learned, but he could hear nothing, although he put his ear close to
the ground. Nor could he hear the singing the next evening, nor the
next, although his woman could hear it plainly. So now the woman got
her knife and cut a round hole in the ground, and Lone Bull laid his
head in it and could then hear the singing. He told her to make the
hole deeper; larger. She did so, and cut clear through the ground, and
looking down he could see the beavers sitting in their home, singing
beautiful songs, and dancing strange and beautiful dances in time to
them.
"'Younger brothers, have pity on me!' he cried. 'Oh, my young
brothers, teach me your medicine!'
"They looked up and saw him, and one answered: 'Close the hole that
you have made, because the light disturbs us, and we will soon be with
you.'
"They soon came in through the doorway, four fine-looking men,
beautifully dressed. They had changed themselves from beavers to men.
They took seats, and then one of them said to Lone Bull: 'Elder
brother, what is it that you want of us? How can we help you?'
"Lone Bull told them what it was: his great desire to obtain
_na-wak´-o-sis_ and grow it for the people.
"'We have that plant; like us it is from the water, a water medicine,'
the beaver man told him; 'but before you can use it you have much to
do, much to learn. You have to learn all our songs and prayers and
dances and different ceremonies, and gather for the ceremonies a skin
of every animal and bird that is of the water, one of each except the
beavers, and of them there must be two. You know these animals and
birds: otter, mink, muskrat; different kinds of ducks; the fish hawk,
and all the other birds that get their food from the life of the
water. Why? Because there are two great life-givers of this world: the
sun, which gives heat, and water, that makes growth, and in our
ceremonies the skins of these different animals are symbols of the
water.'
"'I shall collect them all, so teach me everything,' Lone Bull told
them. And they began that very night.
"Day after day Lone Bull hunted the animals and birds, brought in
their skins for his woman to cure, and night after night the beavers
taught him their medicine, all the sacred prayers and dances and
ceremonies of it. And at last he knew them all thoroughly.
"Then, one night, the beaver chief handed him some stalks of
_na-wak´-o-sis_, the top stems all covered with little round seeds.
"'These,' said he, 'are the children of the big-leaved plants; put
them into the ground and they will grow and make other plants that
bear children. And now, I must tell you just how to plant: Gather a
great, long, wide pile of old dry logs, dry brush and weeds, and set
it afire. The heat from it will burn the ground, burn the sod, and
make everything soft under it. Then, when the place has cooled, gather
from around badger holes, squirrel holes, and wherever you can find
it, plenty of the brown earth they have thrown out, and mix it with
the burned black earth, so that it will not pack hard around the
seeds, and keep them from coming up into the sunlight.
"'After you have taken all the seeds from the stems, you must put them
in a sack and not touch them again with your hands. With an antelope
horn you will make row after row of little holes all across the burned
ground and only a hand apart, and with a buffalo-horn spoon drop a
seed into each hole. When that is done, and it will require a long
time, you and yours are to dance along each row of seed, singing the
sacred songs, your feet lightly pressing down the ground over the
seed. At the end of a row you must step across to the next row, and
dance backward on that one, and forward on the next, and so on until
the last row has been pressed down, and all your songs have been sung.
Then you can go away from the place for a time. Return after one moon
has passed, and you will find that the young plants have grown above
the ground. Watch them, that insects do not destroy them. Give them
water if the rains fail you. They will grow all summer, and fade with
the ripening of the choke-cherries. Cut them then, care well for them,
and you and your people will have a plenty for your winter smokes and
ceremonies. There! I have told you all!'
"It was planting-time then. Lone Bull moved right up to the foot of
the lower one of the Inside Lakes, and did everything that he had been
told to do, his wife helping him in every way. People hunting from
down Chief Mountain way came and saw his growing plants, and went home
and told about them. The four medicine men just laughed. 'Ha!' They
cried. 'He has no _na-wak´-o-sis_! He wanted to join us and we would
not let him into our society. He but plants some useless weed.'
"But later on, just as their planting was getting ripe, a terrible
hailstorm came along and destroyed it all; every leaf was cut into
fine pieces! They cried from grief! Then they said among themselves:
'_Na-wak´-o-sis_ we must have or our medicines will be without power.
