CHAPTER XIX--The Indian Pow-Wow--Tom and Joe Get Into The Squaw Dance

The Indians were arriving when the boys reached the meadows below the falls, and were already beginning to set up their wigwams, or tepees, beside the Swift Current. The chiefs and braves, in their Indian dress, with feathered head-gear and bright blankets, were on horseback, and so were most of the squaws and children; but the tepees were being transported from the reservation out on the prairie in motor buses, and there was even an entire Indian family in a touring car, with the brave at the wheel!

"Gee whiz, times change all right," said Spider. "Even the Indians have automobiles."

Nearly a hundred Blackfeet arrived, all told, fine looking men and women for the most part, although the older squaws were fat and huddled up in their blankets, looking like funny bears. What struck Joe and Tom first of all, however, was the good nature of these Indians.

"I always thought Indians were silent and sort of grouchy," Tom said to Mills, who was on hand to help the Indians get settled in camp and see that the hotel, which had induced them to come, provided enough for them to eat.

"Not at all," the Ranger answered. "They are always laughing and joking, as you see. They are a very happy people, and they have a mighty hard time of it, too. They don't know how to raise cattle or grain, because they've always been hunters. Now the government has taken the Park away from them, and won't let 'em hunt here, and they half starve every winter. I tell you, I'm sorry for 'em."

The boys moved among them freely, listening to their strange language, and watching the tepees go up. Some of these tepees were made of tanned skins, mostly elk skins, but one or two very old ones of buffalo skins. They were stretched around a frame of lodge-pole pines, leaving a hole at the peak where the smoke could rise, as through a chimney. On the outside were painted in various colors bands and designs, and in the case of the chiefs, funny figures of buffalo and men chasing them on horseback, and other men being killed in battle. These pictures, Mills said, were painted by the chiefs themselves, and depicted the life history and exploits of each warrior.

"Good idea," Tom laughed. "You sort of paint your autobiography on the outside of your house."

"I suppose when you get home, you'll draw a picture of yourself climbing a cliff, over your front door," said Joe.

"And you can draw yourself falling down the cellar hatchway," Tom retorted.

By late afternoon, the tepees were all up, smoke was ascending from the peaks, the horses of each brave were tethered near their master's lodge, in the centre of the camp was a large, flat open space, to be used later for the dances, and here the little Indian children were now playing. When the flap of a lodge was lifted, you could see women inside, cooking or laying beds of skins and blankets. The funny Indian dogs, mongrels of all shapes, sizes and colors, were roaming around. Beside the camp flowed the Swift Current, green and foaming, and behind it rose the towering walls of the canyon sides. Except for the tourists who had come down from the hotel to watch, and the one Indian automobile parked near by, the camp might have been an Indian village of two hundred years ago, before the white men ever came. Tom and Joe were reluctant to leave, it all seemed so like a picture out of the past, the picture of a life and a race now fast vanishing from the earth. They took many pictures of the camp before they finally went back to their own camp, to see if any hikers had arrived.

A party was coming down the trail just as they got there, and Tom was soon busy. But when supper was over, he and Joe went back, taking the hikers along, to see the camp again. As they drew near, they heard strange noises, the TUM-_tum_, TUM-_tum_, of Indian drums. The pow-wow had begun.

"It won't amount to much, though, till to-morrow," Mills said. "They just get worked up a little to-night."

There was a big fire going in the central dancing ground, and near it, dressed in all their finery, two of them stripped bare to the waist with their skins covered with yellow paint, were the three makers of music, each holding a shallow skin drum in one hand and beating it with the other, in a regular, monotonous, unvaried rhythm, a two-foot beat, heavily accented on the first foot--TUM-_tum_, TUM-_tum_, TUM-_tum_, over and over, rather slowly. As they pounded out this rhythm, they kept laughing, emitting yells and calls, and sometimes sang. Meanwhile some boy or young brave would spring out into the fire-light, in the centre of the ring of braves and squaws and children squatted or standing around, and dance to the music, going through strange gestures, brandishing a decorated spear, stooping, bending, circling around, but always, the boys soon detected, adhering to some formal plan, although they didn't know what this dance might signify, and always surprisingly graceful.

"Some of those dances are very intricate," Mills said to them, as an Indian boy, after finishing a hard dance, dropped panting back into the circle, while the older braves applauded and another took his place instantly. "It takes a boy weeks to learn them, and each one has a meaning. It may be the boy's medicine dance, part of the ritual which will keep harm away from him."

Even after the scouts left, they could hear the TUM-_tum_ of the drums, till the roar of the falls drowned it. The next day they hurried back, as soon as the camp work was done, and found the Indians dancing again, in broad daylight now, of course, with a great crowd of tourists around watching them. They were still at it when the boys came back after luncheon, seemingly untiring. But presently they stopped, and an old chief stepped out and began to make a speech.

"What's he talking about?" Tom asked Mills, edging in close to the circle.

"Don't ask me--I can't talk the language," the Ranger answered. "Hi, Pete, what's old Stabs-by-Mistake saying?"

This last question was addressed to a half-breed who was standing just in front of them, in the Indian circle.

Pete, who was dressed in cowboy costume, but without any hat, turned with a grin.

"He says they are going to take my white man name away from me, and give me a Blackfeet name," Pete replied. "He says the white men give the mountains foolish white man names, but I'm part Indian, and they're going to take my name, Pete Jones, away from me."

