|
Post by Historian on Jan 30, 2024 14:56:59 GMT -5
Does anyone have any information about a Cheyenne woman known as "Old Hundred"?
|
|
|
Post by Dietmar on Jan 31, 2024 2:44:03 GMT -5
I´ve seen her identified as Poison, Pizen, Pisen and also Pisen´s sister.
|
|
|
Post by Dietmar on Jan 31, 2024 4:49:59 GMT -5
On several pages 'Old Pizen' is described in "Fort Reno - or Picturesque Cheyenne and Arrapahoe Army Life before the Opening of Oklahoma" (1896) by Mrs D. B. Dyer (born Ida Casey, daughter of an U.S. congressman and wife of the Indian Agent at Darlington, Oklahoma). Here is an extract, where Pizen was mourning for some poor Cheyenne who had died (page 160 - 163):
"Old Pizen," the seamy-faced centenarian of the Cheyennes, and myself were on the most friendly terms. She was said to be one hundred and ten years old, and her appearance seemed to bear out that statement. beauty was not the curve of an eyelash, or, the model of a shell-like ear, but if her prayers could have won blessings, I would have been wealthy in mercies. She was a small creature, with wild, black, beady eyes, a mop of grayish hair, and a long chin. Hideous smiles rippled over her wrinkled features. Her emaciated cheeks, covered with skin that resembled yellow parchment, were traced with crows' feet and wrinkles, until one almost fancied that she had been on earth since the days of ancient Egypt, at any rate, she had certainly out-lived the ordinary lifetime of her species. Her appeals to me for "chuck-a-way" were always made with a copious flow of tears, punctured with boisterous sobs; so loud did she often become in her lachrymose wail, that, on one or two occasions, I found it necessary to admonish her to be more mild in her supplications, for fear of disturbing the lurking coyotes.
[...]
A low moaning and groaning sound was wafted through my window one day as a deep sigh of the wind in some remote depth, when I stepped out on the veranda to find " Pizen," this antiquated weather-beaten specimen of humanity, in all fortitude, sitting in contemplation of the ruin that she had seemingly brought upon herself. She looked as if her world of hope and joy had become an abomination of desolation. I stared dumfounded, for I thought despair was sandwiched deep in the furrows of every lineament of her wrinkled countenance, but under the mask I discerned the workings of a human heart.
Such a sight almost threatened the destruction of my soul. Here was the venerable old savage, with her limbs, from her knees down, cut and slashed in a most revolting manner lying in the sun, exhausted from pain, and suffering the extremity of bodily torture. She still indulged in a low chant as weird as a witch's incantation. This was her religious faith, and she believed that this knife-cutting was an act most acceptable to her God. There is no room upon the list of this world's heroes for those who are great in goodness alone, and I am afraid my lowly annals are the only pages that the recital of her virtues will ever enrich. This inspiring incident, however, did not prevent her being, from a constitutional standpoint, just about as physically immoral as she could be.
[...]
The day which time can never efface-the advent of my departure. The old woman, five score and ten, grasped my hand with inexpressible anguish at what she thought the last parting. So great was the fascination of her grief, that I joined with her, and mingled tears on this lamentable occasion. For her wrinkled begrimed lips murmured supplications and benedictions in a quavering key that was sufficiently heart-rending as she bent double, and walked around haltingly, just as one would expect a hundred-and-tenyear-old mendicant to do, who had probably not tasted food for many hours. Great was the merriment when Captain L of the 9th," discovered that this old crone, not blinded by her sorrow, had appropriated scissors and all other small articles of value in her reach, and had successfully escaped detection until too far gone to recover them. I comforted myself in this seeming dishonesty that the souvenirs and mementos she had taken would assist her eyesight, and unlock the mysteries not yet revealed to her industrial sewing life, for she was noted for making the representative Indian dolls for the tribe. Out of buckskin, beads, and strauding, she constructed facsimiles of Cheyenne chiefs and maidens, that brought her two and three dollars apiece revenue.
|
|
|
Post by grahamew on Jan 31, 2024 4:51:40 GMT -5
I´ve seen her identified as Poison, Pizen, Pisen and also Pisen´s sister. Me too.
|
|
|
Post by grahamew on Feb 3, 2024 9:20:04 GMT -5
|
|