The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1930-09-12

was the figure of an Indian
chief, respondent in buckskin, scalp
shirt, fringed leggings, beaded mecca
sins and a magnificent war bonnet
that swept to the ground. AS he
stepped forward to place on the white
marble tomb war bonnet and a coup
stick, he said in his native tongue, Il
feel it an honor to the red man that
he has taken part in this great event
today because it shows that the thou
sands of Indian soldiers who fought
in the great war are appreciated by
the white man. / am glad to repre-
sent the Indians of the United States
in placing on the grave of this noble
unknown warrior this coup stick and
war bonnet, every eagle feather of
which represents a deed of valor by
my race. l hope that the Great Spirit
will grant that these noble warriors
have not given up their lives in vain
and that there will be peace to all
men hereafter. This is the Indians
hope and prayer"
This chief who was chosen as the
representative of all the Indian tribes
to place the red mans tribute upon
the grave of the Unknown Soldier is
known among his people, the Alb
sarokees, as Aleek-chea-ahooSh, mean
ing MANY Achievements" But the
white men who call the Absarokees
Crows, he is more commonly known
as Chief Plenty Coups,' perhaps the
best known Indian in the United
States today. For that reason one of
the outstanding biographies of the
year is the book American" pub
lished recently by the John Day COM
pany, for it is 1.-THE Life Story of a
Great Indian, Plenty Coups, Chief of
the Crows" as he told it to Frank
B. Linderman through the medium of
in which both Plenty Coups and Lin
derman are adopts.
american" is not the first Indian
autobiography but it is outstanding
because it is the story of a genuinely
primitive Indian. When Plenty Coups
was born in Montana in the late '4Os
his people were still living their nor
NAL nomadic life in the days before
the buffalo herds were swept away,
and these wild horsemen of the plains
were almost untouched by any contact
with the whites. His early life was
lived under tribal conditions, but lit
tie changed over period of hundreds
of years; in his early manhood he
witnessed the first conflict between the
two races with their inevitable climax
of the subjugation of the red and the
domination of the white and his de-
clining years are being passed in an
era which is seeing century of his
tory concentrated in a decade. So in
q sense the life story of this Indian
chief is an epitome of 800 years of
American history, from savagery to
civilization, from wilderness to the
industrial age.
1t was that keen student of western
life, Owen Wister, who once had one
of his characters in book observe
you take an Injun and let him be
warrior and chief and grandfather,
who has killed heaps of white men in
his day-but all that don't make him
grown up. He stays a child in some
respects till he's dead. He may have
hair like snow and eyes like an eagles
and he can sing war song about
fights that happened when our fathers
were kids. But if you want to deal
with him, you got to remember he's
a child of five:' How true this OBJ
servation was is illustrated by an In
cident connected with the publication
Of Plenty Coups' biography. Plenty
Coups was a war chief among his peo-
pie many years ago; he was one of
the first of his tribe to realize the
futility Of resistance to the white man
and to resolve to travel 'in the white
mans road" For many years he has
been regarded as the leading chief Of
his tribe, and as such he has repre-
sente6 them at Washington many
times. He is patriarch. far past the
allotted three score and ten. And
yet
When Mr.. Linderinan completed his
work he assured the old chief that
the first copy Of the book to come off
the press would be sent by special
messenger to him This obligation