Meet the New Dawn
Authors: Rosanne Bittner
Meet the New Dawn
(Savage Destiny #6)
Rosanne Bittner
Copyright © 2012, Rosanne Bittner
Cover Design by Patricia Phelps Lazarus
Each novel in this series contains occasional reference to historical characters, locations, and events that actually existed and occurred during the time period of each story. All such reference is based on factual printed matter available to the public. However, the primary characters in this series are purely fictitious and a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance of the author’s fictitious characters to actual persons, living or dead, or of the author’s fictitious events to any events that may have occurred at that time and of which the author is unaware, is purely coincidental.
The major portions of this novel take place in present-day Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Wyoming, and South Dakota. Fort Laramie is in southeast Wyoming; Fort Lyon is in southeast Colorado; Fort Robinson is in extreme northwest Nebraska; the reservation for the Southern Cheyenne is in northern Oklahoma per the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867; the Sioux/Northern Cheyenne reservation mapped out in a treaty with Red Cloud in 1869 encompasses most of the western half of South Dakota, from the Missouri River west to the Wyoming border.
This novel covers the years 1869 through 1886, during which most of the Indian wars were fought—the last days of freedom and an end to the old ways for the American Indian.
Into this land I came
To place my hand in yours,
My man, my love, my life.
You held me close
Through pain and hardship,
Death and turmoil.
We were one in each other
And with the land,
Our spirits so blended
That even in death
We could not be parted;
For how can death take away love …
Or memories …
Or that kindred spirit that tells us
We will always be together.
I reach up to the heavens …
And again, you take my hand.
Author
Contents
In the West, the turbulent years following the Civil War were painful growing years—painful not only for the settlers, who faced tragedy at every turn; but also for the Indians, whose very life blood was being drawn from their bodies by the slaughter of the buffalo, incoming railroads, floods of miners, and settlers who put up fences. Their gradual demise was aided by deceitful traders, who handed bottles of cheap, sugared whiskey to the red man in return for valuable robes, and who took advantage of ignorance and desperateness, feeding the vengeful fires in the hearts of the Indians. The trail of deceit and misunderstanding that led to the end of the Indian way of life is a long one, and to this day there are many who still do not understand the Indian, and why he fought so desperately, why he committed some acts against settlers that were, to whites, despicable. Yet stories of equally despicable acts committed against the Indians by soldiers, miners, and buffalo hunters are seldom told, so that in the end, the history books give a distorted view of what really happened.
There were a few whites, like Agent Edward Wynkoop, who defended the Indians, explaining over and over that treaties should not be broken, that Indian villages should not be attacked without provocation, that all Indians should not be punished for what just a few of them did. But government and men in power didn’t want to hear the Indian’s side. They would prefer the Indian did not exist at all, for it would make the taking of their lands so much easier, and would relieve
their consciences. But the Indian did exist, and land-hungry railroad magnates, miners, and settlers dreaming of a new life had to find a way to either get along with the red man or exterminate him. The latter seemed simplest.
And so various soldier campaigns began, with unnecessary attacks on peaceful villages; the destruction of badly needed robes, food, supplies, ammunition, and horses; mutilation of women and children; constant pursuing and harassment of the Indians. These operations only caused more trouble, for the Indian was proud; his riding and fighting abilities magnificent; his spirit reckless and determined.
This story accents the last days of the fighting Cheyenne, under some of their greatest leaders: Dull Knife, Little Robe, Roman Nose, Bull Bear, Gray Beard, Tall Bull, and Medicine Wolf. Through 1867 they were chased and harassed by General Custer and Major General Hancock. The Cheyenne did not want the reservation life handed to them. They wanted what they considered their land—the plains of Kansas and Nebraska. They wreaked havoc upon the railroads, attacking work stations and tearing up tracks; brought terror to the settlers, burning ranches and stealing horses, murdering men and women alike. Eastern papers like the
Harper’s Weekly
raged with headlines that told of horrible things the Indians did, but never told why, never explained the terrible fear and desperation the Indians felt at the loss of their precious freedom. Pride and strength were being destroyed by constant running, the introduction of rotten whiskey, and by white man’s diseases.
