Rising Wolf the White Blackfoot Part 7

Well I knew the story of the brave and unfortunate Sieur. My grandfather, who had had some interest in his ventures, had related it many times. Because of enemies who had the favor of the Court, in France, he had failed in his undertakings to establish a great fur trade in the West, and he had died of a broken heart! I must confess that I felt some disappointment upon learning that I was not, as I had thought, the first of my race to see this part of the country. However, the knowledge that I had been the first white person to traverse the great Saskatchewan-Missouri River country comforted me.

As we rode homeward I learned from Lone Walker that a man named Sees Far had discovered the monument and taken the cross. He was long since dead.

I was afraid to ask where the medicine lodge was built at which the cross had been sacrificed to the sun. The penalty for robbing the sun was death. The Blackfeet tribes had too much reverence for their G.o.ds to do that, and war parties of other tribes, traveling through the country and coming upon a deserted medicine lodge, gave it a wide berth; they feared the power of the shining G.o.d for whom it had been built. I remember that the Kai-na tribe of the Blackfeet once came upon three free trappers (or were they the American Company's _engages_--I forget) robbing a medicine lodge, and killed them all!

I come now to a part of my story that is not so very happy. On the morning that we broke the Arrow River camp, the chiefs, and the guard that generally rode ahead of the column, remained on the camp ground, gathered here and there in little groups smoking and telling stories, until long after the people had packed up and were traveling up the long coulee through which the trail led to the plain on the south side of the valley. I went on with Red Crow and Mink Woman, and a young man named Eagle Plume, Lone Walker's nephew, helping them herd along the chief's big band of horses in which, of course, were those that he had given me.

As soon as we got out of the narrow confine of the coulee we drove the herd at one side of the beaten travois and pack trail, keeping about even with Lone Walker's outfit of women and children riders, and their loaded horses. Their place was at the head of the Little Robes Band, and that had its place in the long line about a half mile from the lead band, which was that of the Lone Eaters.

We had traveled three or four miles from the river, and were wending our way among a wide, long setting of rough hills, keeping ever in the low places between them, when, without the slightest warning, a large body of riders dashed out from behind a steep hill and made for the head of our column. Far off as they were, we could hear them raise their war song, and could see that they were all decked out in their war finery.

"Crows! Crows! They attack us!" I heard men crying as they urged their horses forward.

"Crows! We must help fight them!" Red Crow called to me, and like one in a dream I found myself with my companions riding madly for the front.

CHAPTER VII

THE CROWS ATTACK THE BLACKFEET

All the men from the whole length of the line were rushing forward, even the old and weak who had scarce strength enough to string their bows.

Ahead, women and children were coming back as fast as they could make their horses run, and pack horses, travois horses, and those dragging lodge poles were running in all directions and scattering their loads upon the plain. It was a scene of awful confusion and of noise; women and children yelling and crying with fright, flying past us wild eyed, our men shouting to one another to hurry, to take courage, and above all, louder than all, the yells and shouts of the enemy and our few warriors there at the front.

The Crows were forcing our men back; they were fighting their best but were far outnumbered and, as we could see, were falling not a few. I looked back, and the sight of hundreds of our men coming on was encouraging. With my companions, and twenty or thirty more riders, I was now getting close to the fighting. The Crows, in one big, long body, were riding full speed across the stand our men were making, shooting their arrows and few guns as they pa.s.sed, and wheeling out and around for another charge by them. This they had done many times, and so far as I could see, but few of them had fallen.

At last we were at the front, arriving there just as the Crows were making another of their wheeling charges. They must have been all of four hundred men, and we there facing them were not two hundred. On they came, to pa.s.s close on our right, shouting their war cry, their long-tailed war bonnets, the fringe of their beautiful clothes, the plumes of their shields all a-flutter in the wind. A brave sight they were, and fearsome! As they swept past us they shot their arrows, the air was full of them, and we shot at them. Several men on both sides went down, horses were wounded and became unmanageable in their fright, carrying their riders whither they willed. My horse was dancing with excitement and jerking on his bit, making it impossible for me to take steady aim, so I fired my gun at the thickest group of the pa.s.sing riders and so far as I could see did them no harm.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AS THEY SWEPT PAST US THEY SHOT THEIR ARROWS]

This time, instead of wheeling out and around for another charge, the Crow chief led his men straight on along the line of the fleeing women and children. Swarms of our men were coming out, and he no doubt concluded to do all the damage that he could before he would have to give way before our superior numbers. Upon seeing his intent, we, too, turned back, the men crying out to one another: "The women! The children! Fight hard for them!"

