Plenty-Coups, Chief of the Crows by Frank B. Linderman

Author:Frank B. Linderman [Linderman, Frank B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Native American, Biography & Autobiography, Cultural; Ethnic & Regional, Native American & Aboriginal
ISBN: 9780803280182
Google: B6oMQY0pS2oC
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Published: 2002-01-01T03:16:43+00:00

XI

THAT night, after I had turned out my light and while the fireflies darted thick among the bushes along Arrow Creek, I could still see the sorrow in the old Chief’s face as he told of the death of Custer. I recalled that Lieutenant James Bradley, who was with General Terry when the latter’s command went to the rescue of Reno’s men, had said in his priceless journal of the Custer campaign that “outside the relatives and personal friends of the fallen, there were none in this whole horrified nation of forty millions of people to whom the tidings brought more grief than to the Crows.” “When they heard the story,” says Bradley, “they one by one broke off from the group of listeners and going aside a little distance sat down alone, weeping and chanting that dreadful Mourning Song, and rocking their bodies to and fro.”

I am familiar with the battle ground on the Little Bighorn. Its monument and scattered headstones tell an awesome story which tonight kept milling in my mind. I remembered thankfully that the terrible fighting must have ended quickly. In 1887 an old Cheyenne who had taken part in the annihilation of Custer’s command had told me that the sun traveled only the “width of a lodge-pole” (perhaps twenty minutes) while it lasted. He had engaged to tell me the story of the fight. I had patiently waited while he peeled scores of little sticks with his thumb-nail and set them on a little mound he had raised between us, often changing their position and regrouping them to suit his memory. These little sticks represented Custer’s men on the fatal hill, and I had hoped to gather something entirely new from this warrior who had been in the battle. But when at last his little sticks were in proper positions, he suddenly and very violently scooped them all between his hands and threw them spitefully away. “Pooof!” he said, blowing upon his empty palms. And this was all the story the old Cheyenne told me after so much preparation.

“Do you remember exactly how old you were when Son-of-the-morning-star was wiped out?” I asked, after the usual greeting with Plenty-coups next morning.

“Yes,” he replied. “I was twenty-nine when I fought with Three-stars on the Rosebud. I was a chief and had been married since I was twenty-four. My woman’s name was Knows-her-mother. She was the daughter of Warm-robe, a man who once stood off a party of Sioux with only his bow and arrows. He had a gun, a flintlock, fired it once, then threw it away, and fought off a large band of Sioux with his bow and arrows. His woman’s name I dare not mention. She was my mother-in-law.

“Now I want to go back a little way to a winter before I fought with Three-stars. Word reached us that our brothers, the River Crows, were being pushed south of Bear River [Milk River] by the Crees, Yanktonese Sioux, Assiniboine, and some Blackfeet. These Crows

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