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The Narrative of John Green Kelly |
 "If you want the gospel truth about them early days and my part in them you best get a good hold on that chair ‘cause my life was a wild ride commencing the moment the gate swung open." So begins the The Narrative of John Green Kelly, a little-known manuscript that has thus far been available to only a handful of scholars. Before discussing the controversy that has, for over four decades, kept this work in obscurity, a little background on its author is in order. "This picture counts the year Tatsen first came upon the sacred mountain or the enchanted rock. In typical Indian fashion the flowering tree of life is held to be big medicine, and if it can't be found on the mountain top they make one to suit the occasion." -John Green Kelly INTRODUCTION John Green Kelly was born somewhere in Texas around 1853 and he died in San Saba County of natural causes in December, 1941. His mother was a white captive of the Comanche since her ninth year. She had apparently become so accustomed to the Indian lifestyle she never considered returning to her race. His father, it seems escaped to the Comanche. In his narrative, Kelly says, "I was born and raised amongst the Kwahadi Comanche. Mamma and Daddy was all Indian except for their hides which was white." Later after relating several battles in which he and his father distinguished themselves amongst the Comanche, Kelly cautions, "Now don’t go thinking hard thoughts, as our lot was with the Indians back then. We didn’t know no other way. We was hard pressed by the Texicans for our land and the only life we knew. I was raised an Indian, and an Indian I was." During the Battle of Potato Spring on the western frontier, Kelly’s parents were killed and Kelly was captured and thrown into an army prison. So convincing was his Indian appearance, Kelly was unable to convince his captors he himself was White. "After my second night in an Army stockade I made my escape," Kelly relates, without further detail. However, later in the narrative Kelly makes an offhand comment, "Once an army guard tried me on and I didn’t fit. Now he is numbered with things of the past." Not knowing what to do or where to go, Kelly headed north for Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma. On the way he came across Sarah Jane living near the mouth of the San Saba. She was scratching out an existence in a broken down cabin and living, or at least looking like, a White woman. Kelly could tell immediately she was all Indian and, as they were about the same age, they "took up housekeeping" together. Theirs wasn’t a migration from one place to another, but from one culture to another. THE CONTROVERSY In the Fall of 1938 a subcontractor was renovating an old limestone homestead in Llano County, Texas. While tearing out the old floor boards the workers discovered a handmade box hidden beneath a plywood patch in the master bedroom. There was considerable excitement as visions of sudden wealth seized the workers. Their anticipation was put to rest immediately as the sole contents was a dusty old ledger which, in the words of one worker, "was all used up." The book found its way to a yard sale where it and a stack of old newspapers were tied in a bundle for the selling price of 50 cents. The buyer, a journalist who insists on anonymity, purchased the lot. Due to pressing business matters it was almost a month before the book’s new owner discovered his prize. Shortly thereafter the ledger was shown to almost a dozen authorities in the field of Texas letters and history. Immediately, there was strong division among the experts as to the document’s authenticity. That academic debate has continued to this day and the claims and counter claims are too convoluted (and even irrelevant) to mention here. One collector of art and Texas memorabilia has offered $83,000 for the book. "I don’t know if its a forgery or not," the collector said, "but it looks authentic; it sounds authentic; it even smells authentic. I know this, as a work of art it is authentic."
