Song of the Ancient Horseman

This story is a brief memoir on the life of a 100-year-old Indian whose lifetime encompassed the birth of the transcontinental railroad and man’s first steps on the Moon. Of course, he had his own unique perspective on the whole century. And quite a perspective it was.One day I became aware that the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 happened exactly 100 years before Neil Armstrong put the first human footprints on the Moon. My next thought was that there were people who had lived through both! What an amazing lifetime that would be. To be born in a time when there was no way to go from New York to California without traveling by horse, wagon, stage coach, or on foot at least part of the way, and dying in a world where men walked on the Moon.That was the inspiration for this story. It allows us to peer into the heart, mind and soul of a Nez Percé Indian, Joseph Longeyes, as he looks back over his long life, a life that spanned the century in which this nation’s frontiers move from the wild west to the Moon. It is not just a slice of life, it is the whole loaf, and then some.