Part 3

And then, one morning some two weeks later, they came into camp with a rush, driving before them sixty or seventy horses that they had taken from the Kootenais. And two carried a slender wand from which dangled a scalp. They came in singing the song of victory; and then the war chief shouted: "A multitude of the enemy are on our trail. Break camp, you women, and move down river. Take your weapons, you men, and turn back with us!"

We took our weapons. We mounted our horses and rode like mad up the old war trail, and within a half-hour sighted the enemy, forty or fifty of them, strung out in a long, straggling line, according to the strength and speed of each one's horse. We exchanged a few shots with the lead riders; one fell; the rest took their back trail, and how they did go up the steep incline to the summit, and over it. We did not pursue them: "Let them go!" Bear Chief shouted. "We have many of their horses; we have scalped three of them; let them go!"

We "let them go!" and, indeed, that was the wiser way: they could have made a stand at the summit and shot us down as fast as we came on.

The old war road! How many of my people have traveled over it, some of them never to return. It was along this road that Pi´tamakan, virgin woman warrior, led her warriors in what was to be her last raid! But how many, many times our people have come rushing homeward over it, singing their songs of victory, waving the scalps they have taken, and driving before them great bands of the horses of the Pend d'Oreilles, the Snakes, the Nez Percés, and other tribes of the Columbia River watershed.

The names the Blackfeet have given to the four world directions are most significant of their entry into this Missouri River country. North is _ap-ut´-o-sohts_: back, or behind direction. South, _ahm-ska´-pohts_, is ahead direction. East is _pi-na´-pohts_: down-river direction; and west is _ah-me´-tohts_: up-river direction. I have told why the Two Medicine was so named, when the Blackfeet came into the country from the Far North, and drove the Crows before them. This river they named Pu-nak´-ik-si (Cutbank), because its narrow valley for a long way up from its junction with the Two Medicine is walled in by straight-cut cliffs.

The Cutbank River Valley, like those of all the other streams of the country, has been the scene of many a fight between the Blackfeet and their enemies, in which the Blackfeet were generally the victors. A remarkable instance of an old woman's bravery occurred just below here some forty years ago.

A few lodges of the Kut´-ai-im-iks, or Never Laughs band of the Blackfeet, in need of the skins of elk and bighorn for making "buckskin" for light clothing and moccasin tops, were here hunting, and one evening all the men gathered in old Running Crane's lodge for prayers with his beaver medicine. An old woman, named Muk-sin-ah´-ki (Angry Woman), was sitting in her lodge by herself because there had not been room for her in the crowded beaver medicine lodge. But she was listening to the distant singing, and saying over the prayers at the proper time, her heart full of peace and love for the gods.

As she sat there at the back of the lodge, she suddenly noticed that the doorway curtain in the upper part was being slowly pulled aside to the width of a hand, and in that small space an eye glared at her for a time, and then the curtain dropped back to place.

"That was the eye of an enemy," she said to herself. Her heart throbbed painfully; and for the time her thoughts were confused. Then, suddenly, some one, perhaps the sun himself, told her to take courage. She took courage: she stole out of the lodge to see what that enemy was doing. There was a moon; bright starlight; the night was almost as light as day; and she had no more than left the lodge than she saw the man walking here, there, examining the buffalo runners, the best and swiftest horses of the people, all picketed close to the lodges of their owners. Whenever the man's back was toward her, she hurried her steps; got closer and closer to him; and then, suddenly, she sprang and seized him from behind and shouted: "Help! Help! I have seized an enemy!"

In the beaver medicine lodge the men heard her and came running to her relief. She had the man down; he was struggling to rise; but the sun must have given her of his power: she held him firmly until they came, and they seized him, and White Antelope stabbed him to death. He was a Gros Ventre.

HOW MOUNTAIN CHIEF FOUND HIS HORSES

"Nephew, listen! Magic took place here in the long ago," said Yellow Wolf as we sat around his lodge fire this evening.

