Beadle's Pocket Novels No. 131: Red Plume

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

By J. Stanley Henderson; published by Beadle and Adams. This romance opens in the Saskatchie valley near the Wind River Mountains, ca. 1880s, at a Blackfeet encampment. Young warrior Kotselo and La-la, wife of aging Chief Nip-muck-we (Fat Bear), confess mutual love beneath cottonwoods. The hag As-moo-tah spies them and threatens to inform the jealous chief. The narrative simultaneously introduces a Massachusetts pioneer family—Nathan and Sarah Carver, their children David and Ellen, nephew Eben Gookin, and Delaware guide Black Beaver—traveling the Oregon trail. They establish camp at a prairie spring, preparing buffalo meat for supper. The dual plot suggests impending collision between the westbound settlers and the Blackfeet band, with Kotselo and La-la's forbidden romance as counterpoint to frontier expansion.