When the Kiowas were routed in Palo Duro Canyon
by the cavalry, they were herded to Fort Sill,
and they were imprisoned in the old stone
corral which still stands.
And their ponies, their horses, the Kiowas
were said to own more horses than any other-- per capita,
than any other tribe on the Great Plains.
Their horses were destroyed within their hearing.
800 ponies were killed.
In The Ancient Child, which is a novel that
was published in 1989, there is the story
of a contemporary artist, a painter, whose name is
Set, Catlin Set, Locke Setman.
And he's a painter who has achieved great success.
He lives in San Francisco.
He was orphaned at a very young age, raised by a professor,
retired philosopher, a man of very great humanity
whose name is Bent.
And Set becomes a great painter.
But the more success he achieves, the more limited
he becomes in the expression of his own creativity.
And I want to read first of all a passage about Set.
"By the time he was 30, Locke Setman,
called Set by all who knew him, had found the truest expression
of his spirit in painting.
At 35 he had made a considerable reputation,
having received several important awards
and attracted the attention of critics and collectors
throughout the country.
It was fashionable and expensive to own one of his paintings.
At 40 he was in the first rank of American artists,
and he was in danger of losing his soul.
Innumerable demands were made upon him.
He came to understand that success
in terms of fame and fortune was costly in other terms.
More and more often he was asked to compromise his art
or himself in one way or another.
And more often than not, he did so.
For he was inclined to be passive and naive,
it was difficult for him to say no.
Those who exhibited his work who praised and purchased it
and who demanded its proliferation
began to determine it.
Set went along.
He enjoyed celebrity.
It was wonderful to be recognized, to be sought after,
to be admired and envied and imitated.
Men of means invited him to their clubs,
prevailed upon him to speak at their luncheons,
gave parties in his honor.
Women took notice of him, approached him,
laid claim to him, and he went along.
There were times when the disillusionment
was so great that he wept.
It was such a fine thing to paint, to see something,
a human face or an orchard or a moon rolling,
and to render, to make a picture of it
according to his vision which was unique, to see
and to paint with excitement, with a child's excitement that
is what brought him to life.
The child says, here, see, this bird
I have painted it is what I have seen in my soul.
is it not a wonderful thing?
Is this not a good way of seeing?
Set strove to see and to image what
he saw as truly as he could so that others could see
as he did so that they could see in a way
they had not seen before.
But it seemed no one cared about that, no one
among his associates, his public.
He wanted a child to come to his studio
to look at the splatter of paint on the walls, the floor,
his easel, to see the drawings on the walls,
to touch his or her hands to the thickly painted linen plain,
to say to the child, just look at this yellow, how
it vibrates, look at the blues how they make a mystery.
Could you have imagined a blue like this?
And for a moment the child's eyes
would have been wide with wonder,
but the dealers and critics were narrow eyed and glib
and there were calculations in all their faces.
Notwithstanding there was conviction in him
and a commitment to be his own man.
Therefore he struggled.
Now at 44 he found himself in a difficult position.
He had compromised more than he knew.
He had squandered much of his time and talent.
He had become sick and tired.
He remembered a time in which he had painted
for the sake of painting, out of some wild exuberance
in his spirit.
He had been full of excitement, the excitement of learning,
of experimenting, of feeling his ability
and his accomplishment come close together.
But he had committed his time and his work virtually all
of it to his public.
At every breath it seemed another painting or promise
came due.
Moreover, he had ceased to grow in his work.
He wanted to paint a tree, but he
was obliged to paint a house.
He wanted to paint small, but he was obliged to paint large.
He wanted to do something he had never done,
but he was obliged to do the same thing again and again
without end.
He had become sick and tired, and he
did the only thing he could think
to do under the circumstances.
He withdrew, not completely, not all at once but deliberately.
He would fulfill his obligations to be sure.
Indeed he would give the best that was in him.
But he would first and last be true to himself.
He would endeavor to save his soul.
About the same time, he painted a self-portrait, a full length
study in acrylic on paper.
It was a good likeness, though Set was not a portraitist,
and the likeness though close was stylized, essentially
abstract.
Blues and greens and an ivory predominate upon a background
of brown and black.
The figure faces us in a relaxed attitude,
standing with feet well apart, the hands
on the hips, work clothes splashed with paint
hang as on a mannequin.
The body appears to be that of a tall man.
The torso is long though the shoulders and thighs are well
rounded like the shoulders and thighs of a swimmer.
The hands and feet are slim.
The arms and neck disproportionately long but
somehow in keeping with the general character
of the portrait.
The head is inclined slightly to one side.
The hair is blue and grey and unkempt of a length that nearly
covers the ears.
The face is strong with a high broad forehead,
straight nose, a sturdy jaw on the chin cleanly set.
The expression is inscrutable, but we take it to be benign.
