CAMPING ON ARROW RIVER
With flattened ears and a menacing snarl a mountain lion, not four feet
back, was crouching and nervously shuffling her forefeet for a spring at
me, and three or four small young ones behind her all had their backs
arched and were spitting and growling too. I ducked down so quickly that
I lost my balance and tumbled onto the rocks, but luckily the fall did
not hurt me. I was up on my feet at once.
"What was it?" Red Crow asked.
"A big lion! It has little young ones. It was making ready to spring at
me," I answered, and at that he became greatly excited.
"Quick! Let me have your gun! Help me up!" he exclaimed, and I went to
the wall and bent over, and Mink Woman handed him the gun after he had
gotten upon my back. He straightened up, and I expected to hear him
shoot; but instead he called down to us: "They are gone!" and sprang
upon the shelf and we heard a scuff or two of his moccasins as he ran
off. At that Mink Woman helped me get upon the shelf, and I then drew
her up, and we ran around a bend of it just in time to see Red Crow,
farther on, lay down my gun, draw his bow and arrows, and begin shooting
at something that seemed to be in a crevice of the cliff at the back of
the shelf. We hurried on to him and found that he had killed the lion
there where she had made her stand in front of her young, and as we came
up to him he shot the last of the little ones. There were four of them.
He was mightily pleased at what he had done, for the hide of a mountain
lion was valued by the Blackfeet tribes above that of any other animal.
It was believed to bring good luck in hunting and in war to the owner,
and was either fashioned into a bow case and quiver, or softly tanned
and used as a saddle robe.
While we were skinning the animals I asked my friend why he had not
used my gun to kill the old one.
"Never the gun when the bow will do as well!" he answered. "The bow is
silent. The gun goes whoom! and for far around all ears take notice of
it."
There was sound sense in what he said. I determined that I would no
longer delay getting a bow and learning to use it. We little thought
that we were to prove his saying on the height above us. If he had fired
the gun at the lion it is likely that I would not be sitting here
telling you my story of those vanished days.
Having skinned the lions we folded the hides flesh side together, so
that they would not dry out, and would be fresh and soft to stretch
properly when we got them to camp, and packed them with us; they were
light and would not interfere with our climbing. We went back to where
we had come up on the shelf, and then zigzagged our way up from shelf to
shelf, all the time in a deep recess in the great cliff. On the shelf
above the one on which we got the lions, were the remains of a yearling
bighorn which the old lion had apparently killed that morning, and that
explained, we thought, why we had seen none of the animals thereabout.
On the previous day we had seen several small bands there.
At last we climbed onto the cave shelf. From where we struck it, it ran
out toward the valley and then circled around the projecting point of
the formation, and ended in a recess similar to the one we had come up
in. The cave was on our side of the point; about a hundred yards from
it. We hurried out along the shelf, eager to get to the cave and explore
it, but upon reaching the entrance our haste died right there; it was a
mighty black hole we were looking into; a rank, damp, cold odor came
from it; we could see in only a few yards; the darkness beyond might
conceal something of great danger to us! A grizzly, I thought, and my
companions' fears included ghosts; the shadows of the dead always
lurking about to do the living harm.
Said Red Crow at last, and the set expression of his face belied his
words: "Ha! I am not afraid! Let's go in!"
"Come on," I told him, and led the way.
"I am afraid! I shall wait for you here!" Mink Woman told us. But she
didn't. We had taken but a few steps when she was close behind us,
feeling safest there.
A few yards in, the cave narrowed to but little more than three feet,
and then widened out again into a big, jagged-walled and high-roofed
room. We could see but little of it at first, for we were blocking the
light; but after leaving the narrow passage, and as our eyes became
accustomed to the darkness, we saw that the room was the end of the
cave. We stood still, hardly breathing, listening for any movement
there; watching for shining eyes; and at last concluded that the place
was harmless enough. Then I, farthest in, saw something, a dim, white,
queerly shaped object on the floor at the back of the room. I stared at
it a long time, made sure that whatever it was it had no life, and then
moved on. The others then saw it and Red Crow exclaimed: "What is it?
What is it?"
