2 Gun Western, May 1957 — page 34: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

34 2-GUN WESTERN scheme which was supposed to hard- en the tribe’s future warriors. This time each boy was required to snatch a live soldier from the U. S. Army’s Thrid Regiment, then encamped at Fort Collins, Colorado. The Army, naturally, took a dim view of that phase of the Arapahoes’ military training program, and went after them with a detachment of 380 men. The battle was short and cost- ly to the Indians. FTER THEIR defeat—the sec- ond in 6 months—the battered Arapahoes moved 200 miles east and established a village on the Platte River bluffs near the Colorado-Ne- braska border. Then Fish-That-Swims-in-a-Moun- tain-River, who had proved himself to be a genius at devising ways to reduce the tribe’s already decimated population, was inspired by another hairbrained scheme. Enchanted by the appearance of the Union Pacific Railroad which then (spring of 1866) had laid tracks 287 miles west of Omaha, he announced that each fu- ture warrior must prove his courage by standing on the tracks in front of an approaching locomotive and star- ing it to a stop. , | But before he had a chance to an- nihilate any of the tribe’s few re- maining teen-age boys with that idiotic caper, a crippled but shrewd Arapahoe named Crazylegs Two Horses rode into the village. Crazylegs lost no time in announc- ing that the business of proving manhood by ordeal was not only in- credibly stupid but was downright expensive in lives. Furthermore he told Wahatoga, the tribe’s aged chief, that the latest idea of his war captain was especially ridiculous and that the Arapahoes had better learn to live with the whites instead of tormenting them and then getting daylight beat out of the tribe in re- taliation. But Fish-That-Swims-in-a-Moun- tain-River pooh-poohed Crazylegs, saying that as quickly as he got the boys trained they’d plaster the white soldiers once and for all. Then Crazylegs craftily suggested that, if it was such a good idea, the captain himself be the first to stare down a locomotive. Before the big buck had a chance to think of an ex- cuse, Crazylegs reminded the chief that the captain should have nothing to fear since he had assured the tribe’s boys that it could easily be done. It is likely that Fish-That-Swims- in-a-Mountain-River was somewhat less than enthusiastic about demon- strating the latest wrinkle in his — training program. But because Crazy- legs had maneuvered him into a point of no return, he consented to prove, personally, that a locomotive could be stared to a stop by the bale- ful glares of a determined Arapahoe. What happened then is recorded in a letter which engineer Jacob Ta- bor wrote, now in the archives of the Nebraske Historical Society, “When I first see that Indian astanding on the track I didn’t know what on earth was the matter but in a minute I bust out laughin’ and I ketched ahold of that throttle and opened her out and we struck that there Indian agoin’ 40 miles an hour and he just went to his everlastin’.” The death of Fish-That-Swims-in- the-Mountain-River brought peace to the Arapahoes and proved, somewhat belatedly as far as the tribe was con- cerned, that Crazylegs was more than a few notches brighter than the average Indian. In fact he was one of those rare geniuses that pop up occasionally— even among primitive peoples. Crazy- legs, because of the outlawry of his later life, never got much recogni- tion for his efforts in behalf of peace—even though he was the man who inspired the federal govern- ment with the idea of reservations for Indians, a system which prevails to this day. ORN IN approximately 1830 Crazylegs was crippled by the “twisting sickness” when he was a small boy—probably polio, which sometimes struck the plains tribes in epidemic proportions. Unable to participate in the hunt- ing and mock war games of his kit- tle friends, Crazylegs took to learn- ing, a feat which came eaty to his CONMICWVOOKSaA COM)