THE CROWS ATTACK THE BLACKFEET
All the men from the whole length of the line were rushing forward, even
the old and weak who had scarce strength enough to string their bows.
Ahead, women and children were coming back as fast as they could make
their horses run, and pack horses, travois horses, and those dragging
lodge poles were running in all directions and scattering their loads
upon the plain. It was a scene of awful confusion and of noise; women
and children yelling and crying with fright, flying past us wild eyed,
our men shouting to one another to hurry, to take courage, and above
all, louder than all, the yells and shouts of the enemy and our few
warriors there at the front.
The Crows were forcing our men back; they were fighting their best but
were far outnumbered and, as we could see, were falling not a few. I
looked back, and the sight of hundreds of our men coming on was
encouraging. With my companions, and twenty or thirty more riders, I was
now getting close to the fighting. The Crows, in one big, long body,
were riding full speed across the stand our men were making, shooting
their arrows and few guns as they passed, and wheeling out and around
for another charge by them. This they had done many times, and so far as
I could see, but few of them had fallen.
At last we were at the front, arriving there just as the Crows were
making another of their wheeling charges. They must have been all of
four hundred men, and we there facing them were not two hundred. On they
came, to pass close on our right, shouting their war cry, their
long-tailed war bonnets, the fringe of their beautiful clothes, the
plumes of their shields all a-flutter in the wind. A brave sight they
were, and fearsome! As they swept past us they shot their arrows, the
air was full of them, and we shot at them. Several men on both sides
went down, horses were wounded and became unmanageable in their fright,
carrying their riders whither they willed. My horse was dancing with
excitement and jerking on his bit, making it impossible for me to take
steady aim, so I fired my gun at the thickest group of the passing
riders and so far as I could see did them no harm.
[Illustration: AS THEY SWEPT PAST US THEY SHOT THEIR ARROWS]
This time, instead of wheeling out and around for another charge, the
Crow chief led his men straight on along the line of the fleeing women
and children. Swarms of our men were coming out, and he no doubt
concluded to do all the damage that he could before he would have to
give way before our superior numbers. Upon seeing his intent, we, too,
turned back, the men crying out to one another: "The women! The
children! Fight hard for them!"
Out where the Crows had first struck our column there were dead and
dying and wounded women and children, as well as men, and now more began
to fall. The Crows were without mercy. Here were the people who had
despoiled them; taken from them their vast hunting-ground; and now
they should pay for it with their blood! They were so drunk with hatred
that they were for the time reckless of harm to themselves.
We followed them close. Beyond, a great crowd of our men were riding at
them, led by Lone Walker himself. I did not see what he did, I had eyes
only for what was immediately around me, but I heard the tale of it many
times afterward. He made straight for the Crow chief, and the latter for
him, and they brought their horses together with such a shock that both
fell. As they went down both men sprang free and grappled one another,
Lone Walker dropping his empty gun, and the Crow letting go his bow and
handful of arrows. A crowd surrounded them, the Crows endeavoring to aid
their chief, our men fighting them off. The Crow chief had managed to
get out his knife, but Lone Walker gave his arm such a sudden fierce
twist that he dropped it, endeavored to recover it, and as he did so
Lone Walker got out his own knife and stabbed him down through his back
into his heart, and he fell and died!
In the meantime we were in a terrible scrimmage; a thick mixup of
riders. I had stuck my gun in under my belt, there was no time to reload
it, and had fired one of my pistols, and now got out the other one. Red
Crow and I were side by side. He had shot away his handful of arrows and
was reaching into his quiver for more when a Crow rode up beside him,
reached out and grasped him by the arm, endeavoring to pull him over and
knife him. I saw him just in time to poke my pistol over past Red Crow
and fire, and down he went from his horse! The sight of him falling, his
awful stare of hate--would you believe it, made me sick and sorry for
him, enemy though he was! "I have killed a man! I have killed a man!" I
said to myself as I replaced the pistol and got out my gun to use as a
club, as I saw others doing. But just then I saw a wounded woman stagger
to her feet, and then with a cry throw up her hands and fall dead, and
I shouted with joy that I had killed, and with Red Crow dashed on,
thirsting now to kill! kill! kill! Right there, and for all time
vanished my doubts, my tender-heartedness! The enemies of the Pi-kun-i
were my enemies so long as they tried to do me harm!
