Counting Coup

Counting Coup

“Counting Coup”: a story from the collection, Red Iris

By Joe Petrulionis

All rights to these materials are reserved by the author.

Some kind of an old and nearly worn out feather, used to mark a place in a book, found on the shelf of a cabin near Irvingsberg, Pennsylvania. The book’s owner claimed he found the feather at the grave-site of his own daughter.

“When Pap Gannister said, ‘I know for a fact, young feller, that…’ what he meant was that he’d already become aware of the thing in itself, that sure ‘nuf objective reality behind the referents of language, perspective, sensation, interpretation, and all of the other potential distortions of memory. Knowing for a fact meant more than just knowing. No contradictory information that he ever encountered in his great hereafter could be afforded any consideration at all, because by being in opposition to that solitary fact he already knew the contradictory information had already been proven unreliable.”   Jonathan Fost recalled  this with a facial expression he might have used during a history lecture. I smiled because his manner of speaking seemed out of place with the rest of the picture there in front of me.

It was a hot August day out at Simon’s Blue Hole. Jonathan sat in two feet of water, a still smoking pipe on a rock behind him and a brown bottle of beer in his hand. The rest of the six pack chilled just inside the mouth of a small cave at  the edge of the lake. Cool air blew out of the cave and I sat in that breeze, just beginning to take notes.

Fost leaned back into the rock, the water at mid chest now, and said, “That, Beth, is one more for your collection of Theories of Knowledge. You do still collect them?”

“Theories? Seems, these days, all I ever collect are enticing little parts of stories, fits and starts really. But what choice do I have?”

“Well, you could go back to teaching Symbolic Logic to undergrad business majors.”

“Now that would be a productive use of time, wouldn’t it?” I was still smiling. “Speaking of productivity, you know I only have one weekend, this week. That’s the rest of today and tomorrow morning. I was kind of hoping you might fill me in on those Indians you promised to tell me about.”

“That’s exactly what I am trying to do.”

“Okay, sounded to me like you were talking about Pap Gannister.”

Jonathan Fost tossed an empty bottle into the sand behind him. Then he rolled over into the water, covering his head while holding up his canvas hat so the attached fishing license would stay dry. For a few seconds he remained down there, blowing bubbles. When he emerged, there erupted some rather vigorous head shaking and water spitting. Finally, he replaced his hat, picked up his pipe and leaned himself all the way back into the rock. The problem of the pipe, it being no longer lit, of course, it never was, necessitated his next moves. He stood again to find the lighter he had been unable to locate only through feel. I recognized this nicotine related delaying tactic. He wouldn’t be able to continue until the pipe smoke poured forth. “So you were saying about Indian Town,” I suggested.

Didn’t take the bait. “Nope, Lakota, not Conestoga. Indian Town was mostly Conestoga, Shawnee, and Lenape.”  I heard the series of clicks, the sizzle, the lighter being replaced on the rock. Then he sat back down, puffed a few mouthfuls and said, “Pap’s people were Hunkpapa.”

“Sorry, what was that?”

“Hunkpapa. It was one group of the Lakota people. They had been living up in North Dakota. But they had some problems with their neighbors back in the 1860’s and the US Government had to get involved. Seems these neighbors, good friends of the Railroad Industrial Complex, objected to having their horses stolen. This gave the US Cavalry it’s excuse to intervene.”

“Hunkpapa. I have never heard…”

“Of course you’ve heard of them. You just forgot. Let me remind you.”

“Wait. Does this connect to your Lakota Indians story, those lost kids?”

“See, you’ve heard of them. And no. Just one of the kids was Hunkpapa.”

“Which kid?”

“Bethany Mikhailovich Bakhtin, I do realize that the dialog is an ancient and honored literary form, winding its long way down to us from at least the Sophists. But really, since Nietzsche anyway, have there been many successful attempts to relay a plot driven story through the Socratic Method? How ‘bout I just tell you. There will be a question and answer opportunity at the end. Okay?”  

“You got it. Okay, the Hunkpapa.”

