THE THIRST DANCE
To restore harmony and avert the impending rupture between the
factions, Big Bear’s band now proposed a Thirst Dance. This is a fête
of propitiation or sacrifice and rejoicing held as soon in spring
as the poplars are in full leaf. It corresponds to the Sun Dance of
the Sioux, at which braves are made. The devotees dance for three
days without food, sleep or drink and the young men aspiring to rank
thereafter as warriors undergo The Torture. With slits cut in his chest
connected by thongs to the centre-pole of the lodge, the ambitious
young brave dances and throws himself against them until the flesh
breakes and frees him. This may take a day; perhaps more.
We were camped at Frenchman’s Butte, a high conical hill twelve miles
east of Fort Pitt, when on the morning of May 25th both the Plain and
Wood Cree bands joined in the building of the Thirst Dance lodge.
Some went a short distance into the woods and with due observance
of prescribed formalities, which included shooting into the trunk,
chopped down and stripped of its limbs a large poplar, leaving only a
few mutilated branches near the top to support the upper ends of the
poles which would form the rafters of the lodge. Then they tied ropes
to the tree and each with a young squaw mounted behind him, came at a
gallop, yelling and firing their guns, trailing the tree, to the centre
of the camp. A hole had been dug to receive it and in this the poplar
was formally planted. The women dismounted and the bucks returned to
the woods, cut smaller poplars and dragged them in. A row of posts was
next sunk in a circle, perhaps thirty feet across, around the tall
centre-post. The butts of the smaller trees were lashed to a rail laid
on the circular line of posts and their tops lodged among the forks
near the top of the centre-pole, forming the rafters of a rude sort
of hut shaped like a beehive. A roof of leafy branches was next laid,
the spaces between the encircling posts were enclosed in the same way,
one opening only being left for a door; a portion of the interior
was partitioned off into stalls with the same leafy branches for the
devotees, the roof and centre-post were decorated with streamers
of coloured calico, a sacrifice to the gods, and the structure was
complete.
Before the ceremonies began the older warriors engaged in some minor
formalities that interested me only a little less than the Thirst Dance
itself. These took place in the morning, in the open, and constituted
an exhibition of Indian methods of warfare. A pile of poplar brush was
collected in a slight hollow in the centre of the camp. The women,
children, a few of the whites and the non-participants generally stood
looking on.
In a few minutes the painted face of Wandering Spirit appeared just
over the top of a small rise. He held a field glass which he raised to
his eye, looking in the direction of the brushpile; then he beckoned
behind him with the other hand. He crept over the top of the ridge,
followed by half a dozen others, to each of whom in turn he handed
the field glass. A hurried and whispered consultation followed, they
disappeared over the ridge and shortly reappeared at a different
point. Then Dressy Man—as thorough a savage as ever donned war paint
but whose face nevertheless betrayed as strongly as ever face did an
Irishman among his forebears—stole toward the brushheap with a knife
in his teeth, pausing every foot or two as if to listen. He reached
the hollow, placed his ear beside an imaginary tepee, cut an imaginary
circle in the wall, buried the blade in the heart of an imaginary
foe sleeping tranquilly inside, removed the fictitious scalplock
noiselessly and then as quietly made his retreat.
Then suddenly the whole of the pretended war-party sprang to its feet
and with whoops, cries and volleys from its guns rushed upon the doomed
pile of brush. This was the signal for the crowd to do likewise, and
the women and children flung themselves with the warriors upon the heap
and tore it to pieces, each bearing off triumphantly a trophy in the
form of a leafy twig. The whole was a dramatic play, one of the most
novel I have ever seen. New York or London have nothing like it.
Afterward they gave exhibitions of fighting on horseback, circling
and riding furiously; of fighting in rifle-pits hastily dug with
their knives in bare open ground when surprised on the plains; and of
stealing horses from their hereditary enemies, the Blackfeet.
Stanley Simpson and I watched from a small knoll near by the building
of the Thirst Dance lodge. An Indian came up smiling, seized our wrists
and led us toward the structure. The long rafter-poles were green and
heavy and they had an original device for raising them. Two slight dry
poles were lashed together near the top, the upper end of the rafter
was placed in the fork thus formed, two men took hold of the long ends
of the lifting poles and raising the top of the rafter dropped it in
the forks formed by the mutilated branches of the big centre-pole of
the lodge. As each rafter settled in its designated place a chorus of
approving yells came from the construction party.
