers, and Charlevoix pulled out his watch, and saying it was about time for the boys to return, he went downstairs.

  He was right, for everything around here happened on schedule, which was more remarkable for Indians than it would of been for white students, for the notion of time as measured by a little machine carried in your pocket was altogether foreign to them. I never met an Indian who could understand how 5:00 P.M., say, could be the same in winter when the sky was dark as in the bright late afternoon of summer.

  So up the stairs, taking two at a time, come running the young fellows what bunked on the top floor. They was no longer in the stunned condition in which they had sat at the dining-room tables, but was laughing and hooting and chattering like persons their age of any race, added to which these boys had been stifled all day by that routine that meant nothing to them except that they was compelled to follow it, and now at last they could let go until tomorrow morning.

  Well, I sympathized with them, but I had a job to do, so when I had judged by ear that all of them had arrived, I stepped out of the doorway of my room and, waiting a second or two till the din died down, announced my presence.

  Notwithstanding that I spoke in Cheyenne, they all immediately seemed to fall back into the suppertime trance, and this was rather comical in that already most had stripped off their uniforms and was all but bare-arsed naked, down to the breechcloths they wore instead of the underwear I later found out that they was issued but never took out of the foot lockers, not having any idea of what it was for.

  “Can it be,” I asks, “that the Human Beings when amongst white men forget their native speech, which is the finest language of all, because it is spoken by the bravest of all men?”

  The lads now peered at me, and the tallest amongst them says, “We speak our language all the time to one another.” He had the kind of slanty eyes and high-boned bronze face that should of been framed with long hair, but here he stood in his leather breechcloth, his head shorn as close as a white man’s who worked in a city bank, an odd combination.

  Now he had broke the ice, the others come out of the coma but let him do the talking, as them grown-up Cheyenne had let Wild Hog speak for them back in Dodge. This was courtesy. Indians was less likely than any other race I come across to follow their leaders in lockstep, being by nature of an anarchistic temperament, but they was also the politest and most respectful.

  “I am relieved to hear that,” I told him, “for I was worried you had been deprived of speech by some trickster.” Now, in Cheyenne that last word, Veho, is the same term used for “white man.”

  This lad, whose name I might as well use here though I never learned it till later, was Wolf Coming Out, he scowls in thought and says, “But you are yourself white. Are you therefore a trickster? And if you are, maybe you are trying to trick us by using that name and getting it out of the way before we can accuse you of being one.”

  “You might not have learned much else since you’ve been here,” says I, grinning, “but maybe you have begun to think like a white man.”

  “I really hope not,” he says, “else I could understand why you would try to make friends by insulting me first, and I don’t want to understand that. Nor do I want to know how and why you speak the language so well, because I can see no other reason than to use it to deceive us.”

  He was working himself up, and he was, at sixteen or seventeen, a head taller than me. For that matter, in this group of boys, from twelve to his age, I was amongst the shorter and outnumbered worse even than the Seventh Cavalry at the Greasy Grass. But I had me a weapon, and I proceeded to use it.

  Pulling up my pants leg and uncovering the top of the boot I wore under it, I drawed that knife I still carried from my last days with Old Lodge Skins’s band.

  Wolf backed up a step when I did so, then with typical Indian bravado quickly took two steps forward to show how brave he was, though unarmed.

  “Here,” I says, holding out the weapon by the tip of the blade, rawhide-wrapped handle towards him. “Here’s a present for you.”

  For a short while he looked at the knife and then he stared at me. It was just that old skinning knife, but pretty obviously no white man had made it. “Why are you doing this?” asked Wolf.

  I must say that question annoyed me, and my answer was, “You are a young boy who doesn’t know how to act,” which was to say, he had bad manners, a reflection on them who had brought him up, and it was a comment of some force.

  But Wolf Coming Out chose to ignore that point, saying, “We are not allowed to own a knife or any other weapon at this place. You must know that if you are one of them.”

  I couldn’t encourage the breaking of rules, at least not a sensible one like that. “I just came here, and I didn’t know of the rule,” I says, “but I guess it’s a good one, for the Human Being boys might want to cut the Pawnees or other old enemies, and also the reverse.”

  “We don’t fight with one another here,” Wolf told me, “because we all are in the same trouble.” The other boys murmured their agreement, but all of them was less tense now I had shown I wasn’t going to attack them with the knife.

  “You mean stuck in school.”

  “What I mean is being told what to do by white people.”