I sat back, determined to take down the verbatim rendering of what he said. This is what my notes tell me Jonathan Fost finally told me that day:

“My wife’s Grandfather, Henry Gannister, got this story directly from his mother. I had to do some digging. But Gretchen’s Great Grandmother may have been a young eyewitness to the whole thing. Probably still just a toddler. When something like this happens to your family, you learn about it first hand.”

“Tess, that’s Great Grandma Gannister, the girl who married Simon Gannister, the poor thing, told this to her sons. They told everyone in their family, in turn, but no one understood much of it. Then I came along and dug out some of the context. But by the time I had connected the dots there was no family left to tell. I think that’s when what they call genealogy becomes what they call history, isn’t it; when there’s no more family left to tell?”

“But Pap Gannister, that’s Tess’s youngest son, Henry, told anyone who would listen the stories he had heard. But he says Tess spoke mostly the Sioux language. From what I gather, if that is true, then the Sioux language is made up of watching, listening, and waiting; because most of the very few people who ever encountered Tess said she never spoke at all. Still, she could communicate with four others here in Lorraine Township. And her husband was never one of those four. But sometime during Pap’s childhood, his Mother let slip that that she was from Canada. They were all living in the Northwest Territories, up there, still living in teepees and hunting bison. They weren’t exactly refugees, more like hiding out for a while. But Tess’s first memories are all about snow. After that, her earliest memory was the hornets. Bald faced hornets. Said she had gotten dozens of stings all over her body.

Tess’s family was quite a puzzle. She told the boys that she was the daughter of a mighty elder, a mystic by profession, a leader of a small band of Hunkpapa. He was named something like “Takes It Slow and Easy,”  or in their language, Hunkesnee.  Tess’es mother, a prize catch and Hunkesnee’s  third or fourth wife, was probably not Hunkpapa but Cheyenne. Tess still called them “Nota-me-oh-mese-hese.” That’s why Tess ended up here in Irvingsberg.”

I had to interrupt for an explanation.

“Yeah, the Northern Eaters lived over in the Pine Creek Reservation at the time. But the Hunkpapa had to live at Fort Yates, a military outpost on Standing Rock, almost a prison for them. The last thing she remembered her mother saying to her was that when she gets back from school Tess should return to Pine Creek Reservation to live with the Cheyenne, her mother, ‘Many Horses’ would be living over there at Pine Creek by then, ‘so don’t come back here to Standing Rock.’ And that’s what Tess thought she was doing.”

I had to interrupt again. “Jonathan you are confusing me. Can you please just start at the beginning. Are we in Canada or North Dakota or Irvingsberg? Tess’s parents lived at Standing Rock, right?”

“That’s the ending. You want me to start at the beginning or the ending?”

“Jonathan, don’t do this.” I pleaded. “We don’t have the time. Could you please start with Tess in Canada and tell me how she got all the way down here in Pennsylvania?”

“That is precisely what I was trying to do.  Write this down, please.”

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Hunkesnee had other wives; and all had brought him children. There were even four grandchildren. Now, here in the windswept yards of Fort Yates, an island in the Missouri River, eight teepees comprised his own part of the encampment.  His teepee, the one decorated with symbols indicating the names of his children and grandchildren, stood in the very center. Seven others formed a partial circle around Hunkesnee, each about ten long strides from the center tent. Four of these other teepees were for wives, where they each lived with their children and unmarried daughters. In one of these, Ptesan-Wi lived with her mother, Many Horses, while they all still lived at Standing Rock Reservation. Ptesan-Wi’s older brother, Courting a Woman, had just moved into the son’s tent. He was ten.

The son’s tent, one of the teepees on the end of the old man’s crescent, the one most visible from the door of Hunkesnee’s was jammed full of boys, ranging in age from about nine to around sixteen.  Especially here in Standing Rock, these youngsters needed careful oversight. The U.S. soldiers here carried loaded rifles and they still considered Hunkesnee and his band to be prisoners of war, despite the terms of the agreement made at the time of their arrival at Fort Burford. As far as Hunkesnee could tell, the soldiers could not or would not distinguish between a thirteen year old boy counting coup from a coordinated act of war. So these were dangerous times to be a teenage Hunkpapa.