We moved on again, and saw at last that our find was a number of painted
and fringed rawhide war cylinders, receptacles in which warriors carried
their war bonnets and war clothes when on a raid.
"Ghosts' property! Do not touch them!" Mink Woman exclaimed, but I was
already lifting one of them, and as I did so it gave off a fresh odor of
sweet grass smoke, a medicine--a sacred perfume of the Blackfeet tribes,
I knew. I held it under Red Crow's nose and he sniffed at it and
exclaimed: "Newly smoked!" He then took it and held it up in better
light, and pointed to the painted design: "Crow! Crow painting!" he
exclaimed, and turned quickly and stared out the way we had come; so did
I. There was no one in sight. All was quiet; but we felt sure that the
enemy was not far away!
I turned back and counted the cylinders; there were seven, and with
them were coils of rawhide rope, several bridles with Spanish bits, the
first that I had ever seen, and didn't then know were of that make, and
three square-shaped rawhide pouches with slings for carrying. I put my
hand into one of them and brought forth a piece of freshly roasted meat!
That settled it; a Crow war party was somewhere on the cliffs about us;
they had perhaps slept here, and were now out on watch. I thought it
strange that they had not seen us. Said Red Crow: "They must be sitting
out around the point. Just think! If I had fired the gun at the lion we
would now be without scalps!"
And at that he gave a little laugh; a scared little laugh, his eyes all
the time on the cave entrance, as were mine, and Mink Woman's.
"What shall we do?" she whispered.
"Take these things and run," I said.
"No!" said Red Crow, and took from me the pouch, put the roast meat back
and laid it in its place in the pile. "Come!" he said, and we followed
him out. At the entrance we looked off along the length of the shelf as
far as we could see its rounding curve; no one was in sight. We ran, ran
for our lives back the way we had come, our backs twitching in
expectation of arrow piercings. We reached the end of the shelf in the
recess, halted a moment for a last look back, and seeing no one, went
quickly down the slopes and over the shelves to the bottom, and thence
to our picketed horses. Not until we reached them did we feel really
safe.
"There! We survive!" Red Crow exclaimed. "I go for help! We shall wipe
out those Crows! Hasten, you two; go down to the place of our buffalo
killing and keep watch for them, but don't let them think that you know
they are there on the cliffs. I shall come back as soon as I can."
He left us, and Mink Woman and I rode down to the mouth of the deep
coulee, picketed our horses just below it, and then got onto the shelf
from which we had shot the buffaloes the day before; and not until then
did we actually begin our watch. I sat facing the bottom of the coulee,
looking up it the most of the time just as though I were waiting for a
herd of buffaloes to come down for water, and Mink Woman pretended to be
looking up and down the canyon, but most of the time her eyes were upon
the high, rounding point of the cliff opposite us, and in particular the
cave shelf. We felt sure that somewhere up there the enemy lay concealed
and was watching us. It was likely that, coming across the plain in the
early morning, they had seen some of our people riding out to hunt, and
had taken refuge in the cliff with the expectation of finding our camp
and raiding our horses when night came.
It was mid-afternoon when we saw a number of riders, twenty or thirty,
coming down the valley. They appeared to be in no haste, but when they
had come close the sweat on their horses told us that they had ridden
hard the most of the way down. Lone Walker was the leader of the party.
He rode up close to our shelf and asked if we had seen the enemy while
sitting there, and upon learning that we hadn't, said that Red Crow was
guiding a big party to attack the Crows from the top of the cliff. He
then turned to his men and told one of them to ride up the coulee, and
the rest to watch him, in order that the Crows might not have the least
suspicion that we were aware of their presence.
It was hard for us all to do that, to stare up a coulee when we wanted
to keep our eyes on the cliffs, but we had not to endure it long; we
soon heard the whoom! whoom! whoom! of guns, and turning, saw our men on
the top of the rounding point of the cliff, and shooting down at three
men running along the shelf on which was the entrance to the cave. They
disappeared around the bend and I knew that they were making for shelter
there. But whoom! whoom! went two guns back in the recess, and soon one
of the men came running back. In the meantime some of our party had
found a way down to the other end of the shelf, and now came running
along it out around the point. As soon as the lone enemy saw them he
stopped short, fired an arrow at them that went wild, and then with a
quick leap threw himself from the shelf. Down, down he went, a sickening
sight as he whirled through the air, and struck the rocks far below.
