Black Bow: A Hickory Bow Travels Through Sioux Culture, into American History

By Don McComber

The tragedy of the Indians on the American prairie during the white migration across the continent will never be forgotten or forgiven. The American government thought they had purchased the west from France and Mexico, but the real owners were the Indian Nations. Within several decades in the late 19th century, their freedom to roam the land was taken away and a way of life that had lasted for 200 generations vanished. Their freedom to live and love, and fight and die as they chose was lost, but their pride survived. I know; I knew them.

This third book weaves the adventure of an American pioneer family into the larger drama of the demise of the great Indian Horse Culture of the prairie. Hang on tight to this tale of adventure, emotion, triumph and tragedy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Apr 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781698700793

Don McComber

He was born and raised in a tiny prairie town, had a career as a scientist, traveled the world and developed a deep respect for American Heritage. He writes about those exceptional people who risked everything to come to this land of freedom and promise. These are the people who gave their lives to create a new country called America.

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© Copyright 2020 Don McComber.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

isbn: 978-1-6987-0080-9 (sc)

isbn: 978-1-6987-0079-3 (e)

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Contents

Preface

Prologue

Eyanosa

Akecheta

Hinto

Tatanka

Lyotanka

Levi

West

Reconcile

The JM

Montana

Levi Junior

Disappointment

Finding Junior?

Epilogue

THE FAMILY LINE

Main Characters

(Those in this story are bold)

Sarah - William Augustus

Son: Macum -Giles McCumber, b.1746

      Cousins: Adie (Adolphus), Doig

Son: Harmon McCumber, b. 1800 m. Lydia,

Friend: Harmon

Brothers: Kanti, Donnal, Joseph b. 1796 m. Rebecca,

      Son: Levi b.1848 m. Marcia,

      Son: Levi Junior b. 1870

Son: Giles (Mack) McComber, b.1850, m. Fanny, b.1878

      Brothers: Adolphus, William

Son: Robert Giles McComber, b.1913, m. Fern

      Brothers in law: Myron & Francis Bateman

Son: Donald McComber, b.1939 (Author)

Children: Kristine, Michael, Diana

These stories are dedicated to

Reginald Cedarface.

He was all Sioux and all friend.

They are also dedicated to

Bob Beckerbauer,

boyhood friend, mentor and inspiration with

whom I shot this bow thousands of times.

Preface

T his tale began generations before Levi’s Grandfather arrived on the shore of America in 1763. It involves two stories, one about the American Indian owners of a simple wooden bow and its travel through generations and the other about a pioneer family struggling to survive in early America. The story lines of the Indian bow and our pioneers intersect when young Levi McCumber and a Sioux warrior Lyotanka exchange weapons in an expression of mutual respect; it was 1868 in southern Wyoming Territory. We know not when the actual bow of the story was made, but suspect it was handed down through a number of generations before it belonged to our Sioux warrior. The bow is a real artifact that was briefly owned by Levi’s family, then returned to Lyotanka and eventually confiscated from his son Crowfoot at the Pine Ridge Reservation in early 1890. There are many unknowns in the story but here is our version of the trail the Black Bow left in history.

Levi’s Grandfather, Giles McCumber, was born in Culloden, Scotland and with his two bastard cousins traveled to America in 1763. The family story is told in the first book; Confluence. Levi’s Father Joseph was then born in St. Louis in 1796, and after being forcibly separated from his wife Rebecca for a decade, reunited with her in the Willamette Valley of Oregon and subsequently had three sons. Levi was the youngest of the three and much of the second book the Other Brother is devoted to his story.

Levi was a young teen when he left the JM Ranch in the southern Willamette Valley and struggled west over the coastal range of mountains. He lived with the Indians on the coast for a year, then was picked up by the good ship White Goose for a harrowing trip around Cape Horn. He was drafted onto the USS Hartford for service in the Civil War and when it ended, found work on the Transcontinental Railroad where he was a hunter and scout. It was there he accumulated eight bows taken from vanquished Sioux warriors sent to kill him. The last of these however, was an exchange with a warrior Tatanka-Lyotanka, and it is this bow that became his favorite. Generations later a bow of the exact description was found in a storage shed in western Nebraska; it was 1950. How did it get there and how was the story behind it discovered?

