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 19-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary
Double Strike Woman worries about Running Fisher, who has moved out of the lodge and become sullen and withdrawn. As Rides-at-the-door’s other two wives eat and joke with their friends, Kills-close-to-the-lake thinks about how Running Fisher, her husband’s son, recently forced himself upon her. Since then, she has become infatuated with him. She goes outside to find him in his tipi. Striped Face, Rides-at-the-door’s second wife, follows Kills-close-to-the-lake and sees and overhears her having sex with Running Fisher. Striped Face is pleased to have this knowledge over Kills-close-to-the-lake and Running Fisher.
Chapter 20 Summary
Fools Crow comes across the ranch where Fast Horse and Owl Child’s men killed the Napikwan and terrorized his wife and children. In the Lone Eaters camp, Yellow Kidney watches Good Young Man and One Spot and thinks about how he has become a shadow of a man since his return. He feels old and no longer desires his wife or wishes to raise his sons. He believes they will be happier without him and resolves to return to the Spotted Horse camp where he once lay dying. Most of the people there are elderly and can no longer hunt. That night, he leaves his lodge to go seek the Spotted Horse people.
Owl Child and his men realize they are being trailed by an unknown rider, whom Fast Horse identifies as Fools Crow. When Fools Crow gets close, Fast Horse angrily asks what he wants from them. Fools Crows says that Boss Ribs has sent him to ask him to come back. Fast Horse asks what his father thinks about him riding with Owl Child, and Fools Crow replies that Boss Ribs believes that learning the Beaver Medicine is more important than “killing off the Napikwans and taking their horses” (237). Fast Horse refuses to return and says to tell his father that he could not be found. Fools Crow agrees that Boss Ribs is better off not knowing what his son has become.
Chapter 21 Summary
After six days of travel, Yellow Kidney begins to feel that perhaps he should return to his family, rather than going to the Spotted Horse people to die. He decides to wait out a blizzard in an old war lodge and falls asleep by the fire. Meanwhile, a white man and his teenage son traveling along the Missouri River from Fort Benton become concerned about their safety after hearing about how Frank Standley was “killed and scalped by a party of Blackfeet” and his wife “beaten and raped” (243). When the snowstorm begins, the man realizes they will need to find a place to stay and decide to seek out refuge in the old war lodge where Yellow Kidney is currently staying. He sees Yellow Kidney sleeping by the fire and shoots him while his young son watches through the entrance.
Chapters 19-21 Analysis
Fast Horse rejects his final chance to return to his community and become keeper of the Medicine Bundle after the confrontation with Fools Crow, during which he explains that he no longer shares Pikuni beliefs. Nonetheless, Fast Horse is not the only character to have become alienated from his community. Fools Crow and Double Strike Woman have both noticed a change in Running Fisher, which started around the time of the attack on the Crows. He has become bitter and sullen, like Fast Horse after the raid. He takes out his negative feelings about himself by beginning a relationship with his father’s young wife, whose loneliness and unhappiness in Rides-at-the-door’s lodge makes her susceptible to his advances. This betrayal of his father represents an offense that could ostracize him from the community forever.
Yellow Kidney also feels alienated from his family and community after returning home with his hands mutilated and his spirit crushed by his humiliating defeat. He no longer feels like a man since he cannot hunt or fight and resolves to leave the Lone Eaters and go die among the elderly Spotted Horse people. After leaving, however, he begins to miss his family after all; the knowledge that Red Paint will soon give birth (though she has attempted to keep this news from him so that it will be a surprise) revives his interest in family life.
Before he can return, however, Yellow Kidney becomes a victim of Napikwan prejudice against Native Americans. The novel gives insight into this prejudice by showing the perspective of the nameless white man and the way in which he associates all Blackfeet with the violence that Owl Child and Fast Horse have just carried out against Frank Standley and his family. While the man’s prejudice is based in fear, he ends up thinking to himself, “I want to kill an Indian” (246). The fact that Yellow Kidney is sleeping when the man shoots him highlights Yellow Kidney’s defenselessness and the man’s bloodlust. This act of violence foreshadows the events of the Marias Massacre, during which many people will be burned to death in their sleep.
