The Canyon Jack Schaefer

by Les Weil

  THE CANYON

  Jack Schaefer

  1953

  To Louise

  TRACE ON A MAP the high border country, the land of high plains and high mountains that is the vast northern boundary of the western United States. There is no exact demarcation except on the north where the long, unfortified miracle of the Canadian line runs along the upper edge of North Dakota and Montana. Trace this westward to the flat top of the Idaho panhandle. Drop south and east in an irregular arc roughly paralleling the Idaho-Montana line along the main chain of the Rockies and on down into Wyoming. Sweep eastward across Wyoming from the Absaroka range past the lower tip of the Bighorns and on past the Black Hills into South Dakota. Swing northward in another arc near the eastern edge of South Dakota and push straight up across North Dakota to the Canadian line again. Let other people argue the precise location of the latter lines you have run. The area you have enclosed is the heart bulk of the high border country, the great bull-shaped expanse of Montana with an edging of the Idaho panhandle and the upper portion of Wyoming, spreading on over the Dakotas eastward across the wide Missouri to shade away into the lower plains rolling downgrade to Minnesota.

  Those are names now on our maps. They were not names then. The area was not yet even marked on early maps as it was marked for so many years later in ignorance as part of the Great American Desert. The Sioux, who were to make much of it their own and their last stronghold against the whitemen, were still grounded on foot east of the Missouri. Only the first small straggling parties of their westward migration had penetrated beyond the river to confront the tribes there before them and discover the freedom of the horse. But the Crows were there, and the Pawnees, and the Comanches, and the Arapahoes. And the Cheyennes, these last moving out ever farther westward from their settlements along the west bank of the Missouri to follow the roving buffalo ever deeper into the high border pasturelands. And far to the east, still remote as though lost on some far other continent, the twelve colonies that would be thirteen fretted the Atlantic coast with advancing civilization and the thought of their independence was still only a vague half-realized flicker in a few minds.

  Find now along the southern rim of this high border country, midway between the Missouri and the crescent of the Bighorns and straddling the Wyoming-Dakota line, the roughly circular shading of the Black Hills. They are cradled on the map between the sweeping, south fork of the Cheyenne River and the lovely long, reach of the north fork that is known as La Belle Fourche. Streams feeding these rivers lead deep into these hills that are not hills but mountains, not soaring and luminous by night as by day like the Bighorns yet strong and rugged in the solid honesty of their rock risings. If you could follow the right one of these streams into the hills from its junction with Belle Fourche and take the right one of its branches fingering out and up into the broken levels, you would come at last to a wall of stone climbing in jagged tiers for more than a hundred feet. The water flows from a fissure at the base. Around and to the left a gently graded upland pasture leads on, rising slowly until it matches the wall height, and you emerge on a plateau that seems to stretch unbroken for a mile and more. You must move carefully now. Suddenly through the tall grasses and occasional low bushes the ground opens before you, a big gash in the basic rock formation dropping sheer for nearly eighty feet to an almost flat floor then rising again on the other side to the plateau level so that even at a short distance the eye is deceived and it cannot be seen. You are looking at the lost canyon of Little Bear. . . .

  Ages ago in the strains of the earth's crust thrusting up to form the western mountains, some fault in the rock strata created that canyon. It is shaped like a long blunted triangle. It is relatively narrow at the upper end where a stream flows from the higher levels over the plateau and drops over the rock lip to fall straight down into a pool worn in the floor. It widens steadily to some five hundred yards at the lower end where the stream drops out of sight into its rock fissure. The sides are sheer, nearly vertical, weather-polished. Only a few narrow ledges harbor scant grass tufts and a lonely bush struggling for roothold. He is a fool who would attempt to scale those sides unaided up or down. But at one place, where successive ledges top each other at fifteen- to twenty-foot intervals, there are niches be tween in the rock. They are similar in shape. They are regularly spaced. They have the unmistakable imprint of the mind and hand of man.

  There were no niches in the rock then. There was only the blunted triangle of the canyon, sharp-rimmed around, stretching its hidden depth across the plateau deep in the Black Hills that are not hills but sturdy over the mountains. The buffalo had found it, nosing beneath edge to snort at the dropping away of space and turning from it. Times beyond counting in the endless herd generations an unwary animal, startled in the dark and rushing the from danger behind had plunged over the rim to the instant death of crushing impact below or the slow death of broken bones. And one moonless night far back along the unmeasured years, when the strange sheet lightning of the hills flared through the black and fireballs hung on the horns, a whole herd stampeded across the open and the formost flowed over the rim and those following struggled to turn and those behind drove forward and the river of living flesh poured over and piled into a mangled bloody heap for the last falling to strike upon. In the first light of dawn there were seven living buffalo in the canyon by the mass of the dead and four dragged broken bones and died lingering deaths dwindling the number and three remained, two cows and a young bull, and these were enough. There were the good grasses the stream. There were trees for summer shade when the sun stood high overhead. There were sheer rock walls to shed the winter winds and the worst of the driving blizzards. Thereafter the rutting-season battles of bulls and the ruthless impartial pressure of the winters eliminated the weaker and kept the nurnber almost constant, a small herd never more than fifteen, rarely less than eight. . . .