"Hai! Hai! Hai! A brave end!" cried Lone Walker, and all the party
echoed his words, and several made a dash across to secure his scalp and
weapons. Meantime one of our men up on the extreme point of the cliff
was signaling down to us, his signs plain as he stood outlined against
the clear sky: "They are all wiped out! Dead! We meet you at camp!" And
at that we all got upon our horses and rode home.
The cliff party, bearing the scalps and plunder they had taken from the
enemy, arrived in camp at the same time we did and were hailed with
great acclaim. As soon as the greeting was over Red Crow handed me one
of the fringed and painted cylinders that we had discovered in the cave.
"Take it," he said, "it is yours. See, I also have one. We got them
all."
We went to our lodge then with Lone Walker, and Red Crow told us how he
had guided the big party out, stationing a few men down at the cave, in
the first place, and then leading the others out upon the point above
the shelf where he thought the enemy would be sitting. Upon looking over
the edge they had found the seven Crows lying flat on the rocky
projection straight below, all intently watching our party across at the
mouth of the coulee. Four of them had been killed where they lay. Two of
the three that then ran for the cave had been shot down before they
could reach it. The last man, rather than give the Pi-kun-i the honor of
killing him, had committed suicide by jumping from the cliff. "He was a
coward! Had I been in his place I would have fought to the last; I would
have tried my best to make others die with me!" Red Crow concluded.
"I like to hear you say that. Fight to the last! That is the one thing
to do!" Lone Walker told him.
With no little eagerness Red Crow and I unlaced the round end covers of
our Crow war cylinders, and drew out the contents, and found that we
each had a beautiful war suit and eagle tail feather war bonnet. The
streaming ends of the bonnets were feathered all the way, and were so
long that they would drag at our heels as we walked. Then and there a
visitor in the lodge offered me five horses for my costume. I would not
have parted with it for any number of horses; I had nine head, all that
I could possibly use while on the trail.
We camped on Arrow River all of a week, the women busily gathering
choke-cherries for winter use. Upon bringing them into camp they pounded
them, pits and all, on flat rocks, and set the mass on clean rawhides to
dry, and then stored it in rawhide pouches. There was never enough of it
for daily use. In its raw state, or stewed, or mixed with finely pounded
dry meat and marrow grease--pemmican--it was passed around as a side
dish to a feast. I liked it, and always ate my share, although never
without some misgivings as to the effect of the sharp and indigestible
particles of pounded pits in my stomach.
During our stay at this place an old, old man named
Kip-i-tai-su-yi-kak-i (Old-Woman-Stretching-Her-Legs) came into our
lodge one night, took his bow and quiver case from his back, passed it
to me and said: "There, my son Rising Wolf! I heard that you wanted bow
and arrows, so I give you this set, one that I took long ago in battle
with the Snake People. It is a good bow. The arrows are well feathered
and fly straight. I hope that you will have good success with my
present, and sometimes remember that I am fond of broiled tongue!"
And at that he laughed, and we all laughed with him, and I said that he
should not lack for tongues, and kept my word. I was very glad to get
the bow. At first it was a little too stiff for the strength of my arms,
but with daily use of it my muscles grew up to its requirement of
strength, and I soon became a fair shot with the feathered shafts. I did
not carry the bow all the time, but always used it for running
buffaloes. On my first chase with it I killed three cows, and once,
several years later, shot down thirteen cows with it in one run. But
that was nothing. I once saw a man, named Little Otter, shoot
twenty-seven buffaloes in one run! He was a big, powerfully built man,
he rode a big, swift, well-trained, buffalo horse, and every time he let
an arrow fly it slipped into an animal just back of the ribs and ranged
forward into the heart and lungs.
You ask how a man happened to be named Old-Woman-Stretching-Her-Legs.
When a child was born, a medicine man was called in to name it, and
invariably the name he gave was of something he had seen, or of some
incident, in one of his dreams, or, as he believed them to be, visions.