Married daughters lived with their husbands in two other teepees, but their traditions had it that they would always form a part of the old man’s constellation. These daughters’ husbands provided much of the leadership for the teenage sons in the front tent. Only Hunkesnee’s wives, his married daughters, and their husbands could enter the old man’s tent without specific invitation. But, still, Hunkesnee doted on his kids. Since he spent much of his time sitting in front of his teepee, Hunkesnee could be approached by any of the children at most any time. Such was family life of the Hunkpapa.

The camp had been arranged so that almost all of the teepee door flaps faced west, centered on that spot where the sun disappeared after the longest day of the year. But the teepee on the westernmost end of the crescent, the place where the unmarried sons all lived, had been situated with its flap faced back toward Hunkesnee. Most of the other tents in the circle could observe the comings and goings of the sons’ teepee and the mothers and sons-in-law could never quite tell if Hunkesnee was a part of the mischief or not. He was usually sitting out there telling children about his own childhood, the history of the Hunkpapa, the stories of his own counting coup, the days before Greasy Grass.  This is how cultural patterns get pressed into the next generation and Hunkesnee took this role very seriously.

So for most of the summer, the rising sun lit up the rear of most of the teepees. In the middle of that rear wall of Hunkesnee’s own teepee, a cluster of symbols were usually the first to be lit by the morning sun. His third wife, Many Horses, one of his two youngest wives, termed “daughter-wives” in the nomenclature of the Hunkpapa, had her symbol drawn at about knee height, a square surrounding a dozen or more little sideways drawn x’s. Directly above that were two other symbols, One looked like a black smudge outlining a white bison.  That was for Tess, “White Buffalo Woman.”  The other symbol portrayed a small rider on a horse leading many small sideways x figures on a line, for her brother, “Courting A Woman.”  These symbols glowed each morning, a start to Hunkesnee’s day there in that place he had otherwise grown to consider Hell on Earth.

That particular summer, their first year at Fort Yates, must have really felt like Hell on Earth. The temperatures weren’t recorded. But several soldiers commented in their letters and journals that year about the dry heat blowing up out of the southwest.

Tess Gannister would tell her sons about one particular afternoon, when Ptesan-Wi ran into the encampment crying.  She’d been stung a dozen or so times. Hornets, she thought. But she would have been a tiny thing, six or seven years old, wearing nothing but a little corset of deerskin tied at the waist. So hornets could get into her tender most parts. With welts forming on her face, neck, arms legs, feet, the child would have been in agony. The swelling and burning, and probable screams of pain, came quickly to the attention of Hunkesnee who grabbed the girl up and ran with her over toward the river bank. He knew about a clay deposit there and daubed all of her stings while he taught Ptesan-Wi, and about a dozen of her extended family siblings assembled around them, a lesson in Hunkpapa Stoicism.

He told them that the sting itself didn’t hurt a bit, showing them a tiny stinger he had pinched out of the little girl’s cheek.  While displaying the almost invisible stinger on his finger and showing it around the circle of children, he said,“It was only the idea of the sting that hurts. The hornet could only use his little tiny spear to give you the idea of pain. But you, Ptesan-Wi, you must make the choice to let that little stinger become a big idea of pain. You could follow the example of the dog. Dog also got stung, didn’t he. But look at Dog now.  Dog says to himself, ‘that’s only Hornet. He makes me itch a little, like mosquito.’ And so Dog itches. You, Ptesan-Wi, you say to yourself that Hornet hurts. So your wounds don’t itch, they burn. But you could do what Dog does and choose to itch and forget the pain.”

Now at the center of attention, Ptesan-Wi seemed to be making a remarkable recovery in front of the other children. The idea of the hornet stings became more like an itch as the old man covered her with clay daubs, singing a song about mosquitoes.  Invariably, now that they had him to themselves, the kids would entreat the older man to tell them stories. His song made them all scratch at imaginary itches now. But he would entertain them with tales of his own childhood, especially the one they called his “counting coup.”