It may be that this Lone Bull really has the true plants: let us go up
and see them.'
"They went, all the people with them, and saw that he had the sacred
plants. The hailstorm had come nowhere near his place.
"Said they to him then: 'You have a big planting, and we will help you
gather it, and you and we four will use it. You shall join us.'
"Lone Bull laughed long before he answered: 'I need no help from you.
You shall each have a little of my planting for your own use, and you
shall pay me well for it. The rest, excepting what I need, I shall
give to the people, and hereafter they will always have all that they
need of the plants.'
"And as he said that he would do, so he did, and the people gave him
great praise and honor for it all, and he lived to great age. Kyi! Why
not? He had the beaver--the water medicine! It is a powerful medicine
to this day!"
* * * * *
A visitor in our camp this evening told a tale that ill pleases us.
There is a tourist camp away up in Gun-Sight Pass, one of the most
weirdly beautiful places in this whole country. There, the other day,
an employee was putting up a table on which were painted arrows
pointing to the different mountains, the name of each peak alongside
its particular arrow.
A tourist standing near and watching the work suddenly exclaimed:
"Why, over there is a peak that has no name. Can you not name it after
me?"
"Certainly I can," the employee answered; and painted another arrow
and inscribed beside it: "Lehnert Peak."
"And over there is a fine waterfall," the tourist said. "Will you
please name it after my little daughter?"
"Sure!" said the man; and painted another arrow pointing to "Mary
Frances Falls."
Enough said!
V
IKS-I´-KWO-YI-A-TUK-TAI (SWIFT CURRENT RIVER)
_September 1._
We moved up here the other day and made camp beside one of the most
lovely lakes in all this Rocky Mountain country. In my time we called
it Beaver Woman's Lake. It is now McDermott Lake. And what a name that
is for one of Nature's gems! There are names for other lakes and peaks
here just as bad as that, but we shall have nothing to say about them
here. Only by an act of Congress can we get what we want done, and we
have faith that within a reasonable time all these mountains and lakes
and streams will bear the names of the great chiefs, medicine men, and
warriors who traversed them before the white men came.
[Illustration: ICEBERG LAKE
Immense bergs are continually dropping into it from the live
glacier in background]
Some of us--all excepting our two old men and the women--have been
riding over the different trails here, viewing the glaciers and other
places of interest, especially Iceberg Lake, where we saw a mass of
ice as large as a house part from the glacier, splash down into the
deep lake, and disappear, and after a time come up from the depths to
the surface and create another commotion of the waters. It was a grand
sight!
Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill says that the lake with the
unpronounceable white man's name--McDermott--should be called Jealous
Women's Lake; that away back in the days of his youth, when the
Kootenai Indians occasionally came to camp and hunt with the
Blackfeet, he had a youthful friend of the mountain tribe who told him
the following story:--
THE JEALOUS WOMEN
"In those days a young Kootenai, good of heart, a great hunter, and
very brave, married twin sisters so alike that except for one thing
they could not be told apart: one was a slow, the other a very fast,
talker.
"In time the fast talker, named Marmot, became jealous of her sister,
Camas, complaining all the time that she had to do the most of the
lodge work, and that she was sure Camas said bad things about her to
their man. Camas denied all this. 'I have never tried to place myself
first with our man,' she said. 'We are twins; I love you dearly; our
man's heart is so big that it holds us both in equal love. Now, be
sensible! Cast out your bad thoughts for they are all wrong.'
"But Marmot persisted in believing that she was neglected; that her
sister had all their man's affection; and she finally went to him with
her complaint. He laughed. 'I love you just as much as I do your
sister,' he said. 'Now, just think back and show me when and in what
way I have shown that she is first with me!'
"Marmot sat down and thought. She thought a long time; remained
silent. The man was very patient with her; he waited for her answer,
but it did not come. At last he said: 'Well, you have thought a long
time. Have you found one thing in which I gave her preference?'
"'No, I haven't, but all the same I believe that you love her best,'
Marmot answered; and got up and went about her work.
