Part 10

Next came my part in the ceremony. My old relative and friend felt around in his medicine pouch, got out a small sack of _a-san´_, the sacred red paint, and painted my face with it, at the same time beseeching the gods to give me, his brother, Ap-i-kun´-i, long life, good health, and prosperity in all things. Then, having finished the painting and the prayer, he had his wife hand Chief Crow, his helper, the long red-painted wooden flute that goes with the medicine, and the latter, holding it aloft, danced with it almost to the doorway of the lodge, where he blew several soft, clear notes to the four corners of the earth, and then returned the flute to the woman. This was the Elk Medicine whistle, for imitating the weird call of that animal, and was used just now to call him, the ancient Elk god, to give me his favor, his pity. My friend then facing me, upon his knees began the thunder song, in which all joined, and, spreading his blanket-clad arms wide to represent the thunder bird wings, hovered before me, fanned me with his wings, the intent being to waft to me from him the sacred power. That over, all arose, and passing in line from the lodge, Chief Crow leading, danced through the camp and back again, and the ceremony ended.

I cannot begin to express how I felt all through the ceremony. I honored my people for their sincere faith, their reverence for their gods. And my thoughts went back to the time when they were the lords of these plains and mountains and knew not want. And not so very long ago they were a tribe of three thousand members, and now they number only eight or nine hundred, and those who have gone have mostly gone from want, from their susceptibility to disease because of lack of proper nourishment. Do you wonder that they feel bitterly toward the whites, who have taken from them everything that made their life worth living?

_August 27._

Because we were to-day to embark upon the deep, dark waters of this lake, we yesterday had a little ceremony on the shore, beseeching the dread Under-Water People to have pity upon us and allow us to pass in safety over their domain. We had a little fire close to the water's edge, and having filled and lighted his pipe with a coal taken from it with his sacred red tongs, old Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill smoked and made his prayers, at the same time casting into the water a little sack of his medicines as a sacrifice to the gods. It was a short ceremony, but satisfied even the most timid of the women that all would be well with them during their voyage upon the lake.

And so, where we once had rude rafts of logs, lashed together with rawhide ropes, we this morning embarked in good boats and went all up the beautiful lake, past Red Eagle, and Little Chief, and Almost-a-Dog Mountains to the head of the lake, and looking back at the slope of Milk River Ridge saw the far-apart, enormous footprints of Heavy Runner, keeper of the buffalo.

Away back in ancient times, after Old Man had made buffalo and they had increased and covered the plains, they had great desire to wander westward and see what might be on the other side of the great mountains. The people--the Blackfeet--learning of this were greatly distressed. The far side of the mountains, away west and still westward to the shores of the Everywhere-Water, was the country of their enemies, many tribes of them, and should they get possession of the buffalo herds they would never let them return. What to do about it they had no idea, so they called upon Old Man for help.

Said he: "I made the buffalo to be plains animals, and here upon these plains they shall remain, and other-side tribes shall come to you and ask permission to kill a few of them now and then. So, don't worry. Go home now and attend to your affairs. All shall be well with you."

The people went home. They saw that the buffalo remained upon the plains in apparently as great numbers as ever. But some of the hunters, to learn for sure if they were all there, ascended the different passes of the mountains and went down the other side for some distance. There were no buffalo, not even a few straggling bulls on the other side, and they wondered how Old Man was keeping them back. They soon learned. In a vision it was revealed to an old medicine man that a huge god, a man of enormous stature, was patrolling the mountains from far south to the everlasting snow of the north, and with a club driving the buffalo back eastward as fast as they came anywhere near the summit of the range. And so it was that the other tribes--those of the west--never got the buffalo.

* * * * *

On our way down the lake we passed the beautiful Sun Camp and the chalets of the Great Northern, perched upon the very spot where Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill and I killed many a bighorn and goat in times gone by. It was a favorite wintering place of the animals, for the winds kept the steep mountain slope practically bare from snow. And passing the mouth of the creek just above the camp, I remembered that I had named it after Thomas, and Colonel Robert, and the Honorable Cecil Baring, of London, with whom I often hunted back in the eighties. In those days there were many bighorn and goats, and not a few grizzlies back in the basin at the head of the creek. And what amusing and sometimes exciting adventures we had with them! One morning we espied a big "billy" goat on a ledge, and just as we saw him he moved to the back side of it and lay down, showing only an inch or two of the top of his back.

"Who will go up and rout him out, so that I can get a shot?" asked Colonel Baring, and Jack Bean, of Yellowstone fame, volunteered.

