Linda and I are what are known as "Buckskinners."
We have been doing living history presentations and
re-enactments of the lives of the mountain men in the
Rocky Mountains in the 1820's and 30's.
In doing this, we have learned much of the ways of
the people who lived then; and in recreating and
re-enacting them, we have developed characters to
portray the life and times.
Linda is a blonde. These critters were rare in the
Rockies in the early 1800's , so we had to come up
with plausible explanation for her presence in our
portrayal of the times.
I developed a story of how she came to be out here,
how we met, and how she got her name.
As the story goes, she was kidnaped when she was a
baby somewhere east of the Missouri River by the
Arickaree Indians and brought west and sold to the
Lakota Sioux who took her with them to the Black
Hills of the Dakota territory. She grew through
her teens with them. Always she was treated as a
slave and given all of the menial tasks, and
generally mistreated by the women of the tribe.
As time passed, they began to call her Hinziwin.
(Sun Hair Woman)
When an opportunity to escape presented itself,
she took it and fled from the village. Later she
was found by a Crow hunting party and taken farther
west into the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming.
This is where I met her. She was still living on
food scraps and cast-offs.
As a white trapper and trader, I was in possession
of many wonderful things that the Indians had never
seen or imagined. Things like knives, needles,
mirrors, strikers and much more.
The women of the tribe, in particular, could see the
value of these things immediately and were willing
to give almost anything to get them. Any woman who
came into possession of even one of these treasures
became an instant celebrity and her status in the
tribe climbed by leaps and bounds.
I decided to spend the winter with the Crow and after
a period of time I noticed this dirty pitiful woman
lurking at the edge of the crowds that gathered
around me. In time I realized that under the dirt was
a white woman.
I asked Chief Arapooesh (Rotten Belly) about her and
he said she was of little value and that I could use
her if I wished.
I approached her and gained her trust. After a period
of time, I got her cleaned up. I did some trading with
the women of the village and got her some decent clothes.
I moved her to my camp, and she began to shape things
up in no time at all. Soon my clothes were mended and
clean. She tanned the hides of the deer and elk that
I killed for food and soon presented me with a new set
of buckskin clothes to wear.
In doing this, she had convinced me that she needed a
knife, needles, beads, etc., to make my clothes.
Neither of us realized it at the time but her status
in the tribe was changing significantly. Just the fact
that she had become the white man’s woman had moved
her up the ladder. The possession of the "foofaraw" I
gave her to do her chores raised her standing even more.
As the winter passed, I came to think a great deal of
Hinziwin and decided to keep her. To make it official
I gave Arapooesh’s wife a trade blanket and several
hanks of beads to mollify her over the loss of her
servant. I gave Arapooesh an old musket and a supply
of powder and lead, which satisfied him completely.
I then took a step that white trapper’s seldom did,
much to the shock of the tribe. I asked Arapooesh to
give Hinziwin to me as a wife--not just as an item
of trade.
It was a custom with the Indians in the Great grand-
father times, that on occasions of great importance
a man could change his name to signify the occasion
or change the name of someone in his family.
It was also the custom of the time that a woman
walked behind the man in deference to him and his
position.
On the occasion of our marriage, I changed her name
to make it clear to all that met her from that day
forward, she was no longer just another woman of the
tribe. Her new name said it all.
I named her Icamaniwin (ee-chah-mah-nee-win),
"Walks Beside Him Woman"
Epilogue:
Another custom of the times was that
the man of the family sat at the rear of
the tipi and if there were visitors, the
guest of honor sat to the left of the
master of the lodge. The woman sat near
the door and the wood pile to enable her
to tend the fire.
Today in our lodge Linda always sits to
my left (the heart side) in the place of
honor, and the guests sit next to her.
