Part 3

When we entered the big tepee we saw twenty-one men seated in a circle against the wall and facing the open centre, where the ground was blackened by the ashes of former fires. Three Bulls sat exactly opposite the queer door, a horseshoe-shaped hole reaching two feet above the ground, and extended by the partly loosened lacing that held the edges of the tent-covering together. Mr. L'Hereux, the interpreter, made a long speech in introducing each of us. We stood in the middle of the ring, and the chief punctuated the interpreter's remarks with that queer Indian grunt which it has ever been the custom to spell "ugh," but which you may imitate exactly if you will try to say "Ha" through your nose while your mouth is closed. As Mr. L'Hereux is a great talker, and is of a poetic nature, there is no telling what wild fancy of his active brain he invented concerning us, but he made a friendly talk, and that was what we wanted. As each speech closed, Three Bulls lurched forward just enough to make the putting out of his hand a gracious act, yet not enough to disturb his dignity. After each salutation he pointed out a seat for the one with whom he had shaken hands. He announced to the council in their language that we were good men, whereat the council uttered a single "Ha" through its twenty-one noses. If you had seen the rigid stateliness of Three Bulls, and had felt the frigid self-possession of the twenty-one ramrod-mannered under-chiefs, as well as the deference which was in the tones of the other white men in our company, you would comprehend that we were made to feel at once honored and subordinate. Altogether we made an odd picture: a circle of men seated tailor fashion, and my own and Mr. Remington's black shoes marring the gaudy ring of yellow moccasins in front of the savages, as they sat in their colored blankets and fringed and befeathered gear, each with the calf of one leg crossed before the shin of the other.

But L'Hereux's next act after introducing us was one that seemed to indicate perfect indifference to the feelings of this august body. No one but he, who had spent a quarter of a century with them in closest intimacy, could have acted as he proceeded to do. He cast his eyes on the ground, and saw the mounds of sugar, tobacco, and tea heaped before only a certain few Indians. "Now who has done dose t'ing?" he inquired. "Oh, dat vill nevaire do 'tall. You haf done dose t'ing, Mistaire Begg? No? Who den? Chief? Nevaire mind. I make him all rount again, vaire deeferent. You shall see somet'ing." With that, and yet without ceasing to talk for an instant, now in Indian and now in his English, he began to dump the tea back again into the chest, the sugar into the bag, and the plug tobacco in a heap by itself. Not an Indian moved a muscle--unless I was right in my suspicion that the corners of Three Bulls' mouth curved upward slightly, as if he were about to smile. "Vot kind of wa-a-y to do-o somet'ing is dat?" the interpreter continued, in his sing-song tone. "You moos' haf one maje-dome [major-domo] if you shall try satisfy dose Engine." He always called the Indians "dose Engine." "Dat chief gif all dose present to his broders und cousins, which are in his famille. Now you shall see me, vot I shall do." Taking his hat, he began filling it, now with sugar and now with tea, and emptying it before some six or seven chiefs. Finally, when a double share was left, he gave both bag and chest to Three Bulls, to whom he also gave all the tobacco. "Such tam-fool peezness," he went on, "I do not see in all my life. I make visitation to de t'ree soljier chief vhich shall make one grand darnce for dose gentlemen, und here is for dose soljier chief not anyt'ing 'tall, vhile everyt'ing was going to one lot of beggaire relation of T'ree Bull. Dat is what I call one tam-fool way to do some'ting."

The redistribution accomplished, Three Bulls wore a grin of satisfaction, and one chief who had lost a great pile of presents, and who got nothing at all by the second division, stalked solemnly out of the tent, through not until Three Bulls had tossed the plugs of tobacco to all the men around the circle, precisely as he might have thrown bones to dogs, but always observing a certain order in making each round with the plugs. All were thus served according to their rank. Then Three Bulls rummaged with one hand behind him in the grass, and fetched forward a great pipe with a stone bowl and wooden handle--a sort of chopping-block of wood--and a large long-bladed knife. Taking a plug of tobacco in one hand and the knife in the other, he pared off enough tobacco to fill the pipe. Then he filled it, and passed it, stem foremost, to a young man on the left-hand side of the tepee. The superior chiefs all sat on the right-hand side. The young man knew that he had been chosen to perform the menial act of lighting the pipe, and he lighted it, pulling two or three whiffs of smoke to insure a good coal of fire in it before passing it back--though why it was not considered a more menial task to cut the tobacco and fill the pipe than to light it I don't know.

Three Bulls puffed the pipe for a moment, and then turning the stem from him, pointed it at the chief next in importance, and to that personage the symbol of peace was passed from hand to hand. When that chief had drawn a few whiffs, he sent the pipe back to Three Bulls, who then indicated to whom it should go next. Thus it went dodging about the circle like a marble on a bagatelle board. When it came to me, I hesitated a moment whether or not to smoke it, but the desire to be polite outweighed any other prompting, and I sucked the pipe until some of the Indians cried out that I was "a good fellow."

