then to Oliver, "The Tsis-tsis-tas were saved by a dog once in the
country of the Ho-Hé. That is Assiniboine," he explained, following it
with a strong grunt of disgust which ran all around the circle as the
Dog Chief struck out with his foot and started a little spurt of dust
with his toe, throwing dirt on the name of his enemy. "They are called
Assiniboine, stone cookers, because they cook in holes in the ground
with hot stones, but to us they were the Ho-Hé. The first time we met we
fought them. That was in the old time, before we had guns or bows
either, but clubs and pointed sticks. That was by the Lake of the Woods
where we first met them."
"Lake of the Woods," said Oliver; "that's farther north than the
headwater of the Mississippi."
"We came from farther and from older time," said the Dog Soldier. "We
thought the guns were magic at first and fell upon our faces.
Nevertheless, we fought the Ho-Hé and took their guns away from them."
"So," said the officer of the Yellow Rope, as the long buckskin badge of
rank was called. "We fought with Blackfoot and Sioux. We fought with
Comanches and Crows, and expelled them from the Land. With Kiowas we
fought; we crossed the Big Muddy and long and bitter wars we had with
Shoshones and Pawnees. Later we fought the Utes. We are the Fighting
Cheyennes.
"That is how it is when a peaceful people are turned fighters. For we
are peaceful. We came from the East, for one of our wise men had
foretold that one day we should meet White Men and be conquered by them.
Therefore, we came away, seeking peace, and we did not know what to do
when the Ho-Hé fell upon us. At last we said, 'Evidently it is the
fashion of this country to fight. Now, let us fight everybody we meet,
so we shall become great.' That is what has happened. Is it not so?"
"It is so!" said the Dog Dancers. "Hi-hi-yi," breaking out all at once
in the long-drawn wolf howl which is the war-cry of the Cheyennes.
Oliver would have been frightened by it, but quite as suddenly they
returned to their pipes, and he saw the old Dog Chief looking at him
with a kindly twinkle.
"You were going to tell me why you are called Dog Soldiers," Oliver
reminded him.
"Dog is a good name among us," said the old Cheyenne, "but it is
forbidden to speak of the Mysteries. Perhaps when you have been admitted
to the Kit Foxes and have seen fighting--"
"We've got a war of our own, now," said Oliver hopefully.
The Indians were all greatly interested. The painted Arapahoe blew him a
puff from his pipe. "Send you good enemies," he said, trailing the smoke
about in whatever direction enemies might come from. "And a good fight!"
said the Yellow Rope Officer; "for men grow soft where there is no
fighting."
"And in all cases," said the Dog Chief, "respect the Mysteries.
Otherwise, though you come safely through yourself, you may bring evil
on the Tribe. ... I remember a Telling ... No," he said, following the
little pause that always precedes a story; "since you are truly at war I
will tell a true tale. A tale of my own youth and the failure that came
on Our Folks because certain of our young men forgot that they were
fighting for the Tribe and thought only of themselves and their
own glory."
He stuffed his pipe again with fine tobacco and bark of red willow and
began.
"Of one mystery of the Cheyennes every man may speak a little--of the
Mystery of the Sacred Medicine Arrows. Four arrows there are with stone
heads painted in the four colors, four feathered with eagle plumes. They
give power to men and victory in battle. It is a man mystery; no woman
may so much as look at it. When we go out as a Tribe to war, the Arrows
go with us tied to the lance of the Arrow-Keeper.
"The Medicine of the Arrows depended on the Mysteries which are made in
the camp before the Arrows go out. But if any one goes out from the camp
toward the enemy before the Mysteries are completed, the protection of
the Arrows is destroyed. Thus it happened when the Potawatami helped the
Kitkahhahki, and the Cheyennes were defeated. This was my doing, mine
and Red Morning and a boy of the Suh-tai who had nobody belonging
to him.
"We three were like brothers, but I was the elder and leader. I waited
on War Bonnet when he went to the hunt, and learned war-craft from him.
That was how it was with us as we grew up,--we attached ourselves to
some warrior we admired; we brought back his arrows and rounded up his
ponies for him, or washed off the Medicine paint after battle, or
carried his pipe.
"War Bonnet I loved for the risks he would take. Red Morning followed
Mad Wolf, who was the best of the scouts; and where we two went the
Suh-tai was not missing. This was long after we had learned all the
tricks of the Ho-Hé by fighting them, after the Iron Shirts brought the
horse to us, and we had crossed the Big Muddy into this country.
