Spotted Buffalo to Fluffy Cows: Plenty Coups' Story from a Time of Changes
A Book Overview
In practically every American History class taken in middle school and junior high, the coverage of the mid-1800s and the changing of the Western landscape can be glossed over, and the rapidity with which it took place is rarely ever truly appreciated. When frontiersman Frank B. Linderman started his writing career at the turn of the last century, he was looking at a country and world largely changed from his teenage years of trapping in the great western American wilderness. Even he, however, had not felt the most impact that the last century had brought. When he sat down to interview many different American Indians, perhaps none of his writings or stories stood out as much as the conversations he had with Plenty Coups, Chief of the Crows. A man who recalled a time when muskets were scarce on the Great Plains and when the buffalo herds were more than plentiful (prior to their mass culling in the 1860s and 70s), Plenty Coups offered Linderman a unique insight into a way of life that Europeans had left behind centuries before and was all but vanished by the time of his interview. In Plenty Coups' wisdom and Linderman's insightful writing, their joint effort in communicating the chief's story was one that would endeavor to preserve the experiences and ways of life of the Crow people for generations to come, when the children of the Crow would only be able to learn these stories by reading what the American settlers had written down.
Beginning this story, Plenty Coups establishes his identity in his spiritual life, the basic social organization of his tribe, and his personal experiences with visions and his guides. As part of a coming of age process, the young men were encouraged to undertake a spiritual journey. This involved fasting, isolation, and the construction of a small sweat lodge where the young man would remain until he experienced a spiritual vision. The most important of these scenes is when Plenty Coups has his first vision in which he observes the disappearance of a mass throng of buffalo and their replacement with the confusing appearance of the "spotted buffalo". He recognizes in his retelling to Linderman that these spotted buffalo are cows, but he does recall his initial assessment for the writer. After his vision, he addresses the elders of his tribe who have insight into what these spiritual visions mean. These experiences often give glimpses into the individual's future place within the tribe; in Plenty Coups' instance, he is informed that he is meant to be a great leader among the Crow people.
Among the various stories he tells of his life, Plenty Coups spends a lot of time recalling skirmishes and horse theft and striking back for the theft of their own horses by other tribes. Even by the end of his recollections to Linderman, Plenty Coups is very much aware that most of his stories from his youth as a warrior involve some form of warfare between tribes and stealing horses. Many of his early escapades included sneaking away from his village in order to go retrieve horses from enemy tribes that had recently done the Crow wrong. Many of these descriptions are highly detailed--down to the key elements of the violence of an individual encounter. One thing about Plenty Coups' retelling of the events of his life is that he does not stray from the reality of what happened in the battle-laden moments. When he does not remember a name, he makes sure that he tells Linderman, and when he does not remember precisely what or how something played out, he makes that clear to his audience, too.
Plenty Coups laments the detachment of the younger generations of Crow from their religion and their traditions. He further notes that modern life and conveniences that were introduced to them through the industrialized American settlers have created a far more sedentary lifestyle. The intuition and connectedness with how the natural world operates that he grew up with was something he considered common sense. When a group of settlers lacks this intuition on an expedition to retrieve stolen horses from a rival tribe, Plenty Coups recounts the frustration he experienced with this lack of basic wisdom. Speaking of the youth in his tribe he acknowledges this vast difference in their experiences of youth. While he knows that this means that his people have the benefits that Western civilization can offer them, he also knows that this means that the day-in-day-out life of being steeped in how the natural world operates separates them substantially from their traditions or the rhyme or reasoning for them. This insight leads him to his initial invitation to Frank Linderman--seeking a way to preserve what knowledge and experience he can for the future of his people.
Plenty Coups' wisdom has in fact lasted down the generations in the form he wished his words and experiences to be preserved. His insight and story has been read by many--not just his own people, but by the European American settlers and countless other people from around the world. The information included in the introduction for the edition I read includes a recounting of the insight and reach that Plenty Coups' biography has given to the Crow people. In much more modern and clinical terms, Barney Old Coyote Jr. provides a list of facts about how Crow culture functioned—these facts lining up precisely with Plenty Coups’ more poetic accounting of life in these days. While these details can be recounted in this technical way, Plenty Coups’ method of storytelling provides insight into the narrative traditions and ways of thinking of the Crow people. Old Coyote Jr. also reiterates Plenty Coups’ emphasized importance of learning the ways of the white settlers—to get the same education to remain an equal instead of becoming a victim. This mentality extends beyond just the Crow people, as the continuing and constant shifting in technology requires continued learning to keep apace of these changes—in all communities. Plenty Coups’ wisdom, Old Coyote Jr. points out, is a universal understanding of the need to meet continued changes and challenges in our modern world that continues to be vastly different even from the circumstances of five or ten years ago. Barney Old Coyote’s introduction concludes on the note that Plenty Coups’ vision and story continue to be of great import in the Crow culture, with his story reprinted and even a museum set up in his honor on the land of his home—which Linderman visited in order to obtain the chief’s narrative.
Today, Yellowstone and Montana tourists get a laugh out of what has become a generic meme for a variety of souvenirs: "Don't pet the fluffy cows." This somewhat dark reference to the inevitable tourist injuries at the hands (or horns) of bison on an annual basis ironically and unintentionally mirrors the phrase Plenty Coups first used to identify cows when he saw them in his first vision. We are now in the age of cows where buffalo are just "fluffy cows". Plenty Coups saw the time when cows were just spotted buffalo--and he lived into our modern era. These two incredibly different worlds bookended his lifetime, and for most of his life, he was prepared for this reality. Because of his faith, however, he was able to acclimatize and look to his past with happiness and only a little sadness for the time long-gone by his last days. These two things--his past and his faith--he shared with Linderman to write down for posterity and the education of future generations of his people who would never experience this way of life again. Reading Linderman's book provides a unique insight into this way of life at the very end of its existence.
Bibliography (for further reading):
Linderman, Frank Bird. Plenty Coups: Chief of the Crows. Lincoln, NE: Bison Books, 2002.
Terri's thoughtful insights are a reminder to read and reread Plenty Coups' vivid descriptions. The Crow way of teaching children is another good reason to read Linderman's book.