The mouth, which is full might describe the faintest of smile.
The eyes are slightly narrow as if the subject
is looking into the sun.
The gaze is level and penetrating.
The portrait is that of a thoughtful and well-meaning
man, a man of intelligence, some experience, a man of sorrow,
a man of deep feelings.
Set imagined it was to please, but it
was to astonish God that he painted.
His presumption and arrogance were pronounced and dangerous
for they would certainly lead to the sin of despair thence
to death and nothingness.
Bent said so half in jest, only half.
Rather as Set himself said on occasion he
painted in vain in order to relieve
the terrible boredom of God.
He expounded God's burden is infinite.
Surely we humans even with our etiquette and our institutions
and our mothers-in-law ceased to amuse him many ages ago.
What sustains him is the satisfaction far deeper
than we can know of having created
a few incomparable, landscapes, waters, birds, and beasts.
It takes particular pride in the stars
and it pleases him to breathe havoc upon the ocean.
He sighs to the music of the desert at dawn.
The eagle and the whale give him still to ponder and admire.
And so must he grieve for the mastodon and the archaeopteryx.
But bear-- [SIGHS] he used both hands when he made the bear.
Imagine a bear proceeding from the hands of God."
The girl Grey in the novel is half Navajo, half Kiowa.
She is a medicine woman.
Set's destiny is to run to the edge of the world and beyond.
He is the boy bear.
He is the reincarnation of the boy who turned into a bear,
there's a legend about this in Kiowa storytelling.
So he has this bear power in him and he
has to discover it in the course of the novel.
He has to deal with it.
And at the end he must come to a confrontation with the bear.
Grey, the girl assists him.
She is a medicine woman, a 19-year-old medicine
woman which is fairly rare.
They're generally older than that.
But she's very beautiful.
She's very learned and she assists
him and she falls in love with him
and she finally becomes pregnant by him.
She doesn't give birth by the time the novel is finished,
but there is this in the offing.
And Set comes to the confrontation.
Well, Grey is a creature of great imaginative powers
and she fantasizes about Billy the Kid.
She knows more than other people do about Billy the Kid
and she writes in the course of this novel,
she writes a kind of paean to Billy,
a piece of 21 parts, 21 poems and short prose pieces,
one for each year of Billy the Kid's life.
She imagines that she assists him in his most trying moments
when he escapes, for example, from the Lincoln County
courthouse.
She imagines that it is she who goes to the courthouse
and passes him the note on a thin strip of cigarette paper
as she shakes his hand.
She passes the note which reads latrine,
and Billy the Kid knows at that point
that a gun is secreted in the latrine.
And so he goes down with Bell one of his guards
and there in a folded up copy of the New Mexican, which
I think is entirely appropriate, is the pistol,
the gun which he then places in his belt
and he's shackled hand and foot like Set-angya
and he leads Bell up the steps, Bell his guard.
And at a certain moment he turns.
Having taken the gun from his belt
and he turns and the gun is in Bell's face.
This is the greatest escape story
I think in American literature, and it's true.
That's what makes it wonderful.
He says to Bell, I don't want to hurt you.
You have been good to me unlike Olinger, the other guard,
who has taunted Billy and made his life miserable.
Billy says to Bell, I don't want to hurt you.
For God's sake, don't do anything foolish
because I'll kill you if I have to.
And Bell is, of course, humiliated
and overcome by having the tables turned on him.
And so he tries to escape.
They're on the stairs and the first--
the first stairway goes down to a landing
and then there's a right angle and there's another stairway
down to the street.
And Bell foolishly decides that he can make a break for it
and if he turns that blind corner he's safe,
but what he doesn't take into account, of course,
is that there is behind him the greatest coordination of mind
and muscle in the Southwest.
So he makes a break for it and Billy is very sad
to see him do that.
And there are these two shots.
One strikes Bell in the back and spins him around the corner
and he's dead, falls into the street.
Olinger who is in the Wortley Hotel across the street
in Lincoln hears a shot.
He thinks.
He's suddenly very alert drinking his lunch.
And he said, did I hear a shot?
What's going on?
So he ventures out into the street, crosses the street
and as he's under the window he hears Billy's familiar voice,
hello, Bob.
And he looks up into the twin barrels of his own shotgun.
His signature was a double barreled shotgun.
Unfortunately, he left it in the courthouse
when he went to lunch and Billy got hold of it.
And so Billy shoots him.
I could go into the gory details of that, but I think I won't.
He makes his escape and Grey fantasizes
about him in this way.
She assists him in that great moment in his life.
She's with him at other moments in his life.
She tells him about Set-angya, chief of the Kaitsenko Society,
the Kiowa chief of the Crazy Dog Society,
who is the model of bravery and courage to her.
And she says, Billy, all I want to tell you about this old man,
he was--
he was a wonderful man.
