James Willard Schultz

“ Not a few wore moccasins of solid quill embroidery. Every man had on a war bonnet of eagle tail feathers, or horns and weasel skins, and carried suspended from his left arm a thick, round shield of shrunk bull hide, from the circumference of which eagle tail feathers fluttered gayly in the wind. Thus dressed, with bow and arrow case on their backs, guns in hand, and mounted on their prancing, high-spirited horses, the hundreds of warriors who soon gathered around us presented the most picturesque and at the same time formidable sight that I had ever seen. ”

“ The old man, half blind and quite feeble, roused up when he heard that, and cried out: “Is it so? Not satisfied with taking our mountains, the whites even take away the ancient names we have given them! They shall not do it! You tell them so! That mountain yonder is Rising Bull Mountain, and by that name it must ever be called! Rising Bull was one of our great chiefs: what more fitting than that the mountain should always bear his name?”
“Rising Bull was a chief in two tribes,” Yellow Wolf went on. ”

“ It was a terrible night.
"We can't go on!" said Pitamakan. "Perhaps I was mistaken. Bears do not lie down for their winter sleep until the snow has covered up their food. We must go back and take our chance of one being there in that hole."
We felt our way along the foot of the cliff until we came to the place. There we knelt down, hand in hand, sniffed once more, and exclaimed, "Kyaiyo!" (Bear!)
"But not strong; only a little odor, as if one had been here last winter," Pitamakan added. "The scent of one sticks in a place a long time." ”

“ I remembered how worried my uncle was when I had left our lodge; how serious was the expression of Abbott's eyes when he predicted that the attack by the cut-throats was about to take place.
I stared at the faint, moonlit outlines of the Moccasin Mountains, away off to the southwest. Somewhere along the trail at the foot of them the Pikuni were doubtless camping that night. Unwittingly I cried out in Blackfoot, "Oh, hurry! Hurry to us, you men of the Pikuni, else you will come too late!"
"What? What did you say? Do you see enemies?" Pitamakan whispered as he sat up suddenly at my side. ”

“ Then, standing within the circle of the lodges, he awaited the coming of the old chief. He soon appeared, wearing a beautiful war costume and riding a sorrel pinto war horse. And now, dressed as he was, and easily controlling his fiery-tempered mount, he did not seem to be so very old; at a distance one would have thought him a young warrior. His weapon in hand was a long, scalp-tufted spear. On his back he carried a bow and otter-skin quiver of arrows, and in his belt, in a handsome sheath, quill-embroidered, was his knife. Said New Robe to himself: ‘He looks strong, he is brave. ”

“ The cradle was propped up at the foot of his mother's couch, so that he rested in an almost upright position. The mother, half sitting up against a willow slat back-rest, gazed across the length of the couch at the round little face, and there was a world of love shining in her big dark eyes.
The baby's face, as well as its short, thin hair, was of a red bronze color. It had a funny, tender little mouth, and its eyes were very bright. All at once it began to pucker its mouth and make a queer little cry.
"There! there! mother," the chief said anxiously, "it is crying; maybe it is sick. ”

“ I went down into the camp, keeping an eye upon the great wolf-like dogs lying around each lodge. Children were playing everywhere around, and the river was full of them, swimming. Women were busy with their daily tasks, cooking meat, tanning leather, or removing the hair from hides with oddly shaped elkhorn hoes tipped with steel or flint, or else sitting in the shade of the lodges gossiping, and sewing garments with awl and sinew thread, or embroidering them with colored porcupine quills. ”

“ The steep slide where my horse and I had so nearly been lost was buried deep in snow; towering above it were heavy, greenish, concave drifts of snow clinging to the knife-edge wall and likely to topple over at any moment. Our weight might, and probably would, start an avalanche rushing down the slide and off into abysmal space. We stood in the trail of several goats, which had ventured out on the slide for a few yards, abruptly turned and retraced their steps.
"Even they feared to cross," said Pitamakan. "Come on! Let's go home." ”

“ 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 way to climb the mountain is by the long, narrow, and in places cut-walled ridge running up toward its summit from the west, and then one has but one cliff to surmount, the one almost at its crest. Only men and goats and bighorn can scale that cliff, but on the extreme summit lies an old buffalo skull, taken there by a Blackfoot in the long ago for a pillow rest while getting his medicine dream. ”

“ Outside the lodges the dogs sat up on their haunches and howled; and from beetling cliffs and the far reaches of valley and plain the wolves joined in with long-drawn, melancholy cry. Had you been there, as I was, you too would have been strangely affected by it all. It was a very solemn and sacred time: men, women, children, even the very animals, were united in beseeching their gods for food.
Sinopah sat very quiet and wide-eyed watching his grandfather. The old man first got out his paint-bag and rubbed reddish-brown ochre, color best loved by the gods, on face and hands ”

