Buckskin Brigades - Chapter 2, part 2 - Rewriting History

At the sight of the smoke signals, Yellow Hair and White Fox quickly saddle their horses, stuff their equipment into "war sacks," and ride to meet their fellow warriors.  Yellow Hair is in the lead, of course.  You might wonder why, if he's only there to carry White Fox's equipment as some sort of Blackfoot squire, but I guess this is to show us how impetuous or heroic he is.

Oh, wait, there's like animals and stuff out west, isn't there?

Frightened antelope fled at their approach.  A herd of chunky brown buffalo stampeded.  Small prairie dogs popped out of their holes to inquire in impudent whistles what the matter was.

Undoubtedly they also startled a grizzly bear, made a bald eagle take flight, provoked a rattlesnake to shake his tail, and bothered some raccoons.

Yellow Hair flayed his gray war pony

Looks like Hubbard had a way with words even in his very first novel.  Yes, it's technically correct in that "flay" can mean to frighten something, but since the main meaning is to tear something's skin off, it's probably not the best way to phrase what's happening here.

into greater effort and very soon they drew near the high bluff of the Marias River.

Yellow Hair and White Fox arrive expecting a battle, but instead find a group of morose Pikuni waiting in front of a tall "lodge."  The Glossary never explains whether this is a permanent dwelling or temporary tipi, from what I can tell the Blackfoot made use of both.  Though if it is a permanent structure, why aren't Yellow Hair and White Fox waiting in it?

Most of the warriors are standing around, but two are on the ground (not in the lodge?).  Running Elk is stretched out on a folded robe in terrible pain, while the body of Wolf Plume is covered nearby.  The war party had left their village in high spirits, anticipating some good old-fashioned inter-tribal bloodshed, but now everyone's in shock.

Divested of their war bonnets, their shields and their horses, they were bewildered at the disaster that had overtaken them from such an unexpected quarter.  Their keen, intelligent faces were still stamped with disbelief that this thing had happened.

I mean, these noble, innocent people only wanted to kill some Tushepaws!  What kind of monster would do this to them?

Yellow Hair and White Fox dismount, and the latter indicates that the former should stay silent.  Instead, it's White Fox who doesn't speak for four pages.  Low Horns, who is in command of the party now that Running Elk is down, greets them by saying "It's useless to pursue them.  We have no weapons."  And Yellow Hair immediately responds with "I still have mine."  It's only after this exchange that anyone asks or explains what's going on, and Low Horns gives his account of the Blackfoot's fateful encounter with Captain Lewis.

"Today but one" the Pikuni war party saw a white fellow by the river, and stopped to watch.  They soon realized that it was a trap, because while the natives were staring, three other white men approached from behind!  The brave warriors resolved to fight to the last, but then the white men's leader indicated that they should talk instead.

This does fit with Lewis' account that, after sending one of his men to approach the natives with a flag, "their attention had been previously so fixed on Drewyer that they did not discover us untill we had began to advance upon them."  Low Horns doesn't mention the Blackfoot's subsequent confusion and retreat to the top of a hill before they finally calmed down, dismounted, and met Lewis and his three men.

Now, Low Horns and the Pikuni recognized this white guy as the same one who had spoken with the Mandan two years earlier.  The Mandan were a particularly hospitable tribe that the Lewis and Clark Expedition wintered with in 1804.  They also lived in the modern day Dakotas, so I have to wonder how Low Horns heard about this encounter.  Guess word must've come through traders and such.  Anyway, this white guy "talked of how we must not go to war with anyone, just like he told the Mandans."  And everyone knows the Mandan took him at his word, forgot to post sentries, and got whupped by the Sioux for it.

Or something like that.  According to the PBS website, the Lewis and Clark Expedition talked to the Mandan about trade with the US and sending a representative to meet President Jefferson, and the natives were receptive to both notions.  The explorers also tried to broker peace with the nearby Arikara tribe, but that didn't work out.  Also, the Native Americans were fascinated by York, the black gentleman Lewis brought along as a slave.  For all the stuff about natives' first encounters with white people, I think a work exploring one people of color meeting another would be a refreshing change.

Anyway, because the Mandan were sloppy and paid for it, Low Horns and the Pikuni knew that Lewis was a liar, and since he mentioned how other members of his expedition were nearby, and posted sentries the night after their talk, the natives knew that the white man was up to no good and meant to kill them.  And even though the Blackfoot war party outnumbered the white guys two to one, fighting them was impossible, and so was fleeing because the horses were too far away

"Then, the only thing for us to do, we did.  To keep from being shot, we must take their guns.  This we tried, never thinking that death would be the penalty."

They thought the tricksy, false white guys were planning to kill them, but would never have dreamed that their attempts to avoid that fate would end in death.

"Wolf Plume snatched a rifle and raced away with it, just at dawn.  But the sentinel quickly overtook him and although Wolf Plume made no effort to shoot him, which he could easily have done, the sentinel plunged a knife into Wolf Plume's heart.

While according to Lewis,

This morning at day light the indians got up and crouded around the fire, J. Fields who was on post had carelessly laid his gun down behid him near where his brother was sleeping, one of the indians the fellow to whom I had given the medal last evening sliped behind him and took his gun and that of his brothers unperceived by him, at the same instant two others advanced and seized the guns of Drewyer and myself, J. Fields seing this turned about to look for his gun and saw the fellow just runing off with her and his brothers he called to his brother who instantly jumped up and pursued the indian with him whom they overtook at the distance of 50 or 60 paces from the camp sized their guns and rested them from him and R Fields as he seized his gun stabed the indian to the heart with his knife the fellow ran about 15 steps and fell dead;

So Low Horns leaves out the two other Pikuni involved in this altercation. And that would make more sense, wouldn't it?  Trying to steal all the evil white men's guns rather than just one?  As for Wolf Plume being some moral hero who died because he was unwilling to shoot someone, I'd like to point out that these guns probably weren't primed and ready to fire when they were stored, and it would probably be difficult to do that while running away with one.  Also, according to a footnote on the University of Nebraska's Lewis and Clark journals page, the stabbed guy has been named He-That-Look-at-the-Calf or Sidehill Calf, depending on the source.  Obviously Hubbard was citing a different authority.

