One Horn taking with him one of his women to help in the butchering
and packing in of the meat. They were no sooner gone than one of the
Crow chief's women hurried to One Horn's lodge and told his other
woman all about the plan to kill him. She told it because she was
jealous; she did not want her man to take another wife!
"So it was that, when One Horn came home that evening, this wife ran
to him and embraced and kissed him as though she would never let him
out of her arms. This strong showing of love was unusual with her, and
he asked her the cause for it.
"'Because to-morrow you are to die, and sister and I are to become
slaves. See now what you have done by coming to try to make peace with
these Crows!' And she told him all about the plot to end his life.
"But One Horn just laughed: 'Wipe away your tears and take courage,'
he told her. 'These Crows will not kill me, a bear medicine man, and a
chief. They cannot kill me. I will show you to-morrow something that
will surprise you!'
"That night he kept his favorite war horse picketed close to his
lodge, and the next morning he carefully dressed himself in his
beautiful war clothes, painted himself and his horse, took his bow and
arrows, his shield and spear, and rode into the center of the big
camp, and called upon the Crow chief to come out. He did come out,
also dressed for battle, and One Horn cried out to him, at the same
time making signs, so that he would be sure to understand, 'Your plot
is discovered. So you and that River Crow are going to kill me. Where
is he? Call him. I want to fight you both. I am a bear. I fight like a
bear. Come! Hurry! Let us fight. Ha! I am going to fight my true
friend, the chief of the Mountain Crows, he who smoked and ate with
me, he who was going to join me in making a lasting peace between our
two tribes. Come! Let us fight! Shall it be on horseback or afoot? I
give you the choice.'
"The Crow chief gave him no answer. Some of the people, looking on,
were beginning to show their anger and shame at his betrayal of a
friend. He turned and went back into his lodge, and would not come out
again.
"While this was going on, several men had hurried to the River Crow
man, stopping in the far end of camp: 'Your plan to kill the Blackfoot
is discovered, and he is dressed and armed and mounted, waiting to
fight you. He is like a raging grizzly, and his, you know, is the bear
medicine. What are you going to do?'
"The man did not answer them. He mounted his horse, and, hidden from
One Horn's sight by the lodges, struck out for the River Crow camp on
Little River, and fear was with him. He often looked back to see if
he were being pursued by this dreadful bear medicine man who had once
wounded him, and was now so anxious to meet him face to face.
"One Horn rode back to his lodge. 'Take down the lodge, pack up
everything. We will not stay another day with these treacherous
Crows,' he told them, and rounded up and caught what horses were
needed for packing and riding.
"Just before they were ready to leave, the Crow chief sent one of his
women to say to One Horn that he was sorry for what he had done, very
sorry that he had ever listened to the River Crow, and wanted to make
reparation. He wanted to give his Blackfoot friend ten head of horses.
"'Tell him that I will not accept anything from him,' One Horn
answered the woman. And he and his outfit started for the north and
were soon out of sight of the Crow camp.
"Some days afterward they arrived at the camp of their people on the
Big River of the North, and had no sooner set up their lodge than One
Horn called a council of the chiefs and told them where he had been
and for what purpose.
"'Although I accomplished nothing, I am glad I went,' he told them. 'I
now know the Crows. They are liars all, and not to be trusted. I
advise that we begin a steady war against them.'
"The other chiefs agreed to that. Messengers were sent to the brother
tribes, the Bloods and the North Blackfeet, and to the Gros Ventres,
friends of the Blackfeet, and the war was started. Little by little,
summer after summer, they drove the Crows southward, killing many of
them, and were not satisfied until they forced them to the country
south of the Elk River,[11] where they have ever since remained. So,
because of their treachery, the Crows lost a great and rich country."
[11] Po-no-ka´-ĭs-i-sak-ta. Elk River; the Yellowstone River.
_August 18._
THE ELK MEDICINE CEREMONY
Not in many, many years have I been so affected as I was this morning.