Once pushed onto the new reservation land in 1867, there was a brief period of relative peace, until treaty provisions were once again ignored, promises broken, and the restless, unhappy Cheyenne exploded onto the plains again, raiding and murdering, not knowing how else to fight the puzzling whites who insisted on keeping them confined, who insisted on taking away their children and putting them into strange schools, who insisted that the Indian farm rather than hunt, who insisted that a way of life that was purely logical to the Indian was the wrong way. Misunderstanding piled upon misunderstanding, and again the Indians were hunted, with orders that
they be killed on sight.
Many Cheyenne headed north to join relatives who were already living among the Sioux. More and more settlers poured into the plains, the railroads continued to advance, buffalo continued to be slaughtered by the thousands that would lead to millions. Many Cheyenne still remembered the horror of the slaughter of their loved ones while camped peacefully at Sand Creek in 1864: soldiers mutilating women and babies beyond recognition, parts of bodies cut off or cut out, scalps taken, skulls smashed. The horror was reawakened in 1868, when another peaceful village camped on the Washita was similarly attacked and destroyed and a valued leader, Black Kettle, was killed. Again the Cheyenne made war, and again they were pursued and harassed to a place in northeast Colorado called Summit Springs, where a pitiful battle took place, leaving many warriors, women, and children dead, and an entire village burned, along with all food and supplies. A few of the survivors struggled north to join the Sioux but, for all practical purposes, the battle at Summit Springs in the summer of 1869 ended Cheyenne occupation of the land between the Platte and Arkansas Rivers, comprising most of Kansas and Nebraska.
The Cheyenne began surrendering themselves to Lt. Col. Anderson D. Nelson and to their new reservation in Oklahoma. They were starving and beaten. They had little choice, and bore little resemblance to the once-proud and mighty Cheyenne nation. Reservation life began under the Society of Friends, who were Quakers appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant to work among the Indians and help “civilize” the red man.
The old ways were ended, except for the few Northern Cheyenne who lived among the Sioux and continued their own hopeless fighting in Montana and the Dakotas. The Sioux had won a temporary victory over the soldiers and the United States government. Forts along the Powder River were closed and burned. The Sioux and Northern Cheyenne, under the great leader, Red Cloud, enjoyed the taste of revenge, thinking the white man would not come back to their land, for the red man had planted fear in their hearts. But citizens and congress
were screaming. Something had to be done. There was gold in the hills of Montana, and Red Cloud could not be allowed to interfere with white men wanting that gold. The treaty signed by Red Cloud, promising that whites could not enter his lands, would be drastically changed by the time it was signed in Washington. Again, the Indian would be deceived. The lands he so desperately fought for, spilled blood to keep, would not belong to him after all.
Through this turbulence one family clung together, a family familiar with both sides of the story. They were the Monroes: Zeke, a half-breed Cheyenne; Abbie, his white wife; and their several mixed-blood children. As the land felt the pain of change, so did the Monroes. But one thing did not change, and that was the great love shared between Zeke and his Abbie-girl.…
“As I rode down the trail, I could see written across the boundless western sky the signs of doom for the Indians of the vast plains; and, even more tragic, there seemed to be nothing—nothing that could save them from oblivion.”
Father Pierre Jean DeSmet, a Roman Catholic missionary who worked among the Indians for fifty years, known as “Black Robe” to the Red Men that he loved.
from
The Wind River Rendezvous
Vol. IX, Mar/Apr 1979 No. 2
The sky awoke in brilliant pink on a quiet morning in May, 1869, casting a peaceful glow on the ranch below. It lay there in the rich green that comes when the ground is still wet with melted winter snows, the Arkansas River dancing along the southern border of the eight hundred acres that belonged to Zeke and Abigail Monroe. Zeke raised some of the finest horses in Colorado, mostly Appaloosas; Abigail went about the many chores expected of a woman on a ranch in the 1800s.