At this point the rest of the Pikuni warriors were trying to get to their horses to flee, but Low Horns thought he heard the white man leader, "he of the forked tongue," telling them to stop.  He bid Running Elk do so, only to realize the evil white man "only wanted to have us as standing targets."  So their leader was shot, and then the white guys stole four of their horses and the rest of their baggage before leaving.

And that's how it happened.  The Blackfoot immediately saw evidence of the white man's treachery when they were snuck up upon, heard their lies when they talked (no mention of having to communicate in sign language), and tried to escape an inevitable betrayal and ambush only to be cruelly and unjustly killed.  The encounter certainly wasn't a botched robbery attempt exasperated by mutual fears of aggression, compounded by confusion and miscommunication, nope.  The Pikuni were the victims here.

Yellow Hair knelt beside Running Elk and tried to take the old man's hand.  Instinctively, Running Elk drew away.

"Your brothers, the whites, have done this,"said Running Elk, voice jerky with pain.

"My brothers," gasped Yellow Hair.  "You are delirious.  White Fox, get some water."

But the older man doesn't move, and our hero becomes aware that everyone - Low Horns, Hundred-Horses, Double-Coup, Singing Bear, Lost-in-Mountains - are all staring at him with a hard expression, "taking in his tall straight body, his white, sensitive face, the alarm in his usually reckless blue eyes."  Yellow Hair looks down at his white buckskins as though there was something wrong with his clothes that was bothering the rest of his people, the poor dope.

The echoes of the shot from Captain Meriwether Lewis' rifle had not died between these high bluffs.  Soundless, but roaring, it was increasing and would continue to increase for years, decades, even centuries.

Well, a century and a quarter.  The Indian Wars were pretty much over by the 20th century, and the last paltry conflict mentioned on Wikipedia took place in 1924.  And stuff like the Posey "War" only saw two people killed.  So I guess technically this incident was the Blackfoot-Lewis and Clark War of 1806.

And the first one slapped by the echo stood gripping the handle of his skinning knife, facing the elders of the tribe.

Ugh, more on this later.

Yellow Hair, a touch sarcastically, asks why everyone is standing around like a bunch of women instead of going after the people who wronged them, and wonders why they didn't kill the interlopers if they were convinced of their treachery - which is actually a good question.  If the Blackfoot were the victims here, and not would-be robbers, surely they'd be brimming with righteous vengeance?  But of course because history says the Blackfoot never went after Lewis, they can't do it in this story.

"Peace," cautioned White Fox.

"Peace!  You'll have no peace now.  When you return to our lodges, do you think Wolf Plume's sisters will give you peace?  Ah, but you are too old.  Your bravery is beyond question.  They will not give you women's clothes to wear.  Not you.  Low Horns, head of the Kit-Foxes---Hyai, I would hate to be you!"

"Silence, whelp!" snapped Low Horns.

All Low Horns has done in this story so far is tell a tale and try and get Yellow Hair to shut up, but I already like him more than our hero.

"Ah, to be sure.  Silence!  But do not look to me to carry your blame.  The story you could tell would be simple.  You bring me out on my first war party and I bring you bad luck.  Oh yes, I could take the blame, but I won't.  I am going to follow up that party of Kitchi-Mokans and challenge the Fork-Tongue to personal combat.  You---all of you---stay here and wail like the old women you are."

"Stop!" ordered White Fox.  "Warriors, you forget that he is young.  Do not punish him.  He does not know what he is saying."

See, I think what's going on here is that Yellow Hair, being an immature young warrior, doesn't know how to handle the accusing stares of his people, and so is lashing out.  It probably isn't meant to be seen as his core personality.  Problem is, all we've seen of him is this whiny, insulting, hot-headed brat.  It'd be nice to have some positive traits to counteract the rest.  Maybe in the next chapter?

Oh, and "Kitchi-Mokan" - the Glossary assures us that this is the Pikuni term for a white man.  Doing a Yahoo search for the phrase brings up a whopping two results, one of them Buckskin Brigades and the other a Dukes of Hazard fanfic of all things.  Google isn't much better, but I did find an extract from a history of Jasper National Park, and in that extract is an appendix of locations' names in native tongues, and Fort Benton, MT is referred to by the Cree as Kichi Mokan Waska Hikan, or "American House."  So it's not outside the realm of possibility that some Native Americans used words similar to "Kitchi-Mokan" to refer to some people with white skin.

Yellow Hair continues to make an ass of himself, Low Horns gets mad, and White Fox has to step in and invoke the memory of Yellow Hair's father.  This Many-Guns died only a few years ago, but joined the Blackfoot well before that.  He was a great warrior with good aim who helped the Pikuni defeat the Snakes, and even led a war party far south to raid the "Almost-Whites."  White Fox advises Low Horns to look at the gun in Yellow Hair's hands and remember its former bearer, and look at the traces of Many Guns in his son's features, and try to ignore the bleating coming out of his spawn's mouth.  Though perhaps not quite in those words.

And even though Yellow Hair just insulted an entire war party and suggested they were a bunch of frightened old women, of course it is Low Horns who gets to apologize for pointing out that Yellow Hair's skin is the same color as their new enemy's.  The war leader forbids out hero from chasing vengeance, since the treacherous Forked-Tongue would no doubt have his men overwhelm him, and the rest of the war party can't go with him because... well, while we're all here, let's get a fire going and give Running Elk some broth and medicine, eh?  Wait, why didn't they do that when they were sending the smoke signals?