Out where the Crows had first struck our column there were dead and dying and wounded women and children, as well as men, and now more began to fall. The Crows were without mercy. Here were the people who had despoiled them; taken from them their vast hunting-ground; and now they should pay for it with their blood! They were so drunk with hatred that they were for the time reckless of harm to themselves.

We followed them close. Beyond, a great crowd of our men were riding at them, led by Lone Walker himself. I did not see what he did, I had eyes only for what was immediately around me, but I heard the tale of it many times afterward. He made straight for the Crow chief, and the latter for him, and they brought their horses together with such a shock that both fell. As they went down both men sprang free and grappled one another, Lone Walker dropping his empty gun, and the Crow letting go his bow and handful of arrows. A crowd surrounded them, the Crows endeavoring to aid their chief, our men fighting them off. The Crow chief had managed to get out his knife, but Lone Walker gave his arm such a sudden fierce twist that he dropped it, endeavored to recover it, and as he did so Lone Walker got out his own knife and stabbed him down through his back into his heart, and he fell and died!

In the meantime we were in a terrible scrimmage; a thick mixup of riders. I had stuck my gun in under my belt, there was no time to reload it, and had fired one of my pistols, and now got out the other one. Red Crow and I were side by side. He had shot away his handful of arrows and was reaching into his quiver for more when a Crow rode up beside him, reached out and grasped him by the arm, endeavoring to pull him over and knife him. I saw him just in time to poke my pistol over past Red Crow and fire, and down he went from his horse! The sight of him falling, his awful stare of hate--would you believe it, made me sick and sorry for him, enemy though he was! "I have killed a man! I have killed a man!" I said to myself as I replaced the pistol and got out my gun to use as a club, as I saw others doing. But just then I saw a wounded woman stagger to her feet, and then with a cry throw up her hands and fall dead, and I shouted with joy that I had killed, and with Red Crow dashed on, thirsting now to kill! kill! kill! Right there, and for all time vanished my doubts, my tender-heartedness! The enemies of the Pi-kun-i were my enemies so long as they tried to do me harm!

Their chief dead, and faced by ever-increasing numbers of our warriors, the Crows now turned and fled, but we did not chase them far; our men were so anxious about their families, to learn if they were safe, or dead, that they had no heart for the pursuit. It was a terrible sight that met our eyes as we turned and went back to that part of the trail that had been the scene of the fight; everywhere along it were dead and wounded men and women and children and horses. I could not bear to look at them, and was glad when Lone Walker told a number of us to round up the pack and travois horses scattered out upon the plain, and drive them back to the river, where we would go into camp and bury the dead. We were a long time doing that, necessarily leaving the packs that had fallen for the owners to recover later. When we got back to the river with our drive we found many lodges already up, including our two. None of Lone Walker's great family had been harmed, nor had they met any loss of property. Red Crow and I got a hasty bite to eat, and catching fresh horses went with a strong guard that was to remain out on the plain until all the dead had been carried in for burial, and all the scattered property recovered. That was all done before sunset, and then a guard was placed about camp for the night, and another told off to herd the horses.

That was a sad evening. Everywhere in camp there was wailing for the dead; everywhere medicine men were praying for the wounded, chanting their sacred songs as they went through strange ceremonies for curing them. The chiefs gathered in our lodge to bitterly blame themselves for not having been out at the front, with the guard ahead of them, when camp was broken. They had taken count of our loss: forty-one men, thirty-two women and girls, and nine children were dead and buried--the trees in the near grove were full of them--and some of the wounded were sure to die. The Crows had lost sixty-one of their number, and some of their wounded would undoubtedly die. Not then, nor for many a night afterward, did anyone tell what he had particularly done in the fight against the enemy. It was surmised that, in wiping out the seven Crows on the cliff, another member of the party, perhaps on watch elsewhere, had been overlooked; and that he had gone home and brought his people to attack us. There were two tribes of the enemy: the River Crows and the Mountain Crows. If camping together, they were too strong for the Pi-kun-i to attack. That very evening three messengers were selected to go north to the Kai-na, camping somewhere in the Bear Paw Mountains, and ask them to come down and join in a raid against the enemy.

