They tethered their horses at the edge of the village and walked in, slowly. Curious stares greeted them from every side; laughing children fell silent, paused to watch the strangers pass; odors of cooking venison and the peculiar pungency of drying hides assaulted their nostrils. At length a young brave came up and made some elaborate movements with his hands.
“What’s he doing?” whispered Johnson.
“Sign language,” Toad said, cradling his swollen arm with the other.
“You understand it?”
“No,” Toad said.
But Little Wind did, and he spoke to the brave in the Crow language. The Indian led them deeper into the village, to a large teepee where five older warriors sat around a fire in a semicircle.
“The chiefs,” Toad whispered. At a gesture from one, the white men all sat in a semicircle facing them.
“Then began,” wrote Johnson,
the most protracted negotiations I ever experienced in my life. The Indians love to talk and are in no rush. Their curiosity, the formal elaborateness of ceremonial speech, and the lack of urgency with regard to time peculiar to them, all conspired to a meeting of acquaintance that clearly would take all night. Everything was discussed: who we were (including our names, and the meaning of our names); where we had come from (the cities, the meanings of the names of cities, what routes we had taken, how we had chosen the route, and what experiences we had had on our journey); why we were here (the reason for our interest in the bones, and how we planned to excavate them, and what we planned to do with them); what we were wearing as clothing and why, the meaning of rings and trinkets and belt buckles, and so on ad infinitum et ad nauseam.
If the powwow seemed interminable, it must have in part been because of the tension the whites felt. Sternberg noted that “they didn’t care overly for our answers.” It soon emerged that they knew about Cope, had been told that he was unfriendly to Indians, and had killed his own father. The Crow had been advised to kill him in turn.
Cope was furious, but kept his temper. Smiling pleasantly, he said to the others, “Do you see the villainy, the black scoundrel’s techniques, finally exposed to all eyes? Do I harass Marsh? Do I attempt at every juncture to impede his progress? Am I jealous of him? I ask you. I ask you.”
The chiefs could tell that Cope was upset, and Little Wind hastened to assure them of an error.
The Indians insisted there was no error: Cope had been described well and true.
Who has said these things about him? Little Wind asked.
Red Cloud Agency.
Red Cloud Agency is a Sioux agency.
This is so.
The Sioux are your enemy.
This is so.
How can you believe the words of an enemy?
The discussion dragged on, hour after hour. At length, to control his temper or perhaps his nerves, Cope began to sketch. He drew the chief, and the likeness aroused great interest. The chief wanted the sketch, and Cope gave it to him. The chief wanted Cope’s pen. Cope refused.
“Professor,” Sternberg said, “I think you’d better give him your pen.”
“I will do nothing of the sort.”
“Professor . . .”
“Very well.” Cope handed over the pen.
Shortly before dawn, the discussion turned from Cope to Toad. Some kind of new chief was called for, a very pale, very thin man with a wild look in his eyes. His name was White Deer. White Deer looked at Toad, and muttered something, and left.
The Indians then announced they wanted Toad to remain in the camp, and for the others to leave.
Cope refused.
“It’s all right,” Toad said. “I will serve as a kind of hostage.”
“They may kill you.”
“But if they kill me,” Toad pointed out, “they’ll almost certainly kill all of you soon after.”
In the end, Toad remained, and the others left.
From their camp, they looked down on the Indian encampment as dawn broke. The braves had begun whooping and riding in circles; a large fire was being built.
“Poor Toad,” Isaac said. “They’ll torture him for sure.”
Cope watched through his glass, but the smoke obscured everything. Now a chanting began; it kept up until nine in the morning, when it abruptly stopped.
A party of braves rode up to the camp, bringing Toad with them on a spare horse. They came upon Cope washing his false teeth in a tin bowl. The Indians were entranced and, before Toad dismounted, insisted that Cope pop his lifelike teeth in and then take them out again.
Cope did this several times, contrasting a dazzling smile with a gaping, toothless hole, and the Indians departed much entertained.
Dazed, Toad watched them go.
“That one chief, White Deer, did magic on my hand,” he said, “to cure it.”
“Did it hurt?”
“No, they just waved feathers over it and chanted. But I had to eat some awful stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“I don’t know, but it was awful. I’m very tired now.” He curled up beneath the wagon, and slept for the next twelve hours.
Toad’s arm was improved the following morning. In three days he was cured. Each morning, the Indians would ride up to see Cope. And they would watch Funny Tooth wash his teeth. The Indians would often hang around the camp, but they never took anything. And they were very interested in what the whites were doing: finding bones.
Bone Country
With these preliminary problems resolved, Cope was impatient to begin the work. The students found him standing in the dawn chill, glancing up at the cliffs near the camp, which were being struck with light for the first time that day. Abruptly, he leapt up and said, “Come along, come along. Quickly now, this is the best time to look.”
“Look for what?” the students asked, surprised.
“You’ll know soon enough.” He led them to the cliff face exposure nearest the camp and pointed. “See anything?”
They looked. They saw bare, eroded rock, predominantly gray in color with pink and dark gray striations highlighted in the weak morning sunlight. That was all they saw.
“No bones?” Cope asked.
Encouraged by this hint, they looked hard, squinting in the light. Toad pointed. “How about up there?”
Cope shook his head. “Just embedded boulders.”
Morton pointed. “Near the rise there?”
Cope shook his head. “Too high, don’t look up there.”
Johnson tried his luck. “Over there?”