Why are the people crying? Why is all this mourning? Ah! the poor man has
returned home, and told how those who went with him were killed. He has
told them the whole story. They are getting ready for war. Every one able
to fight is going with this man back to the Snakes. Only a few will be
left to guard the camp. The mother of that bad woman is going, too. She has
sharpened her axe, and told what she will do when she sees her
daughter. All are ready. The best horses have been caught up and saddled,
and the war party has started,--hundreds and hundreds of warriors. They are
strung out over the prairie as far as you can see.
When they got to the Missouri River, the poor man showed them where the
lodge in which they had tortured him had stood. He took them to see the
tree, where he had been bound. The black paint was still on it.
From here, they went slowly. Some young men were sent far ahead to
scout. The second day, they came back to the main body, and said they had
found a camping place just deserted, and that there the trail forked. The
poor man then went ahead, and at the forks he found a willow twig stuck in
the ground, pointing to the left hand trail. When the others came up, he
said to them: "Take care of my horse now, and travel slowly. I will go
ahead on foot and find the camp. It must be close. I will go and see that
old woman, and find out how things are."
Some men did not want him to do this; they said that the old woman might
tell about him, and then they could not surprise the camp.
"No," replied the man. "It will not be so. That old woman is almost the
same as my mother. I know she will help us."
He went ahead carefully, and near sunset saw the camp. When it was dark,
he crept near it and entered the old woman's lodge. She had placed it
behind, and a little way off from, the others. When he went in the old
woman was asleep, but the fire was still burning a little. He touched her,
and she jumped up and started to scream; but he put his hand on her mouth,
and when she saw who it was she laughed and kissed him. "The Piegans have
come," he told her. "We are going to have revenge on this camp to-night. Is
my wife here?"
"Still here," replied the old woman. "She is chief now. They think her
medicine very strong."
"Tell your friends and relations," said the Piegan, "that you have had a
dream, and that they must move into the brush yonder. Have them stay there
with you, and they will not be hurt. I am going now to get my people."
It was very late in the night. Most of the Snakes were in bed and
asleep. All at once the camp was surrounded with warriors, shouting the war
cry and shooting, stabbing, and knocking people on the head as fast as they
came out of the lodges.
That Piegan woman cried out: "Don't hurt me. I am a Piegan. Are any of my
people here?"
"Many of your relations are here," some one said. "They will protect you."
Some young men seized and tied her, as her husband had said to do. They had
hard work to keep her mother from killing her. "_Hai yah_!" the old woman
cried. "There is my Snake woman daughter. Let me split her head open."
The fight was soon over. The Piegans killed the people almost as fast as
they came out of their lodges. Some few escaped in the darkness. When the
fight was over, the young warriors gathered up a great pile of lodge poles
and brush, and set fire to it. Then the poor man tore the dress off his bad
wife, tied the scalp of her dead Snake man around her neck, and told her to
dance the scalp dance in the fire. She cried and hung back, calling out for
pity. The people only laughed and pushed her into the fire. She would run
through it, and then those on the other side would push her back. So they
kept her running through the fire, until she fell down and died.
The old Snake woman had come out of the brush with her relations. Because
she had been so good, the Piegans gave her, and those with her, one-half of
all the horses and valuable things they had taken. "_Kyi!_" said the Piegan
chief. "That is all for you, because you helped this poor man. To-morrow
morning we start back North. If your heart is that way, go too and live
with us." So these Snakes joined the Piegans and lived with them until they
died, and their children married with the Piegans, and at last they were no
longer Snake people.[1]
[Footnote 1: When the Hudson's Bay Company first established a fort at
Edmonton, a daughter of one of these Snakes married a white employee of the
company, named, in Blackfoot, _O-wai_, Egg.]