I pa.s.s over the ensuing days of sadness, in which seven of the wounded died. As soon as the others were well enough to travel we moved on, camped one night on O-to-kwi-tuk-tai, Yellow River, or as Lewis and Clark named it, Judith River, and the next day moved east to a small stream named It-tsis-ki-os-op (It-Crushed-Them). Years later it was named Armell's Creek after an American Fur Company man who built a trading post at its junction with the Missouri. The Blackfoot name was given it for the reason that some women, when digging red paint in the foot of a high cutbank bordering the stream, had been killed by a heavy fall of the earth.

The stream rises in the midst of some high, flat-topped b.u.t.tes crowned with a spa.r.s.e growth of scrub pine and juniper, and its valley is well timbered with pine and cottonwood. Its head is only a few miles from the foot of the Mut-si-kin-is-tuk-ists (Moccasin Mountains). On the morning after we went into camp I rode out to hunt with Red Crow, and he took me to the extreme head of the stream, which was a large spring under an overhang of wall rock. This sloped up from the sands of the floor on the right of the spring to a height of six or seven feet on the outside of the spring, and was of dark brown volcanic rock. Originally very rough, as the extreme outer and inner portion attested, this roof had in the course of ages been rubbed smooth by the animals that had come there to drink at the spring. All that had come, from small antelopes to huge buffaloes, had found the right height of it against which to rub their backs, and they had rubbed and rubbed until the whole roof as high as they could touch it was as smooth and l.u.s.trous as gla.s.s. I could see my face in it.

While standing there we heard some animals coming along one of the many trails in the surrounding timber, and presently saw that they were a file of bull elk. We had left our horses some distance back, so they saw nothing to alarm them. When they were within thirty feet of us Red Crow let fly an arrow at the leader, and the others stopped and stared at him as he fell, and struggled fruitlessly to regain his feet. That gave my companion time to slip an arrow into another one, and then I fired and dropped a third, and we had all the meat that we wanted. We butchered the three, and then went home and sent Lone Walker's nephew and some of the women out with pack horses for the meat.

From the time that the Crows made their terrible attack upon us, we kept a strong guard with the horses night and day, and kept scouting parties far out on the plains watching for the possible return of the enemy.

Some men who had been sent to trail the Crows to their camp, returned in eight or nine days' time and reported that it was on The-Other-Side Bear River (O-pum-ohst Kyai-is-i-sak-ta), straight south from the pa.s.s in the Moccasin Mountains. This is the Musselsh.e.l.l River of Lewis and Clark.

The Blackfoot name for it distinguishes it from their other Bear River, the Marias.

The returning scouts said that the camp was very large, and in two parts, showing that both tribes of the Crows were there. Said Lone Walker when he got the news: "And so they have dared to come back into our land and hunt our game! Ha! As soon as the Kai-na come we shall make them pay dearly for that!"

The talk now was all of war. In every tree about the camp were hung the warriors' offerings to the sun, placed there with prayers to the G.o.d to give them success in the coming battle.

As I have said, the camp was always pitched in a big circle of the clan groups. Inside this circle were nine lodges set in a smaller circle, each one painted with a sacred, or "medicine" design, no two of them alike. The one always set nearest to our Small Robes group of lodges was owned by a great warrior named Mi-nik-sa-pwo-pi (Mad Plume), and had for its design a huge buffalo bull and a buffalo cow in black, the heart, and the life line running to it from the mouth, painted bright red. I had not thought that these lodges had any especial significance, but I was soon to know better. On the day after we killed the elk at the shining rock spring, Red Crow pointed to the buffalo medicine lodge and said to me: "Just think; we are invited there to-night! We are asked to join the Braves!"

