61 pages • 2 hours read
James WelchFools Crow
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1986A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
At eighteen winters of age, White Man’s Dog, a member of the Lone Eaters band of the Pikunis, has yet to distinguish himself as a warrior. Unlike his father, Rides-at-the-door, who has “many horses and three wives” (3), he has “three horses and no wives” and does not own a decent gun (3). He dreams of possessing a “many shots gun” that will allow him to make name for himself in battle and obtain “plenty of wives, children, horses, meat” (4). As White Man’s Dog imagines his future as a successful warrior and husband to many women, he thinks about his father’s youngest wife, Kills-close-to-the-lake, “and the way she sometimes [looks] at him” (4). He has still never touched the body of a woman, something that his friends often mock him for. He asks “Seven Persons and all the Above Ones [the stars/constellations] to take pity on him, to forgive him his bad thoughts, to light his way” (5).
Chapter 2 Summary
On his way to his father’s lodge, White Man’s Dog meets his friend, Fast Horse, who tells him about a raid led by Yellow Kidney, an experienced warrior, against the Crows’ horses that leaves the next day. Fast Horse plans to use the raid to obtain the wealth he needs to marry. If White Man’s Dog goes with them to help, he will be able to keep as many horses as he can take. White Man’s Dog is excited by the prospect of distinguishing himself in the raid but reminds Fast Horse that he has been unlucky for a long time and has received “no song, no vision” from his animal helper (7). He fears that without “good medicine,” he will be killed by the Crows (8). Fast Horse tells his friend that Mik-api, a powerful “many-faces man,” has promised to perform a ceremony that evening to give White Man’s Dog “some strong medicine” to make him brave (8). White Man’s Dog is reassured and agrees to join. In the lodge that night, Rides-at-the-door, White Man’s Dog’s father, thinks that he has not seen his elder son this lively and happy in a long time. Unlike his younger son, Running Fisher, who has already taken two horses from the Cutthroats, White Man’s Dog often seems “morose, even timid” and has been suspected by some of choosing “the coward’s way” (10). As he watches his son laugh and tell stories, Rides-at-the-door hopes that White Man’s Dog is changing for the better.
Chapter 3 Summary
Yellow Kidney waits for Fast Horse and White Man’s Dog with the other men who are accompanying them on the raid to the Crow camp. Yellow Kidney worries about bringing White Man’s Dog because he is unlucky and could bring misfortune on their mission. He is also concerned because he knows Fast Horse to be “boastful and reckless”: “such a man in a small party like this could bring disaster on all of them” (12). On their journey to the Crow camps, Fast Horse tells the group about a dream he had in which “Cold Maker” came to him and told him about an ice spring “hidden in the rocks on the side of Woman Don’t Walk Butte” over which a rock has fallen, keeping Cold Maker from drinking from the spring (14). If Fast Horse moves the rock, Cold Maker will make their raid successful; if he does not, he will punish him and his party. After their raid, Fast Horse must bring Cold Maker “two prime bull robes for [his] daughters during the help-to-eat moon” (14).
On the fifth day of the expedition, they reach the Big River and “ford the Big River downstream” to avoid the ranch of Malcolm Clark, a Napikwan who used to be friendly with the Pikunis but has turned hostile (15). Yellow Kidney worries about the possibility of conflict with the Napikwans especially now that “Owl Child and his gang” have been “causing trouble with the Napikwans, driving away horses and cattle and killing “a party of woodcutters” (16). During the journey, White Man’s Dog has a recurring dream in which “a young white-faced girl” throws off her “sleeping robe” and opens her arms to him; just as he moves toward her in the dream, he wakes up (17). He worries about what this dream might mean for their raid but does not tell any of the men about it.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
The first chapters introduce White Man’s Dog as the protagonist and suggest that the novel will chronicle White Man’s Dog’s development from a hesitant, insecure adolescent into a prominent individual in his community. White Man’s Dog is initially deeply self-conscious and insecure about his lack of experience with war and with women–two key ways in which Pikuni culture evaluates manhood. During their journey, however, Yellow Kidney is impressed by White Man’s Dog’s levelheadedness; he recognizes that these traits will serve the younger man well, both on the raid and in life in general.
The character of White Man’s Dog contrasts with that of Fast Horse. Unlike White Man’s Dog, Fast Horse is arrogant, rash, boastful, and popular with women; many in the Lone Eaters camp believe that he will go on to become a great warrior. However, Yellow Kidney worries that Fast Horse’s arrogance and fixation on personal wealth and glory could jeopardize the success of the raid.
These chapters also introduce the fact that the growing numbers of Napikwans on Pikuni lands are threatening to change the Pikuni way of life forever. After avoiding Malcolm Clark’s farm, Yellow Kidney thinks about the treaties his people have made with the Napikwans, each of which has resulted in the Pikunis having to give up more of their lands. The strained relationship between the Pikunis and the trader-turned-rancher Malcolm Clark is symbolic of their relationship to the white settlers more generally. The Pikunis were initially friendly with Clark, who traded with them for years and took a Pikuni wife; however, when he began to claim more of their lands and turn against their people in favor of the white farmers moving into the area, the Pikunis started to distrust him. Yellow Kidney believes that Owl Child’s aggressive stance against the Napikwans will only make matters worse; he fears that because of Owl Child’s actions, it is only “a matter of time before the Napikwans [will send] their seizers to make war on the Pikunis” (16).