The sun had not actually risen yet, but Zeke was already outside herding a feisty stallion into a corral while riding his own horse the way he always did. A small, flat saddle made of buffalo hide and stuffed with animal hair sat atop a colorful Indian blanket, for Zeke was himself half Indian, his mother’s Cheyenne blood flowing through his veins. He looked all Indian, from his shiny black hair, which hung nearly to his waist—sometimes loose, sometimes braided—to his very dark skin and the fringed, buckskin clothing he preferred to the white man’s uncomfortable pants and shirts. His feet were covered with beaded moccasins rather than boots. At his waist alongside a six-gun hung a knife, a rather infamous knife, which in Zeke Monroe’s hands was much more deadly than the gun. For all his forty-nine years he was a strong, handsome man who did not show his age. He was over six feet tall, lean, and hard-muscled; a man very familiar with violence and hard living, whose body bore scars from old wounds and participation in the torturous teenage Indian Sun Dance Ritual.
He dismounted and closed the gate to the corral, which had higher fencing than any of the others, designed to keep the stallion from jumping it and going after the Thoroughbred that was also a part of the herd. Keeping the Appaloosas and Thoroughbreds separated was not always easy, for the mares didn’t seem to be too particular which stallion became their mate; neither were the stallions particular about which of the many available mares became their love object. Only Zeke’s constant watch let him know which mares were ready to mate, and they were corralled alone with the proper stallions at the right time. But during grazing on the open grasslands, nothing much could be done; there were a lot of mixed bloods in the herd, good enough in themselves, but not as good as the full bloods. Zeke Monroe was good with horses, and determined to raise only the best.
He moved back onto his mount with an animallike grace. A horse beneath him was as familiar and easily maneuvered as his own two feet. “Relax
Kehilan
,” he told the Appaloosa stallion with a laugh. “I will bring you a woman soon. I understand your frustration, my friend.” He laughed again and rode to the barn, dismounting and going inside where a man was shoveling feed into troughs for several horses that were separated into stalls.
“I finally got him into the corral,” Zeke spoke to his son-in-law, walking and picking up a shovel himself. “A man plays hell trying to control that one when he’s got a woman on his mind.”
The other man laughed. “No different from his owner, I guess,” he joked. He was as tall as Zeke and nearly as broad, a very dark, handsome man of thirty-four, twelve years older than his wife, Zeke’s daughter Margaret. Morgan Brown was a mulatto, and no better match could have been made for Margaret Monroe, who had suffered some traumatic experiences because of her very Indian looks. Her unhappy, confused life had been straightened out when Morgan Brown stepped in to simply love her for what she was, understanding himself the tortured life of having two bloods. And therein lay the deep friendship he had built with Margaret’s father, for Zeke Monroe could well attest to some of the miseries that came to a man of two worlds. He had learned some bitter
lessons when being raised in Tennessee by his white father and a white stepmother. The young white girl he had married and their baby son had been brutally murdered by whites for running off with a half-breed. Revenge against the men who had committed the crime constituted Zeke Monroe’s own first murders, after which he had fled west to find his Cheyenne mother. He lived among his Indian relatives for years before meeting another white woman, who forced him back into the white man’s world simply because he loved her so much that he could not live without her. His Abbie—the reason he ran this ranch and had settled into one place.
“Speaking of women and mating, when is my first grandchild due?” Zeke asked, walking over and dumping some feed into another trough.
“Not for a good six months, I’m afraid. You think Abbie can wait that long to hold another baby in her arms?” Morgan asked.
Zeke laughed. “I suppose she’ll have to. But my guess is once it’s born my poor daughter will have a hell of a time getting her hands on her own child. Abbie will take full charge.” He smiled, but an old, tiny ache was reawakened in his heart at the memory of how hard his Abbie had wept after the operation in Denver that guaranteed there would be no more children. After seven of them and too many brushes with death in childbirth, the operation had been necessary. That had been eleven years ago, when Abbie was only twenty-eight.
He stopped shoveling and faced his son-in-law. “I’m happy for you, Morgan, and for Margaret too. For a while there I thought my wayward daughter was lost forever. And the thought of a grandchild really makes us happy.”