"He does not understand," said Lone Walker, standing near us. "Let us sit here, White Son, and I will explain."

We sat there in front of our lodge, and the chief began: "Those nine are the lodges of the chiefs of the All Friends Society. It has nine different bands: the Braves, All-Crazy-Dogs, Raven Carriers, Dogs, Tails, Horns, Kit-Foxes, Siezers, and Bulls. To become a member of one of the bands one has to be of good heart, of a straight tongue, generous, and of proved bravery; so you see that you are thought to be all that, else you would not be asked to join this band of Braves, made up of our young warriors. I am a member of the Bulls, our oldest warriors. All the bands are under the orders of myself and my brother clan chiefs. There! Now you understand!"

But I didn't. I learned in time, however, that this great I-kun-uh-kat-si, or All Friends Society, had for its main object the carrying out--under the direction of the chiefs--of the tribal laws. If a man or woman was to be punished, it was a band of the society that meted it out, after the chiefs decided what the punishment should be. In battle the members of a band hung close together, shouting the name of it, and encouraging one another to do their best. Each band had its particular songs, and its own peculiar way of dancing. Its chief's lodge was its headquarters, and there of an evening the members were wont to gather for a social time, for a little feast, singing, and story telling as the pipe went round the circle.

When Red Crow and I went into the Braves' lodge that evening, Mad Plume made us welcome, and indicated that we should sit at his left. That was the only s.p.a.ce left; all the rest was occupied by his family, and members of the band, who also gave us pleasant greeting.

"Now, then, young men," Mad Plume said to us as soon as we were seated, "we have had our eyes upon you for some time, thinking to invite you to join us. We learned that you are good-hearted, generous, truthful, that you are good to the old. We but waited to learn what you would do before the enemy, and we learned; the other day when the Crows attacked us you each did your best; you each did your share in driving them off, and each killed. So now we ask: Would you like to become Braves?"

"Yes! Yes!" we exclaimed.

"And will you always obey the orders of the tribes' chiefs, and the Braves' chief?"

"Yes! Yes!"

"Then you are Braves!" he concluded. And all present signified their approval. I can't begin to tell you how pleased I was, how proud of this unexpected honor. And at last I felt absolutely safe with the Pi-kun-i; felt that they considered me one of them in every respect.

There were countless herds of game in all directions from our camp there on It-Crushed-Them. By day the hunters scattered it, but it was the mating season of the buffaloes, they were very uneasy, constantly on the move, and fresh herds took the place of those that were frightened away. One day when Red Crow and I were out after meat, with Mink Woman trailing us with a couple of pack horses, we saw a small band of buffaloes lying on a side hill, and leaving our horses in the shelter of the timber around the shining rock spring, approached them. We followed up a shallow coulee that headed close to the resting animals, in places crawling upon hands and knees in order to keep under the shelter of low banks. Mink Woman followed us close. We had asked her to remain with the horses, but she was determined to be right with us and see the shooting at close range.

We were still several hundred yards from the buffaloes, much too far for Red Crow's arrows, and even my gun, when we heard the moaning bellow of bulls off to our left. We paid no attention to it; there had been no buffaloes in sight in that direction, and we thought that the animals making it were a long way off. That deep, m.u.f.fled bellowing, however, was wonderfully deceiving; just by the sound of it, without looking, one could never determine if the animals making it were near by, or a mile or so away. But now we were suddenly warned that the bulls we heard were close; we could hear the rushing thud of their feet, and two appeared just a few yards ahead of us, attacking one another on the edge of the coulee and slipping sideways down the steep bank, head pressed against head.

"They are mad! Don't shoot, don't move, else they may attack us!" Red Crow told me, and Mink Woman, just back of us, heard him.

But they were not all; only two of a band of thirty or forty, all bulls, all outcasts from different herds, mad at one another and at all the world. The two fighting incited others to fight, and the rest, moaning and tossing their heads, switching their short tails, were soon all around us. They presented a most frightful spectacle! Their dark eyes seemed to shoot fire from under the overhanging s.h.a.ggy hair; several more engaged in fights, and some of those afraid to do that attacked the bank of the coulee and with their sharp horns gouged out pieces of turf and tossed them in every direction. We dared not move; we hardly dared breathe; our suspense was almost unbearable. Said Mink Woman at last: "Brother, I am terribly frightened. I think that I shall have to run!"

