LIFE IN THE CIRCLE CAMP
The first day of the big camp, the Indians were all outside their
lodges, eager to see friends and on the lookout to greet those who came
from a distance.
Excitement was in the air. Packs of dogs ran barking through the camp.
Men and boys galloped over the hills, shouting and singing, rounding up
bands of horses and driving them to water, picketing them in the
meadows and driving others to feed on the grassy hills. Women were at
work cooking, stacking lodge-poles or handling unwieldy covers flapping
in the wind.
My lodge was pitched in the band of the Hard-Top-Knots, near Mad Wolf’s
tepee, where the ceremony of the Sun Dance was taking place. I shared
it with Little Creek and Strikes-on-Both-Sides, my Indian sister, and
their children, also Tears-in-Her-Eyes, a niece of Mad Wolf’s, a baby
of six months whom Strikes-on-Both-Sides adopted, because the mother
had died in childbirth.
Near by was the lodge of Morning Eagle, an aged warrior, the hero of
many battles. He was so old and decrepit he had to be lifted from his
horse. Every morning before sunrise, he wakened me, singing his
medicine songs. He was not musical and they all sounded alike; the only
variation being slight changes in the rhythm, or in the bird or animal
calls, at the end of each song. On a cold and rainy day, he crawled
from his tepee to drive back the storm. In spite of his age and
rheumatism, he sat in the wind and rain, singing and praying to the
Maker of the Storm.
Another neighbor was Little Owl, who had a large family. I watched them
every day at their outside fire. His pretty young wife, Coming Running,
was tall and slender, with jet-black hair, which hung in heavy braids
below her waist. Strong and healthy, she was always at work, with a
flock of small children about her. She had many cares—a babe in arms
and a small daughter with a dangerous abscess, and two visitors to
entertain from the Flathead tribe. Yet she was always smiling and in a
good humor. I did not hear her complain or speak an angry word.
She had a little play-tepee for the children, made by a blanket
fastened round a cluster of poles. There they kept their
playthings—dolls with deerskin suits decorated with real beads and
feathers, dolls in baby cases, also little robes and blankets and
cooking utensils. The boys had bows and arrows, and stilts made of
cottonwood, crooked sticks for hobbyhorses and wooden tops.
At the tepee of Running Fisher, I saw a pet coyote puppy, and at
another place a tame magpie sitting on top of a lodge-pole. In former
days these Indians had many pets—hawks, eagles and cranes, beavers,
wolves and antelope. A chief had two grizzly bears for pets. They were
so well trained he could make them lie down with noses between their
paws.
Another Indian had a pet crane, which followed him everywhere, and was
said to be very wise. The man and the crane went so much together the
people called them father and son. Whenever he left the crane behind,
it mourned and was unhappy, going through the camp, even into tepees,
until it found its master and stood beside him.
I met an elderly man from the north, whose name was Natosin (Sun
Chief). He was over six feet in height and had long gray hair falling
over his shoulders. He was venerable in appearance and his face had a
kindly expression. He occupied a small traveling-lodge and had two
travois to carry his baggage, one with a wicker frame of green branches
built over the seat, to shield him and his aged wife from the sun. When
I asked him how it happened they came so far to attend a Sun Dance, he
said:
“Last winter I was very ill; the doctors said I was going to die. But I
made a vow to the Sun; if I recovered I would attend the next Sun
Dance, wherever it might be. In the spring I heard that Mad Wolf and
his wife were giving the ceremony, so I came from the north to fulfill
my vow and eat one of the sacred tongues.”
I saw two women tanning a deerhide stretched on the ground, hair-side
down, and held in place by wooden stakes. They raked it with large
tools of bone sharpened at one end. Then they used an adzelike tool,
removing the surface of the hide in chips, and made it of uniform
thickness. When they had finished the flesh side, they turned the hide
over and scraped off the hair and left it to bleach and cure in the
sun.
At another lodge, I saw an aged woman with snow-white hair seated in
the doorway, soft-tanning a skin by sawing it back and forth through a
loop of twisted sinew fastened to a pole. Then she whitened it by
rubbing it with a piece of fungus and the skin was ready for use.
The wife of Running Fisher was making decorated parfleches at the Otter
Tepee, to be used as cases for packing with horses. And at the Buffalo
Tepee of Wolf Plume, I saw a group of women at work, sewing a large
lodge cover, which was spread between them on the ground. They enjoyed
their work, smoking, gossiping, and feasting. The lodge covers were so
large one woman could not handle them alone. It was the custom for a
number of women to coöperate, making it a social affair with light
refreshments. When the women finished at one lodge, they moved on to
another.
A marked feature of Indian life was the superiority of the women in all
household arts; they were trained in them from childhood. Though women
performed most of the menial work and men were the providers and
defenders, the women were not dissatisfied. A mother trained her
daughter from childhood in tanning skins and making them into clothes
and shelter; also in the knowledge of herbs and wild vegetables, which
were used for eating and healing. Women considered this their special
vocation and allowed no interference from the men, who were unfitted
for the work.
In front of the War Tepee of Running Rabbit were two women drying and
curing meat. They cut it into thin slices and smoked it, hanging it on
a scaffold of poles and left it to cure in sun and wind. They made
pemmican from choice pieces of dried meat, pounding it with stone
hammers and mixing with crushed wild cherries, together with marrowfat
and tallow. For the marrow, they boiled cracked bones and skimmed off
the fat. They split tongues the long way and dried them in the sun. The
tongues were a great delicacy together with beaver tails.
Meat was the chief article of diet for the Blackfoot; they were unhappy
without it. In former years, when wild game was plentiful, they lived
mostly on the flesh of buffalo and the deer species, but of late years
on cattle. Their favorite way of preparing meat was by boiling, or in
the form of soup. Sometimes they ate dogs at ceremonial feasts; but
this was not a common custom.
In the circle camp, I saw preparations for a dog feast by a band of
visiting Assiniboine Indians. Near our lodge was Eagle Child, who owned
a litter of fat puppies. He had a miniature tepee for them, where they
slept and had shelter from the hot sun. I saw them playing daily before
my door. One night all of the puppies mysteriously disappeared; Eagle
Child and none of his neighbors knew what had become of them. But I
finally solved the mystery. While walking among the lodges of the
Assiniboines, who were on the outskirts of the big camp, I saw their
women cooking over an outside fire. In the hot ashes were the remains
of my puppy neighbors with their hair singed off, while some were
boiling in a kettle. Nothing was wasted. At one side was a pile of
little puppy legs and paws to be used for soup.