Fools Crow

Fast Horse sits in his father’s lodge contemplating the Beaver Medicine bundle, which his father, Boss Ribs, plans to pass down to him when he is “old enough, and patient enough, to learn all the songs and rituals associated with the objects in the bundle” (71). Since the raid, Fast Horse has realized that he no longer wants to gain power by inheriting the Beaver Medicine bundle. He hears a commotion outside and leaves the lodge to see that a stranger has ridden into camp. At first, no one recognizes the man, but when he begins to speak the crowd realizes that it is Yellow Kidney. He is missing all his fingers, and his face is covered in pockmarks from the white-scabs disease.

Yellow Kidney explains that the night of the raid he sent Fast Horse and Eagle Ribs in different directions before going into the camp himself. As he was sneaking out of the camp, he heard Fast Horse loudly mocking the Crows. Fast Horse’s taunts alerted the Crows to Yellow Kidney’s presence. A group of men began to shoot at him, and so he darted into a lodge, where he found a young girl “heavy with sleep” (75). After getting under her blankets to hide, he became aroused and raped her. Afterwards, he noticed that the girl was dying of smallpox.

Horrified at what he had done, Yellow Kidney rushed out into the snow, but as he tried to leave the camp, he was surrounded by Crow warriors, including Bull Chief. Instead of killing him, Bull Chief cut off his fingers one by one; he then strapped him onto a horse and told him, “Go and tell the Squats-like-women this is what the mighty Crows do when they send their girls to steal our horses” (78). Yellow Kidney rode for many nights on the edge of death. He was eventually taken in by an old man and woman of the Spotted Horse people who cared for his wounded hands and treated him when he developed smallpox. At times during his illness, he approached the Sand Hills but eventually he recovered enough to return to their world. After hearing Yellow Kidney’s story, the men of the Lone Eaters camp vow to declare war on the Crows. After the other men leave the lodge, Rides-at-the-door tells Three Bears that Fast Horse should be banished from the camp for exposing Yellow Kidney. 

Rides-at-the-door asks White Man’s Dog why he left during Yellow Kidney’s story the night before. White Man’s Dog explains that he believes that if he had told Yellow Kidney about his dream about the “white-faced girl,” he could have prevented him from getting caught. Rides-at-the-door assures White Man’s Dog that he is not to blame, since Yellow Kidney would not have turned the raid back at that point in their journey. He declares that Fast Horse’s boasting was more to blame for Yellow Kidney’s fate; thus, he must try to convince Boss Ribs to banish his son from the camp.

White Man’s Dog prepares to set off on a journey to visit the different groups of Pikuni people, in order to ask for their permission to let Heavy Shield Woman serve as the Sacred Vow Woman at the summer sun ceremony. His mother gives him a gift to give to the chief, Crow Feet, and directs him to talk with his daughter, Little Bird Woman, as she believes that this girl could make a good wife for White Man’s Dog. During his mother’s instructions, White Man’s Dog begins to think about his attraction to his very young “near mother,” Kills-close-to-the-lake, and then about Yellow Kidney’s daughter, Red Paint. Running Fisher enters to tell everyone the news that Fast Horse has left and is thought to have joined “Owl Child and his gang” (90). On his journey, White Man’s Dog visits Crow Feet and Little Bird Woman but realizes that he has “his heart set on Red Paint” as a wife (93). Nonetheless, he cannot banish his impure thoughts of Kills-close-to-the-lake.