The Narrative of John Green Kelly

"If you want the gospel truth about them early days and my part in them you best get a good hold on that chair ‘cause my life was a wild ride commencing the moment the gate swung open."

So begins the The Narrative of John Green Kelly, a little-known manuscript that has thus far been available to only a handful of scholars. Before discussing the controversy that has, for over four decades, kept this work in obscurity, a little background on its author is in order.

"This picture counts the year Tatsen first came upon the sacred mountain or the enchanted rock.  In typical Indian fashion the flowering tree of life is held to be big medicine, and if it can't be found on the mountain top they make one to suit the occasion." -John Green Kelly

INTRODUCTION

John Green Kelly was born somewhere in Texas around 1853 and he died in San Saba County of natural causes in December, 1941. His mother was a white captive of the Comanche since her ninth year. She had apparently become so accustomed to the Indian lifestyle she never considered returning to her race. His father, it seems escaped to the Comanche. In his narrative, Kelly says, "I was born and raised amongst the Kwahadi Comanche. Mamma and Daddy was all Indian except for their hides which was white." Later after relating several battles in which he and his father distinguished themselves amongst the Comanche, Kelly cautions, "Now don’t go thinking hard thoughts, as our lot was with the Indians back then. We didn’t know no other way. We was hard pressed by the Texicans for our land and the only life we knew. I was raised an Indian, and an Indian I was."

During the Battle of Potato Spring on the western frontier, Kelly’s parents were killed and Kelly was captured and thrown into an army prison. So convincing was his Indian appearance, Kelly was unable to convince his captors he himself was White. "After my second night in an Army stockade I made my escape," Kelly relates, without further detail. However, later in the narrative Kelly makes an offhand comment, "Once an army guard tried me on and I didn’t fit. Now he is numbered with things of the past."

Not knowing what to do or where to go, Kelly headed north for Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma. On the way he came across Sarah Jane living near the mouth of the San Saba. She was scratching out an existence in a broken down cabin and living, or at least looking like, a White woman. Kelly could tell immediately she was all Indian and, as they were about the same age, they "took up housekeeping" together. Theirs wasn’t a migration from one place to another, but from one culture to another.

THE CONTROVERSY

In the Fall of 1938 a subcontractor was renovating an old limestone homestead in Llano County, Texas. While tearing out the old floor boards the workers discovered a handmade box hidden beneath a plywood patch in the master bedroom. There was considerable excitement as visions of sudden wealth seized the workers. Their anticipation was put to rest immediately as the sole contents was a dusty old ledger which, in the words of one worker, "was all used up."

The book found its way to a yard sale where it and a stack of old newspapers were tied in a bundle for the selling price of 50 cents. The buyer, a journalist who insists on anonymity, purchased the lot. Due to pressing business matters it was almost a month before the book’s new owner discovered his prize.

Shortly thereafter the ledger was shown to almost a dozen authorities in the field of Texas letters and history. Immediately, there was strong division among the experts as to the document’s authenticity. That academic debate has continued to this day and the claims and counter claims are too convoluted (and even irrelevant) to mention here.

One collector of art and Texas memorabilia has offered $83,000 for the book. "I don’t know if its a forgery or not," the collector said, "but it looks authentic; it sounds authentic; it even smells authentic. I know this, as a work of art it is authentic."

THE LEDGER

The narrative is but one portion of a complex document that fills the better part of a 320-page ledger. Probably the first entries in the book were the pictograph history or Winter Count of Tatsen, an exiled Kiowa-Apache medicine man. Accompanying each pictograph is a brief explanation in Kelly’s hand. The narrative itself literally wraps around the Tatsen material and continues on. The sequence of the stories is not chronological, but ancedotal. Some entries are only a few paragraphs, while others run on for pages. The selections from the entries for this publication is intended to provide a sample of the larger work, particularly chosen because it explains the genesis of the ledger itself. What is not offered here, and what cannot be transcribed or translated into another medium is the aesthetic effect produced by the combination of pictographs and script. The pages seem to exude the magic of a time and place now deep in the region of myth.

THE NARRATIVE OF JOHN GREEN KELLY:

Many years ago I fell in with one Tatsen, or Antelope Horse, an old-time medicine man amongst the Kiowa-Apache. That was in 1886 and he was living a solitary life back in the hills concealed in a place called the Enchanted Rock on the banks of the Sandy.