Their chief dead, and faced by ever-increasing numbers of our warriors,
the Crows now turned and fled, but we did not chase them far; our men
were so anxious about their families, to learn if they were safe, or
dead, that they had no heart for the pursuit. It was a terrible sight
that met our eyes as we turned and went back to that part of the trail
that had been the scene of the fight; everywhere along it were dead and
wounded men and women and children and horses. I could not bear to look
at them, and was glad when Lone Walker told a number of us to round up
the pack and travois horses scattered out upon the plain, and drive them
back to the river, where we would go into camp and bury the dead. We
were a long time doing that, necessarily leaving the packs that had
fallen for the owners to recover later. When we got back to the river
with our drive we found many lodges already up, including our two. None
of Lone Walker's great family had been harmed, nor had they met any loss
of property. Red Crow and I got a hasty bite to eat, and catching fresh
horses went with a strong guard that was to remain out on the plain
until all the dead had been carried in for burial, and all the scattered
property recovered. That was all done before sunset, and then a guard
was placed about camp for the night, and another told off to herd the
horses.
That was a sad evening. Everywhere in camp there was wailing for the
dead; everywhere medicine men were praying for the wounded, chanting
their sacred songs as they went through strange ceremonies for curing
them. The chiefs gathered in our lodge to bitterly blame themselves for
not having been out at the front, with the guard ahead of them, when
camp was broken. They had taken count of our loss: forty-one men,
thirty-two women and girls, and nine children were dead and buried--the
trees in the near grove were full of them--and some of the wounded were
sure to die. The Crows had lost sixty-one of their number, and some of
their wounded would undoubtedly die. Not then, nor for many a night
afterward, did anyone tell what he had particularly done in the fight
against the enemy. It was surmised that, in wiping out the seven Crows
on the cliff, another member of the party, perhaps on watch elsewhere,
had been overlooked; and that he had gone home and brought his people to
attack us. There were two tribes of the enemy: the River Crows and the
Mountain Crows. If camping together, they were too strong for the
Pi-kun-i to attack. That very evening three messengers were selected to
go north to the Kai-na, camping somewhere in the Bear Paw Mountains, and
ask them to come down and join in a raid against the enemy.
I pass over the ensuing days of sadness, in which seven of the wounded
died. As soon as the others were well enough to travel we moved on,
camped one night on O-to-kwi-tuk-tai, Yellow River, or as Lewis and
Clark named it, Judith River, and the next day moved east to a small
stream named It-tsis-ki-os-op (It-Crushed-Them). Years later it was
named Armell's Creek after an American Fur Company man who built a
trading post at its junction with the Missouri. The Blackfoot name was
given it for the reason that some women, when digging red paint in the
foot of a high cutbank bordering the stream, had been killed by a heavy
fall of the earth.
The stream rises in the midst of some high, flat-topped buttes crowned
with a sparse growth of scrub pine and juniper, and its valley is well
timbered with pine and cottonwood. Its head is only a few miles from the
foot of the Mut-si-kin-is-tuk-ists (Moccasin Mountains). On the morning
after we went into camp I rode out to hunt with Red Crow, and he took me
to the extreme head of the stream, which was a large spring under an
overhang of wall rock. This sloped up from the sands of the floor on the
right of the spring to a height of six or seven feet on the outside of
the spring, and was of dark brown volcanic rock. Originally very rough,
as the extreme outer and inner portion attested, this roof had in the
course of ages been rubbed smooth by the animals that had come there to
drink at the spring. All that had come, from small antelopes to huge
buffaloes, had found the right height of it against which to rub their
backs, and they had rubbed and rubbed until the whole roof as high as
they could touch it was as smooth and lustrous as glass. I could see my
face in it.