Thus, in a dream, the medicine man had seen an old woman at rest, or
sleeping, and she had stretched down her legs to get more ease.
Hence the name. A woman generally retained through life the name
given her at birth. A man, as I have explained, was entitled to
take a new name every time he counted a big coup. Some odd names
that I remember are Chewing-Black-Bones; Back-Coming-in-Sight;
Tail-Feathers-Coming-in-Sight-over-the-Hill; Falling Bear; and
He-Talked-with-the-Buffalo.
During the time of our encampment on Arrow River, Red Crow and I killed
a number of fine bighorn rams along the cliffs, and the skins of these,
tanned into soft leather and smoked by the women, were made into a shirt
and leggings for me. It was time that I had them, for my one suit of
company clothes was falling to pieces. Also, my shoes had given out.
Attired now in leather clothes, breechclout, moccasins, and with a toga,
or wrap of buffalo cow leather, I was all Indian except in color. Lone
Walker himself made the suit for me. Men were their own tailors; the
women made only their moccasins. In time I learned to cut out and sew my
clothing.
Red Crow had become the owner of one of the two huge Spanish bits that
we had found in the cave with the rest of the Crow belongings. It was
beautifully fashioned of hand-forged steel, its long shanks inlaid with
silver, and he took good care of it, polishing and cleaning it
frequently. As he was thus occupied one evening, Lone Walker pointed to
the bit and asked me if I knew whence it had come. I didn't, of course,
and said so, whereupon he told Mink Woman to take down a long,
well-wrapped roll of buckskin that was invariably fastened to the lodge
poles above his couch. I had often wondered what it might contain. He
undid the fastenings, unrolled wrap after wrap of leather, and held up
to my astonished gaze a shirt of mail, very fine meshed and light, and
an exquisitely fashioned rapier. He passed them to me for examination,
and I found etched on the rapier blade the legend: "Francisco Alvarez.
Barcelona. 1693." It was an old Spanish blade.
"The people who made the bit," he told me in signs and words, very
slowly and carefully so that I would understand, "made these. They live
in the Far Southland; the always-summer land. I went there once with a
party of our people, traveling ever south all summer. We started from
our country when the grass first started in the spring, and, counting
the moons, arrived in that far Southland in the first moon of winter
here. We found there white men different from those who had come to the
Assiniboine River and built a fort. They were dark-skinned and
black-haired, most of them. They had many horses. We went south to take
their horses, and captured many of them. But not without a fight,
several fights. In one of the fights I killed the man who wore this iron
shirt and carried this big knife. We did not get back to our country
until the middle of the next summer. That is a strong shirt. Arrows
cannot pierce it. It has saved my life three different times in battle
with the enemy."
Well, that was news to me, that these people went so very far, all the
way to Mexico, on their raids. Afterward I heard many interesting tales
of raids into the Far South, many parties going there in my time, and
generally returning with great bands of horses and plunder taken from
the Spanish, and from different Indian tribes. I learned that the Crows
had the first horses that the Blackfeet tribes ever saw, and that they
were almost paralyzed with astonishment when they saw men mount the
strange, big animals and guide them in whatever direction they wished to
go. But fear soon gave place to burning desire to own the useful
animals, and they began raiding the herds of the Crows, the Snakes, and
other Southern tribes, and the Spanish, and in time became owners of
thousands of them through capture, and by natural increase. Lone Walker
told me that his people first obtained horses when his father's father
was a small boy, and as near as I could figure it, that was about 1680
to 1700. The acquisition of the horse caused a vast change in the life
of the Blackfeet tribes. Before that time, with only their wolf-like
dogs for beasts of burden, their wanderings had been limited to the
forests of the Slave Lakes region, and the edge of the plains of the
Saskatchewan. With horses for riding and packing, and, later, a few guns
obtained from the Sieur de la Vérendrie's company, they swept southward
and conquered a vast domain and became the terror of all surrounding
tribes. The Blackfeet named the horse, po-no-ka-mi-ta (elk-dog),
because, like the dog, it carried burdens, and was of large size, like
the elk.