The Sioux warrior, Tatanka-Lyotanka, whose Father’s name was also Tatanka, passed the bow into the family of his white savior Levi. Lyotanka’s birth name was Jumping Beaver and when he grew as tall as the bow was long, his Father’s name and the bow were bestowed upon him. Lyotanka’s generation was the last of the free Indians that had roamed the great prairie for thousands of years, and witnessed the end of its great culture. The bow, however, came down to the first Tatanka from his Father Hinto, and from his Father Akecheta, who received it from another family whose young son Eyanosa, was killed before he could continue the inheritance line for the bow. This puts the age of the bow at about 300 years. Hang on tight to this tale and the circuitous path the black bow takes through generations of wild trails, history, heartbreak, blood and battles.

Prologue

T he first evidence of the bow and arrow was found in the Sibudu Cave, twenty five miles north of Durbin South Africa. The arrow heads were all that remained; their age was estimated at 64,000 years. Bow and arrow fragments were found in Germany and Denmark determined to be about 10,000 years old. So we can speculate that somewhere around 500 centuries ago a particularly astute line of Homo sapiens first stumbled upon the concept then went through the process of development. It was probably a technology that developed slowly and was passed down from generation to generation where each one added a little to the gradual improvement of the bow and arrow as a system of killing from a distance.

At the time, face to face or rock to head contact was the typical method of killing, whether man or animal, and this resulted in the gradual emergence of the physically strongest as dominant. It also limited the size of the animal a man could kill. The development of the bow and arrow would have allowed the smaller man to easily kill the larger, again whether man or animal, and we suspect this was the principle driving factor. Spears, knives, atlatl, and axes were the typical weapons and of these, only the atlatl provided some degree of separation between the attacked and the attacker. The atlatl was used for throwing darts or short fletch-less arrows as well as heavier short spears and here again depended, to a great degree, on the strength of the attacker for success. But it was the bow and arrow and its lethality from a distance of 30 or 50 yards that won the battle and became the preferred weapon for hundreds of centuries. Groups of bowmen could shoot floods of arrows at herds of animals or opponents at ranges of well over a hundred yards with great effect. But how did the people of the time come up with this relatively sophisticated system of killing?

Here is a possibility. One of the early methods of making fire was the bent stick, leather thong and a straight pressure stick method. The thong was tied to each end of a bent stick, then was wrapped one turn around the straight stick. The straight stick was then pressed vertically between an upper rock or piece of wood and a bottom piece of fire starter. The horizontal bent stick was sawed back and forth and the thong, being wrapped around the straight stick, caused it to spin creating a great amount of friction at its bottom. If pressure and friction continued, a ball of hot coals was produced which could then inflame fine fire starter such as dried grass or tiny slivers of wood.

We speculate that during this fire making exercise, the straight stick slipped from the man’s grasp and shot off with sufficient speed to create the flash of an idea. The man then recreated this shooting action by wrapping the straight stick with the thong and holding the whole assembly up so he could pull the straight stick back slightly bending the bent stick and when released, the straight stick would fly off. He then engaged the back end of the straight stick with the thong. He was amazed at how far the straight stick could fly. But the straight stick would not reliably fly straight and tumbled end over end. Slowly over generations and centuries, the idea of the flying stick was refined. The bent stick and the thong were replaced with a curved flexible stick and a piece of gut or sinew and the bow was born. The straight stick was sharpened on one end and a notch was cut into the other to engage the sinew of the bow without slipping. Then a sharpened stone point was tied to the fore end of the straight stick similar to that of a spear. But the straight stick would not fly in a line or point first reliably. It was good for a few yards and if the point hit first, it was deadly. For a long time, it was used as a thrower for the straight stick. It was more of a small spear thrower, but slowly the arrow was made lighter and longer and the bow made more elastic. The men shooting the bow and arrow learned to guide the arrow in the natural notch formed between their top knuckle of the holding hand and the bow. The arrow flight was a problem and the weapon was unreliable until someone simply tied a small thong or tuft of fur or feather on the trailing end and suddenly the flight of the arrow straightened significantly. Many things were attached to the trailing end of the arrow and most slowed it too much; the effectiveness was reduced. Finally someone tried splitting a feather and using tree pitch for glue, attached it to the trailing end of the arrow. One feather caused the arrow to spiral, so another was added with great success. As centuries passed, three feathers became popular and sometimes the shape of the arrow was changed or tapered until the bow and arrow became a good reliable killing system. Then the feather fletches were applied at a slight angle that caused the arrow to spin in flight and again accuracy was enhanced. The last thing to be added was a mark on the string to locate the place where the notched end of the arrow was to be placed on every shot for even more reliability. Different materials were developed for both the bow and arrow and many variations were developed that fit the geographic area and the animals to be killed.