It was to be a steep, almost straight-up climb, so Jack laid down his rifle and started without encumbrance of any kind. At last he reached the shelf and stood up on it, and that "billy" came for him, head down! And Jack! Never have I seen a man come down a dangerous cliff so fast as he did! And he kept coming, falling, sliding, rolling, and then Colonel Baring fired and dropped the goat, and man and animal came the rest of the way to the foot of the place together! We had been too much concerned for the safety of our friend to laugh, but when he at last stood up and faced us, bloody, half-naked, but not seriously hurt, we roared. But Jack never even smiled: "Who would have thought that a blankety-blank goat would go for a fellow!" he exclaimed; and he went to the creek to repair the damages to his person.

On this day, halting here and there along the lake, we took some views of the scenery and of our people, and at sunset were back in our lodges. For some of us it is a last trip over the old, familiar ground. My two old friends, Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill and Yellow Wolf, must soon go on to their Shadow Land!

* * * * *

We were not too tired to-night for story-telling, so, after the children had been put to bed and all was quiet, Takes-Gun-Ahead gave us the following, the story of tobacco, which is called

NA-WAK´-O-SIS

"In that long ago time when the earth was young, and people had not long been made, a man threw some weeds upon a fire and found that the odor, the smoke from their burning, was very pleasant. That night he had a vision and learned that this plant was strong medicine; that, when smoked in a pipe, which his vision explained to him how to make, it would be the right thing with which to offer prayers to the gods. He also taught the man the prayers and all the ceremony that went with the prayers; and told him how to plant the weeds, from the seeds on their tops, so that he could always have plenty of it.

"This man was very much pleased with what he had learned. He went to his three brother medicine men and told them all about it, and the four of them formed a society of themselves and no others, for the raising of the weed and its proper uses. But they were very stingy with this weed, which they named _na-wak´-o-sis_, and would only now and then give the people a leaf of it, although they raised large numbers of the stalks in every summer time.

"A young man named Lone Bull was very anxious to become a member of this medicine society, but because he had no medicines and knew not the rites of it, he was told that he could not join it. At that time the camp of the people was close under Chief Mountain. He left it, with his woman and his pack dogs, and moved up to the river running out of the Inside Lakes, and there set up his lodge. Said he then to his woman: 'I have come up here to get medicines; in some way to find things that will enable me to become a raiser of _na-wak´-o-sis_. If I can do that, I shall be of great help to the people. Now, then, I am going to hunt and collect all the medicine skins I can find, and you stay at home, take care of the lodge, gather wood, and cook what meat we need. I shall bring in plenty of fat meat along with the skins.'

"The man went hunting every day, and the woman remained at home. One day, when the man was gone, she thought she heard singing; beautiful singing; but look where she would she could see no singers. She spoke to the man about it when he came home that evening, and made him feel uneasy: 'If you hear it again, look about more carefully,' he told her.

"She heard it the next day, and this time located it, right under the lodge. She went out to the bank of the river and looked at the bank: there, under the water, were beaver holes in it, and beaver cuttings upon the sandy bottom, and by that she knew that the lodge had been set up above a bank beaver's home, and that beavers were the singers. She went back to the lodge, lay down and put her ear to the ground, and could then hear them plainly, and was pleased. Their singing was so good that it was all that she could do to stop listening to them and begin cooking the evening meal.

"When Lone Bull came home that night she told him what she had learned, but he could hear nothing, although he put his ear close to the ground. Nor could he hear the singing the next evening, nor the next, although his woman could hear it plainly. So now the woman got her knife and cut a round hole in the ground, and Lone Bull laid his head in it and could then hear the singing. He told her to make the hole deeper; larger. She did so, and cut clear through the ground, and looking down he could see the beavers sitting in their home, singing beautiful songs, and dancing strange and beautiful dances in time to them.

"'Younger brothers, have pity on me!' he cried. 'Oh, my young brothers, teach me your medicine!'

"They looked up and saw him, and one answered: 'Close the hole that you have made, because the light disturbs us, and we will soon be with you.'

"They soon came in through the doorway, four fine-looking men, beautifully dressed. They had changed themselves from beavers to men. They took seats, and then one of them said to Lone Bull: 'Elder brother, what is it that you want of us? How can we help you?'

"Lone Bull told them what it was: his great desire to obtain _na-wak´-o-sis_ and grow it for the people.

"'We have that plant; like us it is from the water, a water medicine,' the beaver man told him; 'but before you can use it you have much to do, much to learn. You have to learn all our songs and prayers and dances and different ceremonies, and gather for the ceremonies a skin of every animal and bird that is of the water, one of each except the beavers, and of them there must be two. You know these animals and birds: otter, mink, muskrat; different kinds of ducks; the fish hawk, and all the other birds that get their food from the life of the water. Why? Because there are two great life-givers of this world: the sun, which gives heat, and water, that makes growth, and in our ceremonies the skins of these different animals are symbols of the water.'

