Crows & Cards (28 page)

Larson, Ron.
Upper Mississippi River History: Fact–Fiction–Legend.
Winona, Minn.: Steamboat Press, 1998. An entertaining look at the folklore and history of towns along the upper part of the river, as well as the art of steamboating. This one is a favorite of mine, in part because the author has captained modern-day riverboats and in part because he hails from Winona, the river town where I grew up.

Petersen, William J.
Steamboating on the Upper Mississippi.
Iowa City: State Historical Society of Iowa, 1968. A comprehensive look at the days of steamboating on the upper Mississippi.

Twain, Mark.
Life on the Mississippi.
New York: Signet Classic, 2001. Mr. Twain's exaggerations in this book as well as in
The Adventures of Huckberry Finn
and
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
were a constant inspiration.

B
OOKS
A
BOUT
A
PPRENTICES

Rorabaugh, W. J.
The Craft Apprentice: From Franklin to the Machine Age in America.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. An in-depth look at the demise of apprenticeships in the 1800s.

B
OOKS
A
BOUT
G
AMBLING

Devol, George H.
Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi.
New York: Reprinted by Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1892. A biography written by a riverboat gambler about his days of cheating and glory.

B
OOKS
A
BOUT
M
EDICINE

Armstrong, David.
The Great American Medicine Show.
New York: Prentice Hall, 1991. A well-illustrated history of medicine shows in America. The pictures alone are worth a look.

Dunlop, Richard.
Doctors of the American Frontier.
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965. You'll never squawk about a trip to the doctor again after reading this one.

B
OOKS
A
BOUT THE
F
RONTIER

Brown, Dee.
Wonderous Times on the Frontier.
Little Rock, Ark: August House Publishers, 1991, or
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,
or
The Gentle Tamers: Women of the Old Wild West.
All of Mr. Brown's work lends sympathy and humor to the lives of the settlers and Indians. Try any of his books—you'll be glad you did.

B
OOKS
A
BOUT
N
ATIVE
A
MERICANS

Deloria, Vine, Jr.
The World We Used to Live In: Remembering the Powers of the Medicine Men.
Golden, Colo.: Fulcrum Publishing, 2006. A collection of firsthand accounts about the powers of Indian medicine men, with insightful commentary by the author.

Foreman, Carolyn Thomas.
Indians Abroad, 1493–1928.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1948. Tells the stories of American Indians who traveled to Europe.

Goodbird, Edward, as told to Gilbert L. Wilson.
Goodbird the Indian.
New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1914. The autobiography of a Hidatsa Indian on the frontier. A chance to hear in one man's own words about the coming of the white settlers.

Hoxie, Frederick E.
Encyclopedia of North American Indians.
New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996. A great source for basic information about Indians.

Matthews, Washington.
Grammar and Dictionary of the Language of the Hidatsa.
New York: Cramoisy Press, 1873. A dictionary of the Hidatsa Indians that was written in the late 1800s. My thanks to the University of North Dakota for sharing this dusty volume.

Philip, Neil (editor).
A Braid of Lives: Native American Childhood.
New York: Clarion Books, 2000. A chance to hear Indian children speak of their youth in their own words. You may recognize some things.

B
OOKS
A
BOUT
S
LAVERY

Franklin, John Hope, and Alfred A. Moss, Jr.
From Slavery to Freedom.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988. A very readable overview of the history of African Americans and slavery.

DICTIONARIUM AMERICANNICUM

Words are the keys to knowledge.

—
T
HADDEUS
P
OPE

WARNING!

***

DON'T BE FOOLED BY THE FANCY TITLE

THIS IS A DICTIONARY

AND MAY PROVE

HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH.

***

CONTACT WITH THESE THINGS

HAS BEEN KNOWN TO CAUSE

EPIZOOTIC, MOUNTAIN FEVER

(SPOTTED AND OTHERWISE),

AND PROLONGED FAINTING SPELLS.

***

R
EPORT ANY

SUSPICIOUS RASHES

TO YOUR PHYSICIAN AT ONCE.

DON'T WAIT TILL IT'S TOO LATE.

