Rising Wolf the White Blackfoot Part 5

And at that we laughed again. But I guess that my laugh had a little shake in it; I kept seeing that terrible wall of frightened buffaloes thundering out upon us!

The first thing that I did was to reload my gun and recovered pistol, and draw the wet charge and reload it. Then Mink Woman and I turned to our two buffaloes and Red Crow hurried home for horses to replace those that we had lost. It was late afternoon when we got into camp with our loads of meat. So ended another experience in my early life on the plains.

During the following days of our encampment there on the Two Medicine, the whole time was given over to the ceremonies of the o-kan, or medicine lodge, as our company men came to call it, and I was surprised to learn by it how intensely religious these people were, and how sincerely they reverenced and honored their G.o.ds. My greatest surprise came at the start, when I learned that it was women, not men, who had vowed to build the great lodge to the sun, the men merely a.s.sisting them. It was then, too, that I got my first insight into the important position of women in the tribe; they were far from being the slaves and drudges that I had been told they were.

During the year that had pa.s.sed a number of women had vowed to the sun to build this sacrifice to him if he would cure some loved relative of his illness, or bring him safely home from the war trail, and those whose prayers were granted now banded together, under the lead of the most experienced one of their number, to fulfill their vows. The different ceremonies were very intricate, and to me, with my slight knowledge of the language, quite mysterious. But, Christian though I was, I was completely carried away by them, and took part in some of them as I was told to do by Lone Walker and his family.

On the day after the great lodge was put up, Red Crow's mother took him and Mink Woman and me into it, and had one of the medicine women give us each a small piece of the sacred dried buffalo tongues which were being handed to all the people as they came in for them. I held mine, watching what the others did with theirs, and then, when my turn came, I held it up to the sky and made a little prayer to the sun for good health, long life, and happiness, and having said that, I buried a part of the meat in the ground, at the same time crying out: "Hai-yu!

Sak-wi-ah-ki, kim-o-ket!" (Oh, you! Earth Mother, pity me!)

After that was done the mother and Red Crow and his sister made sacrifices to the sun, giving a beautifully embroidered robe, a bone necklace, and a war bonnet, which a medicine man hung to the roof poles while they prayed. But I was not forgotten; the good mother handed me a pair of new, embroidered moccasins and told me to hand them to the medicine man to hang up, and prayed for me while he did so. I could not understand half of it, but enough to know that in her I had a true friend, a second mother as it were.

On the following day I learned that I had a second father, too. The warriors, gathered in front of the great lodge, were one by one counting their coups, their deeds of bravery, with the aid of friends enacting each scene of battle, and showing just how they had conquered the enemy.

It was all like a play; a very interesting play. As Red Crow and I stood at the edge of the crowd looking on, Lone Walker saw us, raised his hand for silence, and said loudly, so that all could hear: "There stand my two sons, my red son and my white son. Come, son Red Crow, count coups for yourself and your brother, too, as he cannot yet speak our language well."

At that Red Crow took my hand and we walked out in front of the chief, turned and faced the crowd, and then Red Crow described how we had killed the big grizzly, I going to his rescue and giving it the death shot just in time to save him. He ended, and the drummers stationed beside the chiefs banged their drums, and the people shouted their approval. Following that, Lone Walker again addressed the crowd: "By that brave deed which you have heard, my white son has earned a name for himself," he said. "It was a brave deed; by his quick rush in and timely shot he saved my red son's life, and so he must have a brave and good man's name. I give him the name of one who has recently gone from us in his old age. Look at him, all of you, my son, Rising Wolf!"

And at that the people again shouted approval, and the drummers banged their drums. Of course I did not know then all that he had said, but I did know that I had been named Mah-kwi-i-po-ats (Wolf Rising, or, as the whites prefer to translate it, Rising Wolf).

The preparations for building the o-kan required two days' time; the attendant ceremonies four days more, four, the sacred number, the number of the world directions, north, south, east, and west. On the morning following the last day of the ceremonies we broke camp and, leaving the great lodge and its wealth of sun offerings to the elements, moved south again, or, rather, southwest, in order to regain the mountain trail.

Their religious duties fulfilled, the people were very happy, and I felt as light-hearted as any of them, and eager to see more--see all of their great country.