That one they all knew by heart already. It was about that day he had learned his family would be entering war with another group of indians who had stolen some of his tribe’s horses. His people understood that this was a point of pride. The Hunkpapa had stolen those same horses in a fair and square raid on a US Cavalry wagon train. That wagon train had been sent to scout Indian lands for a possible railroad right of way that the United States intended to steal from the Lakota. Now these other scum had the audacity to steal those same horses from the Hunkpapa in a nighttime sneak raid during a sacred ceremony of the Lakota called a sun dance!

The Hunkpapa would not ignore the many layers of insult. First, they decided on an honorable time and place for the retaliatory action. A very young Hunkesnee would overhear the conversation in which his own father and the other Hunkpapa adults decided that noon of the very next day would be both an honorable and appropriate time to strike. Then a strategy was also determined. They would ride slowly into the enemy camp from four directions. Four columns of single file assaults, each attack of four men spaced a couple minutes apart. The first four would attack and only when engaged would they make the Hunkpapa war cry.  The enemy would split its force to handle the first four attackers. Upon hearing the war cry, the next four would attack in the spaces opened up by the first four. A couple minutes later four more would attack the spaces opened up. At some point attackers would make it all the way to the stolen horses, which would be released and driven back to Hunkpapa stables. The tactics were the easy part. The real discussion became order of precedence. Which particular Hunkpapa deserved to be in the honorable first attacks and which must serve their time to attain these honors in some future engagement. Which of the teenagers would be relegated to the humiliating duty of herding the running horses back into Hunkpapa stables. This part of the discussion took the rest of the night, as Hunkesnee would remember it. He was maybe eleven or twelve years old. A role for him had not even been considered.

But as he sat there telling it, Hunkesnee was the most important and famous of the Hunkpapa. His face had seen the depravity of countless wars, winters, starvation, thirst, epidemics. A participant in countless conflicts, both with other native people as well as Federal Cavalry forces armed with sharps rifles,artillery, gatling guns, rail mobility and unlimited reinforcement potential from who knows where out east they all come from, and he was a leader responsible for the wellbeing of the rest,  Hunkesnee never smiled, except sometimes his children and grandchildren thought they could detect a softening around the eyes, Tess Gannister would tell her sons, Simon and Henry, many years later. Hunkesnee was a hard man.

So when he told his story of his own youthful “counting coup” he had their full attention. Hunkesnee had to get across the importance of the tradition so as to distinguish it from simple troublemaking or childish mischief. To count coup, a young man must face grave danger, exhibit personal courage and comport himself with honor befitting the stories that would be told and comparisons that would be drawn among men. Similar in ways to the medals given to contemporary soldiers for bravery under fire, the tokens of counting coup must be granted by the elders for courageous actions of the young. They would wear these tokens for the rest of their lives and the related stories would become the lore of their clans and nations.

Hunkesnee explained to the children that he had overheard his own father claim the honor of leading the first charge of the midday attack, back when Hunkesnee still went by his childhood name, “Jumping Badger.” The next morning, one hour before the planned attack, an eleven year old boy simply walked right into the enemy camp, unchallenged. As he slowly sauntered toward the stable yard where the stolen horses were being kept, he noticed a group of men in full war paint sitting in a circle near the horses. Hunkesnee recalled that his knees felt like they were not working that day so he was a little unsure about bending them. His throat and mouth were also so dry that he could not have spoken if he had been discovered. So he walked very slowly. But, the Grandfather Spirit protected him and no one even noticed him until he had walked right into the circle of men, the enemy council of war.

Hunkesnee tells his own children that Jumping Badger had no fear, just weak knees and a dry mouth. Fear was an idea like pain was an idea. A dry mouth was not an idea, it was a dry mouth.  He recalls that as little Jumping Badger walked into the circle of men, all seated while listening to their war chief, some of the men there barked at him to leave the circle, to join the other children. He tried to swallow but couldn’t. Then he slowly, too slowly really, walked right up to the great war chief, the leader of his enemy. The war leader stopped his talk, hands still extended to each side as he made a point about the weather. Then he exhibited his annoyance at this youngster.