  “But since the whites run every school I ever heard of,” I pointed out, “and Indians have none as yet, you might think about enduring this one until you learn enough to leave it and set up a school run by Indians, particularly the Human Beings, who everybody knows are the smartest.” I let this sink in and then I says, “I was given this knife by Buffalo Calf Woman, wife to Old Lodge Skins, when I was last with his band just after the Greasy Grass fight. I was born white but I was reared amongst the Human Beings. I took this job so that you will have someone on your side who can speak your language. But I don’t blame you for being suspicious.” I stepped over to the entrance to my room and drove the blade of the knife into the door frame deep enough to maintain it at an up thrust angle. “This knife is yours. It’s against the rules for you to carry it, so we’ll leave it stuck here, where you can see it at all times. I hereby name it the Medicine Knife. Its protection extends to all of us.”

  Used as what you might call a talisman like that, the knife worked out better than it would of as just a simple present for him. Indians liked stuff of that kind which could be seen materially but had significance that was felt, as do we all when it comes to flags, crucifixes, and, for some, money.

  I’m not saying them Cheyenne lads instantly accepted me as a blood brother, but beginning at that point they was not unfriendly and by degrees they come to trust me in large part though I was still an adult, plus I was obviously one of the staff at a place they never wanted to be despite any
good reason for so being, the chief amongst which was that their parents wanted them to be there. They was not put in school by force. And when you think their fathers was formerly hostile savages, many of who had fought the U.S. Cavalry, illiterate, counting on their fingers, then you have to admit it was a remarkable thing for them to send their sons and daughters to acquire the white man’s learning.

  Now, as I say, I hadn’t knowed till the Major told me that my job was supposed to be temporary and consisted of using the Cheyenne language to get the boys to learn English, so the more success I had, the shorter time I’d be working there. This by the way was typical of the Major’s procedure and might of surprised me in a military man, had I not had enough acquaintance with Army officers to know that if you looked to them for practical sense you’d do better with even a cowboy. You don’t tell a man that the better a job he does, the sooner he will lose it, unless maybe he’s a doctor.

  But I did see the point that them young Indians ought to learn as much English as they could if they was going to prosper or even survive in the coming years now the Plains tribes had no immediate means of keeping body and soul together except on the basis of learning white ways, and you’d never do that talking only in Cheyenne.

  What I didn’t get was why that couldn’t be accomplished without forsaking their own tongue altogether, which is what the Major wanted, and all the teachers agreed with him including Amanda. Various other tribes was represented at the school, Pawnee, Kiowa, Comanche, Omaha, and all had made reasonable progress in English. Only the Cheyenne boys was the holdouts, and they considered themselves to be defending the tribal honor in so doing. There wasn’t no Cheyenne girls there, so they felt alone, except now for me, and what I had to do was complicated: encourage them to learn English while being on their side when it come to retaining their own language. But I did have a peculiar advantage over everybody, for I was the only person there who could speak both tongues, and in translating to each side I could say whatever I wanted to as the opinion of the other.

  Not that I was the first to discover that power, but I was surely one of the few who ever used it not solely for the benefit of the whites. The translators employed by the Government at the treaty conferences usually told both parties what each wanted to hear, regardless of what either actually said, but it was the Indians who invariably lost, for it was their land that was at issue, and also it was the Government paying the interpreters’ wages. Now, the school was paying mine, what little I was getting, but I didn’t come there for the money.

  The way it worked was like this. Oh, first I should say I was in charge of the Cheyenne boys a good deal of the day, seeing they was up and washed and dressed on time to be marched to the dining hall for breakfast (they was supposed to make their beds too, but unless it was Saturday morning, when the Major come to make an Army-type inspection, I let that go as a task not worth the remarkable effort), sitting at the head of the table and seeing they acted all right during the meal, then to one of the buildings of classrooms where my boys had one all their own so as not to interfere with the other students, who had learned English. This meant they was never in the authorized company of girls, by the way, which the older lads considered a deprivation, about which subject more to come.

  Now the first morning, before the instruction begun, the Major come in and addressed the class. After each sentence or so he stopped and let me give a translation.

  “What a relief it is,” he says, standing there with his erect military posture and gray beard, smiling genially, “to be able to speak to you boys with an assurance that you will be able fully to understand what I’m saying.”

  Now just remember my version, here in English, was in Cheyenne to them young fellows. “Here me when I speak. I am the leader here and am called Gold Leaf.” Which referred to the badge of rank a major wears when in uniform.

  The Major went on. “I can at last explain to you what our purpose is here at school.” He raised his arms in a kind of general embrace of a multitude. “It is only to help you. Keep that always in mind, and whenever you are asked to do a certain thing that you may not like, or to keep from doing something you want to do, you must obey, for what we ask will always be for your own good.”

