The Blackfoot believes that his fathers have told him truly, when they
told him that the people of his tribe, when released from the load of
flesh, come to a steep mountain, up whose huge projecting sides they
have to scramble. After many moons of unwearied labour, tired and
exhausted, they reach the top, from which they behold the land of the
dead. They see stretched out before them an extensive plain,
interspersed with new tents, pitched by the sides of beautiful streams,
the banks of which resound with the humming of bees and the music of
birds, and are shaded from the summer sun by the ever-blooming tree with
great white flowers. Some of the tents are pitched upon hills, some in
valleys, some to meet the whispering breezes of the Month of Buds, and
some the strengthening winds of the Harvest-Moon. While, from the top of
the mountain they are absorbed in contemplation of this delightful
scene, the inhabitants of the happy land discover them, and come singing
and dancing along, clothed in new skins, to meet them, with the blanket
of friendship widely spread to the winds (1). Those Indians who have led
good lives approach with that fearless step and eye which the
recollection of good deeds always inspires, and are received with every
demonstration of joy common among Indians; but those who have embrued
their hands in the blood of their countrymen, and betray, by their pale
cheeks and trembling steps, that they expect and deserve punishment, and
those whose foreheads have been in any way blackened by the smoke of the
breath of the Spirit of Evil, are told to return whence they came, and
without more words are pitched down the sides of the mountain. Women,
whose hard hearts have made their feeble hands take the life to which
they had given birth, quenching the little spark struck out from the
half-burnt brand, never reach the mountain at all, but are compelled by
the Master of all to hover around the seats of their crimes, with
branches of the mountain pine tied to their legs. The melancholy sounds
heard in the still summer evenings, and which ignorant white men think
the screams of the goat-sucker, or the groans of the owl, are the
moanings of these wicked and unhappy mothers, lamenting the unnatural
murder of their helpless little ones. They are trying to recall them to
life, that their doom may be revoked, and that they may be permitted to
approach the mountain.
In the Blackfoot land of souls, all are treated according as the deeds
they have done have been good or evil in their intent or their
consequences. If they have truly and faithfully performed those things
for which they were sent upon the earth, if they have been good sons,
good husbands, good fathers, good friends; if they have fought bravely,
hunted well, told no lies, nor spoken evil of the Great Spirit, nor made
laugh at his priests, they know neither pain nor sorrow, their time is
spent in singing and dancing, and they feed upon mushrooms, which are
very abundant and grow without cultivation. They are attended to the
Happy Regions by the shades of their dogs and guns, and the shades of
their huts and every thing they contained are ready for them the moment
they arrive in these happy regions. The souls of bad men, which are not
separated from the good save by the different feelings and pursuits
which belonged to them in life, wander about, haunted by the phantoms of
the persons or things they have injured. If a man has destroyed his
neighbour's canoe, or his gun, or his bow and arrows, the phantoms of
the wrecks of this property obstruct his passage wherever he goes. He
sees every where the bow, self-drawn, ready to impel an arrow pointed
at his breast, the gun ready poised, the canoe threatening to sink him.
If he has been cruel to his dogs and horses, they also are permitted to
torment him, and to hunt him down, as he in his life-time hunted the
wolf and the deer. The ghosts of the men whom he injured in life are now
permitted to avenge their wrongs, and to inflict on his shade pains
commensurate with those he made them suffer. The spirit of the man, from
whom he stole the ear of soft maize, now snatches from his hungry lips
the red-gilled mushroom, and he, into whose crystal stream he threw
impure substances, in revenge, strikes from his lip the gourd of crystal
water. The good hunter, whose bowstring he enviously cut, fillips him on
the forehead; the warrior whose spear he broke when no human eye beheld
him, now, informed of the unmanly deed by the Spirit who sees all, spits
in his face, as a coward should be spat upon. The soul of the horse
which he overrode, or otherwise maltreated, runs backwards upon him,
with elevated heels and a loud neigh; the dog he whipped too much or too
often rushes upon him with open mouth, and the growl of bitter and
inextinguishable hatred. He steps into the canoe, it sinks beneath him,
and, when his chin is level with the water, it rises beyond his reach.
Lo, there is a gun before him, and the shade of a stately stag nipping
the phantom of a youthful hazel. He makes the attempt to point the gun
towards it, and just as he supposes he has attained the object, and puts
forth his hand to give vent to the winged weapon of death, he finds the
gun has changed its position--the muzzle is pointed towards his own
breast. Thus opposed, thwarted, baffled, by every thing around him,
despised by all things, whether gifted with life or not, he passes an
existence, the horrors of which may be felt but not described.
The soul of the Blackfoot never returns to earth, except to forewarn his
friends of their approaching dissolution. When the Great Spirit says to
him, "Spirit of a Blackfoot, the son or the daughter of your father is
about to leave the green vales of the earth,"--"the foot of your father
is shaking off the drowsiness of age, that he may prepare for the long
journey of spirits,"--"the babe that was born yesterday will be
journeying hither to-day,"--"the heart of your kind mother wants courage
to die,"--"the soul of your beloved maiden, much as it longs for the
arms of its tender lover, faints at the near prospect of the pang that
rends asunder the flesh and the spirit--go, and comfort them,"--then,
and then only--always at the bidding of the Great Master, never of its
own accord--does the soul revisit the gross and unhappy world it has
left. Then does it knock at the ear of the sleeper, whispering, "Take
courage, for the Master despises cowards--meet the pang as a brave
warrior--as a good hunter--as a wise priest--as a beauteous maiden
should meet it, and rejoin the happy souls of thy race, in the valley of
the kind and good Waktan Tanka." The sleeper, thus admonished, wakes
with the words of the spirit deeply engraved on the green leaf of his
memory--that leaf never becomes dry. Is he a warrior, and has he the
fate to be taken in the toils of the enemy?--when bound to the stake,
and the fire scorches his limbs, and the pincers rend his flesh, and the
hot stone sears his eye-balls, and the other torments are inflicted,
that serve to feed the revenge of the conqueror, and test the resolution
of the captive, no groan can be forced from him, in the utmost extremity
of his anguish; he never stains his death-song with grief, but dies as
he lived, a man, because he knows that the Great Spirit despises
cowards. Is he a hunter?--he enters boldly the den of the black bear,
though surrounded by her cubs, and he laughs at the cry of the
catamount, though he crouches for his bound. Is he a priest?--he calls
louder and more frequently and joyfully than before upon his familiar
spirit; he thanks the Master that his prayers are heard; and he is to be
permitted to visit the happy lands. And what if the tears of the
bright-eyed maiden do drop on the bosom of those who pillow her head in
the Hour of Dread, they are not tears of sorrow, but flow from an eye,
by the command of Him who made it the window of the soul, fated to the
weakness of tears, and a heart prone to irresolution and trembling. The
Great Waktan Tanka knows that he made her with the heart of a dove, that
shakes at the fall of a leaf, and the soul of a song-sparrow, that
utters its cry of fear at the fall of a flake of snow. He will not
number tears and sighs, and tremblings and faintings, among the
transgressions of a woman.
This is all I have to say.