  There were no man-made niches in the climbing rock then. There were only the canyon and its buffalo and the good grasses and the trees and the running stream. Out of the hills to the west where the headwaters of the Little Missouri start their northward journey and beyond where the valley of the Powder stretches on to the Bighorns the Comanches and the Pawnees were moving their camps as the free-roaming buffalo moved. Closer in to the north and the east the Cheyennes were following other herds and penetrating into the hills to cut fresh lodgepoles in the lesser timber when the winds of autumn gave warning. Do not ask the exact year or years. It is only when the whitemen come into a land that the drastic changes needing dates arrive. The whitemen were still far to the eastward then, just beginning to spill over the Appalachian barrier. Only a few, almost more Indian than white, had advanced to the western Great Lakes and the upper Mississippi, voyageurs, fur traders making small impress, working alone or in small groups up from the valley of the Ohio or down from the Hudson Bay area. Their existence was little more than a legend among the western tribes, variously told by old men to children, easily confused with tales of wandering Mexican traders who had reached as far north as the neighborhood of the Bighorns. The lost canyon of Little Bear, neither lost nor named because not yet even found, was quiet in the drift of the seasons deep in the Black Hills of the high horder country, the land of high plains and high mountains that lifts in the heart of a continent. ...

  That is the place and that is the time.

  The lodges of the Cheyenne village are set in a large circle, ten groupings around the circumference for the ten tribal divisions, with a wider gap between two groupings on the east for the village entrance. Inside the circle, in the southern arc, are two lodges marked with double crosses, the sacred lodges of the medicine arrows and of the buffalo hat. In one of the lodges of the western arc
women have prepared a meal and a small, clean-burning fire and have left the lodge because a ceremonial pipe is to be smoked there. Men are entering the lodge. Each enters and steps to the right and pauses while the owner of the lodge, on his couch at the rear, welcomes him and appoints him a place to sit, sometimes of special honor to the left and again of ordinary honor to the right. Each takes his place, the fire, the most courteous careful not to pass between the the owner and the fire, the most courteous careful not to pass between anyone and the fire, when necessary passing behind those already seated while they lean forward to give room.

  All eat. Even those eat who have already eaten in their own lodges lest they cast dishonor upon the owner of this lodge who is their friend. He finishes and wipes his hands. He waits until all have finished and have wiped their hands. He brings forth his ceremonial pipe and fills it with native tobacco in which a portion powdered red willow bark has been mixed. He holds the pipe vertical, stem up, before him. He speaks. "My friends. A village of our enemies is camped six days' journey from here. The face of the winter has been hard. It is now the month of the buffalo-begin-to-fill-out moon. They will not expect us. It is my wish to lead a war party against them to take horses. I ask if you will go with me."

  The owner of this lodge is a man who has led war parties before. He has not had to consult an old man of cxperience and carry offerings to the medicine arrows and perhaps swing to the pole for a full day as a personal sacrifice as would a young man wishing to lead his first war party. He has been able to call his friends together like this, with little notice, without formal preparations, when the wish came upon him. Because he has led successful war parties he has no doubt that many will go with him. He points with the pipestem to the sky above and to the ground beneath and to the four cardinal points around, east and north and west and south, making his prayer for success and the honor of the first coup to the spirits that dwell in those quarters. He lights the pipe and smokes. He passes the pipe to the man at his left.

  The man at his left holds the pipe upright, bowl down. He waits a long moment. Perhaps he is arguing his decision in his mind. Perhaps he likes to create a feeling of suspense. He is sitting in the place of most honor and what he does will have influence on the others. He raises the pipe. He smokes. He will go.

  The pipe passes from man to man. Always it is passed and held vertically, bowl down. Each does with it according to tribal custom and the variations on that custom of his tribal division. And each smokes. Each will go. It will be a good war party. At last the pipe passes to the man second from the doorway on the right. He is like the others yet he is not like them. His ears have been pierced but they carry no ornament. His hair is not caught together behind with pine gum or woven into braids. It hangs straight. His dress is plain. He has no buffalo robe about him. He is there because he is a man and he lives in this lodge and not to be there would be to dishonor it. He is a young man but he is not in the first wishful pride of youth. Even younger men are there and they have gone on war parties and they have counted coups but he has not. Always he has passed the pipe unsmoked. The owner of the lodge is sad that this is so but he would not say or indicate by any show of emotion what is in his heart. The others know this and they are the same. They wait, patient and impassive. They wonder what the man who is like them yet not like them will do with the pipe that he holds in his hand. He sits still looking at the ground. He has not raised his eyes since the pipe was brought forth. He does not raise them now. His breath is heard leaving his chest in what might be a sigh. He holds the pipe upright according to custom. He passes it unsmoked. ...

  That is the man.

