SINOPAH'S FIRST BOW
"It is time for our son to learn to use the bow," said White Wolf one
evening when all the family was sitting in the light and warmth of the
little lodge fire.
"Ai! So it is," old Red Crane exclaimed. "I will begin work on one for
him to-morrow, and it shall not be a wooden bow; it shall be made of
horn."
"I wouldn't take so much trouble as that," said White Wolf. "A bow of
wood will be good enough for him to begin with."
"But what does my time amount to?" Red Crane asked. "I am old, old. I
tell you it makes me sick when I see the younger men start out to hunt,
or leave to make war against the enemy, and I can't go with them. All I
can do now is to stay here in the camp. All I can do is to teach our
little Sinopah; teach him to shoot and hunt; teach him to be good and
kind and brave. My time is all for him. So it is that he shall have a
fine little bow of horn."
"Father, don't you worry about these things," said White Wolf. "I can
hunt for us all, and I can go to war. All I ask of you is to be happy.
It is great work that you are doing for our little Sinopah. We are all
glad that you do so much for him."
The next morning the old man went up in the hills with Sinopah to get
some buffalo horns. They soon found the heads of some freshly killed
animals, and took the horns from three of them, all big, shiny black
horns of three- and four-year-old bulls. Back they went then to the
valley and threw the horns into a hot spring, where they were to remain
a couple of days and get soft.
On the third day old Red Crane took the horns out of the spring and
found them so soft that they could be split with a knife as easily as
if they were just soft wood. So he took them home to the lodge and began
making a bow, Sinopah watching every part of the work, and asking many
questions about it, so that he could some day make such bows for
himself.
First, the old man cut the horns into long splints of different size,
the larger ones an inch wide, and a quarter of an inch thick. The larger
pieces were for the middle of the bow, the smaller ones for the ends,
and all were neatly shaved, so as to lap closely one on the other,--to
splice, as such work is called; all the pieces being stuck together with
a very strong waterproof glue made by boiling down the hoofs of the
buffalo. When this was done, the old man scraped the bow with sandstone,
and then a knife, until from end to end it was as smooth as glass, and
of the right shape, heavy and thick in the middle, and from there
tapering each way out to the tips. Lastly, to make the bow all the
stronger, and springy, he glued strips of sinew to its whole outer
length, and wrapped it with sinew bands about four inches apart. When
finished, the bow was about three feet long.
The next thing was to string the bow with a fine cord of twisted sinew,
and then the arrows were made, the shafts of straight, hard, heavy
greasewood, the points of thin iron bought from the traders, and the
feathering of quills of wild-goose wings.
The old man made eleven of these iron-pointed arrows, and then went to
work on another shaft with which he took especial pains, working a whole
evening in just scraping and polishing it, and soaking it full of
grease. Sinopah, watching him, grew restless, and asked why he worked so
long on just one arrow shaft.
"Because this is to be a medicine arrow; a lucky arrow," Red Crane
replied.
He then took from his own quiver an arrow that had a very small, thin,
sharp point of black obsidian, or natural glass. In the Yellowstone
country there is a whole mountain of such stuff.
"Now, I am going to take this point off and fasten it on this shaft,"
said the old man, "and you are never to use it except when in danger. My
father made the point for me, and three different times it has saved my
life. By that you can see it is great medicine."
"Oh, grandfather! Tell me about it," said Sinopah, snuggling up to him
and hanging onto his hand so that he could not work.
"Well, you shall hear," the old man answered, lifting the boy into his
lap and smoothing the hair back from his forehead. "Ai! But the first
time was long ago. Why, I was not much older than you are now. My father
had made a horn bow and twelve arrows for me. Eleven of the arrows had
common white flint points and the twelfth one carried this fine black
one. Just as I tell you now, my father told me then: I was not to use it
except when in great danger.
"One day I went hunting with two boy friends. It was a very hot day and
we walked in the timber close to the river. In my left hand I carried my
bow and two arrows; one a common arrow, the other having this medicine
point. All the rest of the arrows were in a quiver slung at my back.
"My two friends walked in the middle of the timber and near the river,
and I kept at the outer edge of it. After a long time I came to a very
thick patch of willows, so very thick that I could not see into it. In
there I heard a queer noise; a snuffling noise, and little faint cries
as of something in great pain, just such a noise as a dog makes when it
is badly hurt. I thought it was a dog, one of our camp dogs, that had
got hurt and had come out there to die. So I pushed into the thicket,
and suddenly came face to face with a big wolf. Now, wolves, as you
know, never harm any one. They are afraid of man. But this wolf was
different. A big fluff of white foam covered its mouth, and by that I
knew it was a mad wolf, and very dangerous. When it saw me it raised up
and made ready to jump at me, and at the same time I fitted the medicine
arrow to my bow. The wolf opened its mouth and made ready to jump at me,
and I shot the arrow right down its throat. It did jump, but never
touched me. It fell almost at my feet and died, and I got back the
arrow.