Yellow Hair uses his pistol to make a spark, but is still feeling down and goes to wash up in the river.  He has a "single black stripe of joy" on his head, what I'm guessing is some paint added in anticipation of some Tushepaw-killin'.  And then we get the inevitable scene where the story's hero looks at his reflection and finally realizes he's different from his adopted people.  See, Yellow Hair had "fitfully wondered" about his skin tone before, but had "never actually given it any intensive thought."

And now as he knelt beside the river, studying his blue eyes, it came to him as a shock that he was not really a Pikuni at all. True, he was a member of the All Friends Society and aspired to the Society of the Horns, but even that did not make him a Pikuni.

His lip curled a little and his reflection sneered back: "Kitchi-Mokan!"

He spat and the image was shattered by the ripples of the startled pool.

And here's a problem with this story, and others like it.

Hubbard's trying to tell a tale of the Old West from the Indians' perspective.  Problem is, his story's main character isn't White Fox or Low Horns, it's Yellow Hair, a white man raised as an Indian.  And that skews the plot so that it's more about what it's like to be a white man trying live among Indians.

We see this in the "echoes of the shot" passage - the first victim isn't so much Running Elk as it is Yellow Hair, who now has to deal with the hostility of his adopted people and question his identity.  And Yellow Hair doesn't seem very torn up about his girlfriend's dad getting shot, does he?  He's much more concerned about how his peers are looking at him.  It's enough to make us ask why the main character needed to be white in the first place.

One last thing to note is who isn't among the war party: Wolf Calf.  This Pikuni claimed to be a member of the group that met Lewis that night, and later gave an account of the event that I really need to track down.


Back to Chapter 1, part 1 

Forward to Chapter 3

Buckskin Brigades - Chapter 2 part 1 - Of Love and Meat

Let's meet our hero.

To Yellow Hair, farther down the stream, about six miles away, it was not the 27th of July, 1806, and the country about him was not part of the Louisiana Purchase.  The date, to Yellow Hair, was merely a late midday in the Thunder Moon

I've yet to find a nice website that lays out the Blackfoot calendar.  Native Net summarizes different American Indian calendars but doesn't specify whether the Niitsitapi referred to July as the Cherries Moon, Heat Moon, or Blood Moon.  It does list the Thunder Moon as one of the names for August, so maybe the Blackfoot calendar moves a little faster.

and the wide, vibrant country about him was indisputably the southern portion of the Pikuni country, owned, policed and governed by the Three Tribes.

The Blackfoot Confederacy, or Niitsitapi ("original people" says Wikipedia, another site translates an alternate spelling, Nizitapi, as "real people"), consists of several intermingling tribes: the Siksika ("Blackfeet"), Kainai ("Bloods"), and the northern and southern Piegan branches.  The latter are sometimes called the Pikuni, a slight corruption of their Blackfoot name, the Piikáni.  Of these, only the Southern Piegan are still in Montana, the rest went to reservations in Alberta, Canada.  And now you know.

Yellow Hair is impatient, "as usual" - he and his companion White Fox are waiting to join a war party out to punish some Tushepaw raiders, unaware that their fellow warriors have gotten distracted by Meriwether Lewis.  Unbelievably, Wikipedia doesn't have a page for the Tushepaw.  As best I can tell it's another name for the Flatheads, who did not actually have flat heads.  Anyway, Yellow Hair is stamping and pacing, while White Fox is crouched next to the fire with some bison meat.

"Why don't they come?" demanded Yellow Hair.  "They know where we are."

"They will probably come in due time," said White Fox without moving his gray head.  "Of course you can never be certain, but they said they would come and we must wait."

"You told me that yesterday.  Find something new to tell me today.  Stop ogling that meat and take a glance at the sky.  Disgusting!  Motionless.  Not even a cloud moving.  Not a leaf!  Not a puff of dust to be seen.  And look at those herds.  Look at those herds!  They act as though they had never seen a hunter."

This is kinda like waiting for a phone call and getting mad at traffic.  Something tells me Yellow Hair may not be old enough to vote.

White Fox, "annoyed but a little," urges patience, causing Yellow Hair to rant about the Tushepaws being too blind or deaf to respect the Pikuni's territorial boundaries or laws, worry that if they don't retaliate the Pikuni will be their neighbors' punching bag, and speculate that Low Horns and the other warriors they're waiting on have stopped to hunt...

"That's the game for them.  Rabbits.  Big, fierce rabbits with long teeth."

I never thought I'd be able to make this reference in response to an L. Ron Hubbard novel.

"Maybe sweating would cure it," said White Fox mildly, seeming to address the meat instead of Yellow Hair.

"What?"

"Love," murmured White Fox thoughtfully.

"What about love?  I was talking about the Tushepaws and I've certainly no love for those wolverines."

White Fox had the ghost of a grin floating around his slightly cynical lips.  But he kept the joke to himself and slowly turned the buffalo strips, carefully tucking up the sleeves of his hunting shirt.

It takes another page for the author to spell it out, but that's really the heart of the issue: sweating the meat love.  White Fox knows that Yellow Hair has his blue, Aryan eyes on Bright Star, "A girl with a shapely face, stormy eyes and soft hands, a girl who could ride like a warrior."  And unless Yellow Hair makes a name for himself in battle and earns her father Running Elk's respect, he'll never feel those soft hands running through his glorious golden mane.

Until then, Yellow Hair continues to whine and threatens to leave White Fox to wait for the others until the Falling Leaf Moon (October by that Indian calendar source).

"Hyai, what I'll do to those Tushepaws," said Yellow Hair.

"Others of us will be there," commented White Fox. "At least, we might be there."

I have to say, the presence of White Fox in this chapter almost makes up for the presence of Yellow Hair.