"The man shook his head, made no answer to that, and took up his
weapons and went hunting down the river. At the time he was camped
right here at this lake.
"The man had not gone far, moving slowly, carefully, through the
timber and brush along the river, when he heard ahead a great
splashing in the water, and, going closer, found that it was caused by
two otters playing. They would chase each other in the water, then
climb the bank and go as swift as arrows from a bow down a slide that
they had made, and again chase and tumble each other over in the
water. The man crept closer to the slide, an arrow in his bow, another
in his hand, and, watching his chance, shot one of the players. He
tried to get the other, but it dived and was gone before he could fit
the other arrow to his bow: 'It is too bad that I didn't get the
other. I would have liked a skin of these medicine skins for each of
my women,' he said to himself.
"He took the otter home and handed it to Camas. 'That is yours,' he
said. 'There were two of them. To-morrow, Marmot, I will get the other
for you, and then you will each have a strong medicine skin.'
"Marmot said nothing, but looked cross.
"The man went hunting the next day but he could not find the other
otter. He searched the river for many days and could not find one.
"And as the days passed, Marmot became more and more angry, and
finally said to her sister: 'I have proof now that our man loves you
best. He gave you the otter; he does not even try to get one for me.
He hunts other animals every day, bighorn, goats, animals that live
nowhere near the haunts of the otter.'
"'Now, don't be foolish!' Camas answered. 'You know as well as I do
that he has tried and tried to get the other otter for you. But at
the same time he has to get meat for us: that is why he hunts the
mountain animals.'
"'Camas, the two of us can no longer live in this lodge,' cried
Marmot. 'You are a bad woman! I hate you! I will fight you any way you
say to see which of us shall be our man's one wife!'
"Then it was that, for the first time, Camas became angry: 'We have no
weapons to fight with,' she answered, 'but I propose this: We will
swim this lake across and back and across and back until one of us
becomes tired and drowns! Now, crazy woman, what do you say to that?'
"'Come on! Come on!' Marmot cried, and ran to the shore and tore off
her clothes. So did Camas, and the two rushed into the water and began
their swim of hate. They crossed the lake; turned and came back;
crossed again and started back, Camas well in the lead. She reached
the shore in front of the lodge, dragged herself out on the shore, and
turned. Her sister had gone down. There was not even a ripple on the
still water. Marmot was drowned. Hardly knowing what she did, she put
on her clothes and went into the lodge and cried and cried. The man
came home. She was still crying. He asked her where Marmot was, and
she cried all the harder, but at last told him all. Then the man
cried. Together the two mourned for a long time, and searched the lake
for the body of the lost one, and could not find it. So they moved
away from the unhappy place and returned to the camp of their people,
but it was a long time, a very long time, before they ceased mourning,
and never again would they go anywhere near the lake.
"Yes, this is the Lake of the Jealous Women!"
VI
NI-NA US-TAK-WI (CHIEF MOUNTAIN)
_September 7._
We came up here the other day to the foot of this great landmark of
the country, and made camp beside a running spring in the edge of the
timber. The mountain is most appropriately named. It is the outer one
of an eastward projecting spur of the range, and is higher than any of
the peaks behind it. A chief, a leader, should always be taller, more
conspicuous in every way than his followers. This mountain gradually
slopes up eastward from the one behind it to an altitude of 9056 feet,
then drops in a sheer cliff several thousand feet to its steep slope
running down to the plain. From several hundred miles to the north,
and an equal distance to the south, and from the Bear Paw Mountains to
the east, it can be plainly seen, grim, majestic, a veritable Chief of
Mountains, and for that reason the Blackfeet so named it in the long
ago.
The way to climb the mountain is by the long, narrow, and in places
cut-walled ridge running up toward its summit from the west, and then
one has but one cliff to surmount, the one almost at its crest. Only
men and goats and bighorn can scale that cliff, but on the extreme
summit lies an old buffalo skull, taken there by a Blackfoot in the
long ago for a pillow rest while getting his medicine dream. There he
fasted for days, and at last, in his weakened condition resulting from
want of food and water, got his vision, his medicine which was to be
his guardian through life. Who was it that came to him in his fasting
dreams? Ancient Buffalo, perhaps; or, maybe, Morning Star. Whoever it
was, he went staggering down the mountain and to camp, absolutely
certain that he had found his guardian spirit, his medium for favor
with the greatest god of all, the Sun, supreme ruler of this earth.
