The Canyon

By Jack Schaefer

Based on a Cheyenne legend, this novel holds universal appeal as it explores the theme of a man’s conflict with his culture. It is the story of how Little Bear, a Cheyenne warrior who opposes war, reconciles the conflict between his personal values and the demands of his tribe. The dilemma faced by Little Bear gives rise to a story that is at once a compelling adventure tale, an authentic description of Indian life and ritual, and a parable of self-realization.

First published in 1953, The Canyon remained one of Schaefer's personal favorites. This new release will be welcomed by Schaefer’s enduring admirers and by new Western literature enthusiasts. It is a classic not to be missed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: UNM Press
• Release date: Oct 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9780826357496

Jack Schaefer

Jack Schaefer was a journalist and writer known for his authentic and memorable characters set in the American West. Schaefer received the Western Literature Association's Distinguished Achievement Award in 1975 and the Saddleman Award in 1986 from the Western Writers of America. His popular Western novels include Shane (1949) and Monte Walsh (1963).

Book preview

One

His name was Little Bear. That was not a formal name given to him by his father’s brother or his grandfather together with the gift of a horse. It was what his Suhtai father and Tsistsista mother called him when he was small, a pet name, a term of endearment. He was a fat baby with short arms and legs, shorter than usual, for the Cheyennes of both the Suhtai and Tsistsista related tribes that merged to form the one tribe were a tall and well-formed people. Little-fat- person his parents called him, small-round-one, and when he was crawling and trying to stand upright on his short legs he became their Little Bear. He had no other name. When he was six years old, of an age to be given a formal name, his father and his father’s close relatives were dead and so too were his mother and the members of her immediate family. It was a sickness took them, a sickness that crept into the temporary summer camp of good hunters and their families who had followed the buffalo away from the village and when it was gone only one old man and two women and four children were left to return to the village.

No Cheyenne starved when another Cheyenne had meat. No Cheyenne lacked shelter when another Cheyenne had shelter. Little Bear was taken into the lodge of Strong Left Hand. He had food and he had shelter and his foster parents gave him clothing and treated him in all ways as they did their own children. But always Little Bear was conscious of a difference. When he was twelve years old Strong Left Hand gave him a horse, a painted pony sound of limb, as Strong Left Hand had done for his own older son two years before and as he would do for his own younger son in another year. But still Little Bear was conscious of a difference. It was a difference in his own mind. He was an orphan in a lodge that was not the lodge of his father and his mother. He was expected to carry messages and cut the tobacco and herd Strong Left Hand’s horses when they were taken out to graze. It was true that the sons of Strong Left Hand did the same things in equal measure because their father was a fair man in all the doings of those who lived in his lodge and the wife of their father was the same in all that pertained to women’s work. But the sons of Strong Left Hand were his sons and they did these things by right as members of his family. Little Bear did them because they were expected of him in exchange for what was given him, for the food that he ate and the shelter of the lodge and the clothing that he wore. And he could remember when it had not been so.

He could remember the laughter of his father and the soft voice of his mother and the warmth of their lodge that was more than the warmth of a fire. He could remember his father, a good hunter and a good warrior, tumbling him head-over-heels in the long grasses and telling him he must develop the strength of a grizzly in his arms to make up for the shortness of his legs. He could remember his mother singing soft songs to him even when he was no longer of an age for singing-to-sleep and making him many small moccasins and small fringed leggings because he was her one child and she knew she would have no other. He could remember her telling him that he was not like other boys because his ears had been pierced by Standing All Night. Always she told this in the same way and the same words.

It was at the Medicine Lodge, the midsummer medicine meeting for which all the villages for a long traveling distance around gathered in a great camp on the plain. It was on the third evening of the four days of dances and ceremonies and the dancing of the day and the ceremony of the pipe-cleaning were done and mothers were taking their small children-in-arms to the central meeting place and fathers were asking the old crier to call out and ask certain persons to pierce the ears of their children. It was then that the mother of Little Bear took his father by the arm and whispered for him to ask for Standing All Night. That was a brave thought.

Standing All Night was not a Cheyenne by birth. He was an Ankara. He had not married a Cheyenne woman. He had married a Mandan woman and lived in her village which was near a Cheyenne village. He was still a young man when he left that village and went to live with the Cheyennes because he liked their people and their ways. They were glad that he came because they liked him and his ways. They accepted him into the tribe and he was one of them. He was an old man now. He was known to everyone in even the farthest village for the courage and the wisdom and the dignity that had been with him all his days. He knew more of the tribal lore than did the old men who had been born in the tribe and lived in it all their lives. He was respected as few men were ever respected. He was not a man to be asked to pierce the ears of a fat round baby with short legs from a far small village near the hills. The father of Little Bear heard the whisper beside him and laughed as at a joke. He looked at the mother of Little Bear and at their little-fat-person in her arms. He laughed no more. He took Little Bear in his arms and turned to find the old crier.

Standing All Night heard the voice of the crier in the lodge where he rested from the ceremony of the day. He came forth into the central firelight. He was tall though he leaned on his walking stick. He was a very old man and the courage and the wisdom and the dignity of his years were on him. He looked at Little Bear in the arms of the laughing hunter father who was not laughing now. He could turn away and no voice would be raised to stay him. He was Standing All Night. He looked at Little Bear and he saw something there others did not see. His voice was strong despite the years that he carried. This small one has the moon in his eyes. He stood straight and counted a coup for the small one as a man should when he is ready to pierce the ears. It was a coup no one had heard him count before, not once in the long years he had lived with the tribe. It was not like other coups. Long ago when I lived in the lodge of my father I wished to be a warrior before my age. I crept out from the lodge of my father to follow a war party. I could not find them. I was lost. Three days I wandered without food. I was weak and frightened. A man of the Crow people found me and fed me and told me how to go. Three springs after that I was with a war party. We entered a Crow village in the night to take horses. A man woke and ran out of his lodge and took hold of me. We fought. I struck him with my war club and he fell. The blood ran from his nose and he died. The moon gave light. I saw it was the man who fed me.

Standing All Night brought forth his knife, the knife with an iron blade that came from a pale-skinned trader eastward across the big river many many years before. He reached with it and pierced the ears of Little Bear according to custom, making a long cut in each ear in the outer margin. Little Bear made a small noise each time when the knife entered but he did not struggle and he did not cry . . .

These things lived in the mind of Little Bear. They kept him conscious of a difference. Other things did too. The shortness of his legs made a sore in his mind and at last this healed but a scar remained. He could not run as fast as even the slowest among the other boys. They did not want him as a companion in their running games. When they played buffalo hunt and he was a man riding a horse-stick he could not overtake the boys who were buffalo. When they played and he carried a pole on which was impaled a flat leaf of the prickly pear whose thorns represented the horns of a buffalo it was the same. He played as hard as he could. He tossed and struck with the thorns trying to hook the hunters. When one of their play arrows hit the dirt spot on the leaf which represented the heart of the buffalo, he fell and rolled and threw dust and died as a stricken buffalo dies. But it brought little honor to a hunter to kill such a buffalo. He could be overtaken too quickly. His battle rushes could be avoided too easily. And when they played horse-taking he was no help at all. He dropped out of these games and sat cross-legged on rising ground and watched the other boys play and when they were out of sight he still sat and watched the wide rolling world around him and long thoughts grew in his

Reviews for The Canyon

[raizel_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read this when I was a teenager and then recently. In the coming-of-age story, Little Bear is a young Cheyenne who must learn to survive alone in a canyon after he falls and breaks his leg.