Red Plume

Red Plume: The Renegade, a Tale of the Blackfeet Country

This Beadle's Dime Novel, No. 87 (1863), by J. Stanley Henderson, follows two narrative threads in the American frontier. The opening establishes a Blackfeet camp in the Saskatchie valley where young warrior Kotselo and La-la, wife of the aging chief Nip-muck-we, meet secretly. Their forbidden romance is discovered by As-moo-tah, an old woman serving as the jealous chief's spy, who threatens to report their intimacy. Simultaneously, a Massachusetts emigrant party—farmer Nathan Carver, his family, and nephew Eben Gookin, guided by Delaware Indian Black Beaver—prepares camp in the same region. The novel appears to develop themes of romantic conflict and frontier danger as these separate storylines move toward convergence.