All the events happened long, long ago, and they’re related by a 121-year-old man who just wants to pass the story along. The yarn is the most flexible of story forms. Its teller can pause to repeat a point; he can hurry ahead ten years; he can forget an entire epoch in remembering the legend of a single man. He doesn’t capture the history of a time, but its flavor. Little Big Man gives us the flavor of the Cheyenne nation before white men brought uncivilization to the West.