U dz was trying to hurry to get away. Where he was going he knew not, but to stay was certain death. What he didn’t know was he was doomed to a slow death from a whipworm infestation in his gut and that was the reason he was becoming slow and weak the last few months. He was in his mid 40’s and for a man in the year 3300 BCE that was a long life. It was late spring in the Otztal Alps between present day Italy and Austria. The younger men of the group had been waiting for their chance to take over and when Udz showed signs of sickness, they challenged him.

In recent days, he had used his copper bladed axe to kill several men who were much younger and wanted his position in the group. He had wiped their blood on his leather leggings as a demonstration of his superiority, but it failed to intimidate the others. He had injured a finger on his right hand and it had become infected. The resulting fever weakened him even more, so in his desire to preserve his control over his harem of women, he took them and left. In their flight to higher ground the women, some of whom were dragging children, fell behind and were left. The men of the tribe had followed and were trying to kill Udz and take the women back to become their own. Slowly over the course of several weeks Udz’s group dwindled down to him alone. He thought the men of the tribe would let him go off alone and die, but hard feelings had built up and now it had become a question of revenge.

He struggled to find a hiding place where he could finish the construction of his bow and arrows, but the men following were relentless and he had to keep moving. If he could finish it, he would be able to even his odds of dying as it was a weapon that mitigated the need for man on man physical confrontation. He had been able to kill a red deer the evening before and combined with some crushed grains furnished him with enough calories to proceed with haste the next morning. He put on three layers of clothing because he was well above timberline and trying to discourage the men following, but one had finally come close enough to take a shot with his bow. The stone tipped arrow hit him below his shoulder blade at an upward angle and proceeded up to cut the subclavian artery. He fell and rolled into a small hollow and bled to death in minutes. His attacker stood over him and yanked the arrow out leaving the tip to be discovered 5300 years later when he was found and dubbed, Ice Man. The killing weapon had been a very sophisticated bow and arrow.

T he men and women that survived the migration across the land bridge between North America and Asia brought bows and arrows with them. Artifacts of arrow points and barbs have been found spreading from northwest to southeast across North America starting in about 9000 BCE. Then about 700 BCE, any sign of them disappeared for nearly a thousand years before reemerging about 300 AD. The bow and arrow became the preferred weapon of nearly all the tribes for centuries thereafter. Each tribe and frequently each individual with the tribes had slightly different methods of making arrows and marking them for identification and retrieval. The sophistication of both bows and arrows proceeded in a number of directions depending on the geographic location and what materials were available for their construction. The Indians of the northern plains from which the bow of this story came, preferred the one piece simple wooden bow with a flat front face and semicircular back face. Bow wood was impossible to find on the northern plains, and a good living was had by traders that cut straight grained pieces of Osage orange and hickory from southern American forests and took them north for trading with the Sioux, Blackfeet and other northern tribes. (The names used for most Indian individuals and groups are both singular and plural.)