"We were at war with the Pawnees that year. Not," said the Dog Chief
with a grin, "that we were ever at peace with them, but the year before
they had killed our man Alights-on-the-Cloud and taken our iron shirt."
"Had the Cheyennes iron shirts?" Oliver was astonished.
"Alights-on-the-Cloud had one. When he rode up and down in front of the
enemy with it under his blanket, they thought it great Medicine. There
were others I have heard of; they came into the country with the men who
had the first horses, but this was ours. It was all fine rings of iron
that came down to the knees and covered the arms and the head so that
his long hair was inside.
"It was the summer before we broke the Medicine of the Arrows that the
Tsis-tsis-tas had gone out against the Pawnees. Arapahoes, Sioux,
Kiowas, and Apaches, they went out with us.
"Twice in the year the Pawnees hunted the buffaloes, once in the winter
when the robes were good and the buffaloes fat, and once in the summer
for food. All the day before we had seen a great dust rising and all
night the ground shook with the buffaloes running. There was a mist on
the prairie, and when it rose our scouts found themselves almost in the
midst of the Pawnees who were riding about killing buffaloes.
"It was a running fight; from noon till level sun they fought, and in
the middle of it, Alights-on-the-Cloud came riding on a roan horse along
the enemy line, flashing a saber. As he rode the Pawnees gave back, for
the iron shirt came up over his head and their arrows did him no harm.
So he rode down our own line, and returning charged the Pawnees, but
this time there was one man who did not give back.
"Carrying-the-Shield-in-Front said to those around him: 'Let him come on,
and do you move away from me so he can come close. If he possesses great
Medicine, I shall not be able to kill him; but if he does not possess
it, perhaps I shall kill him.'
"So the others fell back, and when Alights-on-the-Cloud rode near enough
so that Carrying-the-Shield-in-Front could hear the clinking of the iron
rings, he loosed his arrow and struck Alights-on-the-Cloud in the eye.
"Our men charged the Pawnees, trying to get the body back, but in the
end they succeeded in cutting the iron shirt into little pieces, and
carrying it away. This was a shame to us, for Alights-on-the-Cloud was
well liked, and for a year there was very little talked of but how he
might be avenged.
"Early the next spring a pipe was carried. Little Robe carried it along
the Old North Trail to Crows and the Burnt Thigh Sioux and the Northern
Cheyennes. South also it went to Apaches and Arapahoes. And when the
grape was in leaf we came together at Republican River and swore that we
would drive out the Pawnees.
"As it turned out both Mad Wolf and War Bonnet were among the first
scouts chosen to go and locate the enemy, and though we had no business
there, we three, and two other young men of the Kiowas, slipped out of
the camp and followed. They should have turned us back as soon as we
were discovered, but Mad Wolf was good-natured, and they were pleased to
see us so keen for war.
"There was a young moon, and the buffalo bulls were running and fighting
in the brush. I remember one old bull with long streamers of grapevines
dragging from his horns who charged and scattered us. We killed a young
cow for meat, and along the next morning we saw wolves running away from
a freshly killed carcass. So we knew the Pawnees were out.
"Yellow Bear, an Arapahoe Dog Soldier, who was one of the scouts, began
to ride about in circles and sing his war-song, saying that we ought not
to go back without taking some scalps, or counting coup, and we
youngsters agreed with him. We were disappointed when the others decided
to go back at once and report. I remember how Mad Wolf, who was the
scout leader, sent the others all in to notify the camp, and how, as
they rode, from time to time they howled like wolves, then stopped and
turned their heads from side to side.
"There was a great ceremonial march when we came in, the Dog Soldiers,
the Crooked Lances, the Fox Soldiers, and all the societies. First there
were two men--the most brave in the society leading, and then all the
others in single file and two to close. The women, too--all the bright
blankets and the tall war bonnets--the war-cries and the songs and the
drums going like a man's heart in battle.
"Three days," said the Dog Chief, "the preparation lasted. Wolf Face and
Tall Bull were sent off to keep in touch with the enemy, and the women
and children dropped behind while the men unwrapped their Medicine
bundles and began the Mysteries of the _Issiwun_, the Buffalo Hat, and
_Mahuts_, the Arrows. It was a long ceremony, and we three, Red Morning,
the Suh-tai boy, and I, were on fire with the love of fighting. You may
believe that we made the other boys treat us handsomely because we had
been with the scouts, but after a while even that grew tame and we
wandered off toward the river. Who cared what three half-grown boys did,
while the elders were busy with their Mysteries.
