Shows No Mercy

I began my adult life as a fur trapper in the Rocky Mountains. I would spend the dead of winter with the Crow Indians. I earned the name "Shows No Mercy" among the Crow for my legendary fights with the Blackfoot, their worst enemy.

I try to explain to the Crow that their way of life is doomed because of the westward tide of immigrants who will not try to live with the Crow as I had, but would push them from the land as though they never existed. This had already happened to the Native Americans east of the Mississippi River.

Elan, the Crow chief, gave me a fortune in gold nuggets. I took him to St. Louis and showed him "civilization" and what the gold could buy. He instructed his grandson Lance to make sure that I never ran out of the "yellow stones".

This is the story of one man's frustration in trying to help those who did not wish to be helped. Mostly they could not conceive of the coming of White immigrants until it was too late.