We crossed Badger River, and then Sik-o-kin-is-i-sak-ta, or Black Barkbirch River, and encamped on a small stream named O-saks-i-i-tuk-tai, Back Fat, or as our French _voyageurs_ later translated it, Depouille Creek. From there our next camp was on Kok-sis-tuk-wi-a-tuk-tai (Point-of-Rocks River). I never knew why the whites named it Sun River. Nor did I dream that the day was to come when I would see its broad bottoms fenced in and irrigated, and a fort built upon it to house blue-coated American soldiers. If I then gave the future any thought, it was that those great plains and mountains would ever be the hunting-ground of the Blackfeet, and the unfailing source of a great supply of furs for our company.

We camped on this stream well out from the mountains, and the next morning, moving on, at noon arrived at its junction with a great river which at first sight I knew must be the Missouri, the O-muk-at-ai of the Blackfeet tribes. Below, not far away by the sound, I could hear the dull roar of a waterfall. We turned downstream, crossed on a swift and fairly deep ford above the falls, and went into camp. As soon as the lodges were up and the women had cooked some meat for us, Red Crow and I saddled fresh horses and struck out to see the country. We had come to the trail of Lewis and Clark, and I was anxious to learn if they had had any followers, if the American Fur Company's men had come into the country, as my factor feared.

We rode to the fall, and after looking at it moved on down and came upon an old and very dim trail along which lay here and there log cuttings about eight feet long and a foot or more in diameter. They were well worn; small pieces of rock and gravel were embedded in them, and I saw at once that they had been used for rollers under boats in portaging them around the falls. I realized how great a task that had been when Red Crow guided me down to all the falls, the last a number of miles below our camp. The Blackfoot name for the falls is I-pum-is-tuk-wi (Rock-Wall-across-the-River.)

Sitting on the sh.o.r.e of the river below the last falls, at the point where the portage had begun, I tried to get some information from Red Crow as to the white men who had pa.s.sed up there, but he could tell me nothing. As we talked I was idly heaping a pile of sand before me, and in doing so uncovered two long, rusty spikes.

"What a find! What a rich find! Give me one of them," Red Crow exclaimed, and I handed him one.

"See! It is long. It will make two arrow points," he explained. And at that I carefully pocketed mine. Material for arrowheads, iron, I mean, was very valuable at that time, in that country. Our company was selling arrow points of hoop iron at the rate of a beaver skin for six points.

Some of the Blackfeet hunters were still using flint points which they made themselves.

And that reminds me of something. At the foot of the buffalo trap cliffs on the Two Medicine I picked up one evening a number of flint and obsidian arrow points, many of them perfectly and beautifully fas.h.i.+oned.

I took them to the lodge and offered them to Lone Walker, thinking that I was doing him a good turn. But he started back from them as though they had been a rattlesnake, and refused to even touch them. "Some of those, especially the black ones, are surely Crow points, and so unlucky to us," he explained. "This was Crow country. We took it from them.

Maybe our fathers killed the owners of those points. But the shadows of the dead keep coming back to watch their property, and cause sickness, trouble, to any who take it. I wish that you would take the points back where you got them and leave them there."

I did so, but carefully cached them under a rock, and years later recovered them. But that is not all. After returning to the lodge I asked Lone Walker where the people obtained the black, as they called it, ice rock for making their arrows, and he told me that away to the south, near the head of Elk River, or in other words, the Yellowstone, were springs of boiling water, some of them shooting high in the air with tremendous roaring, and that near one of these springs was a whole b.u.t.te of the ice rock, and it was there that his people went to get their supply. "But it is a dreadful place!" he concluded. "We approach it with fear in our hearts, and make great sacrifices to the G.o.ds to protect us. And as soon as we arrive at the ice rock b.u.t.te we s.n.a.t.c.h up what we need of it and hurry away."

He was telling me, of course, of the wonderful geysers of the Yellowstone. I believe that I am the first white person who ever heard of them.

