Ghosts
When the wind hurls the mist
from the river at the stars
and the coyotes beg
the moon yield her heart,
Cheyenne and Arapaho
hunt phantom buffalo
in the whispering grass.
A truck klaxon
counts coup
on the night’s quiet.
Buffalo and hunter
fade in the moonlight.
The wind swallows
the coyote petitions.
The mist scurries
to hide in the river.
Buffalo Hunt, Under the Wolf Skin-- George Catlin
When the wind hurls the mist
from the river at the stars
and the coyotes beg
the moon yield her heart,
Cheyenne and Arapaho
hunt phantom buffalo
in the whispering grass.
A truck klaxon
counts coup
on the night’s quiet.
Buffalo and hunter
fade in the moonlight.
The wind swallows
the coyote petitions.
The mist scurries
to hide in the river.
Buffalo Hunt, Under the Wolf Skin-- George Catlin
The Tsetsehestahese (the “Cheyenne”) are an Algonquian-speaking indigenous tribe on the Great Plains. Their traditional foes, the Dakota (Sioux) called Siouan-language speakers “white talkers” and those who spoke other languages “Sahiyena” (red talkers), the probable source of the Cheyenne designation. Their name for themselves probably meant “related to one another, our people, us.” In the early 19th century they merged with the So’taetaneo’o to form a united tribe. In the 17th century the Hoheeheo’o (the “Assiniboine”) drove them from the Great Lakes region into Minnesota and North Dakota. They reached the Missouri river in 1676 and came into contact with the Mandan, Hidatsa (Tse-hese’emaheonese), and Arikara peoples and adopted many of their cultural characteristics. Early in the 18th century they migrated from Minnesota into South Dakota (they were the first of the familiar Great Plains tribes to settle in the Black Hills) and Montana, where they adopted the horse culture, which they introduced to the Sioux around 1730. (They called the Sioux the “Ho’ohomo’eo’o,” the ones the Cheyenne invited into the Black Hills.”) By 1776 the more numerous Sioux drove them out of the Black Hills; in alliance with fellow Algonquian-speaking Arapaho (the Hinono’eino, “our people, people of our own kind”) of Colorado and Wyoming, achieved ca. 1811, they drove the Tanoan-speaking Kiowa (Ka’igwu) further south and expanded their territory to cover most of southern Montana and Wyoming, eastern Colorado, western Nebraska, and western Kansas. (“Arapaho” may have come from the Pawnee word for trader or a corruption of a Crow word for tattoo.) The Cheyenne and Arapaho continued their wars against the Tanoan-speaking Kiowa (Ka’igwu) and their Uto-Aztecan-speaking Comanche allies, both blocs, along with the Athabaskan-speaking Plains Apache, formed a new alliance in 1840, allowing the Cheyenne to enter Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico to hunt and trade, and with the Kiowa they began raiding Mexico in 1853. The Cheyenne also allied with the Sioux, allowing them to return to the Black Hills. All of these tribes were conquered by the US in the 1870s and placed on divided reservations.
ReplyDeletePlains Indians won prestige by “counting coup,” acquired by striking an enemy, for example, but mainly by merely touching him a hand, bow, or coup stick and escaping unharmed. Touching the enemy’s fortifications or touching the first enemy to die in battle, or stealing enemy horses or weapons also counted. Risk of injury or death was a necessary element, but escaping unharmed was a higher honor than being wounded. After a battle or exploit, a warrior would recount his deed before the tribe, and worthy warriors were permitted to wear an eagle feather in their hair (however, if wounded, he had to paint it red); coups were recorded by cutting notches into the brave’s coup stick; tribes in the Pacific Northwest tied an eagle feather to the coup stick for each notch. The Blackfeet (Niitsitapi) of the upper Missouri placed coup bars on the sleeves and shoulders of special shirts that bore paintings of the recipient’s feats.
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