One evening, there at Arrow River, Lone Walker told me that we would
ride out early the next morning, and he would show me a "white men's
leavings,"--nap-i-kwaks o-kit-stuks-in, in his language. I asked him
what it was, and was told to be patient; that I should see it.
Accordingly, we rode out on the plain on the trail by which we had come
down to the river, then turned sharply to the right, following the
general course of the big, walled valley, and after several hours'
travel came to a pile of rocks set on top of a low ridge on the plain,
and at the head of a very long coulee, heading there and running down to
the river, several miles away. "There! That is white men's leavings!"
the chief exclaimed. "We know not how long ago they piled those rocks.
It was in my father's time that our people found the pile, just as you
see it, except that at that time a white metal figure of a man against
black, crossed sticks, his arms outstretched, was stuck in the top of
it, so that it faced yonder Belt Mountains."
I was tremendously interested. "What became of the man figure?" I asked.
"The finder kept it for some time, and then sacrificed it to the sun;
hung it to the roof of a medicine lodge," he answered, and it seemed
strange to think that an image of Jesus had been presented to a pagan
god.
"How long ago do you think it was that white men put up this pile?" I
asked.
"Fifty, maybe sixty, maybe seventy winters. In my father's time white
men came to the camp of the Earth House People. It was in winter time.
They rode horses; wore iron shirts; carried guns with big, flaring
muzzles, and long knives. From the camp of the Earth House People they
went west, returned soon, and went back north, whence they had come.
None of our tribes saw them."
I said to myself: "The Sieur de la Vérendrie's party must have put up
this monument, and yonder Belt Mountains must be those that they named
the Shining Mountains!"
Well I knew the story of the brave and unfortunate Sieur. My
grandfather, who had had some interest in his ventures, had related it
many times. Because of enemies who had the favor of the Court, in
France, he had failed in his undertakings to establish a great fur trade
in the West, and he had died of a broken heart! I must confess that I
felt some disappointment upon learning that I was not, as I had thought,
the first of my race to see this part of the country. However, the
knowledge that I had been the first white person to traverse the great
Saskatchewan-Missouri River country comforted me.
As we rode homeward I learned from Lone Walker that a man named Sees Far
had discovered the monument and taken the cross. He was long since dead.
I was afraid to ask where the medicine lodge was built at which the
cross had been sacrificed to the sun. The penalty for robbing the sun
was death. The Blackfeet tribes had too much reverence for their gods to
do that, and war parties of other tribes, traveling through the country
and coming upon a deserted medicine lodge, gave it a wide berth; they
feared the power of the shining god for whom it had been built. I
remember that the Kai-na tribe of the Blackfeet once came upon three
free trappers (or were they the American Company's _engagés_--I forget)
robbing a medicine lodge, and killed them all!
I come now to a part of my story that is not so very happy. On the
morning that we broke the Arrow River camp, the chiefs, and the guard
that generally rode ahead of the column, remained on the camp ground,
gathered here and there in little groups smoking and telling stories,
until long after the people had packed up and were traveling up the long
coulee through which the trail led to the plain on the south side of the
valley. I went on with Red Crow and Mink Woman, and a young man named
Eagle Plume, Lone Walker's nephew, helping them herd along the chief's
big band of horses in which, of course, were those that he had given me.
As soon as we got out of the narrow confine of the coulee we drove the
herd at one side of the beaten travois and pack trail, keeping about
even with Lone Walker's outfit of women and children riders, and their
loaded horses. Their place was at the head of the Little Robes Band, and
that had its place in the long line about a half mile from the lead
band, which was that of the Lone Eaters.
We had traveled three or four miles from the river, and were wending
our way among a wide, long setting of rough hills, keeping ever in the
low places between them, when, without the slightest warning, a large
body of riders dashed out from behind a steep hill and made for the head
of our column. Far off as they were, we could hear them raise their war
song, and could see that they were all decked out in their war finery.
"Crows! Crows! They attack us!" I heard men crying as they urged their
horses forward.
"Crows! We must help fight them!" Red Crow called to me, and like one in
a dream I found myself with my companions riding madly for the front.