Eyanosa

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E yanosa was larger than the other boys his age and as such, enjoyed a position of natural leadership. Their band of five-tens was about half men and boys of fighting age. Even though he was only eleven, Eyanosa (Big-tall) was so considered. A soft rain was falling on one of those cold spring days of the northern plains. The Yellowstone River that time of year was a natural barrier between this small band of Hunkpapa Sioux and their hated neighbors to the northwest, the Blackfeet. But, for the hideously painted raiding party of Blackfeet, the rain was an ally because it covered any sound of their approach and most of their tracks.

For centuries they and the Sioux had raided each other for women and horses. The boys that played war games with each other were the sentries for the village as they were constantly roaming the countryside. When Eyanosa and his pals spotted the Blackfeet hunting party lurking in a small creek bed on their side of the river, they panicked and ran for the safety of the village a mile away. Shappa (Red Thunder), Eyanosa’s Father, was one of the first to hear their warning of the Blackfeet in the area and he immediately called for the men to take up their weapons and station themselves on the side of the village facing the possible attack.

But, it was uncommon for a hunting party to attack a village head on. They always preferred to watch and wait for an easy target, someone out alone away from the village that could be bonked on the head and abducted without notice. If they could catch two or three; it was all the better. There was no attack, and after a while the boys were teased for the false alarm. When the rain let up, several of the warriors investigated the report of Blackfeet and found a plethora of pony tracks in the creek bottom. They followed the tracks on to the south down into a group of rough hills and when it seemed as though the Blackfeet weren’t interested in their band, it was ignored. It was a simple ruse. A week later Eyanosa’s two older sisters, Kimimela (Butterfly) and Mapiya (Sky) plus four horses were stolen. Several hours later when it was discovered the girls were gone, Shappa, Eyanosa and six other men of the village were on their trail, hate in their hearts and blood in their eyes. They knew the Blackfeet numbered more than a dozen, but their pride convinced them that seven men and a boy would be plenty to find the Blackfeet and kill them all.

This was the high plains in what is now east-central Montana just south of present day Miles City. It was an area the white men passed through on their way west to the mountains and the gold fields, but very few stayed. And, it was an area that could be harsh with little water and broiling sun in the summer and raging blizzards in the winter. But, it was the territory into which the Hunkpapa had moved a century or so before and they didn’t accept infringement by anyone. The river valleys of the Yellowstone, the Missouri and a few smaller were life givers to both the Indians and wildlife. In August, they were a sea of green surrounded by the parched brown hills of high desert. In the spring though, everything was green.

It was easy to follow the tracks of the Blackfeet and Shappa noticed that several of their horses had heavier loads. He was having second thoughts about any kind of open battle between his group and what looked to be a band of fifteen, maybe several more. Kimimela and Mapiya were his daughters and he would have the final say over the strategy used to get them back. The other men wanted a head on, pitched fight, and his opinion against it was weakening. They had three extra ponies with them to carry the two girls and all the weapons they could pick up from their dead opponents. They looked forward to a good fight with all its glory within their own band and the entire Sioux Nation. Losing the fight didn’t even enter their minds.

The Blackfeet were moving rapidly to the west, then they crossed the Yellowstone and headed northwest. They had gone over a hundred miles and their two trailing scouts never glimpsed any following people. The two girls, both in their early teens were subject to repeated attempts to molest them, but the leader of the band would have none of it. By doing so, they would lose half their value and he was in a position to sell them for plenty. If anyone disagreed with his leadership, they could step forward and challenge him; but none did. He was formidable.

Shappa’s group, on the other hand was barely holding together and when they crossed the Yellowstone, open disagreement erupted. They knew the farther west they went the more they moved toward Blackfeet territory, and the band they were following could increase in size. Their advanced scout, who ventured as much as ten miles ahead on their best horse, came back and said they would catch the Blackfeet if they rode several hours after dark. This encouraged the group and they internally prepared for battle.