I had been prospecting on Left Hand Creek and come up empty. Well, I heard tell of this here mountain of rock so I put for the place and a first-hand look. I was fixing to cross Walnut Spring Creek when I come up on an old Indian. Hostiles had pulled out of this piece of country ten or fifteen years back and this old feller didn’t look like he’d hold up in a fight. He was so gaunt he could hardly make a shadow, so I weren’t scared at all - just surprised.

He was sitting cross-legged on a granite shelf near a bend in the creek. His head was raised to the sky. His eyes was closed and he looked to be praying to the Great Spirit.

When a body has enough sense to pray they ought to be left well alone, so I concluded to grant the Indian wide berth. Just then the old boy fell over like he was stone dead. I passed some time in my early years amongst the several tribes of Texas so I felt obliged to repay the kindness by giving the old feller a proper Indian burial.

You can imagine the perplexing situation I was strapped with when I seen the old buzzard was still a breathing wouldn’t come to. I figured him for a gone duck. Or just as likely, he was off in the spirit world and may or may not repair to his mortal form. I chose to give the Indian the benefit of all doubt and hold out till he either come to or passed off the stage. I let every dog wag his own tail and I give people the same consideration. So, I kept my eye skinned on him while he maintained that condition for two full days. I was debating my next course of action when he rose as quick as thought to the same sitting position he held when I first laid eyes on him. I don’t know what kicked the lid off, but after he blinked a few times and offered up a right big smile, the old boy started in demanding grub.

Having returned to the land of the living, Tatsen commenced parleying some in sign, then in Sanko, or Comanche. We surmised the only tongue we both savvied enough to make any headway in was Mexican. From then on we come to be fast friends. He saw fit to live with me and my brood on the Llano for the remainder of his life, or eight years.

My woman was full blood Cherokee - Sarah Jane was the White name given to her on the reservation - and to ol’ Tatsen she was akin to a Yankee or outsider. The Kiowa called the immigrant tribes from the east, Adomko or Timber People. At times harder names than that was used as they had been at war in the past. Seems the Adomko come just as the buffalo went, and the two events was too close together to suit the Kiowa. They concluded the Adomko was bad medicine and that was that.

The conglomeration of tongues amongst the three of us was a powerful drawback - what with white, red, and brown talk being tossed about - ‘till we all learned Mexican. After that things improved a mite.

The first few months was pure hell as Sarah bent my ear without letup. When I brung Tatsen home I figured he only had one or two good days left - a week at the outside. Near the shank of the first year it was clear the old buzzard might outlive us all. I stretched the blanket on Tatsen’s prospects till we all growed on each other. Despite Tatsen’s advanced age he was a tolerable hand with the young’uns as he filled the place of a grandpa, though he was not great shakes as a field hand.

Sarah was a handsome Cherokee squaw if there ever was one, and they was a plenty of them believe me. I never did see her equal. So, when she come up with the idea of raising a war party the slow way - one by one, from scratch - she found me right cooperative. Afore my fortieth year on this earth we had eight mouths to feed not counting Sarah’s, Tatsen’s, or mine. They was all healthier than sunshine, but the young’uns didn’t measure up as a war party as five of them was females, which was just as well ‘cause womenfolk work harder, and boys eat too much anyways.

Well, you’ll need to forgive an old fool’s flying off from his story as this here is to be the memories of ol’ Tatsen, or Antelope Horse, as best as I can recount them.

Time came when I noticed the old buzzard had started in hoarding bits and pieces of paper. It wasn’t like him to surrender any facts, so being none too shy myself, I inquired into his new and peculiar habit. It seems Tatsen was transcribing his life’s story into Indian picture writing. Seeing all the odd scraps of paper covered in symbols was mystifying for sure, but on the whole it was an unwieldy mess.

Being fully alive to the situation, I made a gift to Tatsen of a store-keeper’s ledger with enough pages to last as long as life’s lamp stayed lit. I never seen the old boy so moved as he was when I presented him with his ledger or diary. Fact is, the excitement nearly overtook him as he stopped just short of keeling over like he done that first day. The ledger answered Tatsen’s purpose to a fraction. He spent many an evening drawing by the light of a coal oil lamp. And, like a bear recovering from a winter’s sleep, Tatsen seemed possessed of a renewed spirit.