[Illustration: EN ROUTE TO ICEBERG LAKE]
We are here again upon our own ground, the Blackfeet Reservation, and
so once more have meat in camp, fat bighorn and fat mule deer, killed
by our hunters. This was once a great wintering place for deer and
elk, and, higher up, for bighorn. Some years ago a hunter,
Na-mik´-ai-yi by name, trailed a band of elk around to the ridge
behind the mountain and up its narrow way until they came to the foot
of the cliff near the summit and could go no farther. There they
turned back toward him and he fired one shot and dropped the leader.
The others, afraid to try to dash past him, chose the one alternative:
they rushed to the high cliff there on the north side of the ridge,
and sprang from it, and were all killed by the fall, eighty head of
them!
_September 8._
Last night, after our feast of _ni-tap´-i-wak-sin_ (real meat) we
gathered in Yellow Wolf's lodge for a smoke and a talk, and our host
gave us a little story that I must here set down, the story of
THE WISE MAN
"Here, under this mountain, the people were encamped and two of them
were Wise Man[13] and his woman. He was so named because he was
always finding out how to do useful things.
[13] Mo-kûk´-i In-ah.
"Up to the time of this encampment the people had had nothing to wear
but the plainest kind of garments, shirts, leggins, gowns, moccasins,
all made of plain tanned leather of different kinds. Wise Man thought
long about this, and finally said to his wife: 'Let us move away from
camp for a time, and go farther into the mountains. I have a plan that
I want to try by myself.'
"The next morning they packed their dogs and moved up to the foot of
the Inside Lakes, crossed the outlet, and made camp. Wise Man then did
some hunting, killed plenty of meat for his wife and the dogs, and
began on his plan for making clothing more pleasing to the eye. He
went up on the high ridge between the lakes and Little River and dug
an eagle trap. That is, he dug a pit somewhat longer and wider than
his body, and quite deep, and killed a deer and laid it beside the
pit, and slashed its body so that the liver protruded. He then got
into the pit, covered the top of it with willow sticks and grass, and
waited, hoping that eagles would see the deer and come to eat it. They
did come; he could hear the heavy swish of their wings as they sailed
down upon it; and as they were eating the liver he would cautiously
reach up, grasp them by the legs, pull them down into the pit, and
kneeling upon them crush out their life. In this way, one at a time,
he caught many eagles, and took them home as he caught them, and took
from their bodies the tail feathers, the fluffy plume feathers, and
others that he thought would answer his purpose.
"They had a very rank, unpleasant odor, these feathers; so, when he
thought that he had enough of them, he had his woman cover the floor
of the lodge with a thick layer of sweet sage, upon which he carefully
spread them. He then threw a quantity of sweetgrass upon the fire,
and, running from the lodge, the two tightly closed it and kept the
smoke inside. This last they did three or four times until the
feathers lost their bad odor, and were perfumed with the pleasant
odor of sweetgrass and sweet sage, both perfumes sacred to the gods,
as they afterward learned.
"Winter was now come, and Wise Man began to hunt weasels, brown and
common of appearance in summer, but white and beautiful in winter.
This was more difficult work than trapping eagles, but by setting many
snares he caught during the winter more than a hundred of them. He
then made a headdress of some of the eagle tail feathers, and
suspended from it a number of weasel skins, and along the seams of his
shirt and leggins tied a number of the weasel skins. He then put on
the headdress and his ornamental clothes and stood up and asked his
woman how he appeared in them.
"'You seem to have become a different man,' she answered. 'You look
very brave, very handsome. The clothes are beautiful.'
"'They are of better appearance than they were,' he said, 'but I am
not yet satisfied. Perhaps I can improve them; but first I have to do
something for you.'