The older man pushes Yellow Hair too far, however, when he compliments his white buckskin clothes and asks if he thinks the Tushepaws will be impressed by them, then reminds Yellow Hair that he isn't even a real warrior, and is only here to carry White Fox's robes, shield and "Thunder Medicine Pipe."  The last is overlooked by the book's Glossary, but I don't think it's Injun Speak for "gun" or anything, the narration uses no such mysticism when Yellow Hair checks his rifle.  According to everyculture.com, the Blackfoot have a specific tobacco-smoking ritual done after the year's first thunder is heard.  I'm not sure why White Fox needs this for a war party, though.

At any rate, Yellow Hair dramatically drops his saddle after White Fox disses his beaver cap, then stomps up to and looms over the old man.  Yellow Hair is of course tall even by his adopted people's standards and in the very best physical condition, so "it was easy to see that he could have eaten up White Fox in two gulps."  And White Fox does nothing but continue to turn his bison meat, hands not even trembling.

So of course we get the physical expression of platonic Man Love when Yellow Hair grins and slaps White Fox's back so hard he nearly pitches the guy into the fire.  Laughing, Yellow Hair grabs a strip of bison and admits that he might be distracted by the target of his affections.

"Love," said Yellow Hair, "might do a lot for a man's bravery, but it never did much for his reason. I think about Bright Star and then I think how Running Elk demands I show what kind of man I am and . . . well. . . ."

"Another piece of meat?" said White Fox. "It's roasted through now."

If the lines were worded just a little differently, we could've had White Fox subtly expressing his opinion on what kind of man Yellow Hair is.

Alas, for all the near-wit, Yellow Hair goes right back to boasting about tearing through the Tushepaws like a wildfire, and White Fox repeats his remark that "Some others of us will also be there."  And it's really disappointing, the book was actually off to a fairly solid start, but then some redundant dialogue comes along to remind us we're in a Hubbard novel.

In the middle of exclaiming that "The way I feel today, I could whip the whole Tushepaw nation all by myself" - good thing Yellow Hair isn't White Fox's rear gunner - our hero suddenly notices smoke signals that cut off before resuming.  And so we earn the chapter title of "Two Smokes for Trouble."  We'll finish Chapter 2 next time with a whole lot of talking, standing around and meaningful stares.

But that's our introduction to the hero.  And, well, you know what they say about first impressions.  Now I'm sure that later on we'll see Yellow Hair's gentle, loving side, how he appreciates Bright Star for more than her looks and horseback riding, and how he can express his deep affection for White Fox beyond slapping him.  But right now, he's kind of annoying.  And either White Fox is a bottomless well of patience, or he's gotten used to Yellow Hair being annoying like this.

And maybe we'll get an explanation for why these two were just kinda hanging out on a river bank.  What are Yellow Hair and White Fox doing?  Are they advance scouts?  Probably not, they haven't spotted their quarry that we know of, and have sat still since at least yesterday.  So why are they separate from the rest of the war party?


Back to Chapter 1

Forward to Chapter 2, part 2

Buckskin Brigades - Chapter 1 - A Few Lines

A couple of things about Buckskin Brigades' chapters.  First, they have actual titles like "Arrival of the Brigades," "Reunion," or "The Chipmunk."  This suggests that someone at some point went back over the chapters and chose a few words to summarize them, a marked difference from the likes of Mission Earth, which I'm fairly certain Hubbard didn't bother to proofread.  Second, their lengths vary - the average seems to be about eight pages, while some are as short as four - but their divisions don't look as arbitrary as Mission Earth's.

Anyway, we start out with Chapter 1, "The Echoes of a Shot."  And I have to say, the opening lines are not inauspicious at all.

They never saw each other, they were utterly dissimilar and neither ever heard the other's right name.

And yet upon their lives and upon this almost-meeting hangs the bitter and bloody saga of the West.

I think the term is "story hook," a premise that grabs the reader's attention, makes him, her or other set on finishing the book.  In this case we got a mystery of sorts.  What bitter and bloody saga is the author discussing?  How did this not-meeting trigger it?  I must know more!

One of them was Captain Meriwether Lewis, the great explorer, former secretary to the late President Thomas Jefferson and Governor of the Louisiana Purchase.

And I make it a full three sentences before nitpicking.

First, the use of "late" to describe Jefferson - he died in 1809, three years after the Lewis and Clark Expedition returned.  The same year the Lewis died, as a matter of fact.  So Jefferson wasn't dead during the time span of the Expedition, and both are dead from the reference point of this novel, so it's weird to single out Jefferson.  Second, Lewis wasn't given his governorship until he returned, so again it's odd to describe him as such when recounting an incident that took place during his expedition.

The other was Michael Kirk, who is better known among his adopted people, the Blackfeet, as Yellow Hair, scout and warrior, whose exploits rolled on every tongue from the Shining Mountains to Quebec.

Had to do some searching for the Shining Mountains - Wikipedia thinks I'm looking for the Glass Mountains (more like hills and mesas) of Oklahoma, but Montana tourist information explains that it's another name for the Madison Range.  As for Michael Kirk, Wikipedia only lists a filmmaker born in 1949 when I search for the name.  For someone whose legend spanned the two thousand odd miles from Montana to Quebec, there seems to be little historical record of him, almost as if Hubbard made up this Kirk fella for his story.

Lewis and Kirk's almost-meeting took place on July 27th, when the former had an altercation with some natives he mistook for "Minnetaree" but were actually Piegan Blackfeet.  Our narrator says that while according to his friends Lewis acted in his best interests, "the shot he fired founds its echoes in the dying screams of white traders without number and the wails of Blackfoot women mourning their dead."  As for Yellow-Hair, he "was to suffer the brunt of that sad meeting, and the entire course of his life was to be changed by a man he was never destined to see.  He was to suffer the effects of a bullet he had not even heard or felt."  Such drama!  Such tragedy!

And after this strong start, the author, for the sake of fairness, decides to borrow "a few lines" from the Expedition's journals describing the event.  And by "a few lines" I mean the next five pages of the book are copied from another document.