While all smoked and many talked, I noticed that Three Bulls sat upon a soft seat formed of his blanket, at one end of which was one of those wickerwork contrivances, like a chair back, upon which Indians lean when seated upon the ground. I noticed also that one harsh criticism passed upon Three Bulls was just; that was that when he spoke, others might interrupt him. It was said that even women "talked back" to him at times when he was haranguing his people. Since no one spoke when Crowfoot talked, the comparison between him and his predecessor was injurious to him; but it was Crowfoot who named Three Bulls for the chieftainship. Besides, Three Bulls had the largest following (under that of the too aged Old Sun), and was the most generous chief and ablest politician of all. Then, again, the Government supported him with whatever its influence amounted to. This was because Three Bulls favored agricultural employment for the tribe, and was himself cultivating a patch of potatoes. He was in many other ways the man to lead in the new era, as Crowfoot had been for the era that was past.

When we retired from the presence of the chief, I asked Mr. L'Hereux how he had dared to take back the presents made to the Indians and then distribute them differently. The queer Frenchman said, in his indescribably confident, jaunty way:

"Why, dat is how you mus' do wid dose Engine. Nevaire ask one of dose Engine anyt'ing, but do dose t'ing which are right, and at de same time make explanashion what you are doing. Den dose Engine can say no t'ing 'tall. But if you first make explanashion and den try to do somet'ng, you will find one grand trouble. Can you explain dis and dat to one hive of de bees? Well, de hive of de bee is like dose Engine if you shall talk widout de promp' action."

He said, later on, "Dose Engine are children, and mus' not haf consideration like mans and women."

The news of our generosity ran from tent to tent, and the Black Soldier band sent out a herald to cry the news that a war-dance was to be held immediately. As immediately means to the Indian mind an indefinite and very enduring period, I amused myself by poking about the village, in tents and among groups of men or women, wherever chance led me. The herald rode from side to side of the enclosure, yelling like a New York fruit peddler. He was mounted on a bay pony, and was fantastically costumed with feathers and war-paint. Of course every man, woman, and child who had been in-doors, so to speak, now came out of the tepees, and a mighty bustle enlivened the scene. The worst thing about the camp was the abundance of snarling cur-dogs. It was not safe to walk about the camp without a cane or whip, on account of these dogs.

The Blackfeet are poor enough, in all conscience, from nearly every stand-point from which we judge civilized Communities, but their tribal possessions include several horses to each head of a family; and though the majority of their ponies would fetch no more than $20 apiece out there, even this gives them more wealth per capita than many civilized peoples can boast. They have managed, also, to keep much of the savage paraphernalia of other days in the form of buckskin clothes, elaborate bead-work, eagle headdresses, good guns, and the outlandish adornments of their chiefs and medicine-men. Hundreds of miles from any except such small and distant towns as Calgary and Medicine Hat, and kept on the reserve as much as possible, there has come to them less damage by whiskey and white men's vices than perhaps most other tribes have suffered. Therefore it was still possible for me to see in some tents the squaws at work painting the clan signs on stretched skins, and making bead-work for moccasins, pouches, "chaps," and the rest. And in one tepee I found a young and rather pretty girl wearing a suit of buckskin, such as Cooper and all the past historians of the Indian knew as the conventional every-day attire of the red-skin. I say I saw the girl in a tent, but, as a matter of fact, she passed me out-of-doors, and with true feminine art managed to allow her blanket to fall open for just the instant it took to disclose the precious dress beneath it. I asked to be taken into the tent to which she went, and there, at the interpreter's request, she threw off her blanket, and stood, with a little display of honest coyness, dressed like the traditional and the theatrical belle of the wilderness. The soft yellowish leather, the heavy fringe upon the arms, seams, and edges of the garment, her beautiful beaded leggings and moccasins, formed so many parts of a very charming picture. For herself, her face was comely, but her figure was--an Indian's. The figure of the typical Indian woman shows few graceful curves.

The reader will inquire whether there was any real beauty, as we judge it, among these Indians. Yes, there was; at least there were good looks if there was not beauty. I saw perhaps a dozen fine-looking men, half a dozen attractive girls, and something like a hundred children of varying degrees of comeliness--pleasing, pretty, or beautiful. I had some jolly romps with the children, and so came to know that their faces and arms met my touch with the smoothness and softness of the flesh of our own little ones at home. I was surprised at this; indeed, the skin of the boys was of the texture of velvet. The madcap urchins, what riotous fun they were having! They flung arrows and darts, ran races and wrestled, and in some of their play they fairly swarmed all over one another, until at times one lad would be buried in the thick of a writhing mass of legs and arms several feet in depth. Some of the boys wore only "G-strings" (as, for some reason, the breech-clout is commonly called on the prairie), but others were wrapped in old blankets, and the larger ones were already wearing the Blackfoot plume-lock, or tuft of hair tied and trained to stand erect above the forehead. The babies within the tepees were clad only in their complexions.

