“MY SECOND SON, LITTLE Cloud, was born in 1845,” Dane said. “I wrote an English name for him in my book too, William Jotham Dane, but we never used it, not even when I took him to the seminary to be enrolled as a student. For a while I tried calling him Little Billy, but he would not answer to that, so I quit. Little Cloud did not have the Frenchman’s nose. He looked so much like his mother while he was very young that strangers took him for a girl. He was always undersized, but a splendid little fighter. I’ve always wondered what he’d have been like full grown…”
He turned his head away but not before I saw the shine of moisture in his eyes. “It’s strange how a man views life in a different way when he discovers that his existence is necessary to other persons. I don’t know why I never felt that way about Jerusha and Pleasant. Maybe I was too young. Maybe it was because they were so much a part of the white man’s world that I was not necessary to them.
“You see, in those days there were always two levels in the world of the Cheyennes. We did not consider the world of hunting or hide curing or arrow and moccasin making, or any of those things as the real world. The real world was a place of magic, of dreams wherein we became spirits. I lived with the Cheyennes a long time before I learned how to cross into the real world, and all that time my wife and children could do this and they were puzzled because I could not join them there. By fasting for long periods of time and through the ceremony of the Medicine Lodge, I was finally able to find my way into the real world with my family. I discovered mysterious powers within my memory and learned that when you pray for others to become strong you become strong, too, because that connects you with everything else. You become a part of everything and that is how I knew that I was necessary to my family and they were necessary to me.”
“What was the ceremony of the Medicine Lodge?” I asked.
“Oh, that was the Cheyennes’ Sun Dance. The Sioux borrowed part of the ceremony from the Cheyennes and called it a Sun Dance. It’s a renewal of life. When the white men penned us on the reservations they forbade the ceremonies among all the tribes. The missionaries could not stand the sight of us putting roped skewers through incisions in our breasts and then tearing the flesh loose by dancing and pulling at the ropes fastened to the Medicine Lodge pole. Maybe that was our way of baptizing. We never tried to stop the missionaries from baptizing or any of their other practices that seemed barbaric to us.” He unbuttoned his shirt and showed the old yellow scars on his pectoral muscles, then rolled up his sleeve to another scar. “No more damaging to me than this smallpox vaccination mark that a dirty-fingered contract surgeon forced on me when we came back here from Canada.”
“What is it like, the real world?” I asked.
He remained silent for a while and then spoke slowly. “Being a man who loves words, I’ve often thought about that. But some things cannot be put into words. The closest I ever came was one English word. Shimmering.”
“Shimmering?”
“Yes, like swimming in moonlight.” He grinned at me, and I was not certain whether he was teasing or being serious.
“The Cheyenne way of life as you’ve described it seems idyllic,” I said. “Was it really?”
“Idyllic?” he repeated. “Pleasing, picturesque, romantic, I think the word means. I suppose it was all of those things, especially to an outsider like me. Oh, we killed and were killed. We had our quarrels, accidents, pestilences, deaths. But most of our diseases came from the whites. Mainly it was a balanced world that we lived in. We were in harmony with the animals and plants, the forests and waters. When the white men came they destroyed the balance and almost destroyed us. They are still at it. One day there will be only coyotes here.”
“Did any of you foresee what was coming?”
“I thought of it more than the others, I suppose because I had seen it happen to the Cherokees. Red Cloud of the Oglala Sioux saw it coming, and later on so did Sitting Bull of the Uncpapas. But none of us dreamed how quickly the storm would sweep over us.”
“Was any effort made to unite the tribes in the way that Tecumseh tried in the East?”
“Red Cloud brought all the Sioux, Cheyennes, and Arapaho together, but his world was that paradise along the Yellowstone. The Black Hills, and the valleys of the Powder, the Tongue, and the Little Bighorn. That was his vision of an Indian Nation. But as more and more white men came surging across the Plains, the tribes began to come together in a kind of natural response. Tribes that had long been enemies met in councils and made peace.
“One of the keenest memories of my early time with Big Star’s people was a council we held one summer with the Kiowas and Comanches near Bent’s Fort. Many years in the past the Cheyennes and Sioux drove those tribes out of the northern paradise into the Southern Plains. For a while the Kiowas and Comanches fought each other over territorial rights, but when they found there was room enough for both they became staunch allies. Now they wanted to be allies with their old enemies the Cheyennes, and so we held council with them. They were fierce, proud, and handsome people, the Kiowas and Comanches, rich in fine horses.
“When the time came for us to exchange presents, the Kiowa chief said that his people had more horses than they needed. ‘We do not wish any horses as presents,’ he said, ‘but we shall be pleased to receive any other gifts.’ And so we brought out our best blankets, making a pile on the ground higher than a man. In exchange the Kiowas and Comanches gave us horses, fast-footed little mustangs, so many that some of us received five or six.
“Because Big Star felt the exchange was too much in our favor, he invited all the Kiowas and Comanches to a big feast. I think every kettle we owned was put to use. All the food we had traded for at Bent’s Fort was thrown into the kettles—cornmeal, dried apples, beans, and molasses. Our guests declared it to be the finest feast they had ever partaken of, and they must have meant it because they ate everything in the kettles. The next day, after they struck their tipis and moved off to the south, we went back to Bent’s Fort and traded some of the horses they had given us for a new supply of blankets, cornmeal, dried apples, beans, and molasses.” Laughing softly, Dane got up from his chair, took a long-stemmed pipe from the shelf above the fireplace, and thumbed a charge of shag tobacco into the bowl. After he lighted it with a live coal, he blew the first puff skyward and then compulsively pointed the stem toward the earth and the four directions before drawing more smoke.