But to continue: When Red Crow and I returned home that evening, I asked Lone Walker if his people had seen the white men who had left the cut logs in the trail around the falls, and he replied that neither the Pi-kun-i, nor any other of the Blackfeet tribes had seen them, but he himself had heard of them from the Earth House People--the Mandans--when visiting them several summers back. They had been a large party, traveling in boats, had wintered with the Mandans and gone westward, even to the Everywheres-water of the west, and the next summer had come back, this time on horses instead of in boats. If you have read Lewis and Clark's "Journal," you will remember that they met and fought--on what must have been Cutbank River--some people that they thought were Blackfeet. They were not. They must have been a war party of Crows or some other tribe going through the country.

I next asked Lone Walker if he had ever seen white men on the Missouri River waters.

"Two. In the Mandan camp. Of a race the Mandans call Nothing White Men,"

he answered.

And from that time the Blackfoot name for the French has been Kis-tap-ap-i-kwaks (Useless, or Nothing White Men), as distinguis.h.i.+ng them from the English, the Red Coats, and the Americans, Long Knives.

Lone Walker's answer pleased me; it was evident that the American Fur Company had not entered the Blackfoot, or even the Mandan country, far below. But even then that company was pus.h.i.+ng, pus.h.i.+ng its forts farther and farther up the Missouri, and the day was coming, far off but coming, when I would be one of its employees!

We camped there at the falls several days and hunted buffaloes, making several big runs and killing all the meat that was wanted at that time.

Our lodges were pitched close to the river, right where the whites are now building the town they have named Great Falls.

Our next move was out to the point of the little spur of the mountains that is named Highwood. Its slopes were just alive with deer and elk, especially elk, and Red Crow and I killed two of them, big fat bulls, for a change of meat for our lodges. We did all the hunting for Lone Walker's big family; they required an awful lot of meat; of fresh meat about three pounds a day for each person, and each day there were also a number of guests to be fed. At a rough guess I put the amount that we used at three hundred pounds a day. Do you wonder that Red Crow and I, and Mink Woman helping us, were kept pretty busy?

Leaving the Highwood we moved out to Arrow River (Ap-si-is-i-sak-ta), and once more I felt that I was in country that white men had never seen. The Arrow River valley is for most of its course a deep, walled gash in the plains; there are long stretches of it where neither man nor any animal, except the bighorn, can climb its red rock cliffs. But the moment I first set eyes upon it, I liked it. I always did like cliffs, their ledges, and caves hiding one can never tell what mysteries. There were many bighorn along these cliffs, and mule deer were plentiful in all the rough breaks of the valley. Out on the plains endless herds of buffaloes and antelopes grazed, coming daily down steep and narrow, deep-worn trails to drink at the river; and in the valley itself every patch of timber fringing the stream sheltered white-tailed deer and elk.

There were many beavers, pond beavers and bank beavers, along the stream. Bear tracks were everywhere to be seen, in the dusty game trails, and in the river sh.o.r.e sands.

We wound down into the deep canyon by following a well-worn game trail down a coulee several miles in length, and when we went into camp between a fine cottonwood grove and the stream, and Lone Walker said that we would remain there for some time, I was much pleased, for I wanted to do a lot of hunting and exploring along the cliffs with Red Crow.

We could not do it the next day, for we had to get meat for the two lodges. That was not difficult. With Mink Woman to help us, and leading six pack horses, we left very early in the morning and rode down the valley for four or five miles, examining the many game trails that came into the valley; there was one in every break, every coulee cutting the rock wall formation. We at last struck a well-worn trail that came into the valley through a gap in the cliff not twenty feet wide, and under a projecting rock shelf about ten feet high. We saw that we could climb onto the shelf, and shoot straight down at the game as it pa.s.sed, so Red Crow rode up the trail to look out on the plain and learn if it would pay us to make our stand there. He was gone a long time, and when he returned said that a very large herd of buffaloes was out beyond the head of the coulee, and slowly grazing toward it; he thought that it would be coming in to water before noon. We therefore hid our horses in some timber below the mouth of the coulee, and then all three climbed up on the rock shelf and sat down. I held my gun ready, laid a pistol on either side of me, and Red Crow strung his bow and got out a handful of arrows.

It was hot there on that shelf. The sun blazed down upon us, and we could not have held out had not a light wind been blowing down the coulee. It was past noon when a most peculiar noise came to us with the wind; a deep, roaring noise like distant, but steady thunder. I asked what caused it.

