The Blood camp was on Old Man's River, where Fort McLeod now stands. A
party of seven men started to war toward the Cypress Hills. Heavy Collar
was the leader. They went around the Cypress Mountains, but found no
enemies and started back toward their camp. On their homeward way, Heavy
Collar used to take the lead. He would go out far ahead on the high hills,
and look over the country, acting as scout for the party. At length they
came to the south branch of the Saskatchewan River, above Seven Persons'
Creek. In those days there were many war parties about, and this party
travelled concealed as much as possible in the coulées and low places.
As they were following up the river, they saw at a distance three old bulls
lying down close to a cut bank. Heavy Collar left his party, and went out
to kill one of these bulls, and when he had come close to them, he shot one
and killed it right there. He cut it up, and, as he was hungry, he went
down into a ravine below him, to roast a piece of meat; for he had left his
party a long way behind, and night was now coming on. As he was roasting
the meat, he thought,--for he was very tired,--"It is a pity I did not
bring one of my young men with me. He could go up on that hill and get some
hair from that bull's head, and I could wipe out my gun." While he sat
there thinking this, and talking to himself, a bunch of this hair came over
him through the air, and fell on the ground right in front of him. When
this happened, it frightened him a little; for he thought that perhaps some
of his enemies were close by, and had thrown the bunch of hair at
him. After a little while, he took the hair, and cleaned his gun and loaded
it, and then sat and watched for a time. He was uneasy, and at length
decided that he would go on further up the river, to see what he could
discover. He went on, up the stream, until he came to the mouth of the
St. Mary's River. It was now very late in the night, and he was very tired,
so he crept into a large bunch of rye-grass to hide and sleep for the
night.
The summer before this, the Blackfeet _(Sik-si-kau)_ had been camped on
this bottom, and a woman had been killed in this same patch of rye-grass
where Heavy Collar had lain down to rest. He did not know this, but still
he seemed to be troubled that night. He could not sleep. He could always
hear something, but what it was he could not make out. He tried to go to
sleep, but as soon as he dozed off he kept thinking he heard something in
the distance. He spent the night there, and in the morning when it became
light, there he saw right beside him the skeleton of the woman who had been
killed the summer before.
That morning he went on, following up the stream to Belly River. All day
long as he was travelling, he kept thinking about his having slept by this
woman's bones. It troubled him. He could not forget it. At the same time he
was very tired, because he had walked so far and had slept so little. As
night came on, he crossed over to an island, and determined to camp for the
night. At the upper end of the island was a large tree that had drifted
down and lodged, and in a fork of this tree he built his fire, and got in a
crotch of one of the forks, and sat with his back to the fire, warming
himself, but all the time he was thinking about the woman he had slept
beside the night before. As he sat there, all at once he heard over beyond
the tree, on the other side of the fire, a sound as if something were being
dragged toward him along the ground. It sounded as if a piece of a lodge
were being dragged over the grass. It came closer and closer.
Heavy Collar was scared. He was afraid to turn his head and look back to
see what it was that was coming. He heard the noise come up to the tree in
which his fire was built, and then it stopped, and all at once he heard
some one whistling a tune. He turned around and looked toward the sound,
and there, sitting on the other fork of the tree, right opposite to him,
was the pile of bones by which he had slept, only now all together in the
shape of a skeleton. This ghost had on it a lodge covering. The string,
which is tied to the pole, was fastened about the ghost's neck; the wings
of the lodge stood out on either side of its head, and behind it the lodge
could be seen, stretched out and fading away into the darkness. The ghost
sat on the old dead limb and whistled its tune, and as it whistled, it
swung its legs in time to the tune.
When Heavy Collar saw this, his heart almost melted away. At length he
mustered up courage, and said: "Oh ghost, go away, and do not trouble me. I
am very tired; I want to rest." The ghost paid no attention to him, but
kept on whistling, swinging its legs in time to the tune. Four times he
prayed to her, saying: "Oh ghost, take pity on me! Go away and leave me
alone. I am tired; I want to rest." The more he prayed, the more the ghost
whistled and seemed pleased, swinging her legs, and turning her head from
side to side, sometimes looking down at him, and sometimes up at the stars,
and all the time whistling.
