Post by jinlian on Jan 2, 2009 20:05:48 GMT -5
Two Leggings (or, more properly, Lots of Leggings/Many Leggings), Issaatxalúash, River Crow, U' sawatsi'a/I'cire'te They Bring Game Without Shooting/Not Mixed clan, Mara'xi'ceLumpwood. Born around 1848 (the Indian Census has him as born in 1851), the son of a warrior named Four (also known as No Wife) and Strikes at Different Camps, he was known as Big Crane in his early days. After the untimely death of both his parents, he was raised by his elder brother (a "brother", in the Crow kinship system may be also a maternal uncle) Wolf Chaser. In his recollections, written down by William Wildschut and then edited by Peter Nabokov, Two Leggings often lingered on his being poor and on his ambition of becoming a war chief. He joined his first war party against the Piegan at sixteen. He had no strong medicine of his own (i.e. got after a Sun Dance vision or during fast) so he first "borrowed" one from his brother, and then was given one by the celebrated medicine man and storyteller Look At The BullsPenis, better known as Sees The Living Bull (stepfather of Medicine Crow, who was one of Two Leggings' closest friends). Sees the Living Bull also adopted Two Leggings in his Tobacco society chapter.
Two Leggings was pipe-holder (i.e. leader of a war party) twice against the Lakota Hunkpapa, each time reporting scalps and stolen horses (it is said that one of these parties was against Sitting Bull's band, at the time heading for Canada); another famous and successful party was against the Yanktonai near Fort Peck, when Two Leggings and his warriors captured fifty horses. Two Leggings also joined the Crow's last war party in 1888, killing a Lakota (mistaken for a Piegan horse-stealer).
He was given the name "Many Leggings" (mistranslated by a white trapper as "Two Leggings") when, after a failed war party against the Lakota, he made an extra pair of leggins from his blanket to wear on his own torn pair. He was also known as His Eyes Are Dreamy.
He took two wives: Takes A Shield, whom he divorced after a while (she later married Curley, the famous Custer scout) and Ties Up Her Bunds, who married him in 1880s. The couple had no children of their own, but adopted a niece of Ties Up Her Bundle, Red Clay Woman, and later her son Sings To The Sweat Lodge (also known as Amos Two Leggings). Two Leggings died on April 20 1923.
Two Leggings was pipe-holder (i.e. leader of a war party) twice against the Lakota Hunkpapa, each time reporting scalps and stolen horses (it is said that one of these parties was against Sitting Bull's band, at the time heading for Canada); another famous and successful party was against the Yanktonai near Fort Peck, when Two Leggings and his warriors captured fifty horses. Two Leggings also joined the Crow's last war party in 1888, killing a Lakota (mistaken for a Piegan horse-stealer).
He was given the name "Many Leggings" (mistranslated by a white trapper as "Two Leggings") when, after a failed war party against the Lakota, he made an extra pair of leggins from his blanket to wear on his own torn pair. He was also known as His Eyes Are Dreamy.
He took two wives: Takes A Shield, whom he divorced after a while (she later married Curley, the famous Custer scout) and Ties Up Her Bunds, who married him in 1880s. The couple had no children of their own, but adopted a niece of Ties Up Her Bundle, Red Clay Woman, and later her son Sings To The Sweat Lodge (also known as Amos Two Leggings). Two Leggings died on April 20 1923.
