This is a true story, told to me by my great aunt when I was very small. Long ago, when the Comanche were a free people, there was a young man of the Tanima band (liver eaters) who was married to twin sisters and had twins

with both of these women. This was considered very note worthy since the Comanche experienced a very high infant mortality rate, the whole band considered this family their own, and lavished gifts upon them. Gift giving was a method to show your affection and love, your respect and admiration, but was also a method to show contempt, and insult someone. If you gave them a broken knife, or some other object that was of little or no use, this could be an insult. A dog turd in a leather pouch was often given for this effect. The people of the band all gave what they could with love and devotion. The young father began to get the “big forehead”, thinking that these gifts and affection were a reflection of him, and his being, and not his beautiful family.

Time went on, the young father went on a raid into Mexico, (around 1855) and on this raid three brothers were killed by Mexicans, and left the parents with no sons, or children since the brothers were all young and had no families of their own. The parents were devastated and in their grief they gave away their sons possessions to other band members in a ceremony to mark their grief. They gave the young father one old mule that had belonged to their sons, and had carried the sons when they were babies, they wanted the “Twins” to have the mule, and insisted upon that. The young father thought the gift to be an insult, and became belligerent, but his twin wives reminded him that the old man was a very well liked medicine man and many would be disappointed with him if he did not accept the mule. A few weeks later, the young family was moving across the prairie with all their possessions [packed on horses and the babies (all four) strapped to the mule (two on each side). Ponca warriors attacked the band and in the confusion the people all ran in different direct- ions, the young father was wounded and knocked off his horse. The last thing he saw was the mule running away in a panic with his two sets of twin babies, right into the middle of the attacking Ponca horsemen. His heart sank then and there. After the battle, the survivors regrouped the young family were together again except for the babies, they were no where to be found, among the dead, or living. The survivors of the band searched and searched until their food ran out days later, and they still searched on their way back to the big camp.

All of them were shattered at the loss of the babies, thinking the Ponca had found them and slaughtered them, which the Ponca often did to Comanche babies. As they approached the big camp, one young scout wheeled his horse around and rode to the rear of the column to report to the young father a war leader that he could see the old mule tied up in front of the old medicine man’s lodge. They rode up hard on the lodge and ran into the old couples tepee, (a very rude thing to do) and found the old couple playing with the babies. The young man was instantly humiliated by his own actions, his arrogance and conceit, all of these previous actions came to him and he felt ashamed of himself, he thought himself to be the lowest of the low. The old man looked up at him from the floor of the lodge, and told him that he and his wife loved the babies as their own, and wanted them to have the old mule because they loved the old mule, and the old mule loved them. That was why the old mule ran in the direction he did with screaming babies on both sides. He was not in a panic; he was just going home, with babies he thought belonged to the old couple. The mule had done the same thing with their sons several times before. The young father felt even lower than before, for his scorn of the gift, and not seeing the love these two old, now childless Comanche's, had for his babies. He asked them to be his family members (we still adopt grandparents to this day, in remembrance of this occasion) and they lived to be very old and saw the children of the two sets of twins’ come into the world.“ He whom love touches not, lives in darkness". The young warrior was my great grand- father, the twins were my great aunts and uncles.  

This is a true story as told to Gael Montana

by Jake Harrison . . .