Early Life: Buffalo Bull Facing The Wind
Plenty Coups was born into the Mountain Crow tribe in 1848 at the-cliffs-that-have-no-name (possibly near Billings, Montana), to his father Medicine-Bird and his mother Otter-woman. He was given the birth name Chíilaphuchissaaleesh, or "Buffalo Bull Facing The Wind".
At the time of his birth, the Crow nation's numbers had been decimated by smallpox from contact with white foreigners, reducing their population from between ten and fifteen thousand members down to around one- to two-thousand. Surrounding tribes took advantage of their reduced numbers and were incessantly attacking the Crows, in particular the Sioux. Additionally, all Indian nations, including the Crow, were under heavy pressure from foreigners who were exterminating bison and squeezing the various Indian nations together to compete for land and food, which created a peak of inter-tribal warfare at this time. Plenty Coups grew up facing perhaps the most difficult times his people had seen in many years, perhaps their history.
Read more about this topic: Plenty Coups
Famous quotes containing the words early, buffalo, bull, facing and/or wind:
“I don’t believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“As I started with her out of the city warmly enveloped in buffalo furs, I could not but think how nice it would be to drive on and on, so that nobody should ever catch us.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“Not only the bull attacks his enemies with curved horn, but also the sheep, when harmed fights back.”
—Propertius Sextus (c. 50–16 B.C.)
“Stupidity, outrage, vanity, cruelty, iniquity, bad faith, falsehood—we fail to see the whole array when it is facing in the same direction as we.”
—Jean Rostand (1894–1977)
“Indoors or out, no one relaxes
In March, that month of wind and taxes,
The wind will presently disappear,
The taxes last us all the year.”
—Ogden Nash (1902–1971)