  HIS NAME was Little Bear. That was not a formal name given to him by his father's brother or his grandfather together with the gift of a horse. It was what his Suhtai father and Tsistsista mother called him when he was small, a pet name, a term of endearment. He was a fat baby with short arms and legs, shorter than usual, for the Cheyennes of both the Suhtai and Tsistsista related tribes that merged to form the one tribe were a tall and well-formed people. Little-fat-person his parents called him, small-round-one, and when he was crawling and trying to stand upright on his short legs he became their Little Bear. He had no other name. When he was six years old, of an age to be given a formal name, his father and his father's close relatives were dead and so too were his mother and the members of her immediate family. It was a sickness took them, a sickness that crept into the temporary summer camp of good hunters and their families who had followed the buffalo away from the village and when it was gone only one old man and two women and four children were left to return to the village.

  No Cheyenne starved when another Cheyenne had meat. No Cheyenne lacked shelter when another Cheyenne had shelter. Little Bear was taken into the lodge of Strong Left Hand. He had food and he had shelter and his foster parents gave him clothing and treated him in all ways as they did their own children. But always Little Bear was conscious of a difference. When he was twelve years old Strong Left Hand gave him a horse, a painted pony sound of limb, as Strong Left Hand had done for his own older son two years before and as he would do for his own younger son in another year. But still Little Bear was conscious of a difference. It was a difference in his own mind. He was an orphan in a lodge that was not the lodge of his father and his mother. He was expected to carry messages and cut the tobacco and herd Strong Left Hand's horses when they were taken out to graze. It was true that the sons of Strong Left Hand did the same things in equal measure because their father was a fair man in all the doings of those who lived in his lodge and the wife of their father was the same in all that pertained to women's work. But the sons of Strong Left Hand were his sons and they did these things by right as members of his family. Little Bear did them because they were expected of him in exchange for what was given him, for the food that he ate and the shelter of the lodge and the clothing that he wore. And he could remember when it had not been so. He could remember the laughter of his father and the soft voice of his mother and the warmth of their lodge that was more than the warmth of a fire. He could remember his father, a good hunter and a good warrior, tumbling him head-over-heels in the long grasses and telling him he must develop the strength of a grizzly in his arms to make up for the shortness of his legs. He could remember his mother singing soft songs to him even when he was no longer of an age for singing-to­sleep and making him many small moccasins and small fringed leggings because he was her one child and she knew she would have no other. He could remember her telling him that he was not like other boys because his ears had been pierced by Standing All Night. Always she told this in the same way and the same words.

  It was at the Medicine Lodge, the midsummer medicine meeting for which all the villages for a long traveling distance around gathered in a great camp on the plain. It was on the third evening of the four days of dances and ceremonies and the dancing of the day and the ceremony of the pipe-cleaning were done and mothers were taking their small children-in-arms to the central meeting place and fathers were asking the old crier to call out and ask certain persons to pierce the ears of their children. It was then that the mother of Little Bear took his father by the arm and whispered for him to ask for Standing All Night. That was a brave thought.

  Standing All Night was not a Cheyenne by birth. He was an Arikara. He had not married a Cheyenne woman. He had married a Mandan woman and lived in her village which was near a Cheyenne village. He was still a young man when he left that village and went to live with the Cheyennes because he liked their people and their ways. They were glad that he came because they liked him and his ways. They accepted him into the tribe and he was one of them. He was an old man now. He was known to everyone in even the farthest village for the courage and the wisdom and the dignity that had been with him all his days. He knew more of the tribal lore than did the old men who had been born in the tribe and lived in it all their lives. He was respected as few men were ever respected. He was not a man to be asked to pierce the ears
of a fat round baby with short legs from a far small village near the hills. The father of Little Bear heard the whisper beside him and laughed as at a joke. He looked at the mother of Little Bear and at their little-fat-person in her arms. He laughed no more. He took Little Bear in his arms and turned to find the old crier.

  Standing All Night heard the voice of the crier in the lodge where he rested from the ceremony of the day. He came forth into the central firelight. He was tall though he leaned on his walking stick. He was a very old man and the courage and the wisdom and the dignity of his years were on him. He looked at Little Bear in the arms of the laughing hunter father who was not laughing now. He could turn away and no voice would be raised to stay him. He was Standing All Night. He looked at Little Bear and he saw something there others did not see. His voice was strong despite the years that he carried. "This small one has the moon in his eyes." He stood straight and counted a coup for the small one as a man should when he is ready to pierce the ears. It was a coup no one had heard him count before, not once in the long years he had lived with the tribe. It was not like other coups. "Long ago when I lived in the lodge of my father I wished to be a warrior before my age. I crept out from the lodge of my father to follow a war party. I could not find them. I was lost. Three days I wandered without food. I was weak and frightened. A man of the Crow people found me and fed me and told me how to go. Three springs after that I was with a war party. We entered a Crow village in the night to take horses. A man woke and ran out of his lodge and took hold of me. We fought. I struck him with my war club and he fell. The blood ran from his nose and he died. The moon gave light. I saw it was the man who fed me."

  Standing All Night brought forth his knife, the knife with an iron blade that came from a pale-skinned trader eastward across the big river many many years before. He reached with it and pierced the ears of Little Bear according to custom, making a long cut in each ear in the outer margin. Little Bear made a small noise each time when the knife entered but he did not struggle and he did not cry. . ..