Morgan nodded. “Margaret is a good wife. And being raised by Abbie, I have no doubt she’ll be a good mother.” He looked around the barn and breathed deeply. “And I like it here, Zeke. I’ve never regretted the little deal we made. I didn’t just invest in a ranch. I invested in a good woman, a family, and a home. We intend to stay right here and be a part of the ranch as long as you want it that way.”
“Forever then,” Zeke told him. “When I’m gone you can pretty much take over. The place is just as much yours now as
anybody’s. Without your savings to restock the herd after that Comanche raid, I’d have lost everything.”
“Well that’s long paid back, so we’re even, and I’m staying here because I love Margaret and love this place, not because anybody owes me anything anymore.”
Zeke scooped up another shovelful of feed. “Well I’ll need you to look after things for a while when Abbie and I take LeeAnn up to Julesberg to catch that train east. I’m not sure how long it will take us.”
“No problem.”
Zeke carried the feed to another trough and dumped it in. He stood there a moment, his heart heavy over the thought of sending LeeAnn off to a school in New York. He’d never seen cities like New York. St. Louis and Denver were probably the biggest cities he’d ever seen, but it mattered little to him. He hated cities of any kind. The people in them had little use for Indians, and he had little use for whites who had come west to gobble up the land and its resources with little regard for the red man who inhabited the plains and mountains and whose lives were sustained by the land. LeeAnn was one of his children who had no Indian characteristics, probably the least of any of the others. She was certainly a contrast to her father, with white-blond hair and beautiful blue eyes, apparently inheriting the genes of Abbie’s older sister and Abbie’s mother, both now dead.
LeeAnn had only been thirteen when the Monroe ranch was raided by Comanches and she was snatched away. Zeke had fought savagely to stop her abduction and had suffered severe wounds. There had simply been too many for even a skillful, hard-fighting man like Zeke to subdue, and he would never get over the guilt he felt for being unable to stop the Comanches that day. They had stolen nearly his entire herd, but that mattered little in comparison to the fact that they had snatched his daughter, and in spite of his wounds he was soon going after the raiders in search of LeeAnn. That had been almost five years ago. He had searched for months, risking his life to finally save her from the hands of Comancheros in a one-man rage that left eight men dead. The horror of her captivity had left a lasting impression on LeeAnn’s mind. Now eighteen, she
wanted nothing more than to forget—to leave the wild, lawless land that frightened her and go east where there was civilization, where she needn’t fear outlaws and Indians, even though her own father was part Indian.
But what hurt Zeke was that he knew deep inside she would deny her Indian blood once she got away from Colorado. In spite of how much she might love her own father, she would not admit to her heritage, and she would deny the people who were dying now on wretched reservations because of the greed of the very people the girl would be mixing with. But he would put aside his personal hurt. He knew what she had suffered, and he wanted his daughter to be happy. If going to college in the East would help, then she should go, he supposed. He couldn’t expect all of his children to be exactly the way he wanted them. He turned to walk back to a bag of feed when his son Jeremy walked in. The boy was seventeen, the fourth child, and another one who was all white in nature and looks.
“Where have you been?” Zeke asked in an irritated voice. “We could use your help.”
The boy shoved his hands into the pockets of his cotton pants. He didn’t wear buckskins like his father. For that matter, he had nothing in common with Zeke. “I overslept. I was up late reading,” Jeremy told him. “And I had to ask mother something this morning before I came out here.” The boy swallowed nervously. He was never quite sure how to talk to his father, for they were worlds apart in spirit and nature. Jeremy couldn’t be like Wolf’s Blood, the firstborn, the son who was all Indian and of whom his father was very proud. He supposed Zeke was proud of him also, but not in the same way, and Jeremy had never felt he could truly please his father.
“And what was so important to make you late for chores?” Zeke asked, setting the shovel aside and folding his arms.
The boy took a deep breath. “I … I’d like to go to Julesberg with you and Mother, when you take LeeAnn, Father. And I think I’d like to stay.”