That was the turning point in our affairs. Before that time I figured Tatsen for little more than an old wore out Indian whose time was long gone. Once he started in with that book, he aimed to have at least one person alive that could make sense of it. Being handy singled me out for the task. I was less than a total stranger to Indian picture writing as I had been introduced to it a time or two in my youth - but most of it takes a heap of explaining anyways.

Tatsen was making what is known amongst his race as a Winter Count or picture history. The most important event of the year being rendered with a single picture above a solid bar stood on end. This was their means to recall what had transpired.

It wasn’t ‘till Tatsen began explaining it all that I come to realize he was once a powerful medicine man who had been overcome by a more powerful vision. So, after he taken me into his confidence I too began feeling his sense of urgency and singleness of purpose. Sarah was a mite put off by this turn of events, cussing us both by sections, then by half inches, as Tatsen and I passed a good deal of time back in his old haunts near the sacred mountain where I first come upon him. The place stirred his memory something fierce which was more than a little help to the aging Indian. He was past the century mark and his time, like a bucket full of bullet holes, was fast running out.

Try as I might I never quite lured Tatsen into an account of his life amongst the Kiowa. Despite our bond of friendship, I secured only these few facts:

Tatsen was born in the year of the treaty for peace between his people and the Comanche. I have it on good authority that was in the year of 1789 or ’90. During the next twenty-seven summers he grew into manhood and come to be an eminent medicine man amongst his people with many cures to his credit.

That short description will have to answer for the history of his early years as Tatsen concluded to withhold any further facts. He held that story as a waste of wind. If I was to pass along one sound piece of advice it’d be this - never try to wear down or outlast an Indian. I spent my opinion on the task. I tried and I lost. Sarah, as contrary as she could be at times, was the model of cooperation up next to Tatsen. But she had been around Whites for some time and our impatience rubbed of a mite.

Be that as it may, the singular event that drove Tatsen from his tribe has been a subject of several conversations, and a sadder story has yet to touch these ears.

When a White doctor fails to effect a cure, blame is usually laid at the feet of the patient who, it is held failed in the execution of the doctor’s orders.

Amongst the Indians, cures that come to no effect are no cures at all, and the failure rests on the shoulders of the medicine man. And so it was with Tatsen when his camp was hit hard by a plague of the smallpox. Tatsen had a goodly number of chances to hit upon a cure, but his considerable medicine wasn’t equal to the emergency. Unless he could effect a cure he was washed up as a healer.

Imagine, if you can, that day and time with the village under the darkest cloud of death. Where, from every tipi come the wails of mourners. Day and night, night and day, more and more of the same. Men and women cutting strips of flesh and hunks of hair off of their bodies, women chopping off finger joints, all in honor and grief for the dead and dying. Blood and tears covering bodies from head to toe. I’ve seen such in my time and I swear it was the awfulest sight God or man ever laid eyes on.

Amongst this scene from the bowels of Hell was Tatsen. After fasting for unnumbered days he come upon the final cure in a vision.

Burn everything, especially the dead. Leave all belongings behind, no matter how sacred, in a heap of fire and ash. Leave everything. Walk naked and far away.

There wasn’t a soul that threw in with Tatsen on that cure, as they had lost all faith in his remedies. But he was obliged by his vision to effect the cure for his self. And too, he prayed that some might follow, but none did. So it come to be, on a bony grey-eyed morning, that Tatsen, flat afoot, naked as a newborn, and covered in ashes, in accordance with his vision, left everything he knew. On all sides the constant howls of mourners and the jeers and insults of old friends burned his ears and waylaid his pride.

Tatsen was cut loose from his kin and kind, which was how he come by his name. It meant too that he had no horse under him, and it meant other things to Tatsen over the years. As a fact, Tatsen in Kiowa means antelope horse, or horse that runs with the antelope. From that dark day, ‘till he come to live with us, Tatsen hadn’t run with another living soul.

He struck for the place where the sun goes in the winter, seeking a sacred spot and a vision. Tatsen surmised that without a tolerable cure he could never return in honor amongst his people.

With nothing more than a buffalo robe and a few flint tools he fashioned on his journey, the lone Indian espied a great rock in the south. The pink granite mountain, like a sun fell to earth, laid in the distance. There, Tatsen concluded, was a holy mountain where he could come by a vision and a cure for his people.