It was nearly midnight when their scout came back and told them they were within a half mile of the Blackfeet camp. The seven men prepared themselves by covering most of their exposed skin with a coating of light mud, and moved out on foot. Their tactic was to spread out and find the lookouts, then quietly kill them. Once that was complete, they could move into the camp and dispatch the sleeping Blackfeet. Hopefully it could be done without a pitched battle where they would be outnumbered three to one. Eyanosa was left holding the horses, and when the quiet and darkness came upon him, he was frightened to the core. The reins of the horses were all tied to a short rope onto which Eyanosa clung. He had the rope in one hand with it wound around his wrist several times, and his tomahawk in the other. His hair was standing on end and goose bumps covered his arms and legs. He hoped it would be a short wait.

The Sioux warriors knew what to do in this situation. All the men were veterans of this kind of guerrilla tactic and quickly the four sentries were dispatched all with deeply slit throats. Slowly, they moved into the camp and one by one the throats of those sleeping around the outside were opened. The attackers held supple leather muffs in their hands, then over the dying men’s mouths, so no sound could leak out. Properly executed, it was a way to kill a sleeping man without a peep.

Then things went badly. One of the dying men, in a reflex, kicked another and he awakened with a scream of attack. Instantly, the remaining Blackfeet were up and swiping their knives and tomahawks at the Sioux with devastating effect. The two girls were tied together back to back, lying on the ground with men fighting all around them. It was pitch dark and the only light came from the glowing coals of their fire. The sounds of dying men and sloshing blood from horrible wounds surrounded them. Some of the flying blood splashed on them and across their faces. The warm feel and taste of it made them sick. They squeezed their eyes shut and tried not to listen to the melee above them. Finally it went quiet and all they could hear were the moans of dying and the deep breathing of the survivors. They knew not who had won.

T here were no sounds from the camp for quite a while. The only sound Eyanosa could hear was that of his heart pounding in his ears. Then suddenly, there was a scream of attack, and then the sounds of fighting. The grunting and groaning of battle came to him and he could only hope that his side was winning. But, the Sioux had been found out and a pitched battle would not be good for them. After a few minutes, everything went quiet and again all he could hear was his heartbeat. Then he heard one of sisters scream. He untied all the horses but two and let them go. Then mounted one and pulled one as he galloped off to the east. The other was his Father’s with his bow and arrows. He had to get out of the area because he knew things had gone badly for his Father.

T he two sisters were shaken to get up by several of the Blackfeet warriors. In the dim light, they could see a clutter of dead and dying men around them. Three Blackfeet had survived and several more were moaning their last. One of the Blackfeet swiped at the rawhide rope holding the two girls together and in cutting the rope, cut Mapiya’s wrist so badly her blood was gushing. Kimimela saw it and screamed only to be slapped hard by one of the warriors. Another warrior wrapped a piece of the rope around Mapiya’s lower arm tightly to stop the blood. She was crying aloud and then one slapped her to shut her up, but knocked her to the ground. She had lost so much blood, she couldn’t get up again and Kimimela tried to help her to her feet, but was unsuccessful and both of them fell in a heap. At this point, the two girls were low on the Blackfeet priority and two of the three of them ran to secure their horses. They would all leave at first light.

A s he rode in the darkness, Eyanosa was disappointed that he didn’t run in and help with the fight. So he stopped and turned his two ponies and circled slowly to the north so he could come at the Blackfeet camp from a different angle. He approached the camp, which was down in a small creek bed, from the north. The creek itself was running slowly toward the camp and he stopped to take a good drink and let his horses fill up. He tied them to a low bush next to the water and proceeded downstream to take a better look. It was nearly light in the east, but he could see the flicker of the campfire through the trees ahead of him. He was angry with himself and felt a little guilty that he had not stepped in, but he had never been in a life or death fight especially with one of those large, horribly painted Blackfeet. His anger sustained him to continue stepping slowly in the small stream, moving toward the flickering light. He looked around carefully, listened for any sound and smelled the air for a hint of danger. Step after step he took, moving so slowly nobody would notice. He had his small bow and two arrows tipped with chipped stone heads. He had never killed a human before. As he came to a place where he could see into the camp, the first thing he saw was two of the Blackfeet warriors scurrying around picking up weapons and wrapping them in skins. Then one of them walked out into the dark and came back with two horses. He proceeded to tie them to a bush and started tying the weapons on their backs. They were getting ready to leave. Another warrior came into the firelight with three more horses and tried to get the girls up on two of them. But one of the girls couldn’t move.