"It is the bulls; the buffalo bulls are grunting because now is their mating season," Red Crow explained. "They now take wives. They are very mad; they fight one another, and night and day keep up that grunting."

The noise became louder and louder. "They come. They are coming now to drink," said Red Crow, and soon after that we saw the lead of the herd coming around a bend in the coulee. A number of bulls came first, heads down, and swaying as they walked with ponderous tread, and as they came nearer I saw that they were making that peculiar noise with their mouths closed, or all but closed. It was what I called a grunting bellow, very deep sounding, long sustained, a sound wholly unlike any other sound in the world. It was a sound that exactly fitted the animal that made it.

As the buffalo's appearance was ever that of a forbidding, melancholy animal brooding over strange mysteries, so was its close-mouthed bellowing expressive of great sadness, and unfathomable mystery; of age-old mysteries that man can never penetrate. Often, as we gazed at bulls standing on some high point, and as motionless as though of stone, Indians have said to me: "They know! They know everything, they see everything! Nothing has been hidden from them from the time Old Man made the world and put them upon it!"

Perhaps so! Let us not be too sure that we are the only wise ones that roam this earth!

Well, the herd came on, the bulls moaning and switching and c.o.c.king up their short, tufted tails, and presently the coulee was full of the animals as far as we could see. We had drawn back from the edge of the shelf and sat motionless, only our heads in view, and so we remained until the head of the long column had pa.s.sed out into the bottom. I then leaned forward, and Red Crow sprang to his feet, and we began shooting down, choosing always animals with the broadest, most rounding hips, and therefore the fattest meat. With my rifle, and one after the other my pistols, I shot three good cows, and Red Crow shot four with his bow and arrows. All seven of them fell close around the mouth of the coulee.

Those that had pa.s.sed out into the bottom, unhurt, ran off down the valley. The rest, back up the coulee, turned and went up on the plain, in their hurry and scrambling raising such a cloud of dust that we nearly strangled in it. We got down from the shelf and began butchering our kills, taking only the best of the meat with the hides. We got into the camp before sundown, our horses staggering under their heavy loads.

We had broiled tongue for our evening meal.

Yes, buffalo tongue, a whole one each of us, and some service berries, were what the women set before us that evening. How is it that I remember all those little details of the vanished years? I cannot remember what happened last year, or the year before, yet all of that long ago time is as plain to me as my hand before my face!

The next morning, with pieces of dry meat and back fat in our hands for breakfast, Red Crow and I rode out of camp at daylight for a day on the cliffs. On the previous day we had seen numbers of bighorn along them, and, opposite the mouth of the coulee where we had killed the buffaloes, had discovered what we thought was the entrance to a cave. We wanted to see that. We had told Mink Woman that she could not go with us, but after going down the valley for a mile or more found her close at our heels. Nor would she go back: "I want to see that cave as much as you do," she said. "I help you hunt, and butcher your kills; it is only fair that you do something for me now and then."

It was a beautiful morning, clear, cool, windless. As we rode along we saw deer and elk dodging out of our way, a beaver now and then and coveys of sage hens and prairie grouse. While waiting for the buffaloes to come in, the day before, we had looked out a way by which we thought it would be possible to reach the cave, and now, leaving the horses a half mile or more above our stand on the shelf, we began the ascent of the cliffs. The cave was located at the back of a very long shelf about two thirds of the way up the canyon side, and we believed that we could reach its western end by climbing the series of small shelves and sleep slopes under that part of it.

We climbed a fifty-foot slope of fallen boulders and came to the first shelf, a couple of feet higher than our heads, and Red Crow told me to use his back as a mount, and go up first. He leaned against the rock wall, bending over. I handed my gun to Mink Woman and, stepping up on his back and then on his shoulders, and steadying myself by keeping my hands against the wall, straightened up; and as my head rose above the level of the shelf I saw something that made me gasp.

CHAPTER VI

CAMPING ON ARROW RIVER

With flattened ears and a menacing snarl a mountain lion, not four feet back, was crouching and nervously shuffling her forefeet for a spring at me, and three or four small young ones behind her all had their backs arched and were spitting and growling too. I ducked down so quickly that I lost my balance and tumbled onto the rocks, but luckily the fall did not hurt me. I was up on my feet at once.

"What was it?" Red Crow asked.