Of these Wandering Spirit was one, and when Simpson and I arrived the
Indians seemed at a loss, thinking we would not understand what was
wanted of us.
“_Nisheetotumuk! Nisheetotumuk!_ They understand! They understand!”
cried the war chief. And he went on to tell us good-humouredly in Cree
that we had been honoured by an invitation to assist them in raising
the rafters. Whatever we may have felt, we tackled the job with a will
and whooped as long and as wildly as did any of the redskins as the
rafters went home.
Toward sundown the dance began. One of a number of young men who
aspired to the distinction of a brave climbed to the top of the
centre-pole and perching himself among the forks started a dolorous
chant. It was a part of the rites. He was expected to sit there until
morning, chanting without cessation his melancholy music. The devotees
gathered and were shut up, each in his separate cell, only their heads
being visible. Each held between his lips the wing bone of a wild
goose, aboriginal pipes of Pan, on which they blew in chorus as they
bobbed monotonously up and down in time to the chant of the drummers
grouped near the fire in the centre of the lodge, the shuffle of their
feet and the measured boom of the drum.
Louis Patenaude had returned that day from his scout. He brought
with him a small pinto stallion, which he had hobbled and turned out
behind his lodge to graze with his other horses. Louis was tired and
delegated to me the job of watching his ponies that night.
I wore moccasins in the camp, and as I became familiar with the life
and customs of the Indians, stalked in the evenings among the bucks,
a blanket wrapped closely about me, indistinguishable from one of
themselves. It is against etiquette for one Indian to intercept
another strolling through the camp at night with a blanket trailing to
his heels and folded about his head so that only an eye is visible.
Besides, it is dangerous. The stroller may be on his way to call on his
challenger’s wife, or the wife of some other Indian, and he may resent
having his identity disclosed. In that event he is likely to show quick
disapproval of inquisitiveness; his interceptor may receive a tap on
the skull from the barrel of the gun hidden beneath his blanket that
will effectually knock all curiosity out of him. I took a good deal of
satisfaction in wandering round among the cut-throats and listening to
their councils, knowing that not one of them, while he might suspect me
as the prowler, would dare to draw the blanket from my face for fear of
a mistake which would bring upon his own head the wrath of another of
the band and his gun.
Louis had loaned me his rifle and closely blanketed I went in the
direction of the dancing lodge. The dancers in their booths jerked
tediously up and down to the shrilling of their goose-bone whistles,
the braves at the fire danced and boasted in turn of their exploits
against the Blackfeet, overhead the young would-be warrior droned
his dirge-like chant. Weird, fantastic, spectral, speaking of the
primitive, the forgotten past, it all seemed in the night, the hushed
embracing wilderness, the red glow of the camp fires.
I saw it all and after a walk through the camp I returned to
Patenaude’s lodge and with the rifle under my arm and the blanket
folded about me, lay down beneath a cart to sleep.
It was a glorious night—the air soft and balmy, not a cloud flecking
the high dome of the sky in which the pale May moon rode majestically,
flooding the scene with mellow light. Behind the dancing lodge towered
the lofty Butte of the unlucky Frenchman, its poplared sides glancing
through all their leaves in the shimmering effulgence.
I lapsed into unconsciousness. But suddenly, I don’t know how much
later, the sound of the horses blowing their nostrils came to me. I
got up and walked off into the scrub to drive them nearer to the tent.
I knew Patenaude’s other horses and they knew me, but I had yet to
make the acquaintance of the pinto stallion. He was rather pretty to
look at, with his neat limbs and creamy satin skin, but he introduced
himself to me in a manner which even now as I recall it I am not sure I
have ever completely forgiven.
I remember that I was not more than half awake. Drowsiness weighed my
eyelids down. Otherwise I expect I should have been more careful. I
picked up a small willow and going round the horses turned them toward
the lodge. The pinto, front feet roped together, was slow. I struck him
two or three smart taps on the rump with the switch. Then I woke up.
