Arrow here is chasing a young cougar, which still retains some of its juvenile pelage---an animal which Cheyennes call Nanoseham epavevoxtav, "beautiful spotted panther" (Petter, 1915: 661 & 1003). As noted earlier with Plate 21, cougar skins were a favorite material for constructing bowcase-quiver sets. Skins of spotted cougars were especially desirable. White, crescent-shaped cougar claws were evocative of the Moon, and its protective properties, and so were commonly tied to a man's scalplock, or to the fringes of his clothing (Moore, 1974: 153). Another Cheyenne drawing, done by Soaring Eagle within three or four years of this composition, shows the artist lancing a spotted cougar (Petersen, 1971: Plate 53).

This may be the same horse shown in the previous Plate, although its coat is represented as dark brown, rather than black. We recognize the rider as Arrow, from the small feather tied into the horse's tail. He wears the same beaded leggings seen in Plates 34, 66, 88 & 160; and the same silk shirt as in Plates 100, 120 & 130. Arrow's face is painted entirely red, with three, short, vertical lines on each temple. These may represent the parhelion, or "Sun Dogs", an atmospheric phenomenon of crisp, winter weather, and are similar to the war-shield design shown in Plate 164. Although primary data for Cheyenne usage of the "parhelion" design is lacking, their Algonkian cousins the Blackfeet consider Sun Dogs to be the especial war paint of the Sun (McClintock, 1968: 487).

Col. Richard Dodge, describing Cheyennes of his acquaintance, observed almost exactly what Arrow portrays here:

"The gun is generally enveloped in a case of buckskin, sometimes elaborately fringed and beaded. The pistol is carried in a buckskin holster attached to the belt" (Dodge, 1882: 423).

A pretty clear indication that most of the rifles and carbines Arrow shows himself using were in fact borrowed, is that here he carries a Pennsylvania flintlock "long rifle", perhaps converted to caplock, with a bullet pouch and powder horn. Although we cannot see the lock mechanism, the extreme length of the barrel, and brass patchbox plate on the stock, identify the type of firearm.

If either of the Winchester carbines seen previously were regularly available to Arrow, it is unlikely he would have chosen to use instead what is essentially an 18th-century weapon. This points up again the central dilemma for the Cheyennes trying to defend themselves during the 1870's: their arsenal was haphazard, of multiple calibers, and spanned more than a century of development, from the antequated model shown here, to the 1873 Winchester---the most advanced firearm of its time.

Arrow was not the only Southern Cheyenne forced to defend his family and their country with such slow, and often unreliable weapons. During the battle of the Washita, when Lt. Col. George Custer's Seventh Cavalry destroyed Black Kettle's village in November 1868, Major Joel Elliott led sixteen cavalrymen on a three-mile chase along the ice-choked river, after a large group of wading women and children. They were defended only by a young Cheyenne and a visiting Kiowa youth, both of whom had only arrows, and the elderly chief Little Rock, who had a muzzle-loading long rifle. All of the Cheyennes were virtually naked, having been driven from their beds at dawn, and the cavalrymen were firing at them the whole way. The brave Little Rock was shot through the head, and several of the terrified women had been wounded, when a relief force coming from nearby Kiowa and Arapaho villages surrounded Elliott's men, and killed them all.

George Bent reported, "Some of these Cheyenne women went over to where those dead soldiers lay" (Hyde, 1968: 321). One of these enraged women---probably the old wife of Little Rock---brought his long rifle, and with it as a club she smashed the heads of the men who had burned her home, and had tried to kill her and her children, until she broke the stock. We know the rifle was broken there, because six weeks later the Army went back to find Elliott and his men. In describing their bodies, Custer himself observed:

"I saw a portion of the stock of a 'Lancaster rifle' protruding from the side of one of the men. The stock had been broken off near the barrel, and the butt of it, probably twelve inches in length, had been driven into the man's side a distance of eight inches" (Carroll, 1978: 69).