Happily, the University of Nebraska has the journals of various members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition up online for our reading pleasure - the relevant entries can be found here and here.  The short version: by that point the Expedition had split up as it returned home, and on the 26th of July, Lewis was traveling with three other men when they came across a large group of Blackfoot warriors.  Lewis talked (sign language'd) about the United States' desire for peace and gave out trinkets as goodwill gestures, and the two bands camped together for the night.  Early on the 27th, the explorers caught some natives in the act of stealing some guns and horses while they slept.  One Blackfoot was knifed in the heart, another was shot in the gut by Lewis, the natives ran off, and the expedition resupplied themselves with what the Blackfoot band left behind before cheesing it themselves.

Of particular interest to our author is a note that, while conversing with the natives, Lewis learned that there were other Blackfoot hunting bands nearby, and "With the first of these there was a white man..."  The University of Nebraska transcription doesn't use that exact wording, but indicates there was indeed a "whiteman" nearby.

Now, white folks first made direct contact with the Blackfoot Confederation in 1754, and the two peoples must've had regular peaceful interactions because the Blackfoot's rise to regional supremacy was thanks to firearms acquired from fur traders.  It's possible that this blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to a white guy was describing another of these traders, who could've been making a deal or just making camp with the neighbors like Lewis was doing.  You don't have to be a Native American to hang out with Native Americans.  But for whatever reason, Hubbard uses this reference as the foundation for the story of Yellow Hair, the great white Indian.

Like some historians, Hubbard blames this fateful encounter for subsequent violence between the Blackfoot and white traders, though the University of Nebraska site points out that it's just as likely that the Blackfoot weren't happy about said traders giving firearms to their Shoshone or Crow rivals.  But I guess it's better to put a face on the cause of a conflict rather than blaming politics or social trends, like how World War I is all about Archduke Ferdinand.  At any rate, Chapter Two will concern what Yellow Hair was doing when Lewis was scrapping with the natives, and we'll get a proper introduction to our hero.

To end this post on an aside, Lewis' journal is an interesting read.  He shows little reaction to killing a man with a lingering, painful bullet to the gut, and I'm not sure why he took the shot either.

I called to them as I had done several times before that I would shoot them if they did not give me my horse and raised my gun, one of them jumped behind a rock and spoke to the other who turned around and stoped at the distance of 30 steps from me and I shot him through the belly

So the guy took Lewis' horse, Lewis yelled at him (in what language?) to give it back or he'd shoot, the native came back without the horse, so Lewis shot him.  Maybe you had to be there for it to make sense.

Also, some dark humor at the journal entry's end.

my indian horse carried me very well in short much better than my own would have done and leaves me with but little reason to complain of the robery. 

So I had to shoot and presumably kill a guy, and might have jeopardized future relations with the natives, but the horse I stole in retaliation is pretty good.

The scary thing is, this sounds like the sort of sentiment we'd see from a Mission Earth character.  Certainly changes my perception of one of my country's legendary figures.


Back to the Introduction 

Forward to Chapter 2, part 1

Back in the Saddle

From horrible space opera to underwhelming psychological horror, we now come to... a Western?

According to literally minutes of research on Wikipedia, Buckskin Brigades was Hubbard's first book, published in 1937.  Not his first published story, though, that would be 1935's pirate tale, "Under the Black Ensign."  Its reception seems to be mixed - some praised its narrative and characterization, other critics called the writing style stilted or forced.  A modern author calls it "One of the first novels to present a sympathetic and accurate view of Indians," but since the guy in question published Master Storyteller: An Illustrated Tour of the Fiction of L. Ron Hubbard, I'm suspicious of this claim.

Still, this novel should give us another glimpse of what Hubbard was like at the start of his long and... busy career, well before the depths he would sink to when he wrote Mission Earth.

My copy's a 1987 reprinting, and yes, there was a sales controversy involving Scientologists buying the rerelease in bulk. Anyway, you'll quickly notice something about this sympathetic and accurate portrayal of Native Americans - we got us a honky on the cover.  Yes, he's got a spear instead of a six-shooter, has a simple stirrup-less saddle, and is indeed clad in buckskins, but he's suspiciously Aryan for an Amerindian.  He is of course our hero.

Because this is a 1987 reprinting, the back cover mentions how the author also wrote Battlefield Earth and the Mission Earth Dekalogy* before describing what we're holding in our hands.  Our setting is the "rugged Northwest" at the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition.  In said expedition's journal, the entry for July 27, 1806 mentions a Blackfoot chief being killed in an altercation, as well as a white man who lived with the tribe a few miles away.  "This is his story," the tale of Yellow Hair and his "daring mission across the unmapped wilderness that was filled with violence, treachery, privation and death."

There are complimentary quotes from reviewers, of course.  The New York Times Book Review says the author has "reversed a time-honored formula and has given a thriller to which, at the end of every chapter or so, another paleface bites the dust" and praises his rare enthusiasm for this type of... "romance," huh?  The Atlanta Constitution mentions the book's "true historical background" and says it "moves an exciting tale of scalping parties and forest warfare, duly seasoned with romance."  There's that word again.  And the Cincinnati Enquirer explains that "Through it ring blood-curdling war cries, shrieks, and groans of scalped unfortunates, blood.  It is the story of an empire bought by bullets."  But not a romantic one, evidently.

There's more blurbs past the inside cover, which is to say it reuses quotes from the Times and Constitution, though I'll note that the San Diego Union says the book "brings a bit of belated justice for the Indian."  There is of course a Hubbard bibliography, which starts with Battlefield Earth, contains Fear amongst some other novels, and ends with the Mission Earth series.  Another title page, a table of contents, and then an introduction from Bridge Publications to set the scene - the American Northwest, 1806, which the book reminds us was decades before the battle for the Alamo, wagon trains or cowboys.  So it's a proto-Western.

This is a time of warring fur companies, the English-led Hudson's Bay Company and the Montreal-based North West Company, who built forts, raised "brigades," and interacted with the natives.  As previously mentioned, there were also those Clark and Lewis fellows wandering around looking at President Jefferson's latest purchase.  And there was apparently some guy named Michael Kirk, a "very blond white man" raised by the Blackfoot Confederacy.