I saw his heels in my face. I leaped back; threw up my arm. The hoofs
struck it down. He followed me, racing backward like a crab, and next—I
was still frenziedly retreating—a pile-driver caught me fairly in the
mouth.
The stars had been almost drowned in the splendour of the moonlight,
but they now blazed suddenly forth with startling brilliance. I saw
constellations I had never before heard of and an immense number of
meteors. A little later I realized that I was lying stretched on
the grass with something in my mouth the shape and consistency of a
hard-boiled egg. My upper lip was swollen, cut and bleeding profusely.
The swelling interfered seriously with mastication for some days. My
beauty was marred, though not I hope permanently. The hoof had somehow
missed my teeth and I have them all yet.
I have been kicked severely by several horses, but never as I was
kicked by that rapid-fire, back-action pinto. He was the most energetic
and surprising kicker I ever encountered. I got even with him a day or
two later, when while I was cinching a pack on his back he tried to
take me at a second disadvantage. I happened on this occasion to be
awake and remonstrated with my boots. My feet were in action this time
instead of his.
I drove the horses close to the lodge and lay down again. It was toward
morning—daybreak comes early in May on the Saskatchewan and this was
the 26th—and I had hardly begun to lose consciousness when I was roused
by the voice of an Indian crier. Posted on the high Butte at the foot
of which lay the camp, as dawn came he had sighted on the ground above
Fort Pitt, fifteen miles away, a group of white tents. It was General
Strange with the Alberta Field Force, looking for Big Bear.
Instantly all was excitement. The Indians tumbled out of their lodges,
caught up their horses and began to prepare for flight and battle.
The Thirst Dance ended abruptly, the would-be warrior left his tuneful
perch. Wandering Spirit appeared riding the tall grey mare, her sides
streaked with paint, eagle plumes floating from her tail and foretop.
Naked except for his breechclout and moccasins, his curling black hair
tossing in the wind, his strange eyes flashing, at a mad gallop he
circled the camp, shouting the long war-cry of the Crees. He was belted
with cartridges; across his chest like the sash of some military order
hung a second band. He carried the Winchester without which he never
left his lodge.
Breakfast forgotten, the Indians feverishly struck their tents, and
with belongings thrown into carts and on the backs of ponies and dogs,
hurried away to the east. In the midst of the excitement Wandering
Spirit came with another Indian and marched Henry Quinn, Halpin and
other white prisoners to the dancing lodge. I feared mischief, but the
war chief was concerned only in seeing that no attempt at escape was
made and left them there under a guard. I was not bothered; evidently
he surmised that Patenaude might object to his taking charge of me.
At the Little Red Deer River, a deep coulee two miles from the Butte,
camp was made and a meal cooked. It was then noon. An Indian took
me off to mend his buckboard. My job from his point of view was a
poor one, for it was not of much use to him afterward. As we were
finishing dinner a redcoat scout was reported on the rim of the
coulee and pandemonium reigned again. Patenaude ordered me to get his
horses, which had wandered off to feed, and though I did not like it I
complied. Indians, including Wandering Spirit, rushed past me naked
and shouting war-cries; they were apt to act on impulse in spasms of
excitement. However, I was not molested. We hooked up again, moved down
the coulee to some timber across the sluggish creek or muskeg that
trickled through it and camped for the day.
Here the Indians prepared to make a stand. They went over their
rifles and selected a position along the brow of the bank above us
opposite the point at which we entered the coulee. It was an anxious
and thrilling period for the prisoners. We could have shouted, but
the slightest sign to betray the delight we felt would have been our
undoing. At last! Help, after two months of nerve-racking strain,
hardship and the hope deferred that makes the heart sick, was near.
Often we had despaired of living through to the end of it, but we knew
now that unless our captors should decide at the last moment to wreak
vengeance upon us, our release was at hand.
That evening, as Mr McLean, James K. Simpson and myself sat with Louis
Patenaude and several other Indians in the lodge, Wandering Spirit
lifted the flap and entered. His face looked black and forbidding and
as he spoke he rested his rifle across his knees. He had been told, he
said, that we planned to make our way to the soldiers that night; we
were to get terms for the Indians from the soldier chief. He warned us
that he meant to fight; there was no truce for him with the soldiers.
If we made any such attempt, we would pay with our lives.
There was nothing possible for us, we saw, but to wait.