THE CLAY TOYS
The hunters had killed several hundred buffalo in the chase, so the
chiefs ordered camp to be pitched right there beside a small prairie
lake, and for five days the people were busy stretching and curing the
buffalo hides, and cutting the tons and tons of meat into thin sheets
and drying it.
That first evening by the lake there was much talk about the narrow
escape of Sinopah. A number of instances were recalled where the end had
been different.
"I remember a day away back in my youth, when Chief Three Suns lost his
little girl in just such a way," said Red Crane. "Horses are uncertain
animals. They don't have much sense at any time. You all know how often
they go crazy with excitement. That was just what happened to Sinopah's
pony to-day. The passing of that great stream of buffalo, their swift
running, the thunder of their hoofs, all was too much for his little
brain. He just couldn't help running too; some strange attraction there
was which caused him to go right into the herd and run with it.
"Well, about this little girl: The hunters had chased and killed many
buffalo and the women were at work skinning the animals and cutting up
the meat. The little girl sat on her pony watching her mother cut up a
big fat cow, when over the hill came a big herd of buffalo that had been
feeding at a distance, had seen the other herd running, and now were
running to join it. The animals came close in passing, and suddenly the
pony went crazy and ran to join them. Too late the mother ran to grasp
its trailing rope. The little girl was tied fast in her saddle, so she
could not fall out of it if she tried to. In about the distance of a
bowshot that pony was right in front of the rushing buffalo, and they,
running faster, soon closed in around it. Once in a while we could see
the little girl's head above the shaggy backs of the great animals as
her pony jumped along with them; and then suddenly, a huge bull stuck
its head under the pony and tossed it and the little girl high in the
air. Down they came on the backs of other buffalo, and that was the end
for them. There was mourning in the camp that night, and for many a moon
afterward in the lodge of Three Suns."
Sinopah had not shown much interest in his grandfather's story, and now
that it was ended he wriggled out of his mother's arms and going over to
his father, said:--
"But my horse is not dead, father; it ran away with the buffalo. I want
you to find and bring him back to me."
"That I shall not do," the chief grimly answered. "I forbid any one in
this camp to bring it in. 'Tis an animal of crazy head and evil heart.
Here, now, I give it to the sun, also the saddle that is on its back.
Mother, make a new saddle for the boy. In place of the pony, I give him
that gentle old black-and-white pinto to ride."
"But I have my own horses; plenty of them," Sinopah objected. "Let me
ride one of them."
"Not until you are much older," his father answered. "They are all wild
and too strong-mouthed for your little hands to guide."
As soon as the meat was dried, the people moved on to the middle butte
of the Sweet-Grass Hills, and from there through the gap to Milk River,
which runs past the northern slope of the small range. The lodges were
set up in the edge of the timber bordering the stream, and the play
lodge of the children was placed under some big trees close to the
water. The tribe remained here for several moons. With their mothers to
watch them, and often Grandfather Red Crane, Sinopah and Lone Bull and
Otaki passed the long days playing in and around the little lodge. They
had crowds of guests, children coming from all parts of the big camp to
join in their sports.
A favorite game of Blackfeet children, and one as old as the tribe
itself, was the making of clay images of the different animals of the
country. Not all clay was good for this purpose, some of it falling
apart, or cracking, as soon as it dried. The best was dark gray in
color, very fine-grained, and tough when mixed with a few drops of water
to about an ounce of the material. Grandfather Red Crane discovered a
foot-thick deposit of this good clay in a riverbank near the play lodge
and called the children: "Come over here, all of you," he shouted; "here
is image earth in plenty. Now I want to see which one of you can make
the best buffalo."
With Sinopah and his two chums were a dozen other children. At the call
of the old man, they all ran to him and with sticks and sharp stones
began digging out lumps of the clay; pieces from the size of a hazelnut
up to that of a hen's egg. These were angular in shape and very hard and
tough, but that didn't matter. Each child found a good-sized, flat,
smooth rock, and on it mashed the clay lumps to fine powder with a
smooth hand-stone. The longer the stuff was pounded, the more flour-like
it became, the better it would be for making the images. Some of the
children were in such a hurry to start making these that they didn't
half pound their clay, and afterwards their work cracked and fell to
pieces.
Sinopah had never before played this game, so Grandfather Red Crane sat
beside him and directed the work. It was work, hard work, the pounding
of the clay, and the perspiration dripped from his forehead as he kept
on until it was very fine. It was done at last, and the old man gathered
it in a flat heap in the centre of the flat rock. They were sitting
right at the edge of the river, and dipping his fingers into the water
he sprinkled the clay two or three times, and then began kneading it,
just as a cook does flour for bread.
"Put your hand into it; feel of it," old Red Crane told Sinopah every
few minutes, and the boy kept doing so.
At first the clay was very sticky, large portions of it hanging to his
fingers; and although the stuff had been pounded very fine, it felt
coarse and lumpy.
"Now here is where a big mistake is often made," said the old man. "The
clay feels as if it needed a lot more water, and if you were working it,
you would surely sprinkle on too much. Really the stuff is almost wet
enough. Now see: I put on just a few drops more, and now I work it a
long time."
This time the old man kneaded it steadily for as much as five minutes.
Then he patted it down into a flat cake and ran the palm of his hand
across it several times, making a smooth, dull polish on the surface.
Then he pinched off a small portion and worked it with the fingers of
both hands. The clay was now of just the tough softness of putty as the
glazier uses it for setting window panes. "There! it is just right,"
said the old man. "Mind that you do not ever make the stuff any softer."