He was the leader of the Kaitsenko Society.
He went and gathered up the bones of his son.
He orchestrated his own death, laughing, singing.
At the time what a wonderfully courageous and brave man?
Billy, if you had been there in that time and place,
you would have been a member of the Kaitsenko Society.
Billy says, mm-hmm.
The man you're talking about was truly brave.
He did great things.
To go and gather up the bones of his son in that way
and to carry them around and then
to die in the way he did that was brave.
But I am not afraid.
And she's a little put off by his protestations.
And she said, oh, wait a minute, Billy,
you remember the time in Lincoln when you killed Sheriff Brady?
Remember that?
Brady had confiscated that rifle from you in February
and then three months later, you shot him dead in the street
and there he had lots of men with him.
You had lots of men with you.
There was this kind of general warfare
in the street of Lincoln.
Bullets were flying back and forth.
You went out to gather up-- to fetch your gun
and you were wounded in the leg or hit the thigh.
You remember that?
You were crippled.
You couldn't ride for days after that.
That was brave.
It's a brave thing to do.
And Billy says, no, that wasn't brave.
That was stupid.
And so they go on like this for a time
and he says, besides, there's one other reason,
there's another reason I could not belong to the Kaitsenko
Society.
I can't sing.
So she imagines a meeting between Billy the Kid
and Set-angya.
"The old man sat on the ground, his head bent,
his legs crossed.
Within his reach was the bundle of bones, the bones of his son.
There was a sound and he brought his head up sharply glaring.
The young man was standing a few feet
away beside a pomme blanche waiting respectfully
for the old man to acknowledge him.
Respectfully too, he was looking not directly at the old man
nor at the bones of his son, but to one side where there
was a small stand of willows.
Haw!
How long have you been--
how long have you been standing there?
He said.
Clearly the old man was unsettled, perhaps ashamed
of being taken by surprise.
Not long, Billy said.
Well, well, what-- what do you want?
I come to pay my respects.
I come to visit you and your son.
Here's tobacco.
Haw!
Ahó.
You know my son?
In a way.
In a way?
There was a pause in which the old man seemed
to ponder this "in a way."
He looked down at the bundle of bones,
crushing a pinch of the tobacco in his fingers then up again.
You are about the same age I think.
Yes.
And do you-- do you know me too in a way?
You are Set-angya, Sitting Bear, a warrior and chief
as great as his name.
Over all the prairies you are famous for your bravery
and your deeds.
Your mind is true, your words are true,
and your heart is true.
The eagle knows your name.
The buffalo knows your name.
The bear knows your name.
The white man knows your name.
You are Set-angya, chief of the Kaitsenko Society,
chief of the Crazy Dogs, chief of the dog soldiers.
Yours are the best of warriors, yours are the best of battles,
yours are the best of enemies.
You are Set-angya, who does not surrender his son to death,
who dares to withhold victory from even
the greatest of all enemies, hear
me, old man brave to madness.
Oh my warrior, you and your son great chief,
you are worthy of each other in your courage and loyalty
and love and bigness of spirit.
Your son in his bones and you and your flesh and blood
are of the same sacred mystery, the same medicine
most powerful.
Hear me.
I am honored to make you this speech,
to make you this respectful visit,
to stand here in your company, oh Sitting Bear, yours
and your son.
I have spoken.
Oh, you have spoken well, said the old man.
Gravely, after the appropriate silence, now--
now, I know you.
I know you.
You are surely a famous orator among your people.
Well, no, sir.
My son, my son I do not admire modesty.
I like boasting.
I love to boast and I love others
to boast if they have something to boast about.
You have very pretty words about you.
Why don't you boast of them?
Well, I'm right proud you like my speech, sir.
But to tell you the truth, it ain't mine.
You see my girlfriend wrote it up and I learnt it.
I cannot read.
I cannot read myself.
I memorized it and then I declaimed it.
Why?
I wanted you to like me.
Yes.
I wanted to talk to you about death,
but I'm a man of few words.
Yeah, yes, there is something about you.
There is a sign, a mark upon you.
And there was a mark upon my son and there is a mark upon me.
But I am an old man and so for me it matters very little.
But my son, and you, you are young men
and you are marked men.
There is a thing heavy on my heart.
I have so few words and I wanted you to like me.
I know you in a way.
I'm a dead man.
Yes.
Tell me, did you achieve your death in the proper way?
I guess so.
It happened so fast and I wasn't expecting it,
not at that moment though I had been
looking into the shadows for a long time.
My son died in the proper way.
So did you.
You've heard about that?
Yes, so they say.
You know, there was not a whimper, no pleading, no shame.
I had no time for any of that.
Yes, yes yes.
I think neither did my son.
But I had time, and I neither whimpered nor pled.
Rather I sang.
I can't sing."
Well,
that's enough.
[APPLAUSE]