This red man of the plains is a veritable Apollo Belvedere. He is
pronounced by all ethnologists as possessing a physique hardly paralleled
by any of the northern tribes. He fulfills in his life the nobility of
his stature. At the age of sixty-five, his figure, seventy-four inches in
height, stands unbent—supple and graceful. His whole aspect is that of
quiet dignity, his voice is soft and musical, his eye is keen and
penetrating; modestly and earnestly he describes his share in the Custer
fight. He was trustworthy to the point of death. Very many times the
safety of an entire command depended upon his caution and sagacity. He
served as scout under Terry, Crook, and Custer.
While telling his story he stood upright, lifted his hands full length,
which among the Crows signified an oath, meaning that he would tell the
truth. His Indian boyhood name was Be-Shay-es-chay-e-coo-sis, “White
Buffalo That Turns Around.” When he was about ten years of age his
grandfather named him after an event in his own father’s life. A white
man pursued his father, firing his gun above his father’s head in order to
make him run. And he was afterward called “White-Man-Runs-Him.”
Regarding his boyhood days he tells us: “Until I was fifteen years of age,
together with my boy playmates, we trained with bows and arrows. We
learned to shoot buffalo calves, and this practice gave us training for
the warpath. It answered two purposes: protection and support. We were
also taught the management of horses. We early learned how to ride well.
When the camp moved we boys waited and walked to the new camp for
exercise, or we hunted on the way. We felt brave enough to meet anything.
Thus it was that we roamed over the hills, and climbed the rocks in search
of game, but we were sure to arrive at the camp just in time for the meal
which had been prepared by the squaws. If on our way to the camp we came
across game, such as a rabbit, we shot it with our arrows, broiled it and
ate it for fun. When we got to the new camp we would all praise one boy
for some deed that he had performed on the way, and then we would sing and
dance. That boy’s folks would give all us boys a dish of pemmican for the
good deed he had performed. The little girls had small tepees. They
practised cooking, learning from the older women. These girls would serve
delicacies to us, and we would sing and dance around their tepee.”
“When we were quite small boys we would go out hunting horses, and bring
back a dog and call it a horse. When we made a new camp we seldom stayed
more than ten days. In that way our health was sustained by travel.
While we were on the move from one camp to another, we had to cross wide
streams. We boys would measure the width of the river, and compete with
each other to see who could swim across without stopping. I am telling
you now what I did to build myself up to be the man I am now. The boys
who were the same age and size as myself would wrestle, and if a boy
downed me three or four times, I kept up the practice of wrestling until I
had more strength. Then I could throw this boy and I was satisfied. I
selected a boy to run a race; if the boy passed me, then I made the
distance longer, and if he passed me again, I made the distance still
longer, for I knew that I was long-winded. Then I won the race.”
“Fifteen or twenty of us boys would go out to the river, and daub
ourselves up with mud and so disguise ourselves that no one in the camp
would know us. Then we would take jerked buffalo beef that the women had
hung up around the camp to dry and go off out of sight and have a feast.
None of us was caught at it, because they could not tell one boy from
another. During this time I watched what old people did. When I came to
grow up, I went forth equipped. I always had an amibition to do more than
the best man in the camp could do. When I went on the chase, I made up my
mind that I would bring home a buffalo or I would not go home. And my
folks rejoiced, believing that they had a good boy to help support the
family.”
“We were surrounded by many different tribes, Shoshones, Sioux, Piegans,
and Gros Ventres. They were all our enemies. We often went on the
warpath against these people, because they were always trying to take our
horses and conquer our land. When we went on the warpath sometimes we
would stop and kill a buffalo and have a feast. If we could, we crawled
up on the enemy’s camp and stole his horses. If we met a foe we tried to
kill him and bring his scalp home.”
“Our custom of painting was a sign. If in a dream we saw any one painted,
that was our medicine. In our dreams we would see various kinds of paints
and how to use them; we would see certain birds and feathers, and we
adopted this as our style of paint. Others would try to buy from us our
style of paint. The kind of paint and feathers we wore made us brave to
do great deeds—to kill the enemy or take his horses. We did not buy
horses, but stole them. We gave the horses to our relations. If I got
one or more horses, it represented so much value to me, and brought honour
to me. And, besides, the girls admired the man who could go out and get
horses, and in this way we won a wife. After marriage I would sell a
horse, buy elk teeth, beaded leggings, and put them on my wife as a
wedding present. Elk teeth and horses were a sign of wealth. Then my
wife would make a tepee, and put it up; then I would settle down and have
a home.”
“In early days we had nothing for clothing except the skins of animals.
We used the buffalo hide or the deer hide for a breechclout. For a bucket
we used the tripe of the buffalo, after thoroughly cleaning it. We would
hang it up on the branch of a tree, full of water, and drink out of it.”
“The white people came long before I was born, but when I first remember
the white man I thought he was very funny. I never knew of any one person
particularly, but I know there are good white people and bad white people,
honest white people and dishonest white people, true white people and mean
white people. We always take it for granted that what the white people
say is true, but we have found out by experience that they have been
dishonest with us and that they have mistreated us. Now when they say
anything we think about it, and sometimes they are true. I am saying this
about the white people in general.”
“Going back to the days when we had no horses, we would see the buffalo on
the plains; we then surrounded them, driving them as we did so, near to
the edge of some steep precipice. When we got the buffalo up near the
edge of the precipice we would all wave our blankets and buffalo robes and
frighten the buffalo and they would run off the steep place, falling into
the valley below, one on top of another. Of course the undermost animals
were killed. Then we would go down and get them and take away the meat.”
“The Indians found some dogs on the prairie. After they got the dogs they
would fasten a pole on either side of the dogs with a tanned hide fastened
between the poles, and the Indians would put their trappings, their meat,
and their pappooses on this hide stretched between the poles. In that way
they moved from place to place, the dog carrying the utensils of the camp.
We called it a travois. One day when we were moving, the dog who was
carrying a baby in the travois saw a deer and ran after it. He went over
a bank and carried the baby with him, and finally came back without the
baby.”
“In counting the dead on the battlefield we placed sticks by the dead
soldiers or Indians, then gathered the sticks up, took them to one place
in a pile and there counted the sticks. We count by fixing events in our
mind. We have a brain and a heart, and we commit to memory an event, and
then we say Chief So-and-So died when we broke camp on the Big Horn, and
So-and-So were married when we had the big buffalo hunt in the snow. Or
we had a big fight with the Sioux when our tepees were placed in a ring in
the bend of the Yellowstone River. We dated our time from these events.”