"By and by, though we knew very well that no one should move toward the
enemy while the Arrows were uncovered, it came into our heads what a
fine thing it would be if we could go out after Wolf Face and Tall Bull,
and perhaps count coup on the Pawnees before our men came up with them.
I do not think we thought of any harm, and perhaps we thought the
Medicine of the Arrows was only for the members of the societies. But we
saw afterward that it was for the Tribe, and for our wrong the
Tribe suffered.
"For a while we followed the trail of Tall Bull, toward the camp of
Pawnees. But we took to playing that the buffaloes were Pawnees and wore
out our horses charging them. Then we lost the trail, and when at last
we found a village the enemy had moved on following the hunt, leaving
only bones and ashes. I do not know what we should have done," said the
Dog Chief, "if we had come up with them: three boys armed with
hunting-knives and bows, and a lance which War Bonnet had thrown away
because it was too light for him. Red Morning had a club he had made,
with a flint set into the side. He kept throwing it up and catching it
as he rode, making a song about it.
"After leaving the deserted camp of the Pawnees, we rode about looking
for a trail, thinking we might come upon some small party. We had left
our own camp before finding out what Wolf Face and Tall Bull had come
back to tell them, that the enemy, instead of being the whole Nation of
Pawnees as we supposed, was really only the tribe of the Kitkahhahki,
helped out by a band of the Potawatami. The day before our men attacked
the Kitkahhahki, the Potawatami had separated from them and started up
one of the creeks, while the Pawnees kept on up the river. We boys
stumbled on the trail of the Potawatami and followed it.
"Now these Potawatami," said the Dog Chief, "had had guns a long time,
and better guns than ours. But being boys we did not know enough to turn
back. About midday we came to level country around the headwaters of the
creek, and there were four Potawatami skinning buffaloes. They had
bunched up their horses and tied them to a tree while they cut up the
kill. Red Morning said for us to run off the horses, and that would be
almost as good as a scalp-taking. We left our ponies in the ravine and
wriggled through the long grass. We had cut the horses loose and were
running them, before the Potawatami discovered it. One of them called
his own horse and it broke out of the bunch and ran toward him. In a
moment he was on his back, so we three each jumped on a horse and began
to whip them to a gallop. The Potawatami made for the Suh-tai, and rode
even with him. I think he saw it was only a boy, and neither of them had
a gun. But suddenly as their horses came neck and neck Suh-tai gave a
leap and landed on the Potawatami's horse behind the rider. It was a
trick of his with which he used to scare us. He would leap on and off
before you had time to think. As he clapped his legs to the horse's back
he stuck his knife into the Potawatami. The man threw up his arms and
Suh-tai tumbled him off the horse in an instant.
"This I saw because Red Morning's horse had been shot under him, and I
had stopped to take him up. By this time another man had caught a horse
and I had got my lance again which I had left leaning against a tree. I
faced him with it as he came on at a dead run, and for a moment I
thought it had gone clean through him, but really it had passed between
his arm and his body and he had twisted it out of my hand.
"Our horses were going too fast to stop, but Red Morning, from behind
me, struck at the head of the man's horse as it passed with his
knife-edged club, and we heard the man shout as he went down. I managed
to get my horse about in time to see Suh-tai, who had caught up with us,
trying to snatch the Potawatami's scalp, but his knife turned on one of
the silver plates through which his scalp-lock was pulled, and all the
Suh-tai got was a lock of the hair. In his excitement he thought it was
the scalp and went shaking it and shouting like a wild man.
"The Potawatami pulled himself free of his fallen horse as I came up,
and it did me good to see the blood flowing from under his arm where my
lance had scraped him. I rode straight at him, meaning to ride him down,
but the horse swerved a little and got a long wiping stroke from the
Potawatami's knife, from which, in a minute more, he began to stagger.
By this time the other men had got their guns and begun shooting.
Suh-tai's bow had been shot in two, and Red Morning had a graze that
laid his cheek open. So we got on our own ponies and rode away.