When he saw that she took no notice of what he said, Heavy Collar got angry
at heart, and said, "Well, ghost, you do not listen to my prayers, and I
shall have to shoot you to drive you away." With that he seized his gun,
and throwing it to his shoulder, shot right at the ghost. When he shot at
her, she fell over backward into the darkness, screaming out: "Oh Heavy
Collar, you have shot me, you have killed me! You dog, Heavy Collar! there
is no place on this earth where you can go that I will not find you; no
place where you can hide that I will not come."
As she fell back and said this, Heavy Collar sprang to his feet, and ran
away as fast as he could. She called after him: "I have been killed once,
and now you are trying to kill me again. Oh Heavy Collar!" As he ran away,
he could still hear her angry words following him, until at last they died
away in the distance. He ran all night long, and whenever he stopped to
breathe and listen, he seemed to hear in the distance the echoes of her
voice. All he could hear was, "Oh Heavy Collar!" and then he would rush
away again. He ran until he was all tired out, and by this time it was
daylight. He was now quite a long way below Fort McLeod. He was very
sleepy, but dared not lie down, for he remembered that the ghost had said
that she would follow him. He kept walking on for some time, and then sat
down to rest, and at once fell asleep.
Before he had left his party, Heavy Collar had said to his young men: "Now
remember, if any one of us should get separated from the party, let him
always travel to the Belly River Buttes. There will be our meeting-place."
When their leader did not return to them, the party started across the
country and went toward the Belly River Buttes. Heavy Collar had followed
the river up, and had gone a long distance out of his way; and when he
awoke from his sleep he too started straight for the Belly River Buttes, as
he had said he would.
When his party reached the Buttes, one of them went up on top of the hill
to watch. After a time, as he looked down the river, he saw two persons
coming, and as they came nearer, he saw that one of them was Heavy Collar,
and by his side was a woman. The watcher called up the rest of the party,
and said to them: "Here comes our chief. He has had luck. He is bringing a
woman with him. If he brings her into camp, we will take her away from
him." And they all laughed. They supposed that he had captured her. They
went down to the camp, and sat about the fire, looking at the two people
coming, and laughing among themselves at the idea of their chief bringing
in a woman. When the two persons had come close, they could see that Heavy
Collar was walking fast, and the woman would walk by his side a little way,
trying to keep up, and then would fall behind, and then trot along to catch
up to him again. Just before the pair reached camp there was a deep ravine
that they had to cross. They went down into this side by side, and then
Heavy Collar came up out of it alone, and came on into the camp.
When he got there, all the young men began to laugh at him and to call out,
"Heavy Collar, where is your woman?" He looked at them for a moment, and
then said: "Why, I have no woman. I do not understand what you are talking
about." One of them said: "Oh, he has hidden her in that ravine. He was
afraid to bring her into camp." Another said, "Where did you capture her,
and what tribe does she belong to?" Heavy Collar looked from one to
another, and said: "I think you are all crazy. I have taken no woman. What
do you mean?" The young man said: "Why, that woman that you had with you
just now: where did you get her, and where did you leave her? Is she down
in the coulée? We all saw her, and it is no use to deny that she was with
you. Come now, where is she?" When they said this, Heavy Collar's heart
grew very heavy, for he knew that it must have been the ghost woman; and he
told them the story. Some of the young men could not believe this, and they
ran down to the ravine, where they had last seen the woman. There they saw
in the soft dirt the tracks made by Heavy Collar, when he went down into
the ravine, but there were no other tracks near his, where they had seen
the woman walking. When they found that it was a ghost that had come along
with Heavy Collar, they resolved to go back to their main camp. The party
had been out so long that their moccasins were all worn out, and some of
them were footsore, so that they could not travel fast, but at last they
came to the cut banks, and there found their camp--seven lodges.