  He stopped, and I translated as follows. “It is right that you show me the respect young people should have for their elders, for in doing so you also show respect for your parents, who sent you here.”

  The Major resumed. “Mr. Crabb will translate anything you do not understand, but you must immediately begin to use any English words and phrases you think you know, even if you make mistakes. That is the only way to learn.”

  My translation: “This is Little Big Man. He spent his boyhood with the Human Beings and has always kept them in his heart. He will help you understand white people and their ways, so far as that is possible. If you try you will learn their language quickly, for as Human Beings you are very smart and you will want to show how much better you speak English than the students from other tribes. To do less would be to bring shame to your families.”

  The Major listened smiling when I spoke, and after I finished this time he nodded his beard reflectively and said, “It is interesting that some ideas take much longer to express in Cheyenne than in English, and vice versa.” He turned back to the boys. “You are a fine-looking group of young men, and I’m sure you will do well here. When you are eventually ready to return to your tribe, it will be as educated Christian gentlemen, and you will make them proud.”

  This I rendered almost literally, including the Christian part, for Indians generally had no objection to anything religious.

  “Now,” the Major said, “if you have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them.” He told me, “You have lifted a burden from us all, Mr. Crabb. Not being able to communicate is a great inconvenience.”

  I passed on the matter of questions to the boys and added that if they asked any, the asker should politely get to his feet.

  The one who did was not unexpected. “This here,” I says to the Major, “is Wolf Coming Out.”

  The Major rolls his eyes and says, “That’s another of our responsibilities: to replace those quaint names with real ones. There’s a lot these poor fellows have to overcome. You should have seen them when they arrived, in leggings and dirty blankets.”

  What I wondered is what Wolf’s Pa, himself named for some animal, would make of his son coming home in a monkey suit, with his hair cut off, and named Horace Cooper or, as I heard they done at some of these schools, after the famous, like Thomas Jefferson.

  “You are heard,” I says to Wolf now.

  His question to the Major was: “How is it you have so much hair on your face but none on the top of your head, where it belongs?”

  What I passed on, however, was: “We thank you for this opportunity, and we are eager to learn as much as we can. We do hope, though, that you and those of the staff are patient with us. It isn’t easy to make such a great change in one’s life all at once.”

  The Major was beaming benevolently at Wolf. “The boy speaks well,” he told me. “If they can be taught discipline, how fine an all-Indian regiment would be. Best riders in the world, and it’s an old cavalryman who’s saying that, mind you. I served with the Tenth Horse, you know. Negroes. Very fine fellows.”

  I told Wolf, “It’s me speaking now. I don’t blame you for being an ignorant young person, but that was a rude question, and I did not translate it for Gold Leaf. However, since I believe you were not intentionally being impolite, I will answer it in a general way. Some think white men often lose their hair as they age because of wearing hats all their lives, but others say it’s because they cut their hair short. I think it represents the way the Everywhere Spirit wants it, as with the hair that grows on white men’s faces but not on Indians’.”

  Still standing there in his neat uniform, with close-cropped head, Wolf says, “I know that at the Greasy Grass a Human Being scalped the beard of one of the soldiers.”


  “That was Wooden Leg,” says I. He cut off one of the muttonchops of Custer’s dead adjutant, W. W. Cooke. “But it’s not a good idea to talk of that around here.”

  “Why not?” asked Wolf. “Nobody but the other Human Beings can understand the language, and they don’t mind.” And the other boys laughed on hearing this type of Indian joke.

  He was getting too fresh, and I told him so and to sit down. Which he did.

  The Major innocently joined in the mirth. He said, “They’re a happy-go-lucky lot when you get to know them, I see. I can’t wait until I can speak to them directly—no offense to you, Mr. Crabb, your help is essential. But surely, nothing beyond the most primitive concepts can be expressed in Indian. Yet we know all peoples are equal before the Lord. The red man is as capable as any other if introduced to the power of the word, beginning with the Word of God as it is recorded in the Gospels.”

  Of course, I wouldn’t of translated this comment to them boys, who come from a tribe whose menfolk was known for orating, usually for hours at a time. And if the Major was referring to the Bible, I believe it dated from the Hebrews, who was unlikely to have wrote it in English. I don’t know if I ever mentioned that my old Pa, who made himself a preacher, believed the Indian race might be that lost tribe of Israel as he claimed it said in the Book of Mormon, which however he never read, being illiterate even in his own language. But then it’s always been my experience, in well over a century now, that words can be held to mean anything.

  7. Amanda