For some days I have had a high fever, and have slept but little at
night. In-si-mak´-i (Growth Woman), Yellow Wolf's wife, had been
doctoring me with the good old remedy for fevers, sweet sage tea, but
it seemed to have no effect. So Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill
announced that he would have his Elk Medicine ceremony for my benefit,
and that he was sure that it would cure me of my illness. We had it
this morning, and to-night I have a normal pulse and the fever has
left me. I will not go so far as to say that it was his prayers that
cured me,--prayers far better, far more earnest than those of any
Christian preacher I ever heard,--but yet, I am well! To me, all
religions are nothing more than the codified superstitions of the
ages, but of them all, Christian and pagan, I like best the faith of
these, my people, faith that the sun is the conservator of all life
and the orderly ruler of this, our earth. And what absolute faith they
have in their Sun-religion! Should Christians live as closely to their
beliefs as the Blackfeet do to the laws of conduct given them by their
Sun god, what a different, what a happy world this would be!
Before I relate the details of the ceremony, I must tell something of
the medicine itself.
The Blackfeet believe that, when they lie down and sleep, their
shadows, or, as we say, their souls, their spiritualities, leave the
body and go on far adventure. Their name for this is Ni-pup´-o-kan (my
dream; my vision); and when they awake they really believe that they
have experienced all the incidents of their dream, and relate them as
having been of actual fact.
When men and animals were first created, they had a common language,
and the latter had the power to change themselves at will into the
form of man. It was in that long ago time that a man seeking
knowledge, and praying earnestly for it, was in his vision visited by
an elk in the form of a man, whose name was Po-no-kai´-ût-sĭn-in-ah
(Elk-Tongue Chief).
"I have heard you praying, asking for help. What is it you want?
Perhaps I can help you," the elk man said.
The man answered: "I seek some way to relieve my people from
sickness; some way to give them long life and happiness. Help me if
you can do so."
The elk man answered: "I can help you; I will help you. Through what
was given me in my vision I am in great favor with the sun, and all
the gods of the earth, the deep waters, and the blue above. That
medicine you shall have. I give it to you now!" And having said that,
he gave the man a painted lodge, a medicine pipestem, beautifully
decorated with a down-hanging set of tail feathers of the sage hen,
and wound with strips of the fur of the bear and various water
animals. And with it, wrapped in clean buckskins, were the skins of
birds and animals, all those that live upon the water and in the
water, and feed upon the life in the water, fish, and all the various
water insects. And having given the man all this, he taught him how to
use it, with all the prayers and ceremonies that go with it. The man
took all this to his home, and used it, and found that it was great
medicine, and ever since that time the Elk Medicine Lodge and the
things that go with it have been handed down from generation to
generation, to this day.
So now we come to the ceremony that was given to-day for the curing of
my illness. It was my lucky day! Early in the morning Mr. Herford T.
Cowling, chief photographer for the United States Reclamation Service,
arrived at the Great Northern Railway Company's St. Mary's Camp and I
went to him and asked if he would take moving pictures of the
ceremony, provided the Indians were willing to have him do it. He
enthusiastically replied that he would be very glad to take it all in
with his crank-machine, so I went to my people to ask if they would
permit it to be done. They objected, saying that the ceremony was so
sacred that even the presence of white people, antagonistic all of
them to their religion, would profane it. They did not count me. I was
one of them!
Said I: "Listen, my relatives, and brothers all! We are all soon to
die, and as we pass away the whole of the old life goes with us. Your
children, taken away from you by the whites, put in school and taught
the white men's religion and manner of living, will know nothing about
the way their fathers lived unless I put it all down in writing for
all time to come. That I am doing. And how much more interesting it
will be if I can have pictures to go with it! Say yes! Let us have,
with this that you are to do to-day, the living pictures of it all!"
There followed a long silence, all considering my request. Finally, my
best of friends, Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill, wiped tears from
his eyes, and said, brokenly: "Ap-i-kun´-i is right. The whites take
our children from us and teach them false beliefs. But they teach them
to read, and it may be, that, after we have all gone on to the Sand
Hills,[12] they will read our brother's writings and see us as we
were, making our prayers to the gods, and, having read and seen the
pictures of it all, return to the one true faith. I say, let the
picture man come!"
[12] The Sand Hills (Spät-si-kwo). The drear after-life abode of
the Blackfeet. Their shadows there had a cold, cheerless imitation
of life.