"Wise Man put away his new clothes, and in old ones hunted elk,
taking from them their two tushes, and in the evening boring holes in
the soft part. Having collected two hundred, he sewed them in rows on
the breast and the back of his woman's new gown, and both saw that it
was then a handsome gown.
"Said the woman: 'There! We are now complete; we have fine appearance.
Let us go home and show the people what we have done.'
"'No,' Wise Man answered; 'something is lacking, something that will
make our clothes really beautiful. I have done all that I can without
help, and now I shall ask the gods to show me what more to do.'
"Perhaps it was the gods that directed his footsteps the next day. As
he was going through the timber he came upon the remains of a
porcupine, its quills scattered all around upon the ground. He sat
down, took up some and examined them, and the thought came to him that
they could be dyed different colors and in some way sewed upon
garments and make them of brighter hue. He took all that he could
find, and killed several more porcupines, and carried home all the
long quills to his woman and told her his plan.
"Said she, 'I know that the yellow moss that grows on pine trees will
stain anything a yellow that will not fade, that cannot be washed off.
Let us seek for other colors.'
"They sought a long time, finding a green color in a certain wood, a
red in the juice of a plant, and then they dyed the quills the three
colors. Meantime the woman had been trying different ways to fasten
the quills to leather, and now, by flattening them, turning in the
ends, and sewing them side by side with very fine sinew and with the
finest of bone needles, she succeeded in making long bands of them of
different designs in the various colors. She was a long, long time
making them, but at last she made enough of the bands to sew onto the
arms of Wise Man's shirt, and down his leggins, and upon the neck
front-and-back of her gown. Each was so pleased with the appearance of
the other then that they kissed and almost cried with joy. Early
the following morning they packed up, crossed the river, and started
for the camp, still here at Chief Mountain. As soon as they came in
sight of it they stopped, put on their fine clothes, and then went on.
The people saw them approaching, but not until they were right close
to the camp were they recognized. Then what a crowd surrounded them,
staring at their beautiful garments, asking questions without end, and
as soon as they learned how this had all been done, they began at once
to gather material for similar clothing. And Wise Man, of course,
became a great man in the tribe, for to him was due the discovery of
the way to make beautiful things."
[Illustration: GLACIER ON TRAIL TO ICEBERG LAKE]
_September 9._
Although nothing has been said, we have not been so cheerful as usual
for the past few days, for all have known that we must soon part and
go our several ways. Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill is a sick man,
and Yellow Wolf but little better, so to-night we decided to break
camp in the morning. To-morrow night each family will be at home on
Cutbank, Willow Creek, Two Medicine, and Badger, all streams of the
Reservation, and I shall be upon my way to the Always-Summer-Land.
Well, we have had a pleasant time these past two months, traveling and
camping along our old trails, and yet the evenings around the lodge
fires have not been of unalloyed joy: all have been tinged with sad
memories of other days; of deep regret that the old days--days when we
had all this great country to ourselves--are gone forever. And so,
to-night, after our quiet, last evening meal together, we had no
story-telling, no passing of the pipe; none had the heart for it; and
I am writing these last words by the light of a dying fire, true
symbol of the passing of all things. And now, by its last, blue
flicker, I write--
THE END
Transcriber's Note
Names may appear both in hyphenated and unhyphenated forms, e.g.
Pi´-ta-mak-an and Pi´tamakan. These are preserved as printed.
Both ap-ut´-o-sohts and Ap-ut´-o-sosts appear in the book, referring
to 'North.' It is possible that Ap-ut´-o-sosts is a printer error, as
compass directions seem to end in ~ohts, but as the transcriber was
unable to establish this as a certainty, it is preserved as printed.
Minor punctuation errors have been repaired.
The following amendments have been made:
Page vii--Is-i-sak´-ta amended to Is-si-sak´-ta--Ki-nuk´-si
Is-si-sak´-ta (Little River)
Page 143--warror amended to warrior--It struck the old warrior
fair in the ribs.
The frontispiece illustration has been moved to follow the title page.
Other illustrations have been moved where necessary so that they are
not in the middle of a paragraph.