"The Ah´-pai-tup-i[4] were hunting on this Cutbank stream, every day or two moving nearer and nearer to the mountains. At one of their camping-places some distance below here, Mountain Chief lost his two fast buffalo runners, and although all the young men of the camp scattered out to look for them, they could not be found. Camp was moved nearer to the mountains, and after a few days moved again, this time to this very place where we are now encamped.

[4] Ah´-pai-tup-i (Blood People). One of the twenty-four gentes of the Pi-kun´-i, or "Piegan" Blackfeet.

"The loss of the two buffalo runners was all that Mountain Chief could think about. As they could not be found, he felt sure that some enemy had stolen them.

"There was a Kootenai Indian visiting in camp, and one day he entered Mountain Chiefs lodge, and said to him: 'You are grieving about the loss of your two fast horses. Now, if you will do as I say, perhaps I can find them for you.'

"'Whatever you ask, that shall be done,' Mountain Chief told him.

"'First, then, you must give me a robe, a good bow, and a quiver of arrows,' said the Kootenai.

"'They are yours; there they are: my own weapons, that robe. Take them when you want them,' said the chief.

"'I will take them later,' said the Kootenai. 'And now, call in your leading men.'

"Mountain Chief went outside and shouted the names of the men he wanted: a medicine man; several old, wise men; some warriors of great name. They came and were given seats in his lodge, each man according to his standing in the tribe. Said the Kootenai then: 'I have a sacred song that I want you all to learn. I will sing it over three or four times, then you sing it with me.'

"He sang the song. It was low in tone, and slow; a strange and beautiful song that gripped one's heart. But it was not hard to learn; after the Kootenai had sung it over four times, all there could sing it with him.

"Then the Kootenai told Mountain Chief to have the women build for him a little lodge there inside the big lodge. This they did by leaning the sticks of two tripods against one of the poles of the lodge, their lower ends making a half-circle, and then covering them with buffalo leather. Into this little enclosure crept the Kootenai, taking with him a bird wing-bone whistle, and a medicine rattle, and as soon as he was inside he ordered the women to smooth down carefully the leather coverings so that he would be in the dark. He then said to the people, sitting there in the big lodge: 'We will now sing the song four times. It is a call song to all living things: the birds, the animals, the trees, the rocks--yes, even they have life. All will come when we sing this song, and we will question them as to the whereabouts of the two missing horses.'

"They sang the song four times, and then the Kootenai, alone in his dark little lodge, sang another song, keeping time to it with his rattle, and the people, listening, heard outside the sighing of the wind through a big pine tree, although no such tree was near; and the Kootenai questioned the pine tree, and it answered that it had no knowledge of the missing horses.

"Then, at his summons, came the different birds and the animals; one could hear outside the flutter of their wings, the tread of their feet; and the Kootenai questioned them, and one by one they answered that they had not seen the horses. Came then a big rock, hurtling down through the sky and through the smoke hole of the lodge right into the fireplace, scattering ashes and coals all around the lodge, and frightening the people sitting there. And the Kootenai questioned it, and it answered that it knew nothing of the lost horses.

"'Let us sing the sacred song again,' the Kootenai called out from his dark little lodge, and the people sang it with him, not once, but four times. The Kootenai then blew his whistle four times, four long, loud whistles. At the time there was no wind, but soon they heard, far off, the roar of an approaching wind of terrible force. Said the Kootenai then: 'I have called him, he is coming, Old-Man-of-the-Winds: be not afraid; he will not harm you.'

"He came with dreadful whirlwinds of his making. Winds that shook the lodge, and made the lodge ears hum with the noise of that of a hundred swarms of bees. And then, suddenly, the wind fell, and outside the people heard this wind god ask: 'Why have you sung--why have you whistled for me--what is it you want to know?'

"The Kootenai answered: 'Mountain Chief, here, has lost his two best horses. Fast buffalo runners they are; both black; one with a white spot on his side. I called you to ask if you have seen them anywhere?'

