WARRIOR AND THE LONETREE INCIDENT

Another cold, frosted September morning dawned in the town of Marbleton, located about a mile north of Big Piney, Wyoming on US 189. On a sign at the edge of town, Big Piney staked its claim as the nation's icebox, based on the National Weather Bureau attention it receives for its regularly reporting of temperatures of 30 below zero in the winter, not counting the wind chill.

Officer Gary Pitchford had spent a few minutes before leaving his residence letting his patrol car engine run until the defroster heated up. In the meantime, he scraped the windshield, side mirrors, and rear windows free of the one-eighth inch of opaque frost, which had accumulated during the night while the car was parked in the driveway. With an empty 32-ounce insulated coffee mug in hand, he quickly climbed into the barely warm vehicle and headed to the Big Piney Mini Mart for coffee before going on to the sheriff's office.

Minutes later, Pitchford, armed with his mug of burning black coffee, slowly eased his vehicle north from the Mini Mart's busy packed parking lot filled with oil patch related workers with their dirty dust and mud-caked trucks. He was about to pick up his microphone to call in when dispatch interrupted. He acknowledged that he was on duty, and then released the button signing off and glancing at his watch, which read a few minutes past seven. He started to take a sip of the hot coffee when the radio came back on.

"23-12, we just got a call reporting a hanging from a flagpole in Marbleton. Sheriff is not here yet. Could you check on it?"

Gary nearly scalded his mouth on the coffee. He set the mug down on the console and picked up the mike. "Dispatch, this is 23-12, would you repeat?" Click. Dispatch repeated the message.

On a flat, grassy bench a short distance from the Popo Agie (popo sia) River, a small hunting camp of 14 Shoshone (Snake) tipis stood facing east, awaiting the first rays of sunlight. A star known as the Morning Star shown bright in the eastern sky while the faint glow of daylight was about to grow into a brilliant, sunshiny day. Two camp dogs were snarling at each other, teeth flashing, as their growls grew deeper. They circled one another, and within seconds a fight ensued over a stolen piece of dried buffalo meat. The sounds woke the camp. An old squaw came out of a tipi, picked up some stones and threw them at the animals, hitting one of them on the head, causing a yelp and the fighting dogs to break up. One grabbed the meat and ran away, while the second cowered in another direction.

The noise awakened the newborn baby; frightened, he started to cry. Suddenly he could not cry any more; he could not breathe. The air entered his lungs once more through his nose and mouth, and again he began to cry, but the air was taken from him for another moment. Though only an infant, he began to learn that if he cried, he couldn't breathe. His mother, Smooth Water, had placed the palm of her hand over the baby's mouth and lightly pinched his nostrils together. The second the baby stopped crying, she released her hand from his face, allowing him air. After three attempts, the baby didn't cry, and Smooth Water nestled him to her breast and fed him. Plains Indian babies were indoctrinated not to cry, as crying could be heard by an enemy which would put the tribe in danger. Crying was not allowed.

He suckled with his eyes wide open, looking up at the shadows the tipi poles made as the sun rose higher. By now there was much more activity. The men had risen and walked out of their lodges wrapped in buffalo robes. The squaws started cooking fires whose smoke filled the air with the aroma of sagebrush and cottonwood. His mother, still holding the infant close, stepped out of the tipi entrance and stood for a moment in the morning sun. Already it was getting warmer. She brushed a mosquito off his forehead, smiling at him lovingly.

In the white man's time, the year was 1857, the season late spring. The baby had been born in May, the "Sandhill Cranes' Return Time," as the Shoshone knew it. His mother was Smooth Water and father was Two Crows. Laughing Woman, his grandmother, was married to Long Gun Shoots. The baby came into the world wet, bare, and eyes shut. Now he, a papoose, was fed and kept dry and warm swaddled in a fox pelt and protected in a cradleboard. His eyes, black as a buffalo horn comb, took in everything he looked at with astonishing interest.

He would see something different soon, although at his age he wouldn't recognize a white man to be different. The hunting camp was headed for a place named Fort Bridger to trade their furs and buffalo hides.

In early spring, the Shoshone hunting parties had branched off from the main winter camp. They had split up in search of kotea (buffalo). The buffalo had banded together in the fall the previous year and moved as a collected herd to winter foraging grounds. Now the herd had divided into small groups, breaking up the main migrating herd. With the growth of new grass on the plains, they disbanded into smaller herds to feed on their own and to give birth to calves. The Shoshone now followed the buffalo movement out onto the plains.

Buffalo was the main source of food, clothing, shelter, and medicine for the Shoshone, as it was to all Plains Indians who inhabited an area from the Mississippi River