Zeke frowned. “Stay? What for?”
“I don’t know for sure. I just want to see some of the world, Father, like LeeAnn will get to do. Maybe I can find a job there—maybe for the railroad, even. I’ve wanted to learn more
about trains and all.” Zeke continued to frown as he listened, and Jeremy shifted nervously. “I know what the railroad is doing to the Indian,” he added. “But it’s coming whether the Indians want it to come or not, Father. It’s part of a whole new civilization coming west, and I want to be a part of the excitement. I’ve never liked being here on the ranch all the time. You know that. I want to do some more exploring, get some more schooling. You know I like reading and learning. I could maybe get a real important job some day.”
Zeke glanced at Morgan, who shrugged and went back to his work. Then he took some tobacco and paper from a pouch he wore on his belt, holding the paper in one hand and pouring the tobacco into it with the other. “Running this ranch is an important job, Jeremy,” he told his son. He licked the paper and sealed it. “That’s what you might be doing some day, you know. Who knows if your brother will come back to this life?” His heart ached at the words. Wolf’s Blood was a treasured son. The boy had been Indian from the beginning, and now lived in the North with his Cheyenne uncle, Swift Arrow, where he lived and warred against soldiers and miners in Red Cloud’s fight for the Black Hills and the Powder River country. How he missed his son! He lit his cigarette.
“You know what I mean, Father. And you have Morgan now, and Jason is eleven already and helps a lot. You don’t really need me all that much. You thought you needed Wolf’s Blood too, but you let him go north to live with the Indians—to make war and be wild. Why is that any different from me? You knew it was his nature to live like that, so you let him go because you understood that part of him. You’re more Indian than white. You want to live just like Wolf’s Blood, and you would if it weren’t for mother. Now I’m asking you to understand me—my side! I want to go to Julesberg and maybe get a job for the railroad. I’m seventeen and old enough to try. You always understood Wolf’s Blood—always let him be his own man. Can’t you do the same for me?”
Zeke took a deep drag on the cigarette, studying his handsome but slightly built son, whose hair and eyes were a medium brown, and whose skin was tanned but bore none of the darkness of an Indian. Jeremy was so different from Wolf’s
Blood, who would not even take a white name. Zeke felt he had somehow failed Jeremy, perhaps expected too much of him. Jeremy had never been able to ride and shoot well, had never been interested in the things Zeke thought were important. They had never been close in the way that Zeke and Wolf’s Blood had been. And he knew that if he let Jeremy go, the boy would never return to the ranch.
“What did your mother say?” he asked.
The boy sighed. “She’s not real happy about it, just because she doesn’t want to see me go away. But she said it’s my decision and that you let Wolf’s Blood make his own decisions when he was my age and I should have the same right. But she said it’s up to you in the end.”
Zeke nodded. “She did, did she? Then I guess it’s up to me to be the good guy or the villain. But since it probably wouldn’t do any good to tell you that you can’t go, I won’t. You’re old enough that you’ll ride off and do what you damned well please anyway, so why should there be hard feelings over my telling you not to go?”
The boy grinned a quick, bright smile. “Thank you, Father! And you watch and see. I’ll be a real successful man some day.”
Zeke’s dark eyes ran over this son of his. Their ideas of what success was vastly differed. “I hope you find what you’re looking for, Jeremy. I guess it was never here, was it? Maybe some day you’ll find out it was here all along.”
“I don’t know. But I won’t ever know if I don’t go away, will I?”
“I suppose not. Now go out and fill the water trough for
Kehilan,
will you? He’s got himself worked up this morning and probably needs a drink by now. And pour the water through the fence posts. Don’t go inside. You know how ornery he can get.”
“Yes sir.” The boy hesitated. “I’m sorry, Father, if you’re disappointed in me.”
Zeke sighed deeply, reaching out and grasping the boy’s shoulder. “I’m not disappointed, Jeremy. No two people can be alike. Not even a father and his son. You’re all different and you all have different dreams. Don’t worry about it.”