A

accordion

The word may be familiar, but is its history? The accordion is a fairly recent invention, first appearing in Europe in the early 1800s. Dr. Buffalo Hilly's accordion would have been a novelty.

afeard

Afraid.

ain't

Contraction for
are not
or
am not.
If you're worried about proper usage, you shouldn't use it, for the word is a mark of being uneducated. That hasn't stopped a lot of people from using it over the years. There have even been times when this little contraction was in fashion among the upper classes.

airs

Not what you breathe. In this instance it refers to the act of pretending to be more important than you are.

Alleghenies
(al-uh-GAY-nees)

Allegheny Mountains, located in the eastern United States and part of the Appalachian Mountains, which marked the western edge of European expansion until the later 1700s.

Aphrodite
(aff-row-DIE-tee)

Greek goddess of love and beauty.

applejack

Liquor made from apples. It was an important drink on the frontier, where drinkable water was sometimes hard to come by.

apple-pie order

The best possible shape or condition.

a te dami
(ah theh dah-mee)

Translates as "three kings," although the literal translation is "fathers, three." It is from the Hidatsa language. The Hidatsa are an Indian tribe that lived on the upper Missouri River in the 1840s. They still live in the same general area, which today is part of North Dakota.

atwitter

Excited.

B

bandy

To toss words about without thinking over what you're saying.

bang-up

Really good, top-notch, or first-rate.

bankroll

Money someone has. If you withdraw paper money from the
bank
and
roll
it into a cylindrical shape, you have a
bankroll.

bile

Anger. Today bile refers to a fluid made by your liver to help absorb fats. In Zeb's day it had a much different meaning, one that dated back to medieval times, when physicians believed there were four fluids that controlled a person's health and temperament. Back then bile was considered a fluid that made people easily angered.

bit

A Spanish coin that was worth sixteen and a half cents and was often used in the Old West.

biters

Horses that bite.

Black Hawk

A chief of the Sauk tribe in Illinois. He fought with the British against the United States in the War of 1812, and in 1832 he took part in an uprising that became known as the Black Hawk War. The primary reason for this war? He and his followers refused to be pushed west of the Mississippi River by European settlers.

blackleg

Cheater or swindler.

blacksmith

Someone who forges iron. To forge something, you shape it by heating and hammering it. The word
blacksmith
comes from iron being called the black metal and a smith being someone who works with metal. On the frontier, blacksmiths did everything from making horseshoes to mending plows.

blimblam

A word that may have been made up by Mark Twain—at least, it appears in his fiction but not in any dictionary researched for this book. It seems to mean to talk noisily and endlessly.

blue streak

A long, fast stream of words.

boiler deck

On a steamboat, the deck above the boilers. The boilers heat (or boil) the water that powers the ship when turned to steam.

bonjour
(bone-ZHUR)

Translates as "hello" or "good day." It is from the French language.

brush fence

Fence made from cut brush. It is a quick way to build a fence and often the first type of fence that farmers threw up when settling in a wooded area.

buckboard

Wagon with a seat mounted on springs.

buck the tiger

The phrase means to try to win at the game of faro. The symbol for faro is a tiger, and gaming halls sometimes advertised that they played faro by placing a picture of a tiger out front.

buckshot

Small lead pellets used in a gun.

buckskin

Skin made from a buck (in this case, a male deer or antelope). It was a common material for clothing on the frontier.

bullyragging

Threats.

bumpkin

Someone who's unsophisticated.

bungle

To make a dumb mistake.

bust-head liquor

Really strong liquor. Drink too much of it and you'll feel as though your head has been busted.

C

cast iron

Iron that has been heated to a liquid and poured into a cast or mold. Skillets (frying pans) are one of the more common items made from cast iron. Some people still cook with cast-iron pans.

catarrh
(kah-TAR)

The common cold. The term sounds educated, which may explain why Dr. Buffalo Hilly uses it. He wants to impress his audience.

chamber pot

Before indoor plumbing, people had to use outdoor bathrooms or outhouses. A chamber pot was a lidded pot that was kept indoors, usually in a bedroom, to save people a long, cold trip to an outhouse in the middle of the night.

chaw

A measurement that's about a mouthful in size and usually refers to chewing tobacco. Another way to say
chew.