"'I shall collect them all, so teach me everything,' Lone Bull told them. And they began that very night.

"Day after day Lone Bull hunted the animals and birds, brought in their skins for his woman to cure, and night after night the beavers taught him their medicine, all the sacred prayers and dances and ceremonies of it. And at last he knew them all thoroughly.

"Then, one night, the beaver chief handed him some stalks of _na-wak´-o-sis_, the top stems all covered with little round seeds.

"'These,' said he, 'are the children of the big-leaved plants; put them into the ground and they will grow and make other plants that bear children. And now, I must tell you just how to plant: Gather a great, long, wide pile of old dry logs, dry brush and weeds, and set it afire. The heat from it will burn the ground, burn the sod, and make everything soft under it. Then, when the place has cooled, gather from around badger holes, squirrel holes, and wherever you can find it, plenty of the brown earth they have thrown out, and mix it with the burned black earth, so that it will not pack hard around the seeds, and keep them from coming up into the sunlight.

"'After you have taken all the seeds from the stems, you must put them in a sack and not touch them again with your hands. With an antelope horn you will make row after row of little holes all across the burned ground and only a hand apart, and with a buffalo-horn spoon drop a seed into each hole. When that is done, and it will require a long time, you and yours are to dance along each row of seed, singing the sacred songs, your feet lightly pressing down the ground over the seed. At the end of a row you must step across to the next row, and dance backward on that one, and forward on the next, and so on until the last row has been pressed down, and all your songs have been sung. Then you can go away from the place for a time. Return after one moon has passed, and you will find that the young plants have grown above the ground. Watch them, that insects do not destroy them. Give them water if the rains fail you. They will grow all summer, and fade with the ripening of the choke-cherries. Cut them then, care well for them, and you and your people will have a plenty for your winter smokes and ceremonies. There! I have told you all!'

"It was planting-time then. Lone Bull moved right up to the foot of the lower one of the Inside Lakes, and did everything that he had been told to do, his wife helping him in every way. People hunting from down Chief Mountain way came and saw his growing plants, and went home and told about them. The four medicine men just laughed. 'Ha!' They cried. 'He has no _na-wak´-o-sis_! He wanted to join us and we would not let him into our society. He but plants some useless weed.'

"But later on, just as their planting was getting ripe, a terrible hailstorm came along and destroyed it all; every leaf was cut into fine pieces! They cried from grief! Then they said among themselves: '_Na-wak´-o-sis_ we must have or our medicines will be without power. It may be that this Lone Bull really has the true plants: let us go up and see them.'

"They went, all the people with them, and saw that he had the sacred plants. The hailstorm had come nowhere near his place.

"Said they to him then: 'You have a big planting, and we will help you gather it, and you and we four will use it. You shall join us.'

"Lone Bull laughed long before he answered: 'I need no help from you. You shall each have a little of my planting for your own use, and you shall pay me well for it. The rest, excepting what I need, I shall give to the people, and hereafter they will always have all that they need of the plants.'

"And as he said that he would do, so he did, and the people gave him great praise and honor for it all, and he lived to great age. Kyi! Why not? He had the beaver--the water medicine! It is a powerful medicine to this day!"

* * * * *

A visitor in our camp this evening told a tale that ill pleases us. There is a tourist camp away up in Gun-Sight Pass, one of the most weirdly beautiful places in this whole country. There, the other day, an employee was putting up a table on which were painted arrows pointing to the different mountains, the name of each peak alongside its particular arrow.

A tourist standing near and watching the work suddenly exclaimed: "Why, over there is a peak that has no name. Can you not name it after me?"

"Certainly I can," the employee answered; and painted another arrow and inscribed beside it: "Lehnert Peak."

"And over there is a fine waterfall," the tourist said. "Will you please name it after my little daughter?"

"Sure!" said the man; and painted another arrow pointing to "Mary Frances Falls."

Enough said!

V

IKS-I´-KWO-YI-A-TUK-TAI (SWIFT CURRENT RIVER)

_September 1._

We moved up here the other day and made camp beside one of the most lovely lakes in all this Rocky Mountain country. In my time we called it Beaver Woman's Lake. It is now McDermott Lake. And what a name that is for one of Nature's gems! There are names for other lakes and peaks here just as bad as that, but we shall have nothing to say about them here. Only by an act of Congress can we get what we want done, and we have faith that within a reasonable time all these mountains and lakes and streams will bear the names of the great chiefs, medicine men, and warriors who traversed them before the white men came.

