Hu Chan Sahiyela wan wowapi lila waste. This book of the Cheyenne Wooden Leg is beautiful.
This edition of Wooden Leg’s story begins with a short introduction by Dr. Richard Littlebear. Littlebear is the current president of Chief Dull Knife College on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Montana. Littlebear revisits Wooden Leg, recalling a time when he was a college student in Kansas and read it then. Years later, with age and a retrospective knowledge of his people the story of Wooden Leg is filled with reminders that the Cheyenne were a changing adaptive people in the course of three hundred years who went from a sedentary life of agriculture to a nomadic hunter-gatherer people - a horse people - to a sedentary people, though this time by no choice of their own.
Littlebear recollects a painful moment in his people’s history in which they scouted for Col. Nelson Miles, “Northern Cheyenne scouts helped to locate Chief Joseph and his nation’s citizens. Perhaps this is not a good chapter in the history of the Cheyenne people,” (Wooden Leg, 2003; vii). Though short, this introduction informs readers of the highs and lows of a people’s history.
Thomas Marquis, MD, a brief one-time physician on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Montana, wrote a brief author’s statement, acknowledging Cheyenne epistemology - how the Cheyenne know what they know - in their reconstruction of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Along the way in this reconstruction, Marquis took a special interest in the life story of Wooden Leg, from his boyhood days and the Battle of the Little Bighorn to the days the Cheyenne were prisoners of war and removal to Oklahoma, to their eventual return to the Northern Plains. The Little Bighorn from the perspective of the Cheyenne was “checked and corroborated or corrected” by Marquis’ Cheyenne informants to keep the narrative true.
Wooden Leg’s narrative recalls his early life on the Great Plains. This early life was filled with survival on the open plains, violence of intertribal warfare, and even lively challenges with the Sioux. Much of these early recollections took place on the Tongue River. He does recall being informed that Cheyenne had an agency at the mouth of the Cheyenne River which was moved to Red Cloud Agency - which the Cheyenne knew as White River Agency. These recollections recall a familiar landscape in the American west. This is their homeland.
We are informed of the Cheyenne ways of life. These ways include pursuits of excellence of honor and virtues in everyday life. Everyman pursued bravery each day. Women honored each others’ accomplishments as providers, preparers, gatherers, and mothers. This doesn’t mean that women could not be brave in battle. The Cheyenne recall the Battle of the Rosebud as the Fight Where The Girl Saved Her Brother.
Wooden Leg is an invaluable work. Published at a time when there were few books about the Cheyenne - Littlebear makes this point in his introduction as well - it serves as a window into the daily life of the Cheyenne. Daily life is described from making arrows, how they wore their moccasins, marriage too, and to how they communicated over distances using mirrors.
Marquis’ translations are fluid and are in easy to read everyday speech. Marquis does mention that Wooden Leg also employed the Plains Indian Sign Language in his recollections to Marquis, but there are no attributions within Wooden Leg’s narrative that mention this. The inclusion of this method of communication would only have enhanced this already fascinating read.
Of significant interest to this reader is Wooden Leg’s account of his vision quest. Perhaps it is the Lakhota in me, or the sign of the times I live, but vision quests are generally not shared publicly. Perhaps though by sharing his experience in retrospect as an elder Cheyenne, he has graciously shared his vision to construct a positive worldview the reader would have. Wooden Leg said that nothing supernatural happened to him, aside from a visit of a buffalo, during his quest. But the buffalo’s visit was interpreted by Red Haired Bear that the buffalo was Wooden Leg’s friend and that it would provide for him. As Wooden Leg made nothing negative of sharing his experience with Marquis neither shall I.
Marquis interjects in the story of Wooden Leg but once to inform readers of the place the Cheyenne had in the larger story of the “Indian Troubles” following the Civil War. It is minimal and recalls readers to major historical events like gold and silver being discovered, Bozeman’s Trail, Red Cloud’s War, the Little Bighorn Fight, and the fallout of that fight.
Wooden Leg’s first person perspective of the arrival of Isanyati (“Santee”) Dakhota on the western prairie steppe is one of wonder and pity. The Cheyenne called them “Waist and Skirt Indians,” for the unique style of dress the women of that division wore. Wooden Leg also notes how poor they were, “their men had no clothing. They were extremely poor, having but little property and no horses...they had plenty of dogs...to carry their tepees and other scant property,” (Wooden Leg, 2003; 182). Wooden Leg’s perspective gives readers insight into just how poor the Dakhota were when they fled Minnesota following the 1862 Minnesota Conflict.
Wooden Leg is a story of survival. As his story draws to a close, he recalls for readers being taken to Oklahoma to live among the Southern Cheyenne, and there he found his wife - herself a survivor of Custer’s 1868 Washita campaign. Wooden Leg shares many things to be proud of, even the Cheyenne men who served as scouts in General Mile’s campaign against the Nez Perce (we should recognize that these men had families to feed in a time when bison were disappearing), but the most sorrowful event Wooden Leg recalls to us is an incident when Little Wolf got drunk and became angry. What do people do when a great leader falls? They were sad, and Little Wolf was no longer their chief.
This eye-witness account invokes a deep sense of humility and humanity that the Cheyenne culture cultivated. A culture that still exists today.