While standing there we heard some animals coming along one of the many
trails in the surrounding timber, and presently saw that they were a
file of bull elk. We had left our horses some distance back, so they saw
nothing to alarm them. When they were within thirty feet of us Red Crow
let fly an arrow at the leader, and the others stopped and stared at him
as he fell, and struggled fruitlessly to regain his feet. That gave my
companion time to slip an arrow into another one, and then I fired and
dropped a third, and we had all the meat that we wanted. We butchered
the three, and then went home and sent Lone Walker's nephew and some of
the women out with pack horses for the meat.
From the time that the Crows made their terrible attack upon us, we kept
a strong guard with the horses night and day, and kept scouting parties
far out on the plains watching for the possible return of the enemy.
Some men who had been sent to trail the Crows to their camp, returned in
eight or nine days' time and reported that it was on The-Other-Side Bear
River (O-pum-ohst Kyai-is-i-sak-ta), straight south from the pass in the
Moccasin Mountains. This is the Musselshell River of Lewis and Clark.
The Blackfoot name for it distinguishes it from their other Bear River,
the Marias.
The returning scouts said that the camp was very large, and in two
parts, showing that both tribes of the Crows were there. Said Lone
Walker when he got the news: "And so they have dared to come back into
our land and hunt our game! Ha! As soon as the Kai-na come we shall make
them pay dearly for that!"
The talk now was all of war. In every tree about the camp were hung the
warriors' offerings to the sun, placed there with prayers to the god to
give them success in the coming battle.
As I have said, the camp was always pitched in a big circle of the clan
groups. Inside this circle were nine lodges set in a smaller circle,
each one painted with a sacred, or "medicine" design, no two of them
alike. The one always set nearest to our Small Robes group of lodges was
owned by a great warrior named Mi-nik-sa-pwo-pi (Mad Plume), and had for
its design a huge buffalo bull and a buffalo cow in black, the heart,
and the life line running to it from the mouth, painted bright red. I
had not thought that these lodges had any especial significance, but I
was soon to know better. On the day after we killed the elk at the
shining rock spring, Red Crow pointed to the buffalo medicine lodge and
said to me: "Just think; we are invited there to-night! We are asked to
join the Braves!"
"He does not understand," said Lone Walker, standing near us. "Let us
sit here, White Son, and I will explain."
We sat there in front of our lodge, and the chief began: "Those nine are
the lodges of the chiefs of the All Friends Society. It has nine
different bands: the Braves, All-Crazy-Dogs, Raven Carriers, Dogs,
Tails, Horns, Kit-Foxes, Siezers, and Bulls. To become a member of one
of the bands one has to be of good heart, of a straight tongue,
generous, and of proved bravery; so you see that you are thought to be
all that, else you would not be asked to join this band of Braves, made
up of our young warriors. I am a member of the Bulls, our oldest
warriors. All the bands are under the orders of myself and my brother
clan chiefs. There! Now you understand!"
But I didn't. I learned in time, however, that this great
I-kun-uh-kat-si, or All Friends Society, had for its main object the
carrying out--under the direction of the chiefs--of the tribal laws. If
a man or woman was to be punished, it was a band of the society that
meted it out, after the chiefs decided what the punishment should be. In
battle the members of a band hung close together, shouting the name of
it, and encouraging one another to do their best. Each band had its
particular songs, and its own peculiar way of dancing. Its chief's lodge
was its headquarters, and there of an evening the members were wont to
gather for a social time, for a little feast, singing, and story telling
as the pipe went round the circle.
When Red Crow and I went into the Braves' lodge that evening, Mad Plume
made us welcome, and indicated that we should sit at his left. That was
the only space left; all the rest was occupied by his family, and
members of the band, who also gave us pleasant greeting.
"Now, then, young men," Mad Plume said to us as soon as we were seated,
"we have had our eyes upon you for some time, thinking to invite you to
join us. We learned that you are good-hearted, generous, truthful, that
you are good to the old. We but waited to learn what you would do before
the enemy, and we learned; the other day when the Crows attacked us you
each did your best; you each did your share in driving them off, and
each killed. So now we ask: Would you like to become Braves?"