“Whose is this little calf?” He boomed. Some of the younger men moved to their feet. Jumping Badger realized he had only a second. He reached out his bare and open left hand and placed it right on the painted chest of the war chief who looked at the child, really, for the first time. Hidden in the right hand was a small knife. Jumping badger shoved this small blade to its hilt, directly into the belly of the great war chief. Then Jumping Badger dashed into the cluster of teepees and noise and people that represented his enemy’s war camp. He kept running, paying more attention to what pursued him from behind than where he was headed; until he ran into the open arms of his own father. The attack was already underway.

Later, Jumping Badger would learn that his trek toward the enemy camp had not gone unnoticed, although he had told no one of his intentions. The men of his village had almost caught up with him, just as they watched the youngster walk slowly into the enemy camp. Attributed to the confusion surrounding the gravely injured war chief, the enemy did not respond to the almost instantaneous attack. Even the four men of the shock force, the first wave of the planned attack, made it into the village before the cluster of fighters around the war chief were even aware that the perimeter was being pierced.

Two days later, the Hunkpapa war party held a special dance for Jumping Badger.  His father stood proudly as younger men of the village acted out the story of Jumping Badger’s slow walk right up to the enemy war chief. The slowness of that walk became the enduring theme of the story as it would be told over the years. And for his token of counting coup, the elders gave Jumping Badger a single feather, half black and half white, which he would wear on any ceremonial occasion from that day forward.

Ptesan-Wi already knew this story. All of the children of the village had heard it many times. But this time, she remembered that her grandfather hoisted her up and carried her back to the circle of teepees. Along the way he asked her if the little mosquito bites itched. Then his eyes softened.

This is the mental image that Great Grandmother Tess wanted her sons to remember: that moment when, surrounded by a dozen children, Hunkesnee emerges back into the center of his encampment. He walks around his own teepee, still carrying Ptesan-Wi, and walks right into the center of several gruff US Army soldiers. Two sons-in-law are standing up to the armed soldiers and one of the soldiers had his big red hand tightly around the upper arm of Hunkesnee’s son and Ptesan-Wi’s older teepee brother, Courting a Woman.

Courting a Woman stands with his chin out, his eyes focused on nothing at all. Ptesan-Wi squirms in her Grandfather’s arms. He puts her down but keeps his hand firmly on her shoulder. After Ptesan-Wi finally makes eye contact with her brother he holds her gaze. She detects a hint of pride in his expression, yet in no ways might there be a smile there.

Hunkesnee speaks the language of the US Soldiers pretty well. So after a few minutes of loud voices, during which time the big soldier shakes her brother’s arm several times, Hunkesnee finally allows his granddaughter to wriggle out from under his hand. She slips away to her mother’s teepee and watches from just inside the flap. Hunkesnee and most of the soldiers sit down on the ground in a circle. Courting a Woman is held to the center of the circle by the big soldier. The older soldier, the one with the strange hat and the stripes down his pants legs, screams at Hunkesnee who sits through the storm without a flinch or any response at all.

Once the old soldier stopped screaming, Hunkesnee stood. Looking toward his son, he boomed, “Now I have several questions of this child.” He glowered as he slowly, ever so slowly, walks over to Courting a Woman and in their Lakota battle language asks the boy if he has been mistreated by these blue devils who can not even talk to each other anymore because it is their way to avoid telling anything like the truth to anyone. Hunkesnee wonders out loud how white dogs find their way back east because they are so used to telling each other false explanations that their horses don’t even trust them. No one smiled as Hunkesnee’s voice lowered into a more threatening tone. He explained that the white man has to lie to each other because their language was learned from the coyote, the grandfather of their race. That’s why, he explained, their breath smells like the inside of a dead coyote.

With that Hunkesnee walked over and grabbed roughly the arm of his son, jerking it out of the hand of the big red soldier. With a dramatic spin, Hunkesnee swung the boy into the flap of his own teepee, a great honor for a ten year old who had never been invited in there before. Shaking his head, and looking back to the older soldier, Hunkesnee continued to feign anger and shifted back into English when he asked the soldier for advice in raising sons. The Colonel apparently took the bait and talked in that English language for quite some time. Hunkesnee seemed to listen very carefully to every word.

