What happened when two Cheyenne women and their daughters who survived the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, cold and starving, encountered a wolf?
The Wolf Helper Cheyenne
This is a Cheyenne “story of mystery” its meaning and power arising from its setting in the horrifying historical episode of the Sand Creek massacre. Some have called this massacre the beginning of the war for the Plains that did not end until twenty-five years later with another massacre, Wounded Knee. On the morning of November 29, 1864, Colonel John Chivington made a surprise attack on a village of Cheyennes and Arapahoes who believed themselves to be under the protection of nearby Fort Lyon. After a swift and brutal attack with rifles and howitzers, which was met with only a brief defense by the Indians, the drunken soldiers slaughtered the wounded and mutilated the bodies. Some 200 Indians, mostly women and children, were murdered. This story is about a few survivors who escaped the devastation.
The tale was collected by George Bird Grinnell and published in his book By Cheyenne Campfires (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1926).
After the Sand Creek massacre was over, the troops had gone, there were left alive two women. In 1902 these women were still living. One was named Two She-Wolf Woman, the other, Standing in Different Places Woman. They were sisters and each had a little daughter—one ten years old and one of six years. Their husband was badly wounded and likely to die, and he told them they must leave and go on home to the camp, so that they might save themselves and their children. They started. They had no food, and no implements except their knives and a little short-handled axe. They had their robes.
They traveled on and on, until they reached the Smoky Hill River. Here they found many rose berries, and they pounded them up with the little axe and ate them. After they had pounded the rose berries, they made flat cakes of them to give to the children and started on. They did not know where the camp was and did not know where to go. They just followed the river down. One night after they had been traveling for six or seven days, they went into a little hole in the bluff for shelter, for it was very cold. They were sitting up, one robe under them, with the other in front of them, and with the children lying between them. In the middle of the night something came into the hole and lay down by them, and when this thing had come near to them, standing between them and the opening of the hole, they saw that it was a big wolf, and were afraid of it; but it lay down quietly.
Next morning, they started on, and the wolf went with them, walking not far to one side of them. Their feet were sore, for their moccasins were worn out, and they often stopped to rest, and when they did so the wolf lay down near by. At one of these halts the elder woman spoke to the wolf, just as she would talk to a person. She said to him: “O Wolf, try to do something for us. We and our children are nearly starved.” When she spoke to him the wolf seemed to listen and rose up on his haunches and looked at her, and when she stopped speaking, he rose to his feet and started off toward the north. It was the early part of the winter, but there was no snow on the ground.
The women still sat there resting, for they were weak and tired and footsore. They saw the wolf pass out of sight over the hill and after a time they saw him coming back. He came toward them, and when he was close to them, they could see that his mouth and jaws were covered with blood. He stepped in front of them and turned his head and looked back in the direction from whence he had come. The women were so weak and stiff they could hardly get up, but they rose to their feet. When they stood up the wolf trotted off to the top of the hill and stopped, looking back, and they followed him very slowly. When they reached the top of the hill and looked off, they saw, down in the little draw beyond, the carcass of a buffalo, and in a circle all about it sat many wolves. The wolf looked back at the women again, and then loped down toward the carcass. Now the women started to walk fast toward the carcass, for here was food. All the wolves still sat about; they were not feeding on the carcass.
When the women reached it, they drew their knives and opened it. They made no fire, but at once ate the liver and tripe, and the fat about the intestines, without cooking, and gave food to the children. Then they cut off pieces of the meat, as much as they could carry and made up packs and started on their way. As soon as they had left the carcass, all the wolves fell upon it and began to eat it quickly, growling and snarling at each other, and soon they had eaten it all. The big wolf ate with the other wolves. The women went on over the hill and stopped; they had eaten so much that they could not go far. In the evening, when the sun was low, one of the women said to the other, “Here is our friend again”; and the wolf came trotting up to them.