The viewpoint is the synthesis of the worlds of Michael Kirk and Yellow Hair, of the white man and the Indian, of 1806 and today.  At times, the reader will feel he is crouched by a fire, listening to the story being told by those who were there, or those who heard about it, in the same way that all good stories should be told.

Secondhand tales for an all-male audience, that's the way things should be.

On the Indians' side of the ledger, this story is meticulously accurate.  No detail was omitted, even down to such esoteric parts of Indian ritual as the fact that when pipes are passed in a lodge, they are never passed across the open door but must retrace their step until they reach the other side of that portal.

The reason for this, the publishers explain, is that L. Ron Hubbard not only grew up in Montana, he "knew the Blackfeet well" and was made a blood-brother of the tribe.  He "listened to their stories, sang with them around the fire and shared in their dances and rituals."  I guess it helps to have someone who vividly remembers his time among the Native Americans if you're trying to present them accurately, yeah?

Welllll... if you flip a few pages past the publisher's intro and some maps of the Northwest Territory (and another title page, because screw trees), you get to Hubbard's own Preface.  It's remarkably brief and to the point compared to some of his later introductions.  He claims "a peculiar kind of courage to condemn one's own race, a worse kind of cowardice to malign men dead three hundred years" and that he's trying to describe "the fur traders, not as they are thought to have been, but as they were" with the help of "the greatest authorities of those times."  No authorities in particular, but rest assured they're great ones.

Problem is, Hubbard wraps it up by saying

When I was two and a half years old I am told that I danced one of their dances to the throb of their drums.  I have forgotten.  But I cannot forget everything I have found to their credit and in this book I have tried to present them, not as they are, but at the height of their power--the mightiest body of fighters on the plains, the truest of gentlemen.

Nothing about becoming a blood-brother, and the author admits forgetting if he ever danced to their drums - which if it did happened, occurred when he was a toddler.  Even the About the Author section at the end of the book fails to mention this tribal affiliation, and summarizes his childhood with "he grew up in the wide open spaces of Montana before traveling the northwest and then the Pacific and the Far East."

I guess the publishers were consulting the official Hubbard biographies, which claim that at the tender age of six he was made a blood-brother of the Blackfoot, who have no memories or records of this event, lived a hundred miles from Hubbard's childhood home, and do not practice such rituals.  And it looks like the Hubbards moved to San Diego when L. Ron was ten.  But I'm sure the miracle child absorbed a great deal of Blackfoot culture and history in that decade he was living a hundred miles away from them.

If I have erred in presenting them, I am not conscious of that error.  I have only tried to show what it was that the voracious trader wiped out.

A handy thing, ignorance.  I haven't studied the Blackfoot, and don't know how to tell them apart from any other northwestern tribe.  Based on what pop culture I've absorbed about the Indians, I could probably spin a tale about them, and would not be conscious of any errors or inaccuracies made in the process.  Just like I wouldn't be conscious of whether I got anything right.

One last thing to note: this book was reprinted in 1987.  The Red Power movement started alongside other civil rights movements in the '50s through '70s.  The American Indian Movement was started in 1968.  Yet in the publishers' foreword, they never use the phrase "Native American," it's always "Indian."  You'd think they'd want to show some sensitivity when introducing this celebration of indigenous culture.

Let's see what we can learn from this tale of fur trappers, white Indians, blood and romance, shall we?

* DEKALOGY: A group of 10 volumes

Forward to Chapter 1

Mission Update

It's been too long since I did some writing, and too long since I've mocked Hubbard's inability to do the same.  I'm still mulling over whether I've got the right novel to work with or if I need to go back to my friendly local used book store, but one way or another I intend to spork something Soon™.  The question is how to go about that.  Blogger's recent adult policy near-miss is a bit alarming - I'm glad that they decided not to go through with shutting off all their adult blogs, but I'm also concerned that they came so close to doing so. 

I don't consider Mission Spork an adult blog - its purpose is not to titillate, but to post amateur literary criticism that is hopefully entertaining.  But in the process of doing that I quote the books directly, and a few of those chapters have content that, while not technically explicit or erotica, is pretty clearly adult (and/or offensive) and stuff that I wouldn't want any kids to read.  I'm not aware of any way to mark individual posts as adult, so the whole blog gets that designation instead.  And that's always annoyed me, that such a small minority of the nearly 700 posts in this thing have such an impact on the rest.

I can't complain too much - it's not like Blogger makes me pay for this hobby of mine - but I can't help but think about whether it would be better to make my own website elsewhere.  Problem is that I'm technically inept and easily angered by uncooperative devices, so that hypothetical website would be at the end of a long and bumpy road, and there's no guarantee that it wouldn't have a troublesome content policy either.

So here's the plan:

I'm going to go through Mission Spork and clean it up.  Beyond typos and formatting errors, if I come across any quotes containing adult or other offensive material, I'll summarize rather than repeat these naughty passages.  But if any brave souls are really curious about just what Hubbard thought lesbians get up to when the lights go out, those unedited passages will still be available through links to Mission Spork Uncensored, a sub-blog if you will.  Said sub-blog will be marked adult and serve as a dumping ground for any such content encountered in future sporkings, while Mission Spork itself will be free of the adult classification.

The self-censorship rankles, but being able to remove the stigma of an "adult" blog from one that's mostly terrible science fiction might make up for it.  Once that's done I'll move on with a new book to skewer, and maybe work in some more renovations (like page ads!  Those student loans don't pay off themselves).  And if I'm still not happy with the results, I'll see about finding hosting elsewhere.

So, after months of inactivity, things on this blog will be moving again.  Thank you for your patience during this intermission.

...Isn't is strange that this blog gets to be flagged "adult" for quoting content that a sixth grader could theoretically buy from any bookstore?