"Yes! Yes!" we exclaimed.
"And will you always obey the orders of the tribes' chiefs, and the
Braves' chief?"
"Yes! Yes!"
"Then you are Braves!" he concluded. And all present signified their
approval. I can't begin to tell you how pleased I was, how proud of this
unexpected honor. And at last I felt absolutely safe with the Pi-kun-i;
felt that they considered me one of them in every respect.
There were countless herds of game in all directions from our camp
there on It-Crushed-Them. By day the hunters scattered it, but it was
the mating season of the buffaloes, they were very uneasy, constantly on
the move, and fresh herds took the place of those that were frightened
away. One day when Red Crow and I were out after meat, with Mink Woman
trailing us with a couple of pack horses, we saw a small band of
buffaloes lying on a side hill, and leaving our horses in the shelter of
the timber around the shining rock spring, approached them. We followed
up a shallow coulee that headed close to the resting animals, in places
crawling upon hands and knees in order to keep under the shelter of low
banks. Mink Woman followed us close. We had asked her to remain with the
horses, but she was determined to be right with us and see the shooting
at close range.
We were still several hundred yards from the buffaloes, much too far for
Red Crow's arrows, and even my gun, when we heard the moaning bellow of
bulls off to our left. We paid no attention to it; there had been no
buffaloes in sight in that direction, and we thought that the animals
making it were a long way off. That deep, muffled bellowing, however,
was wonderfully deceiving; just by the sound of it, without looking, one
could never determine if the animals making it were near by, or a mile
or so away. But now we were suddenly warned that the bulls we heard were
close; we could hear the rushing thud of their feet, and two appeared
just a few yards ahead of us, attacking one another on the edge of the
coulee and slipping sideways down the steep bank, head pressed against
head.
"They are mad! Don't shoot, don't move, else they may attack us!" Red
Crow told me, and Mink Woman, just back of us, heard him.
But they were not all; only two of a band of thirty or forty, all bulls,
all outcasts from different herds, mad at one another and at all the
world. The two fighting incited others to fight, and the rest, moaning
and tossing their heads, switching their short tails, were soon all
around us. They presented a most frightful spectacle! Their dark eyes
seemed to shoot fire from under the overhanging shaggy hair; several
more engaged in fights, and some of those afraid to do that attacked the
bank of the coulee and with their sharp horns gouged out pieces of turf
and tossed them in every direction. We dared not move; we hardly dared
breathe; our suspense was almost unbearable. Said Mink Woman at last:
"Brother, I am terribly frightened. I think that I shall have to run!"
"Don't you do it! No running unless we are about to be stepped upon!" he
answered. An old bull standing not twenty feet from us heard the low
talk, whirled around and stared at us. Anyhow I thought that it was at
us, but if it was, he likely did not distinguish us from the rocks and
sage brush among which we were lying. If he charged us I intended to
shoot him in the brain, and then we should have to take our chances
running from the others. But just then a bellowing started off where the
band was that we had been approaching, and he turned and went leaping
out of the coulee toward it, others following, leaving but two sets
fighting in front of us. At that Mink Woman, no longer able to stand the
strain, sprang to her feet and ran down the coulee, we then following
her and looking back to see if we were pursued. The fighters paid no
attention to us, but we kept running and never stopped until we reached
our horses. Then, looking up the hill, we saw that the bulls had mingled
with the band that we had been after, and all were traveling off to the
south.
"Hai! We have had a narrow escape!" Red Crow exclaimed, and went on to
tell me that outcast bulls were very dangerous. The hunters never tried
to approach them on foot, and generally kept well away from them even
when well mounted. Mink Woman listened, still shaking a little from the
fright she had had, and then told me that only the summer before a mad
bull had attacked a woman near camp and pierced her through the back
with one of his horns, upon which she hung suspended despite his
efforts to shake her off. Becoming frightened then, and blinded by her
wrap, he had rushed right into camp and into a lodge, upsetting it and
trampling its contents until killed by the men. He fell with the woman
still impaled upon his horn. She was dead!
