Gear, W Michael - Novel 05

The Morning River

W. Michael Gear

 
          
 
TO

 
          
 
Joseph /. Cook

 
          
 
FOR TEACHING ALL THE HARD LESSONS

 
          
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

 
          
 
The book you now hold would never have made it
to your hands without Kathleen O'Neal Gear's constant encouragement. From its
original draft in 1985, Kathy always believed in the story and characters. She
kept the book alive despite countless rejection letters from all manner of
publishers.

 
          
 
Harriet McDougal, our incomparable editor at
Tor/Forge, dissected the manuscript with her usual competence. Harriet always
pushes us further than we think we can go—but, then, she is the best in the
business.

 
          
 
Linda Quinton, marketing director at Forge
Books, deserves special thanks for her constant support and encouragement. She
likes packrats and buffalo, too.

 
          
 
Special appreciation is given to Sierra Adare,
our hyper-efficient business manager, for all her hard work. Doug Nichols, our
ranch manager, had to listen to bits and pieces of the story over coffee in the
morning, and was very patient with a writer's odd proclivities. Thanks, Doug.

 
          
 
Finally, special thanks go to Jessie, Berdina,
Pancho, and Firedancer for helping to remind me what is really real.

Contents

HISTORICAL FOREWORD

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY-ONE

 
          
 
I accept as axiomatic that history is nothing
more than the official version of the myth. As an anthropologist and historian,
I've always been disappointed with historical novels written about the American
frontier. Most such novels have consistently rewritten the old myths, and while
occasional authors will research white history with great diligence, the Native
peoples are usually stereotyped in one way or another.

 
          
 
The
Morning
River
is set in 1825, at a time when white
Americans were about to enter the tail end of a three-hundred-year-old North
American industry: the fur trade. Lewis and Clark had explored the length of
the
Missouri River
and crossed the Northwest. The Astorians
had followed in their wake. Manuel Lisa had outfoxed his competition and placed
ephemeral fur-trading posts up and down the
Missouri
until his death in 1820.

 
          
 
A wealth of goods were flowing along the
Missouri
, making chiefs rich, upsetting the old
social order. Disease followed on the heels of the white traders, rolling up
the river in waves, decimating entire villages, weakening established tribes.
At this time, too, the Sioux swept westward like Mongols, murdering, stealing,
looting, and pillaging all that lay before them.

 
          
 
In 1823, the desperate Arikara fired on
William Ashley's expedition, killing several men and goading a military
response. Hearing of the army's advance, the Sioux allied with the American
military in hopes the joint effort would end in the extermination of the Rees.
Instead, the Arikara withstood a bombardment that blew their village apart, and
ghosted away in the middle of the night. The Rees were loose, and the Sioux
were furious and scornful of anything American. As a consequence, the
Missouri
was closed to traders until 1825 when
Congress sent the Atkinson-O'Fallon expedition to reopen the river.

 
          
 
This, then, is the story of the beginning of
the end for the peoples of the Northern Plains.

 
          
 
One of the goals of The Morning River and its
sequel, Coyote Summer, is to give the reader a glimpse of the incredible
cultural diversity present in the Northern Plains prior to American
acculturation in the mid-nineteenth century. While some traits were shared by
most Plains people, each band or tribe had its own stories, social structure,
and unique adaptation to the land. Some, like the Pawnee, had stratified,
hereditary chieftainships, while others, like the Shoshoni, lived in fluid
ethnic bands governed by community consent. The
Omaha
were patrilineal, the Crow fiercely matrilineal.
The Arikara and Arapaho spoke languages more different than English from
Persian. Many, like the Sioux and
Cheyenne
, were newcomers to the Plains, originally
corn farmers from the East. This wealth of rich cultural detail has been
largely ignored in American fiction.

 
          
 
We have created many myths about the Plains
Indians since their final conquest. The truth, as usual, is a little less
palatable to modern tastes. The people of the Plains took slaves, murdered
women and children, committed genocide on their neighbors, and broke treaties.
From archaeological sites, we know that scalping dates back at least five
hundred years before the arrival of the Europeans—and the taking of trophy
heads more than two thousand. Once the rose-colored glasses of the modern age
are doffed, historic Native peoples become curiously human in retrospect.

 
          
 
The
Morning
River
and Coyote Summer were originally contained
in one manuscript that grew too large to be published as a single volume. A
Selected Bibliography is appended at the end of this volume for those who wish
to learn more about Native American ethnology or the fur trade era.