Fear Itself

Fear bills itself as a "novel of suspense," a chiller, a horror story.  We're supposed to enjoy our reactions to all the... uh, scariness, instead of spending too much time or effort trying to figure out whether Lowry's being bedeviled by devils or be-malaria'd by malaria.  The questions about the cause are less important than the effects, in other words.  You could, for example, put some thought into puzzling out how the Overlook Hotel works, but it's fully possible to enjoy The Shining without doing so.  The characters in that story certainly aren't worried about why the hotel is full of bad juju, they just want to survive.

The problem is, Fear is a horror story built around a specific question: what happened to Lowry's hat?  I mean, his lost four hours.  All the supernatural "spooky" stuff is merely the window dressing for Lowry's quest to discover what he did that Saturday afternoon.  And as a mystery covered in Halloween decorations, Fear is a disappointment.

There is such a thing as a "Fair Play" Whodunit, a mystery that is solvable using the clues presented in the story.  Fear obviously isn't one, since it bombs the very first requirement, that the reader never hears the thoughts of the killer.  But the real big annoyance is Mary, and specifically how the reveal at the end relates to her.

See, Hubbard is competent enough to sprinkle little hints that Lowry might have a "motive" to kill his wife over the course of the story - the flashes of jealousy, the revelation that Tommy tried to woo her before she picked Lowry, which Lowry hasn't quite gotten over.  But then Hubbard cheats.  We never get anything that would place Mary at the scene of the crime, and Lowry has no choice but to completely forget that he has an upcoming birthday, just to ensure that the reader wouldn't be able to guess that Mary was at Tommy's house that afternoon to plan a surprise party.

It's sort of like, spoiler warning, if Shyamalan had cut the opening bit in The Sixth Sense where Bruce Willis gets shot so we couldn't guess that he actually died from his wound and was a ghost for the rest of the movie.  If we found out that Willis was dead at the same time we learned he'd gotten shot in the first place, do you think Sixth Sense would be remembered for having one of the greatest twist endings in cinema?  Or would Shyamalan's reputation have never risen high enough for his subsequent movies to ruin?

And what about the jealous, malaria-fueled murder itself?  Did we get any foreshadowing that would help us anticipate that?  There was that bit about Lowry breaking a window as a kid, but do we ever see him reacting aggressively to nasty shocks?  Quite the contrary.  Even though he eventually girds his loins to confront his fear and solve the mystery of his hat, the book basically boils down to Lowry running away from the things he encounters while attempting to do so.  Well, Lowry is aggressive for that one part in the end where he tries to defeat Tommy and steal his essence back, but that ends with Lowry getting his ass kicked.  It certainly isn't something that suggests Lowry could subdue and axe-murder two adults.

The author at least makes some effort to foreshadow Mary and Tommy's fate, and not just through Lowry's hallucinations of Mary crying his name.  Lowry never actually eats anything Mary prepares for him over the course of the story, he either fixes himself a sandwich or experiences wobbling plates whenever he tries to spear a meal with his fork, forcing him to go to he diner.  Lowry gives an excuse for Mary's absence in church on Sunday, and when she and Tommy visit his office on Monday, nobody else is around to see or react to them.

But what about Tommy?  Did anyone give Lowry strange looks when he came in to church, sat down on a pew with a large space around him, repeatedly looked at nothing off to one side of him, and then walked out while clutching at nothing all the way home?  The author doesn't say.  The author can't say, it might spoil the surprise.  And that's kinda cheaty.

So Fear the mystery is a disappointment, is what I'm getting at.  Whether Fear the horror story works for you will probably depend on your tastes.  As I said before, I feel Fear's at its best when it's building up to the what it thinks is scary, like with that nightmare sequence after Lowry comes home from Tommy's house.  It's comparatively restrained, more psychological, more authentically dream-like.  But dreams aren't necessarily scary - Lowry just kinda rolls with the dream-logic when conversing with a knight in full plate, or a stereotypical witch.  And when it's time to unleash the scares, all Hubbard has for us are a hangman, or blood on the floor, or fake vampire teeth in people's mouths.

I guess that could be scary, if Fear is your first horror novel, and you've never watched TV or a movie.  But compared to the works of HP Lovecraft or Edgar Allan Poe, two phenomenal American horror writers who came before this "classic" of the genre, Fear comes across as pretty juvenile.  Seriously, an invisible something brushing the narrator's leg?  Disembodied laughter?  A high-speed factory assembly?  A street full of movie set buildings?  A world full of Tommy? 

We could nitpick over whether malaria could really addle someone enough to kill their wife and best friend in a jealous frenzy, or the plausibility of someone mentally deleting their memory of that murder and going on to hallucinate his victims so he'd never suspect they were dead, but it's not really important.  The bottom line is, Fear succeeds as a horror story about as well as Battlefield Earth succeeds as a sci-fi epic, and Fear's mystery elements are about as well-presented as the "romance" in Mission Earth.


Back to Chapter 8, part 2

Fear - Chapter 8, Part 2 - Aftermath

Let's have ourselves a shocking climax, shall we?

Lowry continues to stumble through the twilight, bedeviled by the visages of the other two principal characters as they appear on the faces of the nameless masses.

He fled past other pedestrians, and each one that looked at him was possessed of the face of either Tommy or Mary.  And after a little they began to call to him at intervals.

"Hello, Jim," said Tommy in mockery each time.

"Oh, it's you, Jim," said Mary.

The last two sentences will be repeated five times over the rest of the chapter, and boy howdy, each repetition is more terrifying than the last, let me tell ya.

It's getting darker, and alternatively warmer and colder (remember: not malaria), and Lowry feels that furry thing brushing past his legs, and sees all manner of spooky shapes in the shadows.  He even thinks he sees "a scaly thing dissolve an instant late" as he steps down from a curb, presumably an alligator in the sewer.  And the author's just throwing everything at us, isn't he?  Like the climax of The Shining, except with less blood gushing out of an elevator, inexplicable men in dog suits performing implied oral sex on other men, or Jack Nicholson. 