That night, after they had reached camp, they were inviting each other to
feasts. It was getting pretty late in the night, and the moon was shining
brightly, when one of the Bloods called out for Heavy Collar to come and
eat with him. Heavy Collar shouted, "Yes, I will be there pretty soon." He
got up and went out of the lodge, and went a little way from it, and sat
down. While he was sitting there, a big bear walked out of the brush close
to him. Heavy Collar felt around him for a stone to throw at the bear, so
as to scare it away, for he thought it had not seen him. As he was feeling
about, his hand came upon a piece of bone, and he threw this over at the
bear, and hit it. Then the bear spoke, and said: "Well, well, well, Heavy
Collar; you have killed me once, and now here you are hitting me. Where is
there a place in this world where you can hide from me? I will find you, I
don't care where you may go." When Heavy Collar heard this, he knew it was
the ghost woman, and he jumped up and ran toward his lodge, calling out,
"Run, run! a ghost bear is upon us!"
All the people in the camp ran to his lodge, so that it was crowded full of
people. There was a big fire in the lodge, and the wind was blowing hard
from the west. Men, women, and children were huddled together in the lodge,
and were very much afraid of the ghost. They could hear her walking toward
the lodge, grumbling, and saying: "I will kill all these dogs. Not one of
them shall get away." The sounds kept coming closer and closer, until they
were right at the lodge door. Then she said, "I will smoke you to death."
And as she said this, she moved the poles, so that the wings of the lodge
turned toward the west, and the wind could blow in freely through the smoke
hole. All this time she was threatening terrible things against them. The
lodge began to get full of smoke, and the children were crying, and all
were in great distress--almost suffocating. So they said, "Let us lift one
man up here inside, and let him try to fix the ears, so that the lodge will
get clear of smoke." They raised a man up, and he was standing on the
shoulders of the others, and, blinded and half strangled by the smoke, was
trying to turn the wings. While he was doing this, the ghost suddenly hit
the lodge a blow, and said, "_Un_!" and this scared the people who were
holding the man, and they jumped and let him go, and he fell down. Then the
people were in despair, and said, "It is no use; she is resolved to smoke
us to death." All the time the smoke was getting thicker in the lodge.
Heavy Collar said: "Is it possible that she can destroy us? Is there no one
here who has some strong dream power that can overcome this ghost?"
His mother said: "I will try to do something. I am older than any of you,
and I will see what I can do." So she got down her medicine bundle and
painted herself, and got out a pipe and filled it and lighted it, and stuck
the stem out through the lodge door, and sat there and began to pray to the
ghost woman. She said: "Oh ghost, take pity on us, and go away. We have
never wronged you, but you are troubling us and frightening our
children. Accept what I offer you, and leave us alone."
A voice came from behind the lodge and said: "No, no, no; you dogs, I will
not listen to you. Every one of you must die."
The old woman repeated her prayer: "Ghost, take pity on us. Accept this
smoke and go away."
Then the ghost said: "How can you expect me to smoke, when I am way back
here? Bring that pipe out here. I have no long bill to reach round the
lodge." So the old woman went out of the lodge door, and reached out the
stem of the pipe as far as she could reach around toward the back of the
lodge. The ghost said: "No, I do not wish to go around there to where you
have that pipe. If you want me to smoke it, you must bring it here." The
old woman went around the lodge toward her, and the ghost woman began to
back away, and said, "No, I do not smoke that kind of a pipe." And when the
ghost started away, the old woman followed her, and she could not help
herself.
She called out, "Oh my children, the ghost is carrying me off!" Heavy
Collar rushed out, and called to the others, "Come, and help me take my
mother from the ghost." He grasped his mother about the waist and held her,
and another man took him by the waist, and another him, until they were all
strung out, one behind the other, and all following the old woman, who was
following the ghost woman, who was walking away.
All at once the old woman let go of the pipe, and fell over dead. The ghost
disappeared, and they were troubled no more by the ghost woman.