They put Kimimela up on one of the horses and while it became more light in the east, the three Blackfeet loaded everything they could, except Mapiya onto the remaining ponies. As the fire burned down, suddenly one of the men gave a yelp and off they went, leaving Mapiya on the ground next to the smoldering coals. After a long time, Eyanosa crept into the camp and knelt down by Sky. She was breathing slowly, but wouldn’t respond to his voice or touch. He patted her on the cheek and spoke her name over and over without response. So he covered her with several of the skins that were covering the sleeping men several hours ago. While he was doing that, he noticed she had a piece of leather rope tied tightly around her lower arm and then noticed the ugly gash on the underside of her wrist and realized she had lost a lot of blood. He would not leave her.

Eyanosa could not stand being around so many dead people, so one by one he dragged them away into two groups. One was for his Sioux brothers and his father, and the other for the Blackfeet. When Mapiya was able to travel, he would take her back to their village and come back with help and retrieve the Sioux bodies. He made some broth by boiling a little jerky in some water and fed it to his sister. Her hand below the wound was completely dark purple and he knew that was not good. It was all of four days later when Bigtall tried to coax his sister onto a pony, but she was so feverish she could not. Her hand was black and Bigtall had seen that before. He knew he had to cut it off or it would move up her arm and kill her. So in the bright sunshine, that ten year old boy cut off the hand of his sister. On his first cut, she passed out and he proceeded to cut through the soft tissues avoiding the bone ends. It was done in a minute. He released the tight leather thong around the stump and the blood oozed a little through the black tissue that remained. Mapiya was completely unconscious at that point so he carefully trimmed off all the blackened tissue, then rebound it, but not so tightly this time. In three more days, she was strong enough to travel. By then the bodies of all the dead warriors had begun to stink and the coyotes were becoming more and more threatening.

She couldn’t ride by herself; Eyanosa rode behind her so he could keep her on the horse. It took them another four days to get back to the village, and when people of the tribe saw them they shouted and cried as if it were a miracle. When Shappa’s party didn’t get back in a week, they had given them up as dead. Then, when Eyanosa and Mapiya returned it was a miracle, of sorts.

Mapiya slowly recovered, but Eyanosa did not. He drooped around for months and cried regularly when he was off by himself and wouldn’t be shamed. He took his Father’s bow and arrows out to shoot but was not strong enough to pull it back more than about half way, so he hid it next to his sleeping robes. It had been passed down through the generations; how many he knew not. It was always passed to the oldest son when that boy was as tall as the bow was long. The problem was that it had such a difficult draw that it took a strong man to pull it back. But it would shoot farther than any bow in the camp and he was proud to keep it until he was strong enough.

I t took several years for the small band to recover the loss of seven fathers/ warriors. But, families arrived every year from the villages down around the Paha Sapa and Matho Thapila, now known as the Black Hills and Devil’s Tower. The constant influx of new blood kept all the tribes genetically strong and the elders of each band, of which there were more than twenty, encouraged the movement. Eyanosa was growing rapidly as most teens do, and by the time he was sixteen, he could fully draw the bow. He shot it hundreds of times every day and spent much of his time in the cold months making arrows. He always put two tiny notches about a finger’s width from the nocked end. Every day, he thought about the encounter with the Blackfeet where he lost his sister Kimimela and saved Mapiya. And, he remembered when he had to amputate Mapiya’s hand and how traumatic an experience it had been. For years, he had set a goal for himself. One day he would track down the Blackfeet band that took Kimimela and would get his revenge. Best of all he would return her to her mother and family. But Hiamovi, the chief would have no part of it and unless Eyanosa could guarantee that he would return with many horses, they would not authorize his plan. Horses were to be his main prize, not the young woman.

One of Eyanosa’s warriors actually had an old musket they had traded from a bearded white man that came through the