“Did you ever return again to the Cherokee Nation?” I asked. “To visit your own people?”
“Oh, yes, a few times. I must tell you about Jotham and his trading post. Fort Carrothers. That changed all our lives. You remember I told you of meeting Jim Carrothers, the old fur trapper turned trader, at Fort Laramie. Well, after the U.S. Army took over the fort and made it a military station, old Jim built himself a trading post east of Laramie—between the Ghost Timbers and Laramie. He called his place Fort Carrothers. Moved his Arapaho wife and family down there and did a lot of trading with the Cheyennes and Sioux. We always stopped at Fort Carrothers going and coming from our winter camp at the Timbers.
“When the Great Medicine Road—the Oregon Trail—got busy with wagons heading for the Far West and Mormons going to Utah, old Jim had more to do than he could handle. One spring when we stopped there on our way north, he asked me if I’d like to go to Independence with him, maybe travel on to St. Louis. ‘This old buffaler wants to get away from this place for a spell,’ he said. ‘From the all-fired figgerin’ and the old woman and the young-uns. I’m gettin’ on in years and I want to see what it’s like back there ’fore I lose my eyesight complete. Besides I can get double money on hides I deliver instead of sellin’ ’em to a wagon freighter. I got two wagons and need another driver.’
“I thought about his offer all day, and that night made arrangements to go with him. An old French trapper who worked for Carrothers was to look after the place while he was gone, and Carrothers’s Arapaho wife promised me she’d take good care of my family. I helped Sweet Medicine Woman get our tipi fixed up behind the trading post, alongside a clean little stream. She did not want me to go. She cried through most of the night before Jim and I left for the East. I guess she thought I was deserting her.
“Carrothers gave me trading credit for some white man’s clothes for the journey, and when Sweet Medicine Woman saw me dressed in broadcloth trousers, black boots, and a linen shirt, she turned her back on me and refused to say good-bye. After four years of wearing buckskins, I didn’t feel at ease myself in those clothes for several days.
“But old Jim and I were like a pair of workhorses set free, with no cares except for the two wagonloads of hides and furs. Only thing that upset us was the constant stream of covered wagons we kept meeting on our way, long trains of wagons filled with men, women, and children. ‘Good God!’ Jim kept saying. ‘Looks like the whole damned white race is running after the western sun. Oughta be plenty room left back East for old Mountain Men and Indians.’
“Well, there didn’t seem to be any shortage of people in the towns we saw springing up along the Missouri. A whole new town had been built west of Independence. They called the place Westport Landing, and it looked to us as if all the steamboats in the world were gathered in the river waiting to unload. I soon discovered that Mr. Louis Tessier had built a new warehouse at Westport Landing, and he generously offered Carrothers and me the use of one of his rooms for our quarters. Mr. Tessier said that William and Jotham still traded with him and he was expecting one or the other of them to arrive almost any day from the Cherokee Nation to buy supplies. I felt a wave of homesickness for the old family, just thinking about them.
“One morning I was down at the landing watching the steamboats unloading when I noticed a young boy doing the same thing a few yards in front of me. Something in his stance seemed familiar. His brown-streaked sandy hair sprayed out from beneath a round-topped hat that was too small for him. I was circling around to get a better look at the boy’s face when a voice came from right behind me. ‘That’s him all right, Dane. Except for his lighter skin and hair he could be you, back in Okelogee.’
“I whirled around. ‘Jotham!’ I yelled, and after we’d embraced, pounded each other, and laughed wildly, he called Pleasant over to us. The boy shook hands and studied me with considerable curiosity. I could see Jerusha in his pale blue eyes, and I felt that old sense of something treasured lost forever.
“Afterward Jotham told me that Pleasant had quarreled with his stepfather, the Reverend Crookes, and had run away from home. Jotham tracked him down and persuaded him to become an apprentice blacksmith. ‘He’s a good worker, and I don’t blame him for not wanting to live with old Crookes. I don’t know how Jerusha can endure that man.’
“Jotham and Pleasant slept in their wagons behind Mr. Tessier’s warehouse, and during the next three or four days we spent a good deal of time together. Jim Carrothers and Jotham took a liking to each other, and one evening old Jim announced that he was going to sell Fort Carrothers to Jotham, and buy himself a spread of ground for a log cabin on one of the ridges above Westport Landing. ‘I’ll put two porches on it,’ he said. ‘One to set watchin’ the sun go down in the west and t’other to set watchin’ the steamboats in the river.’
“I could see that Jotham was excited by the idea of owning his own trading post somewhere out West. He and Jim spent hours talking about prices and credits. However, I never thought anything would come of it. Carrothers didn’t seem to be the kind of man who would want to live near a crowded place like Westport Landing, and I knew Jotham did not have very much money. But the world is full of wonders, and the next spring a real surprise was waiting for me at Fort Carrothers.”