"'No, I have not seen them,' Old-Man-of-the-Winds answered. 'As you know, I belong on the west side of this Backbone-of-the-World. It is from there that I start the winds that blow over your country. I have been no farther out than here. No, I have not seen the horses.'

"'Now I am depressed,' the Kootenai exclaimed. 'I did not expect to learn much about this from the birds, the animals, trees, and rocks, even the bumblebee could tell me nothing; but I felt that you would surely know where the two horses are!'

"'Well, I have a friend who can tell you what you want to know,' said Old-Man-of-the-Winds. 'He is Red-Top Plume. He lives in the clouds; he can see the whole country; undoubtedly he can tell you where those horses are.'

"'He is a stranger to me. How shall I find him--this Red-Top Plume?' the Kootenai asked; and all the people held their breath, waiting to hear the answer. Here was sacred talk; talk of a man with a god, and about gods: they could hardly believe that it was real, that which they were hearing.

"Answered Old-Man-of-the-Winds: 'Watch the clouds. When you see one of them turning from white to red, as the sun goes down to his lodge on his island in the great sea, you will know that Red-Top Plume is there above you. That red cloud is his plume. Yes, when you see that, sing your song again four times; blow your whistle again four times, and he will answer you.'

"And with that the wind suddenly started to blow from the east, and Old-Man-of-the-Winds went with it back to his western home, and they heard him no more.

"From his dark little lodge in the big lodge, the Kootenai called out to Mountain Chief: 'Go, stand outside your lodge, watch for a cloud turning red, and when you see it, come inside and tell me that it is there above us.'

"Mountain Chief went outside. He looked up and saw but a few small, white, slowly drifting clouds in the sky. There were four of them straight above him. These drifted toward one another, and he cried out: 'A sign! A sacred sign! Four small clouds are getting together to make one large cloud!'

"And at that all the people in the lodge cried out: 'The sacred number! Oh, sun! Oh, Above People all! Pity us! Pity us all! Allow us to survive all dangers! Give us long life and happiness!'

"And then, as the sun was setting, Mountain Chief cried out: 'The four are now one large cloud, and its edge is beginning to turn red! Ai! The red, the sacred color, spreads over it!'

"His voice trembled. Himself, he trembled; for he knew that he was looking--not at an ordinary cloud, but at Red-Top Plume himself, the great cloud god!

"'Come in! Come in!' the Kootenai cried to him. And he went back into the lodge and joined in the singing of the sacred song. Four times they sang it, oh, how earnestly! The Kootenai then blew his wing-bone whistle four times. Followed a silence; the people scarcely daring to breathe. And then they heard outside, in a deep and beautiful voice: 'I am Red-Top Plume! Why have you called me here?'

"'Red-Top Plume! God of the clouds! Pity us!' the Kootenai answered. 'It is a matter of horses; of two fast buffalo runners; both black; one with a white spot on its side. We have lost them. Have you--oh, have you seen them anywhere?'

"'That is a small thing to call me down about,' the sky god answered; 'but, since I am here, I will tell you what I know: Yes, I have seen them. I saw them just now as I came down to earth. They are standing beside the spring just up the hill from where you camped when you lost them.'

"'Ah! Ah! Ah!' the people exclaimed in hushed voices. And the Kootenai, questioner of gods and unafraid, cried out: 'Red-Top Plume! Sacred plumed god of the clouds! You are good to us. Tell us, now, what we can do for you--what sacrifice to do?'

"But he got no answer. Red-Top Plume had gone--gone back to his home in the sky, and the people, rushing out from the lodge, looked up and saw him moving slowly eastward, his beautiful plumes redder than ever. And while the Kootenai and Mountain Chief and the other warriors made sacrifice to him, some young men mounted their horses and rode back to the camping-place where the two horses had been lost, and lo! they found them near the spring where Red-Top Plume had told that they were standing."

