Goes-Ahead carries about a tall, attenuated, and weakened frame. He is
standing on the verge of yonder land. He is stricken with a fatal
disease. In manner he is as quiet and unobtrusive as a brooding bird.
When reminiscent his wonted smile disappears, his eye lights up with a
strange mysterious fire. He talks straight on like a man who has
something to tell and is eager to tell it. We may gain better glimpses of
his life if we let him tell his own tale:
“When I was quite a lad I went to war. I was the first in the battle and
the others all said: ‘There he goes ahead of us.’ I have been first in
battle ever since and thus I got my name, Goes-Ahead. The greatest
pleasure I had when I was a boy, I remember, was in killing wolves. After
we had shot the wolf we would run up and put our coup stick on him and
play that he was our enemy. Another sport we had was playing buffalo. We
divided up and part of the boys would be buffalo and part would be
hunters. The boys who were playing buffalo would paw up the dust and we
would run after them and shoot arrows at them, and then the buffalo bull
would chase us back until he caught one of the boys, then we went on until
we conquered the buffalo. When I was a young man we had buffalo skulls
with the meat and skin all taken off and we would tie ropes to them and
put them on the ice. The girls would sit on the buffalo head and we would
draw them along the ice. That was one of our greatest pleasures. I was
about fifteen years old when I first went on the war trail. It was in the
winter time and I was on foot. I used a bow and arrows and my arrows were
not very good. The young fellows who went with me had old Springfields,
using powder and bullets. We used to make a shack by the edge of the
woods, the others would kill the buffalo and then we would roast the meat
by the fire. I used to cut the buffalo meat in strips, and dried it, and
then put it in sacks and carried it along for the war party. When we made
a little log shelter at night they made me stay by the door where it was
cold and I had to do all the cooking for the party. We had no bucket with
which to carry water, so when we killed a buffalo we took the tripe and
used that for a pail in which to carry water. The scouts of the war party
of course were away ahead of us and when we made our shack in the woods
they would return at night. If they returned singing we knew that they
had buffalo and we would run to get their packs. These scouts got up
before daybreak and left the camp on another scouting expedition—they were
looking for the enemy to see which way they were moving or what they had
been killing. We found the trail by the marks of their old camps. The
scouts trailed the enemy until they found the camp, then they returned
howling like a wolf as they came near us, and then we knew they had found
the enemy. When they approached the camp we made piles of different
material and then they shook their guns at the piles and we knew that they
were telling the truth, that they had seen the enemy. Then they run over
the piles. Then we got ready for the night and stretched our ropes; we
took our medicine and tied it on our heads. Then we all stood up in a row
and they selected the bravest to take the lead to the camp of the enemy.
Then these braves started on a run, first on a dog trot and then faster
and faster until they got their speed, and then we endeavoured to keep up
until we reached the enemy’s camp. When we got within sight of the camp
we would all sit in a row and take off our moccasins and put on new ones.
Then we selected two men to go around to the camp and get all the horses
they could capture and bring them back to our party. When these horses
were caught and brought back to us we roped and mounted them bareback and
rode away as fast as we could, driving the remainder of the horses they
had captured. We kept on for days and nights without anything to eat or
any rest. After we had reached our camp and had spent the night we
painted ourselves and the best horses, mounted them, and started shooting
guns in the air; then everybody knew that the war party was back. We rode
through the camp on our horses. We did not expect the enemy to pursue us,
because we had gone so far and so long that we knew we were out of their
reach.”
[On the War Trail]