Then Lowry sees Tommy's face again, but disembodied this time, a thin and blurry image against the darkness that still manages to smile slyly at him.  And then he sees a beckoning figure that he recognizes as Mary, though her face is still scornful.  "Hello, Jim," "Oh, it's you, Jim."  A shadow "like spread wings" falls over the town.  And there's bats!  Bats are scary, right?  Might wanna turn on a strobe light too and put on some pipe organ music, Hubbard.

We're almost done.  Lowry continues to follow the vision of Mary, and smells some recognizable odors - the scent of Mary's perfume, mixed with Tommy's exotic tobacco.  He pauses on the stone bridge by the church and sees a figure in a black cloak and broad hat sitting on the other side, braiding a rope.  "Jack Ketch!" Lowry doesn't scream - instead he knows he'll rest a bit before walking over to this "man of darkness."  How about that.

But before he can do so...

He caught a glimpse of something white in the water and leaned a trifle farther, not particularly interested in the fact that it was a reflection of his own face in the black mirror surface below.  He watched the image grow clearer, watched his own eyes and mouth take form.  It was as if he was seeing himself down there, a self far more real than this self leaning against cold stone.  Idly he beckoned to the image.  It seemed to grow nearer.  He beckoned again in experiment.  It was nearer still.

With sudden determination he held out both hands to it.  It was gone from the water, but it was not gone.

Like a chicken that was not a chicken.

After seizing his reflection, Lowry stands up straight, and takes a deep breath.  He looks across the bridge and sees Old Billy Watkins the policeman, smoking his pipe.  Lowry walks across that bridge "with a feeling that was almost triumph, for all the weight of sorrow within him," greets Billy pleasantly, and asks if he'll follow him somewhere.  Old Billy's a smart guy, and after sensing Lowry's mood knows that it's time to keep quiet and see where Lowry takes him.

Lowry leads Billy to Tommy's house, which is dark and quiet but seems "to be waiting for them."  He asks the policeman to unlock the front door, since the mansion only has a common lock that patrolling cops ought to have the key for.  I guess back in those days it was only possible to make so many types of keys?  Or law enforcement was given duplicate keys to upper-class homes as a sign of trust, or to help with security?  It's not really important, we might as well say Billy was able to force the door with his police training for all it changes the story.

When they step into the mansion, Lowry points out two things near the door: a lady's handbag, and a hat initialed "J. L."  Lowry, his voice quiet and controlled, leads Officer Billy past a living room containing a broken chair and upset ash tray, and a kitchen with a broken window.  There's a spooky mewling sound, and Lowry opens a basement door to let a half-mad cat bolt to freedom.  Then he and Billy descend the steps.

Hopefully Mr. Akira Yamaoka won't mind if I borrow some of his music one last time to help with the mood.

Jim fumbled for the basement light.  For a moment it seemed that he would not turn it on, but that was only for a moment. 

Oh, my pounding heart.  Truly this work is by a master of suspense.

The naked bulb flooded the basement and filled it with sharp, swinging shadows.

A crude hole had been dug in the middle of the dirt floor and a shovel was abandoned beside it.

Jim Lowry took hold of the light cord and lifted it so that the rays would stream into the coal bin.

An ax, black with blood, pointed its handle at them.  From the coal protruded a white something.

Old Billy stepped to the dark, dusty pile and pushed some of the lumps away.  A small avalanche rattled, disclosing the smashed and hacked face of Tommy Williams.  To his right, head thrown back, staring eyes fixed upon the fingers and blood-caked arm out flung, lay the body of Mary, Jim Lowry's wife.

Officer Billy stares at Lowry for several minutes, before the professor, in a monotone, explains what happened.   He did the fell deed the Saturday afternoon he met with Tommy, and came back that night to find the evidence he left behind - his hat - and to dispose of the bodies.  And then he came back again Sunday for whatever reason, but he'd lost the key so he had to break the kitchen window.  And at some point in the process of removing his hat from the premises, he left that hat on the hat rack in the front hall.  Good grief, Lowry, even as a murderer you're terrible.

Jim Lowry sank down upon a box and hid his face in his palms.  "I don't know why I did it.  Oh, God, forgive me, I don't know why.  I found her here, hiding, after I had found her hat.  Everything was whirling and I couldn't hear what they kept screaming at me and... and I killed them."  A sob shook him.  "I don't know why.  I don't know why she was here... I don't know why I could not reason.... cerebral malaria... jealous madness-"

So the super twist ending is that Lowry does, in fact, have malaria, something he's been underplaying and ignoring for the entire book?

As for why Mary was at Tommy's house, Officer Billy finds a note to "Tommy Old Sport" from her explaining that she wants to give Lowry a surprise birthday party next week, so she needs his help making a list of people to invite and which rum to get.  On the bright side, it looks like Lowry was definitely not expecting a birthday party, so mission accomplished, Mary.

Somewhere high above, there seemed to hang a tinkle of laughter: high, amused laughter, gloating and mocking and evil.

Of course, though, it was probably just the sigh of wind whining below the cellar door. 

Ah-ha!  It's the demons that gave Lowry malaria!

And that's Fear.  A story about a skeptic with malaria who refuses to recover from his illness, wanders around town hallucinating, and I guess murders his wife and best friend while they were trying to decide what kind of booze to get for a party.  I suppose it's up to the reader to decide whether a tropical illness was to blame for Lowry's behavior, or if he really was bedeviled by vengeful spirits who could only affect him while he had a tropical illness.

But if you think the plot's settled, here's a spine-chilling riddle to enjoy this Halloween.  If Lowry's hat was waiting for him inside a locked mansion, whose hat did he pull down over his eyes when he passed Mary on the way to that mansion? 


Back to Chapter 8, part 1

Forward to the conclusion