Soon after he had joined them they started on to look for a hollow where they might sleep. The wolf traveled with them. When it grew dark they stopped, and the wolf lay near them. Every day they tried to find a place to camp where there were willows. They used to cut these and make a shelter of them, and cover this with grass, and make a bed of grass, and then put down their robes and covered themselves with grass. So they were well sheltered.
One morning as they were going along, they looked over the hill and saw in the bottom below them some ponies feeding. They started down to see whose they were, the wolf traveling along, but off to one side. Before they had come near to the horses two persons came up over a hill, and when these persons saw the women coming they sprang on their horses and ran away fast. The women walked onto the place where the men had been. Here there was a fire, and meat that the men had left — a tongue and other food roasting. The women took the meat and ate, and they cut the tongue in two and gave the smaller end of it to the wolf which had come up and was lying by the fire.
After they had finished eating they went on, and soon came to a big spring with a hollow near by – a good place to camp. They were glad to find the place, for the sky looked as if it were going to snow. They made a good camp, a house of willows and grass, and covered it with bark from the trees. By this time they had become so accustomed to having the wolf with them that every night they used to make a bed near the door of the house, piling up grass for him to sleep on.
That night the women heard a noise down in the hollow—something calling like a big owl. Two She-Wolf Woman was watching; for they were afraid during the night and used to take turns keeping watch. They could hear this thing breaking sticks as it walked about. The watcher awoke her sister, saying, “Wake up! something is coming.” The wolf now stood up, and soon he began to howl with a long-drawn-out cry, which was very dismal. Soon from all directions many wolves began to come to the place. After a little while this thing that was making the noise began to come closer, and when it did so all the wolves rushed toward it and began fighting it, and the women seized their children and ran away into the night. They got far out on the level prairie and stopped there, for their feet were sore, and they very tired. In the morning just as day was breaking they saw the big wolf coming toward them. When he reached them, he lay down.
The elder woman now spoke to him again, and said, “Wolf, take pity on us; help us to find the trail of our people.” When she had ceased speaking, the wolf trotted away, leaving the women, and they followed on very slowly. Before long they saw him coming back toward them fast—loping. When he got to them, they saw that he had in his mouth a big piece of dried meat. He dropped the meat in front of them. They seized the meat and divided it, and gave some of it to their children and ate of it themselves. The wolf did not lie down, but stood waiting, and when they had eaten, he led them to an old camp where there were sticks standing in the ground, and on each stick hung a parfleche sack of meat. Their relations had left these things for them, knowing that they were lost and thinking that they might pass that way.
Now the women had plenty of food they went to the water and built a shelter with a place in it for the wolf. That night it snowed. When they arose, the snow was above their ankles. Again, the woman spoke to the wolf, and asked him to go and find their camp and he went away. The women stayed there. The wolf was not gone a long time; he came back the same day. They were watching for him, for now they knew that he was their friend, and that he was true; they knew that he would do something for them. The two women went to the top of the little hill near by, and before night they saw the wolf coming. He came up to them and stopped, and then began to look back. The women felt sure that he had found something and went back to their camp and to their children, and went to the wolf, who started back as he had come, traveling ahead of them. On the point of a high hill he stopped, and when the women overtook him they looked down, and there they saw a big Cheyenne camp on the river below. This was the head of the Republican River.
They went on down to the camp, and to the lodge of Gray Beard. The wolf remained on the hill. After the women had eaten, the older woman took meat, and told the people that a wolf had led them to the camp, and she was going back to give him something to eat. She went back and gave the wolf the food, and after he had eaten she said to him, “Now, you have brought us to the camp, you can go back to your old ways.” Late that evening the woman went up on the hill again to see if the wolf was there, but he was gone. She saw his tracks going back the same way that he had come. This happened in the winter of 1864 and 1865. The women and one of the children are still alive.
From TALES OF THE WOLF – fifty-one stories of wolf encounter in the wild, compiled by Denise Casey and Tim W. Clark. 1996. Homestead Publishing, Moose, WY. Pages 20-23. Used by their permission.
Grinnell’s By Cheyenne Campfires is available on Amazon. The Wolf Helper is on pages 149-153.
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