2 Gun Western, May 1957 — page 35: what you’re looking at

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

THE OLD WEST'S STRANGEST INDIAN 35 nimble brain. He became a favorite with the tribe’s elders who taught him the lore and history of their nation. But his quest for knowledge found its greatest outlet when he was in his early teens—after the tribe captured an adventurer named Aaron Finley who became a “white Indian” by marrying an Arapahoe, adopting the tribe’s customs, and taking up permanent residence with them. Finley was a mysterious but soft- spoken and edwycated little man whom Western historians have tried in vain to establish as a_ fugitive from some crime in the East or, per- haps, as an early-day soldier of for- tune. But whatever the reason that Finley came West the important fact is that he brought with him a substantial education and a half- doz- en books. Crazylegs was fascinated by Fin- ley who taught the boy how to read and write English and to speak it with little accent—considerable ac- complishments for an Indian of those times, In addition, he tutored Crazy- legs in the history of the white man’s world and in elementary law and mathematics. Crazylegs learned readily. And in later years he astonished more than one white official by his knowledge of history and law and by his flu- ency with both spoken and written English. Besides his tremendous capacity for knowledge, Crazylegs was possessed of another asset—sound judgment. So it was inevitable that, when he reached manhood, he came to dis- agree with the tribe’s chief and war captains who, when they were not actually at war with the whites, were always planning a war. Crazylegs believed that the white man’s conquest of the West was but a matter of time and that it would be to his people’s advantage to ac- cept that fact and live in peaceful — co-existence rather than by promot- ing endless costly wars. But Chief Wahatoga and most of his tribesmen were sold on the idea that if they could kill enough whites others would fear to invade their territory. So they increased the tem- —-s po of their harassments and mass- acres in proportion to the influx of white men. Then, with the discovery of gold in Colorado, there were— almost overnight—more white men than the Arapahoes could hope to exterminate, So they enlisted the aid of the Cheyennes and the Sioux, The har- assments of the loosely-allied tribes progressed to atrocities by the spring of 1864. On April 13, 1864, a herdsman em- ployed by Irvin, Jackman & Co., a firm engaged in hauling freight for the federal government, came into Army headquarters in Denver and reported that the Cheyennes and Arapahoes had stolen 60 work-oxen and 12 head of mules from their win- ter camp on the Kiowa, 30 miles south of Denver. To enliven their thievery they had tortured 7 em- ployees of the company with fire, ending their sport by scalping them alive. The district military commander, Col. Chivington, ordered Captain Sanborn—in command of the troops on the Platte—to capture those In- dians and bring them into Denver for trial. But the elusive Indians got away, an accomplishment which burned Sanborn, brought the wrath of his superiors onto him, and prob- ably caused him to do what he later did. “Marvels of the New West,” a book published in 1887, says, “From this time on, all spring, summer and au- tumn, Indians raided the river routes of travel and the outsettlements, rob- bing and burning houses, attacking, trains loaded with merchandise, kill- ing the drivers and those in charge, carrying off what they could and burning the wagons and remaining contents, murdering and mutilating whole families in a manner too shocking to write or speak of, not only those occupying the out-posts but the dwellers occupying the vil- lages.” i (eckede tne hes Crazylegs Two Horses rode from tribe to tribe attempting to talk the Indians into ending those brutal ravages of life and property. He was so persistent ~ COMICDOOXxS.COMm