“ I am sure that the brush behind them is full of warriors!" Pitamakan replied.
I somehow believed that for once he was mistaken, and when a moment later the five men started toward us, all making the peace sign and singing a strange, quaint, melancholy song, so weird, so strangely affecting, that it almost brought tears to my eyes, Pitamakan himself said, "I was mistaken! They are men of peace! I believe that they are men of the Earth-Houses People." ”

“ We went up the valley. Trailing along behind my companion, I thought over his proposal to club the bear to death. A month, even a few days back, such a plan would have seemed foolish; but I was fast learning that necessity, starvation, will cause a man to take chances against the greatest odds. And the more I thought about it, the more I felt like facing that bear.
I was about to propose that we go after it at once, when, with a whirr of wings that startled us, a large covey of blue grouse burst from a thicket close by, and alighted here and there in the pines and firs. ”

“ But just as I felt that I was beginning to freeze, that there was no longer any use in trying to keep going, we began to descend a steep slope, and at the foot of it rode into a grove of big cottonwoods and out of the terrible wind! Mad Plume led us into a deep part of the woods where grew great clumps of tall willows, and we dismounted. "Ha! We survive! And now for comfort: a lodge, fire, food! Hobble your horses and get to work!" ”

“ Most of the men now rode ahead of the column to hunt. They could be seen chasing different herds of the buffalo on their swift, trained horses, and shooting them with guns and bow and arrows; and where they passed were left many of the big, brown, shaggy-haired animals lying dead on the plain, or standing all humped up on weakening legs, sorely wounded, and soon to tumble down and die. The sight made the hearts of the people glad; there would be plenty of fresh, fat meat, many rich tongues to roast for the evening meal ”

“ It was all aglow with fires shining yellow through the buffalo-leather lodge skins. Drums were booming; people were singing, laughing, and dancing; children were shouting; horses were impatiently whinnying for their mates; and dogs were howling defiance to their wild kin of the plains, the deep-voiced wolves and shrill-yelping coyotes. We paused but a moment, listening to it all, and hurried on down to the camp of the Pikuni and the lodge of White Wolf, chief of the Small Robes Clan, brother of Tsistsaki and father of my chum, Pitamakan—Running Eagle. ”

“ But we may not kill them! Said Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill: “There they are! Our meat, but the whites have taken them from us, even as they have taken everything else that is ours!” And so we are eating beef where once we feasted upon the rich ribs and loins of game, which tasted all the better because we trailed and killed it, and with no little labor brought it to the womenfolk in camp.
Rising Wolf Mountain! What a fitting and splendid monument it is to the first white man to traverse the foothills of the Rockies between the Saskatchewan and the Missouri! ”

“ In a few moments the whole summit of the range was lost in a vast haze of drifting, flying snow. But where we were there was only a gentle breeze from the west, which did not increase in force. I remembered now that in winter, when fierce northwest winds blew across the plains, the summit of the Rockies was always hidden by grayish-white clouds. It was a strange sensation to hear the drone of a terrific wind and not feel it, and I said so.
"Everything is strange in this country," my partner said, dully. "Here Wind-Maker lives; and many another of the mountain and forest gods. ”

“ A fine early morning breeze was blowing down the valley. I called Pitamakan's attention to it, and said that, if the enemy were concealed in the timber, the bighorns would apprise us of the fact. Bighorns leave their cliffs and steep slopes only when need of water or of food compels them to do so. Those we were watching traveled freely enough down the slope, but the moment they stepped out upon the level bottom land they became timid, advancing but a few steps at a time and pausing to sniff the air and stare in all directions. ”

“ His mother heard him and cried out to White Wolf: "Now what do you think this naughty boy is doing? He prays Cold-Maker to come and make ice for him."
"Is it so!" his father exclaimed. "Sinopah, come here. I have something to say. Now, listen!" he went on, when he had the boy close in his arms. "Cold-Maker is a bad god, and you must never pray to him to come. He is not like the Sun, the great giver of life; he is the giver of death. Many and many a one of our people he has done to death. You pray him to come and make ice. Well, away out there on the plains are many of our hunters. ”

“ I once saw a man, named Little Otter, shoot twenty-seven buffaloes in one run! He was a big, powerfully built man, he rode a big, swift, well-trained, buffalo horse, and every time he let an arrow fly it slipped into an animal just back of the ribs and ranged forward into the heart and lungs.
You ask how a man happened to be named Old-Woman-Stretching-Her-Legs. When a child was born, a medicine man was called in to name it, and invariably the name he gave was of something he had seen, or of some incident, in one of his dreams, or, as he believed them to be, visions. ”

“ Trembling with excitement, and out of breath from their long, swift run, Old Man’s messengers arrived at the buffalo trap and told their wonderful news,—that men had come to marry them; that each woman was to choose the man that she thought would best suit her. The butchering of the animals ceased at once, and the women started for their camp to put on their good clothes and recomb their hair. They wanted to appear as neat and clean and well dressed as possible, before the men. Yes, all ran for their camp, all except the chief woman. ”