"Ai! Ai! Let him come!" all cried, and I sent a messenger for him.
During the ceremony he took six hundred feet of it, and so for all
time to come is preserved the interesting ceremony of the Elk
Medicine.
The ceremony is always given in a closed lodge, but this time we threw
the front of it wide open, so that the lens of that moving-picture
machine could take it all in.
As I have said, Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill is old, feeble,
half-blind, and is himself unable to go through parts of the ceremony.
So, on the evening before this came off, he sent for Chief Crow and
his wife, living near, to help him out. Chief Crow is also a medicine
man, his wife, of course, a medicine woman, and he owns the Seizer's
medicine pipe. Four other medicine men were there, all of them taking
part in the ceremony. In each of the three tribes of the Blackfeet
there is a secret society of the medicine men, and the members help
one another in their ceremonies, and they and they only can dance with
the sacred symbols of their rites.
When I went into the lodge the sacred medicines were hanging directly
over the owner's couch, opposite the doorway. They were the sacred
pipestem and many skins of water animals and birds enclosed in various
wrappings, and a buffalo rawhide painted pouch containing sacks of
various colored sacred paints. On Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill's
left sat his medicine wife. I took my seat close to him on his right.
Back of me, and all around the right side of the lodge from me, were a
number of women. On the other side, opposite them, were the men and
Chief Crow's medicine wife.
The ceremony opened with a prayer by Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill,
beseeching the gods to look with favor upon what was to be done. Then his
wife arose and undid the fastenings of the medicines, and slowly,
reverently, laid them on the couch between her and her husband. The
opening song then began, the song of Po-no-kai´-ût-sĭn-in-ah (Elk-Tongue
Chief). Oh, how I would like to inscribe that song here! Alice Fletcher
says--and I know that she is right--that all Indian music is
classical. But their tonal scale is far different from ours; we have not
one musical instrument that can reproduce it. Never, never lived a white
man who could sing these Blackfeet songs. As a boy, year after year, I
tried to sing them, and always failed; one has to take them in with his
mother's milk in order to sing them correctly.
[Illustration: OPENING OF THE ELK MEDICINE PIPE CEREMONY
Left to right: The author; Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill;
his wife and the wife of Chief Crow, both medicine women;
Chief Crow, medicine man, lifting the sacred roll of the
medicine pipe; Medicine Weasel and Old Boy, singers]
The song ended. The medicine woman, with a pair of sacred red-painted
willow tongs, took a coal from the fire, placed it just in front of
the sacred medicines, and dropped upon it a pinch of sweet grass. It
burned, and, as the perfumed smoke arose, she and her man grasped
handfuls of it and stroked their bodies, thus purifying themselves
before handling the medicines. Then, all present joining in, they sang
the song of the real bear, the grizzly, while the medicine woman
unfastened the outer wrapping of the medicine pipestem roll, which was
bound with a strip of fur from a grizzly's back; and at the same time,
in keeping with the time of the song, they made the sign for the bear,
closed hands held upon each side of the head, representing its wide,
rounding ears.
That song finished, the song of the buffalo began, the medicine man
and the medicine woman clenching their hands and alternately putting
one out before the other, representing the deliberate, ponderous tread
of the animals as they traveled to and from the water. When that song
was finished--and it was one to stir one's inmost soul--another
wrapping, bound with buffalo fur, was undone, and all present besought
the gods to have pity upon them.
Next came the fourth and last song, the song of the beaver, chief of
water animals. And while it was being sung, the medicine woman
unrolled the fourth and last wrapping, and the sacred medicine
pipestem lay in sight of us all. At that all the women gave shrill
cries of triumph, of victory; and all the medicine men beginning a
solemn chant to the Sun, Chief Crow advanced, received from the
medicine wife of my old friend the sacred stem, and, extending the fan
of feathers drooping from it, held it aloft and danced in time with
the song to the doorway of the lodge and back again, and returned the
stem to my friend, who reverently took and embraced it, and made a
short prayer to the gods for the long life, good health, and happiness
of us all, especially the little children of the tribe.