"We saw other men riding into the open, but they had all been chasing
buffaloes, and our ponies were fresh. It was not long before we left the
shooting behind. Once we thought we heard it break out again in a
different direction, but we were full of our own affairs, and anxious to
get back to the camp and brag about them. As we crossed the creek
Suh-tai made a line and said the words that made it Medicine. We felt
perfectly safe.
"It was our first fight, and each of us had counted coup. Suh-tai was
not sure but he had killed his man. Not for worlds would he have wiped
the blood from his knife until he had shown it to the camp. Two of us
had wounds, for my man had struck at me as he passed, though I had been
too excited to notice it at the time ... '_Eyah!_' said the Dog
Chief,--'a man's first scar ...!' We were very happy, and Red Morning
taught us his song as we rode home beside the Republican River.
"As we neared our own camp we were checked in our rejoicing; we heard
the wails of the women, and then we saw the warriors sitting around with
their heads in their blankets--as many as were left of them. My father
was gone, he was one of the first who was killed by the Potawatami."
The Dog Chief was silent a long time, puffing gently on his pipe, and
the Officer of the Yellow Rope began to sing to himself a strange,
stirring song.
Looking at him attentively Oliver saw an old faint scar running across
his face from nose to ear.
"Is your name Red Morning?" Oliver wished to know.
The man nodded, but he did not smile; they were all of them smoking
silently with their eyes upon the ground. Oliver understood that there
was more and turned back to the Dog Chief.
"Weren't they pleased with what you had done?" he asked.
"They were pleased when they had time to notice us," he said, "but they
didn't know--they didn't know that we had broken the Medicine of the
Arrows. It didn't occur to us to say anything about the time we had left
the camp, and nobody asked us. A young warrior, Big Head he was called,
had also gone out toward the enemy before the Mystery was over. They
laid it all to him.
"And at that time we didn't know ourselves, not till long afterward. You
see, we thought we had got away from the Potawatami because our ponies
were fresh and theirs had been running buffaloes. Rut the truth was they
had followed us until they heard the noise of the shooting where Our
Folks attacked the Kitkahhahki. It was the first they knew of the attack
and they went to the help of their friends. Until they came Our Folks
had all the advantage. But the Potawatami shoot to kill. They carry
sticks on which to rest the guns, and their horses are trained to stand
still. Our men charged them as they came, but the Potawatami came
forward by tens to shoot, and loaded while other tens took their places
... and the Medicine of the Arrows had been broken. The men of the
Potawatami took the hearts of our slain to make strong Medicine for
their bullets and when the Cheyennes saw what they were doing they
ran away.
"But if we three had not broken the Medicine, the Potawatami would never
have been in that battle.
"Thus it is," said the Dog Soldier, putting his pipe in his belt and
gathering his robes about him, "that wars are lost and won, not only in
battle, but in the minds and the hearts of the people, and by the
keeping of those things that are sacred to the people, rather than by
seeking those things that are pleasing to one's self. Do you understand
this, my son?"
"I think so," said Oliver, remembering what he had heard at school. He
felt the hand of the Dog Chief on his shoulder, but when he looked up it
was only the Museum attendant come to tell him it was closing time.
THE END
APPENDIX
GLOSSARY OF INDIAN AND SPANISH NAMES
THE BEGINNING OF THE TRAIL
The appendix is that part of a book in which you find the really
important things, put there to keep them from interfering with the
story. Without an appendix you might not discover that all of the
important things in this book really _are_ true.
All the main traveled roads in the United States began as animal or
Indian trails. There is no map that shows these roads as they originally
were, but the changes are not so many as you might think. Railways have
tunneled under passes where the buffalo went over, hills have been cut
away and swamps filled in, but the general direction and in many places
the actual grades covered by the great continental highways remain
the same.
THE BUFFALO COUNTRY
_Licks_ are places where deer and buffaloes went to lick the salt they
needed out of the ground. They were once salt springs or lakes
long dried up.
_Wallows_ were mudholes where the buffaloes covered themselves with mud
as a protection from mosquitoes and flies. They would lie down and work
themselves into the muddy water up to their eyes. Crossing the Great
Plains, you can still see round green places that were wallows in the
days of the buffalo.
The Pawnees are a roving tribe, in the region of the Platte and Kansas
Rivers. If they were just setting out on their journey when the children
heard them they would sing:--
"Dark against the sky, yonder distant line
Runs before us.
Trees we see, long the line of trees
Bending, swaying in the wind.
"Bright with flashing light, yonder distant line
Runs before us.