By this time all the other children had prepared their clay and were
busily shaping out images of the buffalo. The older ones were quite
skillful modelers and soon had two or three made and standing on the
bank in front of them. Watching them, Sinopah began his work, taking a
lump of the clay as large as he could hold in one hand and trying to
shape it. He pinched and pulled, rounded and flattened the stuff for a
long time, but could not get it to look like a buffalo or any other
animal.
Grandfather Red Crane sat beside him, smoking his long pipe and saying
not a word. Very often Sinopah would sigh, stop work, and look
beseechingly up, and getting no offer of help, make another trial. And
so it went on for a long time. Quite often the old man muttered some
words, but the boy did not hear. He was praying; praying to the sun: "O
great one! O you maker of the day and ruler of the world!" he kept
saying; "give this boy of ours an enduring heart. Give him a brave
heart. Give him the will to strive and keep striving for that which he
wants."
And then, laying aside his pipe, he reached over and took the shapeless
lump of clay from Sinopah. "You have done your best," he said; "I will
now show you how to make an image."
He made a roll of the clay so that it was much larger around at one end
than at the other, and then pressed it somewhat flat. "The buffalo is
very tall in front," he said, "and quite low in his hindquarters, so we
will fashion his high hump and his big head out of the large end of the
clay."
He worked as he talked, pressing and squeezing and pushing the mass of
stuff with thumbs and fingers, and in a very few minutes fashioned a
very lifelike body of a buffalo. Then he found a slender dead branch of
willow and broke from it four pieces for the legs, and stuck them into
the body in their proper place. This made the model look very queer,
standing as it did on pipe-like, wooden legs. But the old man was not
done with the work. He next took more clay and covered the legs with it,
fashioning the stuff on the sticks, covering them with it completely so
that they very closely resembled the legs of the living animal. Much
pleased with his success he set the little buffalo down before Sinopah
and said: "There is a buffalo for you, my son; now let us see how good a
one you can make."
Sinopah was very proud of the gift. He shouted to the other children to
come and look at it, and they crowded around him bringing the animals
they had made. Not one of them was so good as that modeled by the old
man, and with fresh clay they began at once to try to do better work.
The first buffalo that Sinopah made was not a good one, but at least it
had the shape of one in a rough way. It was plain enough that he had
tried to make a model of that animal. Old Red Crane, smoking his
long-stemmed stone bowl pipe, sat close by all the morning and
encouraged him; the boy made one model after another, improving each
time. By the time the sun was straight above in the sky he had made
seven little buffalo images, and the last one was a very fair likeness
of the great shaggy beast of the plains.
It was now the middle of the day and the children were very hungry, but
they were so interested in making clay buffalo that they would not go
home to eat. Their mothers had thought of their needs, however, and
coming very quietly to the play lodge under the trees, they built a
small fire in it, and broiled plenty of fresh fat meat over the coals.
Then they called the children and old Red Crane, and what a feast they
all had. It was very simple fare; just meat, and a handful of dried
service berries for each; but none of them wanted anything else; not
even salt. Since the very beginning of things the Indians had lived on
meat and a few berries, fresh or dried. It was the white man who taught
them to have other wants.
After eating their fill, the children hurried back to the river and
commenced modeling again. Now that they had numbers of clay buffalo,
they made other animals; deer, bears, elk, bighorn, wolves, beavers,
horses, antelope, and mountain goats. Along late in the afternoon each
child had a really lifelike set of these. Grandfather Red Crane, still
with them, said several times that it was time for the little ones to go
home, but still they lingered, finishing just one more animal. They had
eyes for their work only, but the old man was always looking about him,
up and down the river, and across at the bluffs on the north side of the
valley. Naught moved, or flew, or swam but what he saw it.
So it was that he saw the bushes trembling and shaking a little way
upstream from where he and the children sat, and he knew that this was
not caused by the wind. He sat very still and watched. He wondered what
it could be that was coming toward them.
Presently he saw a small, black-eyed face peering through the leafy
branches at the edge of the thicket. Then another, and another, and he
knew one of them, the face of Weasel Tail, a boy who lived at the upper
end of the big camp. "Ah-ha! he is the leader of the boys up there," he
thought, "and has come to raid my children here."
But he said nothing, and watched and waited. And then, suddenly, with
loud cries, little Weasel Tail sprang out of the brush, leading a dozen
other whooping youngsters, and the whole band came skurrying down the
shore and fell upon the little group of clay image-makers.
Then what fierce excitement and struggling and wrestling took place for
possession of the toys. The little girls, of course, shrieked, and
cried, and ran homeward for protection. But the boys of both parties
just struggled with one another. Sinopah was tackled by an upper camp
boy of about his own age, and over and over they rolled on the gravel
almost into the water. Then the boy quickly sprang up, seized all the
images he could, and ran away whence he had come, all the others of the
band going too and carrying away nearly all the images that had been
made.
Through it all, old Red Crane had sat quietly laughing, and letting the
struggle go which way it would.
Now that it was all over, Sinopah ran over to him and asked:
"Grandfather, why did you let those upper camp boys take our animals?"
"Because they earned them," the old man replied. "That was the game. It
was war. Those boys were your enemies and they conquered. It is now
your turn. You must go and raid them. No, not to-day. You all must send
scouts to watch their play, and sometime you will have a good chance to
get as good as they took from here."