Next came my part in the ceremony. My old relative and friend felt
around in his medicine pouch, got out a small sack of _a-san´_, the
sacred red paint, and painted my face with it, at the same time
beseeching the gods to give me, his brother, Ap-i-kun´-i, long life,
good health, and prosperity in all things. Then, having finished the
painting and the prayer, he had his wife hand Chief Crow, his helper,
the long red-painted wooden flute that goes with the medicine, and the
latter, holding it aloft, danced with it almost to the doorway of the
lodge, where he blew several soft, clear notes to the four corners of
the earth, and then returned the flute to the woman. This was the Elk
Medicine whistle, for imitating the weird call of that animal, and was
used just now to call him, the ancient Elk god, to give me his favor,
his pity. My friend then facing me, upon his knees began the thunder
song, in which all joined, and, spreading his blanket-clad arms wide
to represent the thunder bird wings, hovered before me, fanned me with
his wings, the intent being to waft to me from him the sacred power.
That over, all arose, and passing in line from the lodge, Chief Crow
leading, danced through the camp and back again, and the ceremony
ended.
I cannot begin to express how I felt all through the ceremony. I
honored my people for their sincere faith, their reverence for their
gods. And my thoughts went back to the time when they were the lords
of these plains and mountains and knew not want. And not so very long
ago they were a tribe of three thousand members, and now they number
only eight or nine hundred, and those who have gone have mostly gone
from want, from their susceptibility to disease because of lack of
proper nourishment. Do you wonder that they feel bitterly toward the
whites, who have taken from them everything that made their life
worth living?
[Illustration: ELK MEDICINE PIPE DANCE
Chief Crow leading the column and carrying the sacred stem]
_August 27._
Because we were to-day to embark upon the deep, dark waters of this
lake, we yesterday had a little ceremony on the shore, beseeching the
dread Under-Water People to have pity upon us and allow us to pass in
safety over their domain. We had a little fire close to the water's
edge, and having filled and lighted his pipe with a coal taken from it
with his sacred red tongs, old Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill
smoked and made his prayers, at the same time casting into the water a
little sack of his medicines as a sacrifice to the gods. It was a
short ceremony, but satisfied even the most timid of the women that
all would be well with them during their voyage upon the lake.
And so, where we once had rude rafts of logs, lashed together with
rawhide ropes, we this morning embarked in good boats and went all up
the beautiful lake, past Red Eagle, and Little Chief, and
Almost-a-Dog Mountains to the head of the lake, and looking back at
the slope of Milk River Ridge saw the far-apart, enormous footprints
of Heavy Runner, keeper of the buffalo.
Away back in ancient times, after Old Man had made buffalo and they
had increased and covered the plains, they had great desire to wander
westward and see what might be on the other side of the great
mountains. The people--the Blackfeet--learning of this were greatly
distressed. The far side of the mountains, away west and still
westward to the shores of the Everywhere-Water, was the country of
their enemies, many tribes of them, and should they get possession of
the buffalo herds they would never let them return. What to do about
it they had no idea, so they called upon Old Man for help.
[Illustration: UPPER TWO MEDICINE LAKE
Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill (with pipe) propitiating the
dreaded Under Water People]
Said he: "I made the buffalo to be plains animals, and here upon these
plains they shall remain, and other-side tribes shall come to you and
ask permission to kill a few of them now and then. So, don't worry.
Go home now and attend to your affairs. All shall be well with you."
The people went home. They saw that the buffalo remained upon the
plains in apparently as great numbers as ever. But some of the
hunters, to learn for sure if they were all there, ascended the
different passes of the mountains and went down the other side for
some distance. There were no buffalo, not even a few straggling bulls
on the other side, and they wondered how Old Man was keeping them
back. They soon learned. In a vision it was revealed to an old
medicine man that a huge god, a man of enormous stature, was
patrolling the mountains from far south to the everlasting snow of the
north, and with a club driving the buffalo back eastward as fast as
they came anywhere near the summit of the range. And so it was that
the other tribes--those of the west--never got the buffalo.