So he lit out for the mountain, or the enchanted rock, with great hope in his heart. Had he known the sad result he might have crawled in a hole and pulled it in after him.

Tatsen passed some time on the land close around the mountain before he dared climb to its summit. As he had left all his belongings in a smoldering heap he had no personal medicine to aid him in his prayers to the Great Spirit. He had no eagle feathers, or pipe, or offering to smoke. First he had to appeal to whatever powers might take pity on him for guidance in the creation of a medicine bundle. Then he had to make ready, inside and out, for his parley with the mountain spirit.

Two long years transpired before the medicine man stood on the banks of the Sandy gazing up to his destination. He prayed a great vision was waiting. So, he held out atop the enchanted rock for days, as was the Indian custom, crying for a vision. Tatsen lost all sense of time and his self  before he blanked out. He come to and passed out time and again. Then, in a delirium next to madness, he rolled and crawled and clawed his way back down, through boulders and cactus, to the life-giving waters of Sandy Creek. There he sucked nourishment from Mother Earth like a baby on a sugar tit. Then he crawled, and then he walked again. He emerged from the backside of nowhere in one piece, but he had no vision to speak of. As the years wore on, Tatsen learned a great deal from Gahe, the spirit of the mountain, and gathered much personal power. But when he fasted and prayed for a cure for the spotted sickness he always come up empty.

Finally, in a dream, he followed the cry of a hawk to a place where the red clay was found. Again the cry come in his dream and the hawk directed him back to his camp on the banks of the Sandy and the white ashes of the fire.

As Tatsen pondered the meaning of his dream he wasted no time at all helping it come to pass. In haste he made ready for a journey.

Then low over head come the cry of a hawk, and the whole of his dream was coming to life. He gave his self over to the guidance of the spirit hawk and afore long he found his self again on the summit of the enchanted rock crying for a vision.

This time he mixed the white ashes and the powdered red clay in two dried gourds with juices of prickly pear and spring water from the foot of the sacred mountain.

Then he commenced to cover his self from head to toe in the white ash paint. Next he painted big red dots over the whole affair using the red clay paint. That done he give up offering and prayers to the Great Spirit hoping to come by a cure. He wasn’t long in beholding a vision.

The hawk appeared in the vision and Tatsen followed it in the spirit world down Sandy Creek to where it joined the Colorado. The hawk called again and Tatsen followed the call down the Colorado to a strange and dangerous place, that being the new home of the White intruders.

Then Tatsen come to be wrapped up in a fog or cloud and he could see nothing but the fierce hawk eyes which spoke to him in a voice that come from ever where at once. The spotted sickness was a disease of the Whites, the hawk told him, and the only hope for a cure would come from them.

And then the fog cleared and Tatsen sang for joy while his heart was flopping against his ribs like a catfish in a sack. He was still shy a cure but he finally come by a powerful vision. He had no way of knowing what trials awaited him, but he knew his life hadn’t measured up to his dreams and, at any cost, he aimed to hit upon a cure, even if it meant stealing or even begging one from the Whites.

So Tatsen pulled stakes and set his sights on a place he never seen beyond his visions or dreaming - such was his faith. Down the Sandy he traveled till night was closing in. He struck camp without benefit of fire and ate a fare of dried venison and pecans afore sleep overtook him. Neither that day nor in his dreams that night was there the faintest sign of his spirit guide or hawk. Tatsen took up the journey early the next morning and by the shank of the day there was a deep dread on his mind as he was in strange country and there hadn’t been the least sign of a hawk.

He had skirted more than a few White homesteads and was as cautious as a cat in the process. Seeing nary a sign of his spirit guide he was divided against his self as to whether he should return to the sacred mountain when a hawk come so low overhead he could feel the wind in its wings.

His heart rose with the hawk and sailed beyond the far trees. So it was that he concluded his second day.

After the sun had fairly risen the third day he was well into the land of the Whites. He was slow making headway as he crept from rock to rock careful not to leave the slightest sign as there was one fierce war going on between the Whites and Comanche, and dander was a constant.

Over a ridge come the reports of gunfire and the yell of Comanche in attack. Tatsen concealed his self in a skirt of timber on a ridge with a grand view of the valley. What he witnessed was a catastrophe for the Comanche as a scout of Whites, being masters of the situation, made short work of their enemy.