As we mounted and rode on, Red Crow told other instances of people being
killed by outcast bulls. He said that bulls with a herd were not bad;
that the cows would always run from the hunter, and they with them. We
proved that in less than an hour, for we again approached the band that
had been on the hillside, the outcast bulls now with it, and in a short
run killed three cows, the bulls sprinting their best to outrun our
horses.
Except for playing children and quarreling dogs, ours was a very quiet
camp those days there on It-Crushed-Them. The people still mourned for
their dead and, for that matter, did so for a year or more. Those not
mourning had no heart for social pleasure. All waited impatiently for
the coming of the Kai-na. Day after day the medicine men got out their
sacred pipes and smoked and prayed to the gods to give the warriors
great success against the Crows, still encamped upon The-Other-Side Bear
River, as the scouts kept reporting. I wondered if the Crows had scouts
out keeping equally close watch upon our camp.
One morning Lone Walker sent Red Crow and me to the Black Butte, the
extreme eastern end of the Moccasin Mountains, with dried meat and back
fat for the four scouts stationed there. We started very early, arrived
at the foot of the butte by something like ten o'clock, and there left
our horses in a grove of cottonwoods, and began the ascent with our
packs of meat. It was a long, steep, winding climb up around to its
southern slope, and thence to its summit, and we did not attain it until
mid-afternoon. We found two of the watchers asleep in a little enclosure
of rocks just under the summit, and the two others sitting upon the
highest point. They had seen us approaching the butte on our horses, and
were expecting us. They had no word for us to take back; no enemies had
appeared, the country seemed to be free from them.
It was from this high point that I got my first good view of the Bear
Paw, and Wolf Mountains, across on the north side of the Missouri, and
the great plains of the Missouri-Musselshell country. The plains were
black with buffaloes as far out in all directions as the eye could
distinguish them. I cannot begin to tell you how glad I was to be there
on that high point looking out upon that vast buffalo plain, its grand
mountains, its sentinel buttes, and deep-gashed river valleys. I had a
sense of ownership in it all. White though my skin, and blue my eyes, I
was a member of a Blackfoot tribe, yes, even a member of its law and
order society. And so, in common with my red people, an owner of this
great hunting-ground!
And even as I was thinking that, Red Crow turned from a long lookout
upon it and said to me: "Rising Wolf, brother, what a rich, what a
beautiful land is ours!"
No, that doesn't express it; he said, "Ki-sak-ow-an-on!" (Your land and
ours!)
"Ai! That is truth!" I answered, and we hastened down the steep butte,
mounted our horses and went homeward across the plain.
We arrived in camp to find the messengers returned from the north. With
them had come several hundred warriors of the Kai-na, and the whole
tribe would be with us on the following day. For the first time since
the fight with the Crows our camp livened up; feasts were prepared in
many lodges for our guests, and later in the evening several bands of
the All Friends Society gave dances in which they joined. For the first
time, I put on my Crow war suit and joined in the dance of the Braves.
As I had been practicing the step all by myself in the brush, I did
quite well, and even got some praise.
The Kai-na trailed in and set up their lodges just below us the next
afternoon. I counted the lodges and found that there were eleven hundred
and thirty, including twenty-five or thirty lodges of Gros Ventres. All
together we were a camp of nearly three thousand lodges--about fifteen
thousand people. I looked out at the horses grazing upon the plain;
there was no estimating the number; there were thousands and thousands
of them!
That evening Eagle Ribs, head chief of the Kai-na, came with his clan
chiefs to our lodge to council with Lone Walker and his clan chiefs.
They all used such big words to express what they had to say that I
would never have known what the talk was about had they not also used
signs, these for the benefit of the Gros Ventre clan chief, who did not
understand the Blackfoot language anywhere near as well as I did. The
council lasted far into the night. When it broke up the decision was
that we were to break camp early in the morning, travel all day on the
trail to the Crow camp, and on the following morning go on, the
warriors as fast as possible, the rest at the usual pace. It was the
general opinion that we could strike the Crow camp early in the
afternoon of the second day.