The narrative is but one portion of a complex document that fills the better part of a 320-page ledger. Probably the first entries in the book were the pictograph history or Winter Count of Tatsen, an exiled Kiowa-Apache medicine man. Accompanying each pictograph is a brief explanation in Kelly’s hand. The narrative itself literally wraps around the Tatsen material and continues on. The sequence of the stories is not chronological, but ancedotal. Some entries are only a few paragraphs, while others run on for pages. The selections from the entries for this publication is intended to provide a sample of the larger work, particularly chosen because it explains the genesis of the ledger itself. What is not offered here, and what cannot be transcribed or translated into another medium is the aesthetic effect produced by the combination of pictographs and script. The pages seem to exude the magic of a time and place now deep in the region of myth. THE NARRATIVE OF JOHN GREEN KELLY: Many years ago I fell in with one Tatsen, or Antelope Horse, an old-time medicine man amongst the Kiowa-Apache. That was in 1886 and he was living a solitary life back in the hills concealed in a place called the Enchanted Rock on the banks of the Sandy. I had been prospecting on Left Hand Creek and come up empty. Well, I heard tell of this here mountain of rock so I put for the place and a first-hand look. I was fixing to cross Walnut Spring Creek when I come up on an old Indian. Hostiles had pulled out of this piece of country ten or fifteen years back and this old feller didn’t look like he’d hold up in a fight. He was so gaunt he could hardly make a shadow, so I weren’t scared at all - just surprised. He was sitting cross-legged on a granite shelf near a bend in the creek. His head was raised to the sky. His eyes was closed and he looked to be praying to the Great Spirit. When a body has enough sense to pray they ought to be left well alone, so I concluded to grant the Indian wide berth. Just then the old boy fell over like he was stone dead. I passed some time in my early years amongst the several tribes of Texas so I felt obliged to repay the kindness by giving the old feller a proper Indian burial. You can imagine the perplexing situation I was strapped with when I seen the old buzzard was still a breathing wouldn’t come to. I figured him for a gone duck. Or just as likely, he was off in the spirit world and may or may not repair to his mortal form. I chose to give the Indian the benefit of all doubt and hold out till he either come to or passed off the stage. I let every dog wag his own tail and I give people the same consideration. So, I kept my eye skinned on him while he maintained that condition for two full days. I was debating my next course of action when he rose as quick as thought to the same sitting position he held when I first laid eyes on him. I don’t know what kicked the lid off, but after he blinked a few times and offered up a right big smile, the old boy started in demanding grub. Having returned to the land of the living, Tatsen commenced parleying some in sign, then in Sanko, or Comanche. We surmised the only tongue we both savvied enough to make any headway in was Mexican. From then on we come to be fast friends. He saw fit to live with me and my brood on the Llano for the remainder of his life, or eight years. My woman was full blood Cherokee - Sarah Jane was the White name given to her on the reservation - and to ol’ Tatsen she was akin to a Yankee or outsider. The Kiowa called the immigrant tribes from the east, Adomko or Timber People. At times harder names than that was used as they had been at war in the past. Seems the Adomko come just as the buffalo went, and the two events was too close together to suit the Kiowa. They concluded the Adomko was bad medicine and that was that. The conglomeration of tongues amongst the three of us was a powerful drawback - what with white, red, and brown talk being tossed about - ‘till we all learned Mexican. After that things improved a mite. The first few months was pure hell as Sarah bent my ear without letup. When I brung Tatsen home I figured he only had one or two good days left - a week at the outside. Near the shank of the first year it was clear the old buzzard might outlive us all. I stretched the blanket on Tatsen’s prospects till we all growed on each other. Despite Tatsen’s advanced age he was a tolerable hand with the young’uns as he filled the place of a grandpa, though he was not great shakes as a field hand. Sarah was a handsome Cherokee squaw if there ever was one, and they was a plenty of them believe me. I never did see her equal. So, when she come up with the idea of raising a war party the slow way - one by one, from scratch - she found me right cooperative. Afore my fortieth year on this earth we had eight mouths to feed not counting Sarah’s, Tatsen’s, or mine. They was all healthier than sunshine, but the young’uns didn’t measure up as a war party as five of them was females, which was just as well ‘cause womenfolk work harder, and boys eat too much anyways. Well, you’ll need to forgive an old fool’s flying off from his story as this here is to be the memories of ol’ Tatsen, or Antelope Horse, as best as I can recount them. Time came when I noticed the old buzzard had started in hoarding bits and pieces of paper. It wasn’t like him to surrender any facts, so being none too shy myself, I inquired into his new and peculiar habit. It seems Tatsen was transcribing his life’s story into Indian picture writing. Seeing all the odd scraps of paper covered in symbols was mystifying for sure, but on the whole it was an unwieldy mess. Being fully alive to the situation, I made a gift to Tatsen of a store-keeper’s ledger with enough pages to last as long as life’s lamp stayed lit. I never seen the old boy so moved as he was when I presented him with his ledger or diary. Fact is, the excitement nearly overtook him as he stopped just short of keeling over like he done that first day. The ledger answered Tatsen’s purpose to a fraction. He spent many an evening drawing by the light of a coal oil lamp. And, like a bear recovering from a winter’s sleep, Tatsen seemed possessed of a renewed spirit. That was the turning point in our affairs. Before that time I figured Tatsen for little more than an old wore out Indian whose time was long gone. Once he started in with that book, he aimed to have at least one person alive that could make sense of it. Being handy singled me out for the task. I was less than a total stranger to Indian picture writing as I had been introduced to it a time or two in my youth - but most of it takes a heap of explaining anyways. Tatsen was making what is known amongst his race as a Winter Count or picture history. The most important event of the year being rendered with a single picture above a solid bar stood on end. This was their means to recall what had transpired.... (ABRIDGED VERSION)
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