The Comanche come in from the northwest hooting and yelling, as was their custom, and weaving from side to side. The whole party took on the likeness of a mess of snakes slithering through the valley. The Comanche made fight but to no account as they was quickly disposed of, for the Whites poured on a deadly fire thick as hail. The Comanche were emptied from their mounts to a man, and left upon the ground. As usual the Indians Dogwood switches wasn’t up to scratch next to the Whites’ fire sticks.

The victors commenced firing a time or two each into everything that had the shape of a fallen Comanche. Two Whites lit into the dead Indians lifting a goodly number of scalps, popping them off one after the other. The main force put for the southeast, cutting dust across the hills with a drove of Indian horses to their credit. Shortly the scalpers pulled out, stacking the landscape behind them tailing the rest of their party along the same line as Tatsen’s vision was to take him. Tatsen held out for some time, secreted in a thicket of live oak, afore he was disposed to commence the remainder of his journey. Dead Indians was every where as plentiful as pig tracks near a corn crib. Only one White had fallen in the foray and he was abandoned without so much as a backwards glance. Tatsen held out some hope that the dead enemy fell with provisions and weapons.

It never dawned on Tatsen to lay a hand on the dead Comanche. They was allies to his people. What weapons or medicine they carried had failed in their protection and being bad medicine they was worse than useless to boot.

But a slain enemy was fair game. As Tatsen had not pitched into the battle he drew off from counting coup or taking scalp. The enemy lay face down, and as the wary Kiowa rolled him over, ready to finish the deed if need be, Tatsen saw he was Mexican. The man had his note taken in for certain, and on the inspiration of the moment, Tatsen stripped the feller of his suit of clothes. This was accomplished with some difficulty for his duds fit as tight as a bottle. Tatsen tied his booty in a bundle, slung it over his shoulder, and took off like a shot out of a shovel.

The old boy hardly slept at all after that, itchy as he was to conclude his journey and repair to the safety of the mountains. Finally, dead ahead, he come upon the settlement of Hornsby's Bend, on the banks of the Colorado. Under the cover of night he adopted the garb of the fallen Mexican and entered the settlement. As he did he stepped into a living dream world. All manner of things crowded in on one another, and his thoughts flopped about like a frog caught in a bucket. Such a commotion as he had never witnessed continued well into the night as the Whites went about taking in the many and varied activities of the settlement.

Tatsen’s heart was filled with dread. He could make no sense of their words. All told, the Whites looked alike, as did their lodges. If a medicine man was among them he was well concealed. These people was from a different world. Tatsen pondered his fix for some time. Would White medicine work on the Indian? The Whites planted themselves in rows of square lodges while the Indians, on the move, passed their lives in round tipis drawn into a circle. Tatsen knew there was medicine in everything, and in everything the Whites was different.

Tatsen’s vision fell to pieces in the muddy streets of Hornsby's Bend. He wanted no part of these Whites and their medicine. Even if he had a mind to steal the cure, where would he commence? It was a sad fate that befell Tatsen. I reckon the Great Spirit oversized Tatsen’s pile as the old boy gave it his best lick but was waylaid by events.

As Tatsen was not equal to the emergency, there was nothing left for the exiled Indian but the sacred mountain and the dreary prospect of an uncertain and solitary future. He was never so empty in body and spirit as was on his return up the Colorado and thence the Sandy and his adopted home. I have no cause to doubt Tatsen’s claim that he wept the whole way.

Soon after Tatsen repaired to his mountain he witnessed something that, after everything else, wore his spirit to a numb. He wasn’t the only Indian to see the event. It was the talk of the Plains and come to be called the Winter the Stars Fell, or the Winter of the Storm of Stars.

So plentiful were the falling stars in one night it turned dark into day, showering light bright enough to wake the Indians in their tipis. Stepping outside they watched the heavens fall until daybreak, knowing all along no good would come of it.

Considering all that come to be visited upon the Indians, it don’t take a lick of brain work to figure it was a might bad omen. Though considerable food for thought, it weren’t very nourishing. I know for a fact, Tatsen chewed the bitter end of reflection the balance of his days.

Well, there’s more to this story, but it will have to wait a spell. I won’t hold off for long though, cause I know this old voice won’t last forever. 

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©1999 Ira Kennedy "The Last Winter Count" is a work of Faction