* * * * *
On our way down the lake we passed the beautiful Sun Camp and the
chalets of the Great Northern, perched upon the very spot where
Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill and I killed many a bighorn and
goat in times gone by. It was a favorite wintering place of the
animals, for the winds kept the steep mountain slope practically bare
from snow. And passing the mouth of the creek just above the camp, I
remembered that I had named it after Thomas, and Colonel Robert, and
the Honorable Cecil Baring, of London, with whom I often hunted back
in the eighties. In those days there were many bighorn and goats, and
not a few grizzlies back in the basin at the head of the creek. And
what amusing and sometimes exciting adventures we had with them! One
morning we espied a big "billy" goat on a ledge, and just as we saw
him he moved to the back side of it and lay down, showing only an inch
or two of the top of his back.
"Who will go up and rout him out, so that I can get a shot?" asked
Colonel Baring, and Jack Bean, of Yellowstone fame, volunteered.
It was to be a steep, almost straight-up climb, so Jack laid down his
rifle and started without encumbrance of any kind. At last he reached
the shelf and stood up on it, and that "billy" came for him, head
down! And Jack! Never have I seen a man come down a dangerous cliff so
fast as he did! And he kept coming, falling, sliding, rolling, and
then Colonel Baring fired and dropped the goat, and man and animal
came the rest of the way to the foot of the place together! We had
been too much concerned for the safety of our friend to laugh, but
when he at last stood up and faced us, bloody, half-naked, but not
seriously hurt, we roared. But Jack never even smiled: "Who would have
thought that a blankety-blank goat would go for a fellow!" he
exclaimed; and he went to the creek to repair the damages to his
person.
On this day, halting here and there along the lake, we took some views
of the scenery and of our people, and at sunset were back in our
lodges. For some of us it is a last trip over the old, familiar
ground. My two old friends, Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill and
Yellow Wolf, must soon go on to their Shadow Land!
* * * * *
We were not too tired to-night for story-telling, so, after the
children had been put to bed and all was quiet, Takes-Gun-Ahead gave
us the following, the story of tobacco, which is called
NA-WAK´-O-SIS
"In that long ago time when the earth was young, and people had not
long been made, a man threw some weeds upon a fire and found that the
odor, the smoke from their burning, was very pleasant. That night he
had a vision and learned that this plant was strong medicine; that,
when smoked in a pipe, which his vision explained to him how to make,
it would be the right thing with which to offer prayers to the gods.
He also taught the man the prayers and all the ceremony that went with
the prayers; and told him how to plant the weeds, from the seeds on
their tops, so that he could always have plenty of it.
"This man was very much pleased with what he had learned. He went to
his three brother medicine men and told them all about it, and the
four of them formed a society of themselves and no others, for the
raising of the weed and its proper uses. But they were very stingy
with this weed, which they named _na-wak´-o-sis_, and would only now
and then give the people a leaf of it, although they raised large
numbers of the stalks in every summer time.
"A young man named Lone Bull was very anxious to become a member of
this medicine society, but because he had no medicines and knew not
the rites of it, he was told that he could not join it. At that time
the camp of the people was close under Chief Mountain. He left it,
with his woman and his pack dogs, and moved up to the river running
out of the Inside Lakes, and there set up his lodge. Said he then to
his woman: 'I have come up here to get medicines; in some way to find
things that will enable me to become a raiser of _na-wak´-o-sis_. If I
can do that, I shall be of great help to the people. Now, then, I am
going to hunt and collect all the medicine skins I can find, and you
stay at home, take care of the lodge, gather wood, and cook what meat
we need. I shall bring in plenty of fat meat along with the skins.'
"The man went hunting every day, and the woman remained at home. One
day, when the man was gone, she thought she heard singing; beautiful
singing; but look where she would she could see no singers. She spoke
to the man about it when he came home that evening, and made him feel
uneasy: 'If you hear it again, look about more carefully,' he told
her.
"She heard it the next day, and this time located it, right under the
lodge. She went out to the bank of the river and looked at the bank:
there, under the water, were beaver holes in it, and beaver cuttings
upon the sandy bottom, and by that she knew that the lodge had been
set up above a bank beaver's home, and that beavers were the singers.
She went back to the lodge, lay down and put her ear to the ground,
and could then hear them plainly, and was pleased. Their singing was
so good that it was all that she could do to stop listening to them
and begin cooking the evening meal.