must you yell like this guy?

As long as there have been warriors, there have been battle cries, and as long as there have been boys, there have been boys "yelling like Comanches," as Mother Wilder described Royal and Almanzo's noisy behavior while bringing in the bath water (see Farmer Boy, Chapter 7, "Saturday Night").

Both history and literature are full of descriptions of the Comanche yell. "It was a yell that made the very leaves shiver..." "The whole party, shaking their lances in the air, let forth with the most unearthly yell it was ever my misfortune to hear..." "A party of eight Comanches wheeled out of the chaos, and with a simultaneous burst of that infernal whoop, came thundering on at full speed..." If you grew up watching westerns on television, you've no doubt heard a version or two of this war-cry. And if, like me, you grew up thinking that the "Rebel yell" had been borrowed from the Indians, you might enjoy hearing some actual "Johnny Rebs" in action, filmed in 1938 during the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg.

Did Mother Wilder really accuse Royal and Almanzo of yelling like Comanches? There is no bath scene in the Farmer Boy manuscript (how long would it take to heat a washtub of icicles, anyway?), no examination of ears, no frying of twisted doughnuts. The Comanches were known as fierce warriors, skilled hunters and excellent horsemen, and surely stories of the Texas Indian wars were interesting to Almanzo. At the time Farmer Boy takes place, the Comanches were definitely in the news; they were being forced to give up their lands and move to a reservation in the Oklahoma panhandle. By the 1870s, there were only a few thousand Comanches left, thanks to gifts from the white man: cholera and smallpox.
- posted by pioneergirl at 6:30 PM