"The next time I used the arrow-point was some winters later. I had
grown to be a man. I had taken the point off from the little
arrow-shaft, and fitted it onto one such as men use. I had been running
buffalo one day, and killed four with my common arrows. Then I shot a
big, fat cow, and at the same time my horse fell and broke its leg. The
cow was only wounded, and very mad. She charged me and I jumped to one
side and fired a common arrow at her; it only stuck in her shoulder.
"Four times she turned and charged me, and four times I fired an arrow,
but none of them did any good. I had but the one arrow left, this one
with the medicine point. I made a little prayer, fitted it to the bow,
and then shot it when the cow turned to charge me again. Straight into
her heart it went and down she fell, and I was saved."
"Yes, that makes two times; now tell about the last one," said Sinopah,
for the old man had stopped talking and was looking with dreamy eyes at
the fire.
"Oh, yes, the last time," Red Crane answered, sitting up straight again.
"No. I will not tell you about that, because you might have bad dreams
about it. All I can say is that I had a fight with a Crow chief and
killed him with the medicine arrow."
Sinopah wanted to know all about the fight, but he had now become very
sleepy, and was put on his couch before he had time to ask more
questions.
On the next day old Red Crane made more arrow shafts, these being made
sharp at the end, instead of having iron points. They were for shooting
at marks, and for a long time the old man made Sinopah practice with
them every day. At first he shot them at little sagebrush bushes, or a
piece of robe thrown onto a bush; but after a couple of moons he was
taught to shoot at a ball of grass thrown up in the air. He became so
skillful that he could pierce it nearly every time.
Then, one morning after the early bath in a hole cut in the ice, old Red
Crane took Sinopah out to hunt with the real arrows. It was a very cold
morning; the trees were covered with thick, white frost, and all up and
down the valley they were popping with a noise like rifle-shots, while
the ice on the river heaved and cracked with a rumbling like that of
far-off thunder.
Not far below the camp they heard prairie chickens (sharp-tailed grouse)
clucking, and presently saw a number of them sitting in a small
cottonwood tree. The birds felt so cold that they sat all crouched on
the tree limbs, and paid no attention to the man and boy approaching
them.
"Well, you are close enough to them now," Red Crane told Sinopah when
they had got so near that they could see the shiny black eyes of the
chickens.
Sinopah dropped his robe then and fitted an arrow to his bow, one of the
arrows with iron point, and took aim at a bird at the top of the tree.
"No, no! You must not shoot that one," Red Crane said, "for it would
drop fluttering down among the rest and scare them all away. Shoot at
the very lowest bird in the tree."
Sinopah took quick aim and let the arrow fly; and as the bow-cord
twanged the chicken fell down from the limb with the arrow in it, and
after a few flutters of its wings lay still on the blood-stained snow.
Sinopah never said a word, but his snapping eyes showed how excited and
happy he was as he shot another arrow at the next lowest bird in the
tree.
This time he missed, but a third arrow brought the chicken down, and
three more arrows got two more birds. He was about to shoot at a fifth
bird when Red Crane seized his arm: "That is enough," he said. "You have
one for your mother, one for your father, one for yourself, and one for
me. Remember this: the gods do not love wasters of life. They made the
animals and birds for our use, but we may kill no more than we need."
Sinopah never forgot that. Afterwards, during all his life, he was
careful never uselessly to take the life of beast or bird. Most of the
white hunters of our country have not done that. They have killed the
buffalo and deer, the pigeons and ducks and other birds, just for the
fun of seeing them die. Had they shot only just enough for food, there
would still be plenty of game from one end to the other of our great
land.
Having picked up the four chickens, and the arrows that had been shot,
the old man and the little hunter started back toward home. Had you
been in Sinopah's place, without mittens on that cold morning, you would
have had your fingers frozen stiff. But he never felt the cold, and his
hands were almost as active as on a summer morning. That was because he
had to bathe in the frozen river every day.
On their way through the timber near camp they saw a cotton-tail rabbit
sitting in the edge of a rose-brush thicket. "I would like to have it,"
said Red Crane, "but not unless you can kill it when it is running. Now,
fit an arrow to your bow and see what you can do when I throw one of
these chickens that way."
They were only forty or fifty feet from the rabbit. The old man tossed a
chicken and the little animal started off on the jump through the snow,
passing right in front of Sinopah. He aimed about a foot ahead of it,
and _zip_! the arrow struck it fairly just behind the shoulder. It was a
fine shot. Sinopah shouted as he ran to pick it up, and when he
returned and held the rabbit up before Red Crane, the old man shouted
too and made a little prayer of thanks to the gods. "Never was there
such a fine boy as this one you have given us," he said.
[Illustration: IT WAS A FINE SHOT]
And at home he said to White Wolf: "Now, listen! Sinopah is going to be
a great chief. I know that he is."
"I believe you," White Wolf replied. "I am very proud of him."