Directly, the soldiers stood and marched off toward the garrison apparently satisfied that Courting a Woman would be punished by his father in a manner befitting the crime of assaulting two field grade officers in their own quarters during a time of peace. But they must have been tipped off by a Blackfoot interpreter. Because several days later Hunkesnee and his band of Hunkpapa were told to get ready to transfer to Fort Randall, much farther south on the river. They would go by steamboat.

Four days later the Hunkpapa held a departure dance. The soldiers permitted it after Hunkesnee’s explanation that Lakota could never be enticed by force to leave, without it. Then, because it wasn't one of the most sacred of Lakota ceremonies, nothing like the sun dance,  even the Colonel and the Representative of Indian Affairs had been invited.

As the sun went down the fire became the hub of the ceremony.  The Colonel and the Representative of Indian Affairs sat on each side of Hunkesnee that night. Hunkesnee wore his white leather leggings under a green loincloth. On his chest he wore an elaborate necklace or shield made from the quills of porcupine. From his hair, standing straight from the gather at the back of his head, one straight eagle feather, half white and half black, leaned forward.

Several Blackfoot interpreters stood behind the officials, along with four additional Army officers.  A dozen or more enlisted soldiers, most armed with rifles, stood or squat nearby on their ankles. The drums started and the young Hunkpapa men began to move around the fire. Periodically, there would be screams. Hunkesnee sat with his back straight and his expression somber.   

After ten or so minutes, a young girl and boy, pre-teens really,  walked out to face the bonfire, directly in front of Hunkesnee and the Officials. While the young men continued their dance in a clockwise direction, these children stood and watched several cycles. Then the boy joined the dance and the girl sat down at the edge, sitting directly in front of the officials. With loud drumming a new group joined the fire dance. Dancers dressed with the preserved heads of dogs or coyote, covered with grey capes moved in the opposite direction, obviously disrupting the progress of the dance. The coyote pushed and shoved, some men were thrown toward the fire, others knocked out of the dance altogether. One young man was picked up by two of the coyote and thrown toward Hunkesnee. Neither Hunkesnee nor the little girl in front of him flinched.

The girl stood and walked toward the river. Just outside of the firelight she picked up something that looked like a lunch basket bundled in a piece of dark cloth. She brought this bundle back into the circle and waited for the boy to make his latest circuit.  The boy accepted the bundle and danced two more circuits, shaking the bundle gently as he danced. During these two cycles, all of the dancers who were not in the coyote pack moved outside the fire ring and took a seat.

The boy made a final circuit of the fire ring and then stopped to face Hunkesnee and the officials. He handed the bundle to Hunkesnee who turned toward the Colonel. With his son on one side and his daughter on the other, Hunkesnee began to unwrap the gift.

The colonel began to stand, but he was too slow, stiff from the sitting. He cursed. Out from the bundle flew a swarm of black hornets. They clouded around the officials, Hunkesnee, his children and the Army officers.  Three or four minutes of cursing finally passed. Most of the visiting officials and officers had moved far away from the bundle, which, despite numerous stings to his arms, face, torso and hands, Hunkesnee still held as a gift offering for his neighbors who had now headed back toward the garrison, cursing the whole way.

The ceremony continued. In front of the Hunkpapa, with his eyes and face stung so badly that his features were somewhat distorted, Hunkesnee presented his two children, yes the boy he called Courting a Woman and the girl he called Ptesen-Wi with tokens of their counting coup. Each, even the girl, received a feather cut in the shape of a hornet with the quill of the feather painted red to symbolize wounds and humiliation given to field grade US Army officers, in the form of a basket containing the nest of bald faced hornets and dozens of angry hornets. The Army Officers had been sitting inside their own quarters at a quiet game of poker when the basket fell through the open window into the small room. It landed on their table and caused much pain and burning. .

Great Grandmother Tess Gannister would present that feather as her most precious personal belonging, not to her sons who would only receive from her a mountain of grey limestone in a place called Lorraine Township, Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, but for safe keeping over the years and years, to be held by sons and given to that spiteful young Granddaughter or great Granddaughter or even great-great Granddaughter in the future, who would one day face down a bear or a coyote or even childhood leukemia, with the wisdom of her people that a stinger can only give you an idea. Its up to you, though, if that idea is pain or just an itch.