The result of an hour of waiting on our part and of yelling on the part of the herald resulted in a war-dance not very different in itself from the dances we have most of us seen at Wild West shows. An immense tomtom as big as the largest-sized bass-drum was set up between four poles, around which colored cloths were wrapped, and from the tops of which the same gay stuff floated on the wind in bunches of party-colored ribbons. Around this squatted four young braves, who pounded the drum-head and chanted a tune, which rose and fell between the shrillest and the deepest notes, but which consisted of simple monosyllabic sounds repeated thousands of times. The interpreter said that originally the Indians had words to their songs, but these were forgotten no man knows when, and only the so-called tunes (and the tradition that there once were words for them) are perpetuated. At all events, the four braves beat the drum and chanted, until presently a young warrior, hideous with war-paint, and carrying a shield and a tomahawk, came out of a tepee and began the dancing. It was the stiff-legged hopping, first on one foot and then on the other, which all savages appear to deem the highest form the terpsichorean art can take. In the course of a few circles around the tomtom he began shouting of valorous deeds he never had performed, for he was too young to have ridden after buffalo or into battle. Presently he pretended to see upon the ground something at once fascinating and awesome. It was the trail of the enemy. Then he danced furiously and more limberly, tossing his head back, shaking his hatchet and many-tailed shield high aloft, and yelling that he was following the foe, and would not rest while a skull and a scalp-lock remained in conjunction among them. He was joined by three others, and all danced and yelled like madmen. At the last the leader came to a sort of standard made of a stick and some cloth, tore it out from where it had been thrust in the ground, and holding it far above his head, pranced once around the circle, and thus ended the dance.

The novelty and interest in the celebration rested in the surroundings--the great circle of tepees; the braves in their blankets stalking hither and thither; the dogs, the horses, the intrepid riders, dashing across the view. More strange still was the solemn line of the medicine-men, who, for some reason not explained to me, sat in a row with their backs to the dancers a city block away, and crooned a low guttural accompaniment to the tomtom. But still more interesting were the boys, of all grades of childhood, who looked on, while not a woman remained in sight. The larger boys stood about in groups, watching the spectacle with eyes afire with admiration, but the little fellows had flung themselves on their stomachs in a row, and were supporting their chubby faces upon their little brown hands, while their elbows rested on the grass, forming a sort of orchestra row of Lilliputian spectators.

We arranged for a great spectacle to be gotten up on the next afternoon, and were promised that it should be as notable for the numbers participating in it and for the trappings to be displayed as any the Blackfeet had ever given upon their reserve. The Indians spent the entire night in carousing over the gift of tea, and we knew that if they were true to most precedents they would brew and drink every drop of it. Possibly some took it with an admixture of tobacco and wild currant to make them drunk, or, in reality, very sick--which is much the same thing to a reservation Indian. The compounds which the average Indian will swallow in the hope of imitating the effects of whiskey are such as to tax the credulity of those who hear of them. A certain patent "painkiller" ranks almost as high as whiskey in their estimation; but Worcestershire sauce and gunpowder, or tea, tobacco, and wild currant, are not at all to be despised when alcohol, or the money to get it with, is wanting. I heard a characteristic story about these red men while I was visiting them. All who are familiar with them know that if medicine is given them to take in small portions at certain intervals they are morally sure to swallow it all at once, and that the sicker it makes them, the more they will value it. On the Blackfoot Reserve, only a short time ago, our gentle and insinuating Sedlitz-powders were classed as children's stuff, but now they have leaped to the front rank as powerful medicines. This is because some white man showed the Indian how to take the soda and magnesia first, and then swallow the tartaric acid. They do this, and when the explosion follows, and the gases burst from their mouths and noses, they pull themselves together and remark, "Ugh! him heap good."