_July 22._

Even in my day the many beaver dams in this wide canyon were in good repair, and the ponds were dotted with inhabited beaver lodges. There are few of the little woodcutters here now, but in time to come, under the sure protection of the supervisor of this Glacier National Park, they will become as numerous as they were before the white man came.

Talk about beavers to-night brought out a most interesting story by Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill. Said he: "Beavers build a great dam, often working moons and moons to complete it. Then, when it is finished, and a great pond created, they build their lodges in the backed-up water, and cut their winter supply of cottonwood, willow, and quaking aspen, which they tow out in convenient lengths and sink in deep water around the lodges.

"Now, after a few winters, they have to move on and build another dam-and-pond, for they will have used up all the available trees and willows around the first pond. But that is still their pond, the clan that built it, and in time, when a new growth of food trees has sprung up around it, they return there, repair the dam, build new lodges, and remain as long as the young trees last."

WHITE FUR AND HIS BEAVER CLAN

"Away back in the ancient days, when our first fathers were able to talk with the animals, a beaver chief named White Fur, with his family and his relatives, built a big dam on this river. You can still see the remains of it, willow-grown, and it still backs up some water, a pond as large in extent as the camp of our tribe. But in the old days that dam extended from one side to the other of the valley, and the water it backed up was more than a pond: it was a small lake. Above here, there is a swift stream of white water rushing down the north side of the valley from great ice banks in the mountains. Well, just below its junction with the river is where White Fur built the dam.

"Time passed. The sons of other beaver clans came and married the daughters of White Fur's clan, and took them off, and the sons of his clan went out and found wives and brought them home. The clan increased; the pond became full of lodges; the trees were cut in greater number each succeeding summer. So it was that, when the ice went out one spring, White Fur went around and around the pond, examining the remaining food trees, and saw that there remained only a few more than enough for the coming winter. It was no more than he expected; his last hurried look around, just before the freeze-up in the fall, had warned him that the food supply was getting small.

"He went home, and called a council, told what he had learned on his round, and then said:--

"'We must move out from here as soon as the ice breaks up next spring, and when we go we must know just where we are going; we cannot afford to lose time hunting for a good place to make a new home. Now, who will start out on discovery?'

"'I will!' his eldest son, Loud Slap, first answered. He was so named because he could tail-slap the water louder than any one else in the whole gens.

"Now, Loud Slap was White Fur's favorite son, and next to himself the best, the wisest dam-builder in the gens. The chief wanted to keep him at home, for going on discovery was very dangerous. But for very shame he could not order him to remain and let some other take the risk. So, with sinking heart, he said: 'You spoke up first, my son, so you shall be the first one to look for a new home for us. I have had a dream, and I want you to find out if it told me truth: Go down this river a little way beyond the edge of the pines, look north, and you will see a big ridge with a low gap in it. Go up through that gap, and down the other side, and you will soon come to a small branch of a good-sized stream; look at all the branches of that stream for a good home for us, and come back and tell us all about it. Make that crossing through the gap in the daytime, for then the most of our enemies, the mountain lion, the fisher and the wolverine, the wolf and the coyote, are generally asleep. Night is the time that they do their murdering work.'

"'As you say, so I will do,' Loud Slap answered.

"And the next morning, some time before daylight, he started down river on his dangerous trail of discovery. Below his pond there were other ponds; and as he swam through them many of the beavers living in them asked him where he was going.

"'Out on discovery; our food trees will last us only this coming winter; we have to find a new home,' he answered them all.

"On he went, through the last of the ponds, down the river, swimming fast, so very fast that his big webbed hind feet, swiftly kicking, made the water foam past his breast. He had started out too early; when he passed the last of the pines, daylight was still some time off, so he dived under a pile of driftwood, then crawled up into it, found a good resting-place on one of the logs and went to sleep, sure that none of the prowlers could reach him there.

"The sun shining down through the little openings in the driftwood pile awakened him. He slipped down into the water, made a dive, and came up out in the middle of the river. Near by was a high, sloping bank bare of trees and brush; he swam to shore, climbed it, looked north, and saw the big ridge and the big, low gap in it. He looked all around; no animals were in sight except a few elk, and he knew that they would not harm him: he began waddling toward the gap.