"Don't you do it! No running unless we are about to be stepped upon!" he answered. An old bull standing not twenty feet from us heard the low talk, whirled around and stared at us. Anyhow I thought that it was at us, but if it was, he likely did not distinguish us from the rocks and sage brush among which we were lying. If he charged us I intended to shoot him in the brain, and then we should have to take our chances running from the others. But just then a bellowing started off where the band was that we had been approaching, and he turned and went leaping out of the coulee toward it, others following, leaving but two sets fighting in front of us. At that Mink Woman, no longer able to stand the strain, sprang to her feet and ran down the coulee, we then following her and looking back to see if we were pursued. The fighters paid no attention to us, but we kept running and never stopped until we reached our horses. Then, looking up the hill, we saw that the bulls had mingled with the band that we had been after, and all were traveling off to the south.

"Hai! We have had a narrow escape!" Red Crow exclaimed, and went on to tell me that outcast bulls were very dangerous. The hunters never tried to approach them on foot, and generally kept well away from them even when well mounted. Mink Woman listened, still shaking a little from the fright she had had, and then told me that only the summer before a mad bull had attacked a woman near camp and pierced her through the back with one of his horns, upon which she hung suspended despite his efforts to shake her off. Becoming frightened then, and blinded by her wrap, he had rushed right into camp and into a lodge, upsetting it and trampling its contents until killed by the men. He fell with the woman still impaled upon his horn. She was dead!

As we mounted and rode on, Red Crow told other instances of people being killed by outcast bulls. He said that bulls with a herd were not bad; that the cows would always run from the hunter, and they with them. We proved that in less than an hour, for we again approached the band that had been on the hillside, the outcast bulls now with it, and in a short run killed three cows, the bulls sprinting their best to outrun our horses.

Except for playing children and quarreling dogs, ours was a very quiet camp those days there on It-Crushed-Them. The people still mourned for their dead and, for that matter, did so for a year or more. Those not mourning had no heart for social pleasure. All waited impatiently for the coming of the Kai-na. Day after day the medicine men got out their sacred pipes and smoked and prayed to the G.o.ds to give the warriors great success against the Crows, still encamped upon The-Other-Side Bear River, as the scouts kept reporting. I wondered if the Crows had scouts out keeping equally close watch upon our camp.

One morning Lone Walker sent Red Crow and me to the Black b.u.t.te, the extreme eastern end of the Moccasin Mountains, with dried meat and back fat for the four scouts stationed there. We started very early, arrived at the foot of the b.u.t.te by something like ten o'clock, and there left our horses in a grove of cottonwoods, and began the ascent with our packs of meat. It was a long, steep, winding climb up around to its southern slope, and thence to its summit, and we did not attain it until mid-afternoon. We found two of the watchers asleep in a little enclosure of rocks just under the summit, and the two others sitting upon the highest point. They had seen us approaching the b.u.t.te on our horses, and were expecting us. They had no word for us to take back; no enemies had appeared, the country seemed to be free from them.

It was from this high point that I got my first good view of the Bear Paw, and Wolf Mountains, across on the north side of the Missouri, and the great plains of the Missouri-Musselsh.e.l.l country. The plains were black with buffaloes as far out in all directions as the eye could distinguish them. I cannot begin to tell you how glad I was to be there on that high point looking out upon that vast buffalo plain, its grand mountains, its sentinel b.u.t.tes, and deep-gashed river valleys. I had a sense of ownership in it all. White though my skin, and blue my eyes, I was a member of a Blackfoot tribe, yes, even a member of its law and order society. And so, in common with my red people, an owner of this great hunting-ground!

And even as I was thinking that, Red Crow turned from a long lookout upon it and said to me: "Rising Wolf, brother, what a rich, what a beautiful land is ours!"

No, that doesn't express it; he said, "Ki-sak-ow-an-on!" (Your land and ours!)