Stabs-by-Mistake (that was really the name of the old chief, and not a joke of Mills') now beckoned Pete into the middle of the circle. Two or three young braves danced around him, while the drums beat and all the Indians shouted and sang, and then the braves seized him, pretended to grab something from him with their hands, and ran with this imaginary thing to some bushes outside the camp. They disappeared in these bushes, speedily reappeared holding up their hands to show they were empty, and came back to the circle.

"I suppose they dropped his old name in the bushes!" Joe laughed.

"Sure," said Mills.

Now Stabs-by-Mistake rose to make another speech. Pete stood before him, and he talked for two or three minutes right at him, with many gestures, while the Indians listened. The boys could see that he had not yet given him a new name, and all the Blackfeet were waiting, excited, to see what the new name was going to be. Finally, Stabs-by-Mistake laid his hand on Pete's shoulder and spoke very solemnly. Then he spoke the new name. As he spoke it, he gave Pete a great slap on the back as a sort of period to his oration, and at the same instant the entire circle of Indians broke out into shouts of laughter. Pete looked sheepish, and came back toward the Ranger, red and grinning.

"Well, what's your name now?" Mills asked.

"He made a big talk about giving me the name of a great chief, gone to the Sand Hills long ago, and then he said it was Lazy-Boy-Afraid-to-Work. That's why they are all laughing."

Mills laughed, too. "He's got your number, Pete," said he.

Now another chief was making a speech, and Pete grinned at Mills.

"You're in for it now," he chuckled. "Yellow Wolf says they're going to give you an Indian name."

"Oh, help!" Mills exclaimed.

He was led into the circle, looking uncomfortable and shy with so many tourists gazing at him. But the boys knew he would rather have cut off his right hand than hurt the Indians' feelings by refusing. For him, the ceremony was much more serious. There was no laughing, and Yellow Wolf made a grave and evidently impassioned speech to the tribe, who listened and applauded. They did not go through the comic ceremony of taking the Ranger's old name out into the bushes, but instead they sat him down in a smaller circle of the chiefs, and passed an Indian pipe around. Then, standing once more, they danced and sang, and finally Yellow Wolf gave him his new name, with a slap on the shoulder, while the crowd expressed approval. Then a gorgeous feathered head-dress was put on his head, instead of a hat, and when he finally rejoined the boys, he was still wearing this.

"What's your name?" Tom asked.

"What is it, Pete?" said Mills.

"Tail-Feathers-Coming-Over-the-Hill," said Pete. "He was a fine Indian, too--medicine man."

"I thought so," Mills answered. "I thought I recognized it. Well, boys, I suppose I'm a Blackfoot now! You know" (he added this in a lower tone) "they are grateful to me because in the hard winter last year I didn't prosecute one of 'em for killing a sheep, but got the government to send 'em some food, so they wouldn't have to poach. Tail-Feathers-Coming-Over-the-Hill was a fine old Indian. I'm proud to have his name."

"It's some name!" the scouts laughed.

Now that these ceremonies were over, the Indians fell to dancing again, and the beat of the three drums, the calls and songs, rose on the air. Seeing the crowd of tourists about, and filled with fun and good spirits, the Indians started the squaw dance, the dance in which the women and even the larger children of the tribe take part. The three drummers stood in the middle, pounding their sheepskin drums, and around them, in a ring, holding hands or linking elbows, everybody facing inward, the Indians revolved by a curious little side step with a bend to the right knee, in time to the TUM-_tum_, TUM-_tum_, of the drums. Every moment or two a couple of chiefs or braves would dart out of the circle, seize some white woman or girl, and drag her laughing back into the ring. Then the young squaws began to run out and grab white men. Two Indian maidens seized Joe, while Tom got his camera hastily into action.

"Now, look pleasant, Joey!" he laughed. "We'll have this picture enlarged for the Scout House--Joe and the Indian maidens!"

The girls placed Joe in the circle, and he began to revolve with the rest. One of the girls beckoned at Tom, as much as to say, "Shall we get him?"

Joe nodded, and the girl spoke to another squaw maid on her left, and the two of them left the line and seized Tom, also, keeping fast hold of his hands and dragging him with much laughter into the revolving ring.

Before long as many as two hundred people, Indians and white, old folks and young, men, women and children, were all revolving in a great circle about the three drummers, who were beating violently, singing, shouting. The Indian women began to sing, also, a strange tune, with only one phrase, repeated over and over. Of course, the boys could not understand the words, or even tell for sure sometimes whether there were any words. But the tune got into their heads. They could never sing it afterwards just as the Indians did, for the Indian scale, the intervals, are different from ours, but they could come somewhere near it, as they danced around their camp.

The squaw dance lasted until the "pale faces" began to get tired and drop out of the ring. Then the Indians went back to their former solo dances, their other songs, their general jollification and curious games. But the three drummers, without any rest, kept right on pounding and shouting and singing, as if nothing could tire them. They were still at it when the scouts had to return to their duties at the camp, and all that evening, too, they kept it up.

The next day the steer was to be roasted, in a fire pit dug and prepared by the Indians themselves, but Joe did not see that, for he received word that evening to start out early the following morning with a party over Swift Current Pass, and down to Lake McDonald. Tom went to see the beginning of the ceremony, but the process of roasting an entire steer isn't very pretty, nor very tempting, and he didn't stay. Beside, he had a big party of hikers to look after, and his own meals to cook now Joe was away. He returned to Camp Kent, looked longingly at his coil of Alpine rope, took his axe, and went at the task of replenishing the wood supply.