"The sun was hot. Loud Slap's legs were short; his body fat and heavy; there was no water; he soon became very tired and thirsty, and the top of the gap seemed to be a long way off. More and more often he had to stop and rest, but he kept saying to himself: 'I will not give up! I will not give up!'--and at last he arrived at the top of the gap. Close up to the top on the other side were thick, cool groves of quaking aspen and willows; as far as he could see, the valley below him and its far side was one green growth of trees, and he knew that somewhere down there was water, plenty of it. Down he went, oh, how easily, on the steeper places just pushing a little with his hind feet and sliding along on his belly. He soon came to a small stream of running water and drank and drank of it, rolled over and over in its shallowness until wet all over, and then he followed it down. Other little streams came into it, and at last it became so deep that he could swim. After a time he came to where this stream joined a much larger one, and he turned and went up it, and away up in the timber found where a dam could be built that would form a very large pond, and best of all the quaking aspens and willows were everywhere there growing so closely together that they formed a food supply that would last a number of winters.

"That night Loud Slap slept in a hole that he dug in a bank of the stream. This is the one which we long ago named Ki-nuk´-si Is-si-sak´-ta. I understand that the white people have another name for it.[5]

[5] Ki-nuk´-si Is-si-sak´-ta (Little River). By the whites named Milk River.

"Early next morning Loud Slap came out of his hole, cut down a small quaking aspen, and ate all he wanted of its bark. He then swam down the stream, turned up its little fork, and before the sun was very high left it and took his back trail up through the gap, and before noon was going down the long slope to Cutbank River. The going was easy. But one thing troubled him: the risk that he ran traveling there in that open, waterless country. Whenever he came to a patch of buck brush or a clump of tall grass, he would sit up and look all around to see if any enemy was near; and then he would go on, keeping as close to the ground as possible. Twice he saw a coyote in the distance, and sat motionless until the animal moved on out of sight. And then, when almost to the river, sitting up and looking out from a brush patch, he saw a wolverine coming straight toward him. He trembled; he shivered. 'Now is my end come!' he said to himself, and imagined how it was going to feel to be bitten and clawed and torn to death. Because of his helplessness, because he could in no way defend himself, he wept; but silently.

"On came the wolverine, sniffing the ground; sniffing the rocks; the weed growths; and once, when he turned and looked back, Loud Slap threw himself flat there in the brush; he had not dared move before. The wind was from the southwest; the wolverine was coming from the west, and that was one thing in Loud Slap's favor. But on which side of that patch of brush would he pass? If to the north, then he would scent the beaver-odor trail, follow it, and all would be over. If he passed to the south of the patch, and not too close, then all would be well. From where he lay, flat on the ground in the brush, Loud Slap could see nothing but the brush stems in front of his nose; but presently he heard, close to the patch and to the west of it, the sniff! sniff! sniffle! of his enemy. He closed his eyes; his body shook with fear; he could almost feel strong, sharp-fanged jaws closing upon his neck! The suspense was terribly hard to bear! And then, after what seemed to be a whole moon of time, he heard the sniffling close in front of him; then faint and fainter off in the direction of the river; and presently he opened his eyes, little by little rose up, and looked out from his hiding-place. Lo! Wolverine had come close, _close_ to the brush patch, and south of it, and then had turned, and was now walking slowly toward the river! 'My enemy passes! I survive!' Loud Slap said to himself, and would have sung had he dared. Oh, yes, beavers sang in those days, as you shall learn.

"Loud Slap watched the wolverine go on down the valley, and then waddled to the river as fast as he could work his legs. How good it felt, that plunge into the cool water from the bank! and, once into it, he made it foam as he swam homeward against the swift current. Long before night he climbed the dam of the upper pond, and a little later entered his father's lodge. 'Ha! Back so soon! What found you, my son?' old White Fur asked.