Swiftly runs, swift the river runs,
Winding, flowing through the land."
But if they happened to be crossing the river at the time they would be
singing to _Kawas_, their eagle god, to help them. They had a song for
coming up on the other side, and one for the mesas, with long,
flat-sounding lines, and a climbing song for the mountains.
You will find all these songs and some others in a book by Miss Fletcher
in the public library.
TRAIL TALK
You will find the story of the Coyote and the Burning Mountain in my
book _The Basket Woman_.
The Tenasas were the Tennessee Mountains. Little River is on the map.
Flint Ridge is a great outcrop of flint stone in Ohio, near the town of
Zanesville. Sky-Blue-Water is Lake Superior.
Cahokia is the great mound near St. Louis, on the Illinois side of the
river.
When the Lenni-Lenape speaks of a Telling of his Fathers about the
mastodon or the mammoth, he was probably thinking of the story that is
pictured on the Lenape stone, which seems to me to be the one told by
Arrumpa. Several Indian tribes had stories of a large extinct animal
which they called the Big Moose, or the Big Elk, because moose and elk
were the largest animals they knew.
ARRUMPA'S STORY
I am not quite certain of the places mentioned in this story, because
the country has so greatly changed, but it must have been in Florida or
Georgia, probably about where the Savannah River is now. It is in that
part of the country we have the proof that man was here in America at
the same time as the mammoth.
Shell mounds occur all along the coast. No doubt the first permanent
trails led to them from the hunting-grounds. Every year the tribe went
down to gather sea-food, and left great piles of shells many feet deep,
sometimes covering several acres. It is from these mounds that we
discover the most that we know about early man in the United States.
There are three different opinions as to where the first men in America
came from. First, that they came from some place in the North that is
now covered with Arctic ice; second, that they came from Europe and
Africa by way of some islands that are now sunk beneath the Atlantic
Ocean; third, that they came from Asia across Behring Strait and the
Aleutian Islands.
The third theory seems the most reasonable. But also it is very likely
that some people did come from the lost islands in the Atlantic, and
left traces in South America and the West Indies. It may be that Dorcas
Jane and Oliver will yet meet somebody in the Museum country who can
tell them about it.
The Great Cold that Arrumpa speaks about must have been the Ice Age,
that geologists tell us once covered the continent of North America,
almost down to the Ohio River. It came and went slowly, and probably so
changed the climate that the elephants, tigers, camels, and other
animals that used to be found in the United States could no longer
live in it.
THE COYOTE'S STORY
_Tamal-Pyweack_--Wall-of-Shining-Rocks--is an Indian name for the Rocky
Mountains. _Backbone-of-the-World_ is another.
The Country of the Dry Washes is between the Rockies and the Sierra
Nevadas, toward the south. A dry wash is the bed of a river that runs
only in the rainy season. As such rivers usually run very swiftly, they
make great ragged gashes across a country.
There are several places in the Rockies called _Wind Trap_. The Crooked
Horn might have been Pike's Peak, as you can see by the pictures. The
white men had to rediscover this trail for themselves, for the Indians
seemed to have forgotten it, but the railroad that passes through the
Rockies, near Pike's Peak, follows the old trail of the Bighorn.
It is very likely that the Indian in America had the dog for his friend
as soon as he had fire, if not before it. Most of the Indian stories of
the origin of fire make the coyote the first discoverer and bringer of
fire to man. The words that Howkawanda said before he killed the Bighorn
were probably the same that every Indian hunter uses when he goes
hunting big game: "O brother, we are about to kill you, we hope that you
will understand and forgive us." Unless they say something like that the
spirit of the animal killed might do them some mischief.
THE CORN WOMAN'S STORY
Indian corn, _mahiz_, or maize, is supposed to have come originally from
Central America. But the strange thing about it is that no specimen of
the wild plant from which it might have developed has ever been found.
This would indicate that the development must have taken place a very
long time ago, and the parent corn may have belonged to the age of the
mastodon and other extinct creatures.
Different tribes probably brought it into the United States at different
times. Some of it came up the Atlantic Coast, across the West Indies.
The fragments of legend from which I made the story of the Corn Woman
were found among the Indians that were living in Virginia, Kentucky, and
Tennessee at the time the white men came.
Chihuahua is a province and city in Old Mexico, the trail that leads to
it one of the oldest lines of tribal migration on the continent.