The picture is from fillupe ....... Black Heart and John Y Nelson .... just look at that tipi ... isn't that terrific ?? thought I'd add a bit about John ... he was quite a character !!
John Young Nelson known as “Cha-Sha-Sha-O-Pogeo”
John Y. Nelson one of the most colorful of the Western frontiersmen, traveled with Buffalo Bill for approximately 10 years. He was an audience favorite in the Buffalo Bill Combination shows during the 1870's and with the Wild West Show in the 1880's.
Born August 25 1826 in Charleston Virginia of “American parents” John Young Nelson ran away from home about age 12. After making his way to Missouri - he joined a party of traders going further west. Along the way he developed excellent shooting, hunting, and horsemanship skills. The trading party encountered a large band of Sioux on the Platte River - the first Native Americans Nelson had ever seen. He became fascinated by their culture and wanted to learn all about them. He kept going to their camp refusing to leave even as the traders moved on without him.
Being stuck with the young boy - the Sioux adopted him and gave him the name “Cha-Sha-Sha-O-Pogeo”, or “Redwood Fill the Pipe”. ( Because of its flavor - Nelson was fond of putting red willow powder in the tobacco he smoked.) From the Sioux he learned all about the plains buffalo, hunting and scounting skills, and became an accurate reporter of Sioux life.
Since Nelson spoke both English and the Sioux language, he became valuable in trading transactions. In one such encounter, Nelson met Brigham Young, leading a party of Mormons to Utah. Nelson agreed to guide them on their journey. He became a scout for the US Army in 1857. In that capacity, he was with the troops that arrived too late to prevent the Mountain Meadows Massacre in southern Utah. He spoke with some of the few children who survived and, in his autobiography, provides a near-witness account of what happened.
The 1878 Buffalo Bill Cody Combination show "May Cody, or Lost and Won", which is advertised in a recently discovered billboard from that time, was based on this incident in American history. It was the first time that Bill Cody had hired Sioux friends to take part in one of his shows. Nelson began as a translator for the Sioux and became a featured performer as well. A life-size image of him (a major part of the 1878 historic billboard) has now been restored and is on display in the Reg Lenna Civic Center in Jamestown, NY.
Several years followed of Nelson's being a guide, hunter, trader, pony express rider, cattle driver, bartender, and sheriff, and a driver of the Deadwood Stage. His autobiography records a “run out” with Bill Cody .......
“I had known him since 1857, when he was driving teams along the route. He and I were very good friends, and a good deal of his knowledge of the country round he owed to me.”
Cody once convinced Nelson to go out on the prairie on a hunting trip, despite the fact that Nelson had a bullet in his leg. Seventy miles out, something startled the horses, leaving both men alone in the wilderness without transportation. Cody left Nelson with some food and walked a great distance to get help - which came remarkably soon and saved Nelson's life.
During the time of the re-settling of Native Americans on reservations, Nelson was officially recognized by the US government as a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe and received land on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
“My wife, children and myself had a claim for land, farming implements, rations, goods, and in fact everything that the treaty guaranteed. I may here state that I have never asked for anything myself - but in time the land will become very valuable provided the government does not steal it - which I think it will do sooner or later.”
(Quotes are from Fifty Years on the Trail - The Adventures of John Young Nelson as described to Harrington O’Reilly 1889)