Some of us--all excepting our two old men and the women--have been riding over the different trails here, viewing the glaciers and other places of interest, especially Iceberg Lake, where we saw a mass of ice as large as a house part from the glacier, splash down into the deep lake, and disappear, and after a time come up from the depths to the surface and create another commotion of the waters. It was a grand sight!

Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill says that the lake with the unpronounceable white man's name--McDermott--should be called Jealous Women's Lake; that away back in the days of his youth, when the Kootenai Indians occasionally came to camp and hunt with the Blackfeet, he had a youthful friend of the mountain tribe who told him the following story:--

THE JEALOUS WOMEN

"In those days a young Kootenai, good of heart, a great hunter, and very brave, married twin sisters so alike that except for one thing they could not be told apart: one was a slow, the other a very fast, talker.

"In time the fast talker, named Marmot, became jealous of her sister, Camas, complaining all the time that she had to do the most of the lodge work, and that she was sure Camas said bad things about her to their man. Camas denied all this. 'I have never tried to place myself first with our man,' she said. 'We are twins; I love you dearly; our man's heart is so big that it holds us both in equal love. Now, be sensible! Cast out your bad thoughts for they are all wrong.'

"But Marmot persisted in believing that she was neglected; that her sister had all their man's affection; and she finally went to him with her complaint. He laughed. 'I love you just as much as I do your sister,' he said. 'Now, just think back and show me when and in what way I have shown that she is first with me!'

"Marmot sat down and thought. She thought a long time; remained silent. The man was very patient with her; he waited for her answer, but it did not come. At last he said: 'Well, you have thought a long time. Have you found one thing in which I gave her preference?'

"'No, I haven't, but all the same I believe that you love her best,' Marmot answered; and got up and went about her work.

"The man shook his head, made no answer to that, and took up his weapons and went hunting down the river. At the time he was camped right here at this lake.

"The man had not gone far, moving slowly, carefully, through the timber and brush along the river, when he heard ahead a great splashing in the water, and, going closer, found that it was caused by two otters playing. They would chase each other in the water, then climb the bank and go as swift as arrows from a bow down a slide that they had made, and again chase and tumble each other over in the water. The man crept closer to the slide, an arrow in his bow, another in his hand, and, watching his chance, shot one of the players. He tried to get the other, but it dived and was gone before he could fit the other arrow to his bow: 'It is too bad that I didn't get the other. I would have liked a skin of these medicine skins for each of my women,' he said to himself.

"He took the otter home and handed it to Camas. 'That is yours,' he said. 'There were two of them. To-morrow, Marmot, I will get the other for you, and then you will each have a strong medicine skin.'

"Marmot said nothing, but looked cross.

"The man went hunting the next day but he could not find the other otter. He searched the river for many days and could not find one.

"And as the days passed, Marmot became more and more angry, and finally said to her sister: 'I have proof now that our man loves you best. He gave you the otter; he does not even try to get one for me. He hunts other animals every day, bighorn, goats, animals that live nowhere near the haunts of the otter.'

"'Now, don't be foolish!' Camas answered. 'You know as well as I do that he has tried and tried to get the other otter for you. But at the same time he has to get meat for us: that is why he hunts the mountain animals.'

"'Camas, the two of us can no longer live in this lodge,' cried Marmot. 'You are a bad woman! I hate you! I will fight you any way you say to see which of us shall be our man's one wife!'

"Then it was that, for the first time, Camas became angry: 'We have no weapons to fight with,' she answered, 'but I propose this: We will swim this lake across and back and across and back until one of us becomes tired and drowns! Now, crazy woman, what do you say to that?'

"'Come on! Come on!' Marmot cried, and ran to the shore and tore off her clothes. So did Camas, and the two rushed into the water and began their swim of hate. They crossed the lake; turned and came back; crossed again and started back, Camas well in the lead. She reached the shore in front of the lodge, dragged herself out on the shore, and turned. Her sister had gone down. There was not even a ripple on the still water. Marmot was drowned. Hardly knowing what she did, she put on her clothes and went into the lodge and cried and cried. The man came home. She was still crying. He asked her where Marmot was, and she cried all the harder, but at last told him all. Then the man cried. Together the two mourned for a long time, and searched the lake for the body of the lost one, and could not find it. So they moved away from the unhappy place and returned to the camp of their people, but it was a long time, a very long time, before they ceased mourning, and never again would they go anywhere near the lake.

"Yes, this is the Lake of the Jealous Women!"

VI

NI-NA US-TAK-WI (CHIEF MOUNTAIN)

_September 7._