AN INDIAN CANNIBAL
Lone Man was always my friend and one bright afternoon in early May I
walked to his tent to smoke and chat with the son-in-law of Big Bear.
The usual dance was on, but Lone Man seldom attended. The Indians
still had the Hudson’s Bay Company’s flag—the Union Jack with the old
corporation’s crest in the corner—and I noted with satisfaction that
the ensign flew at half-mast and upside down above the dancing lodge. I
fancied it might be an omen of impending woe for the soldiers.
Lone Man invited me to a seat on the floor of his lodge. He asked me,
according to his custom, endless questions concerning the number and
ways of the white men, in which he displayed the keenest interest.
Little Poplar and his son-in-law, a Crow from Montana, came in and the
host set before us bowls of dripping and sheaves of dried meat, which
we ate. It tasted very good.
I noticed Big Bear’s men unusually in evidence, carrying their guns and
wearing grave faces. An ominous quiet reigned. When his tribal friends
were gone, I asked Lone Man to enlighten me.
“Well,” said he, “you have heard of the old woman in camp who wants to
eat human flesh. She says if she isn’t dead before the sun goes out
to-night she cannot be killed and will then begin to eat the children.
They are afraid. She has but half a smoke to live. Come, we will go and
see her.”
At the farther end of the camp we came to a lodge around which were
grouped many of Big Bear’s warriors. Wandering Spirit in full war dress
was there with his Winchester. His look was inexorable, relentless.
Four-Sky Thunder stood near him. The doomed woman, the _weetigo_,
crouched on the floor of the lodge groaning and mumbling to herself, a
poor demented creature, a helpless, aged and ailing imbecile. We had
tried to persuade the Indians that nothing serious was wrong, that she
could do them no harm—we saw, now, unavailingly. We suggested that they
give her laudanum, as an easier way to the Sand Hills. Unfortunately,
no one had any of the drug.
As Lone Man and I stood with the crowd looking in at her, Henry Quinn
and Malcolm Macdonald approached under an escort of Indians. The
crowd made way for them. Quinn knelt beside the old woman and bound
her wrists and ankles. Then she was placed on a tanned beef-hide,
Quinn took a corner, Macdonald another, Indians the remaining two and
the wretched invalid was borne to the place of death, an open space
a few hundred yards from the lodge. They set her down on the skin,
blindfolded her and an old half-breed named Charlebois, the lower half
of his face painted black, leaped toward her brandishing a heavy club.
“You have asked everybody to kill her and all were afraid. Don’t laugh
at me for striking a woman, and don’t say I did it!” he cried.
He swung the club and struck her a frightful blow on the temple. She
fell forward, blood gushing from her mouth. A boy named Bright Eyes
stepped out and shot the senseless skull. Afterward it was severed
from the trunk. The body was flung into a well and the battered head
burned on a pile of brush. The superstitious savages were determined
there should be no possibility of the resurrection of the _weetigo_.
I should say for myself that I was not a witness of this diabolical
proceeding. I heard the shooting and saw the smoke of the fire, but
learned these particulars later. As to the part played by Quinn, it was
forced upon him by the Big Bear miscreants.
Insanity in Indians, oddly enough, often takes this form of would-be
cannibalism.