A long time ago there were four Blackfeet, who went to war against the
Crees. They travelled a long way, and at last their horses gave out, and
they started back toward their homes. As they were going along they came to
the Sand Hills; and while they were passing through them, they saw in the
sand a fresh travois trail, where people had been travelling.
One of the men said: "Let us follow this trail until we come up with some
of our people. Then we will camp with them." They followed the trail for a
long way, and at length one of the Blackfeet, named E-k[=u]s'-kini,--a very
powerful person,--said to the others: "Why follow this longer? It is just
nothing." The others said: "Not so. These are our people. We will go on
and camp with them." They went on, and toward evening, one of them found a
stone maul and a dog travois. He said: "Look at these things. I know this
maul and this travois. They belonged to my mother, who died. They were
buried with her. This is strange." He took the things. When night overtook
the men, they camped.
Early in the morning, they heard, all about them, sounds as if a camp of
people were there. They heard a young man shouting a sort of war cry, as
young men do; women chopping wood; a man calling for a feast, asking people
to come to his lodge and smoke,--all the different sounds of the camp. They
looked about, but could see nothing; and then they were frightened and
covered their heads with their robes. At last they took courage, and started
to look around and see what they could learn about this strange thing. For
a little while they saw nothing, but pretty soon one of them said: "Look
over there. See that pis'kun. Let us go over and look at it." As they were
going toward it, one of them picked up a stone pointed arrow. He said:
"Look at this. It belonged to my father. This is his place." They started
to go on toward the pis'kun, but suddenly they could see no pis'kun. It had
disappeared all at once.
A little while after this, one of them spoke up, and said: "Look over
there. There is my father running buffalo. There! he has killed. Let us go
over to him." They all looked where this man pointed, and they could see a
person on a white horse, running buffalo. While they were looking, the
person killed the buffalo, and got off his horse to butcher it. They
started to go over toward him, and saw him at work butchering, and saw him
turn the buffalo over on its back; but before they got to the place where
he was, the person got on his horse and rode off, and when they got to
where he had been skinning the buffalo, they saw lying on the ground only a
dead mouse. There was no buffalo there. By the side of the mouse was a
buffalo chip, and lying on it was an arrow painted red. The man said: "That
is my father's arrow. That is the way he painted them." He took it up in
his hands; and when he held it in his hands, he saw that it was not an
arrow but a blade of spear grass. Then he laid it down, and it was an arrow
again.
Another Blackfoot found a buffalo rock, I-nis'-kim.
Some time after this, the men got home to their camp. The man who had
taken the maul and the dog travois, when he got home and smelled the smoke
from the fire, died, and so did his horse. It seems that the shadow of the
person who owned the things was angry at him and followed him home. Two
others of these Blackfeet have since died, killed in war; but
E-k[=u]s'-kini is alive yet. He took a stone and an iron arrow point that
had belonged to his father, and always carried them about with him. That is
why he has lived so long. The man who took the stone arrow point found
near the pis'kun, which had belonged to his father, took it home with
him. This was his medicine. After that he was badly wounded in two fights,
but he was not killed; he got well.
The one who took the buffalo rock, I-nis'-kim, it afterward made strong to
call the buffalo into the pis'kun. He would take the rock and put it in his
lodge close to the fire, where he could look at it, and would pray over it
and make medicine. Sometimes he would ask for a hundred buffalo to jump
into the pis'kun, and the next day a hundred would jump in. He was
powerful.