On the morning of the day of the great spectacle I rode with Mr. Begg over to the ration-house to see the meat distributed. The dust rose in clouds above all the trails as the cavalcade of men, women, children, travoises and dogs, approached the station. Men were few in the disjointed lines; most of them sent their women or children. All rode astraddle, some on saddles and some bareback. As all urged their horses in the Indian fashion, which is to whip them unceasingly, and prod them constantly with spurless heels, the bobbing movement of the riders' heads and the gymnastics of their legs produced a queer scene. Here and there a travois was trailed along by a horse or a dog, but the majority of the pensioners were content to carry their meat in bags or otherwise upon their horses. While the slaughtering went on, and after that, when the beef was being chopped up into junks, I sat in the meat-contractor's office, and saw the bucks, squaws, and children come, one after another, to beg. I could not help noticing that all were treated with marked and uniform kindness, and I learned that no one ever struck one of the Indians, or suffered himself to lose his temper with them. A few of the men asked for blankets, but the squaws and the children wanted soap. It was said that when they first made their acquaintance with this symbol of civilization they mistook it for an article of diet, but that now they use it properly and prize it. When it was announced that the meat was ready, the butchers threw open an aperture in the wall of the ration-house, and the Indians huddled before it as if they had flung themselves against the house in a mass. I have seen boys do the same thing at the opening of a ticket window for the sale of gallery seats in a theatre. There was no fighting or quarrelling, but every Indian pushed steadily and silently with all his or her might. When one got his share he tore himself away from the crowd as briers are pulled out of hairy cloth. They are a hungry and an economical people. They bring pails for the beef blood, and they carry home the hoofs for jelly. After a steer has been butchered and distributed, only his horns and his paunch remain.

The sun blazed down on the great camp that afternoon and glorified the place so that it looked like a miniature Switzerland of snowy peaks. But it was hot, and blankets were stretched from the tent tops, and the women sat under them to catch the air and escape the heat. The salaried native policeman of the reserve, wearing a white stove-pipe hat with feathers, and a ridiculous blue coat, and Heaven alone knows what other absurdities, rode around, boasting of deeds he never performed, while a white cur made him all the more ridiculous by chasing him and yelping at his horse's tail.

And then came the grand spectacle. The vast plain was forgotten, and the great campus within the circle of tents was transformed into a theatre. The scene was a setting of white and red tents that threw their clear-cut outlines against a matchless blue sky. The audience was composed of four white men and the Indian boys, who were flung about by the startled horses they were holding for us. The players were the gorgeous cavalrymen of nature, circling before their women and old men and children, themselves plumed like unheard-of tropical birds, the others displaying the minor splendor of the kaleidoscope. The play was "The Pony War-dance, or the Departure for Battle." The acting was fierce; not like the conduct of a mimic battle on our stage, but performed with the desperate zest of men who hope for distinction in war, and may not trifle about it. It had the earnestness of a challenged man who tries the foils with a tutor. It was impressive, inspiring, at times wildly exciting.

There were threescore young men in the brilliant cavalcade. They rode horses that were as wild as themselves. Their evolutions were rude, but magnificent. Now they dashed past us in single file, and next they came helter-skelter, like cattle stampeding. For a while they rode around and around, as on a race-course, but at times they deserted the enclosure, parted into small bands, and were hidden behind the curtains of their own dust, presently to reappear with a mad rush, yelling like maniacs, firing their pieces, and brandishing their arms and their finery wildly on high. The orchestra was composed of seven tomtoms that had been dried taut before a camp fire. The old men and the chiefs sat in a semicircle behind the drummers on the ground.

All the tribal heirlooms were in the display, the cherished gewgaws, trinkets, arms, apparel, and finery they had saved from the fate of which they will not admit they are themselves the victims. I never saw an old-time picture of a type of savage red man or of an extravagance of their costuming that was not revived in this spectacle. It was as if the plates in my old school-books and novels and tales of adventure were all animated and passing before me. The traditional Indian with the eagle plumes from crown to heels was there; so was he with the buffalo horns growing out of his skull; so were the idyllic braves in yellow buckskin fringed at every point. The shining bodies of men, bare naked, and frescoed like a Bowery bar-room, were not lacking; neither were those who wore masses of splendid embroidery with colored beads. But there were as many peculiar costumes which I never had seen pictured. And not any two men or any two horses were alike. As barber poles are covered with paint, so were many of these choice steeds of the nation. Some were spotted all over with daubs of white, and some with every color obtainable. Some were branded fifty times with the white hand, the symbol of peace, but others bore the red hand and the white hand in alternate prints. There were horses painted with the figures of horses and of serpents and of foxes. To some saddles were affixed colored blankets or cloths that fell upon the ground or lashed the air, according as the horse cantered or raced. One horse was hung all round with great soft woolly tails of some white material. Sleigh-bells were upon several.

Only half a dozen men wore hats--mainly cowboy hats decked with feathers. Many carried rifles, which they used with one hand. Others brought out bows and arrows, lances decked with feathers or ribbons, poles hung with colored cloths, great shields brilliantly painted and fringed. Every visible inch of each warrior was painted, the naked ones being ringed, streaked, and striped from head to foot. I would have to catalogue the possessions of the whole nation to tell all that they wore between the brass rings in their hair and the cartridge-belts at their waists, and thus down to their beautiful moccasins.