AMERICAN INDIAN LIFE

BY SEVERAL OF
ITS STUDENTS

EDITED BY ELSIE CLEWS PARSONS
ILLUSTRATED BY C. GRANT LA FARGE

NEW YORK

MCMXXII

B. W. HUEBSCH, INC.

copyright, 1922, by b. w. huebsch, inc.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

“She always says she will come, and sometimes she comes and sometimes she doesn’t come. I was so surprised when I first came out here to find that Indians were like that,” the wife of the Presbyterian Missionary in an Indian town in New Mexico was speaking, as you readily infer, on her servant question.

“Where did you get your impressions of Indians before you came here?”

“From Fenimore Cooper. I used to take his books out, one right after the other from the library at New Canaan, Connecticut, where I grew up.”

At that time, during the youth of this New Englander past middle age, few anthropological monographs on Indian tribes had been written, but it is doubtful if such publications are to be found in New England village libraries even to-day, and it is more than doubtful that if they were in the libraries anybody would read them; anthropologists themselves have been known not to read them. Between these forbidding monographs and the legends of Fenimore Cooper, what is there then to read for a girl who is going to spend her life among Indians or, in fact, for anyone who just wants to know more about Indians?

From these considerations, among others, this book was conceived. The idea of writing about the life of the Indian for the General Reader is not novel, to be sure, to anthropologists. Appearances to the contrary, anthropologists have no wish to keep their science or any part of it esoteric. They are too well aware, for one thing, that facilities for the pursuit of anthropology are dependent more or less on popular interest, and that only too often tribal cultures have disappeared in America as elsewhere before people became interested enough in them to learn about them.

Nevertheless, the cost of becoming popular may appear excessive—not only to the student who begrudges the time and energy that must be drawn from scientific work, but to the scientist who is asked to popularize his study in terms repugnant to his sense of truth or propriety. Hitherto, American publishers appear to have proposed only to bring Fenimore Cooper up to date, merely to add to the over-abundant lore of the white man about the Indian.

In this book the white man’s traditions about Indians have been disregarded. That the writers have not read other traditions from their own culture into the culture they are describing is less certain. Try as we may, and it must be confessed that many of us do not try very hard, few, if any of us, succeed, in describing another culture, of ridding ourselves of our own cultural bias or habits of mind. Much of our anthropological work, to quote from a letter from Spinden, “is not so much definitive science as it is a cultural trait of ourselves.”

For one thing we fail to see the foreign culture as a whole, noting only the aspects which happen to interest us. Commonly, the interesting aspects are those which differ markedly from our own culture or those in which we see relations to the other foreign cultures we have studied. Hence our classified data give the impression that the native life is one unbroken round, let us say, of curing or weather-control ceremonials, of prophylaxis against bad luck, of hunting, or of war. The commonplaces of behavior are overlooked, the amount of “common sense” is underrated, and the proportion of knowledge to credulity is greatly underestimated. In other words the impression we give of the daily life of the people may be quite misleading, somewhat as if we described our own society in terms of Christmas and the Fourth of July, of beliefs about the new moon or ground hogs in February, of city streets in blizzards and after, of strikes and battleships. Unfortunately, the necessarily impressionistic character of the following tales, together with their brevity, renders them, too, subject to the foregoing criticism. Of this, Dr. Kroeber in the Introduction will have more to say, as well as of his impression of how far we have succeeded in presenting the psychological aspects of Indian culture.

The problems presented by the culture, problems of historical reconstruction, Dr. Kroeber will also refer to, but discussion of the problems, of such subjects as culture areas, as the current phrase goes, as diffusion and acculturation, will not be presented in this book—it is a book of pictures. But if the reader wants to learn of how the problems are being followed up, he is directed to the bibliographical notes in the appendix. If the pictures remain pictures for him, well and good; if they lead him to the problems, good and better. Anthropology is short on students.

E. C. P.

Introduction

“The old ethnology, like every science in its beginnings, was speculative. The new ethnology is inductive. Fifty or sixty years ago the attempt was first made to read the riddle of human origins and substantiate the answer by facts. One student after another—Spencer, Tylor, Morgan, and others—thought out a formula that seemed a reasonable explanation of how some activity of human civilization—institutional, religious, or inventive—began, developed, and reached its present condition; and then ransacked the accounts of travelers, missionaries, and residents among primitive tribes for each bit of evidence favorable to his theory. Thus the origin of marriage was plausibly traced back to the matriarchate and ultimate promiscuity, of society to totemic clans, of the historic religions to a belief in souls and ghosts, of pottery to clay-lined basketry. Twenty-five years ago this theory fabrication was in full swing; and in many non-scientific quarters it still enjoys vogue and prestige.

It is plain that the method of these evolutionary explanations was deductive. One started with an intuition, a rationalization, a guess, then looked for corroborative facts. Inevitably, all contrary facts tended to be ignored or explained away. What was more, the evidence being adduced solely with reference to whether it fitted or failed to fit into the theory under examination, it was torn from its natural relations of time, space, and association. This was very much as if a selection of statements, made by an individual on a given topic, were strung together, without reference to the circumstances under which he uttered them and without the qualifications which he attached. By the use of this method of ignoring context, a pretty good case might be made out to show that the Kaiser was really a pacificist republican at heart, Huxley a devout if not quite regular Christian, and Anthony Comstock a tolerant personality. Roosevelt could be portrayed as either a daring radical or as a hide-bound reactionary. Just such contrary interpretations did emerge in the older ethnology. Totems, for instance, were held by one “authority” to have had their origin in magical rites concerned with food supply, by another in a sort of nicknames, by a third in a primitive, mystic adumbration of the concept of society itself.

Gradually it began to be recognized by students that this method might be necessary in the law-courts, where each party advowedly contends for his own interests, but that in science it led to exciting wrangling rather more than to progress toward impartial truth. And so a new ethnology modestly grew up which held for its motto: “All possible facts first, then such inferences as are warranted.” “All facts” means not only all items but also these items in their natural order: the sequence in which they occur, their geographical relation, the degree to which they are associated.

The anthropologist no longer compares marriage customs from all over the world as they come to hand. He realizes that marriage is likely to be a different rite as it is practiced respectively among peoples, with and without civil government, or among nations that have come under the influence of a world religion or remain in a status of tribal ceremony. The whole culture of the group must be more or less known before the history and meaning of an institution can become intelligible. Detached from its culture mass, a custom reveals as little of its functioning as an organ dissected out of the living body.

Equally important for the interpretation of ethnic facts, are their geographical associations, their distribution. Is a custom or invention peculiar to one people or is it shared by many distinct peoples occupying a continuous area? Such a question may seem trivial. But the answer usually bears heavy significance. A unique institution, or one found in various spots but in disconnected ones, is, other things equal, either of recent and independent origin in each locality, or it is a lingering survival of a custom that was once wide-spread. In short, it represents the beginning or end of a process of development.

On the other hand, where we find an art or institution possessed in common by dozens or hundreds of tribes situated without any gaps between them on the map, it would be far-fetched to assume that each of them independently evolved this identical phenomenon. Why presuppose a hundred parallel causes, each operating quite separately, when one will suffice, in view of the fact that human beings imitate each other’s manners and borrow knowledge. We know that Christianity, gun-powder, the printing press, were originated but once. Even with history wiped out, we could infer as much, from their universality among the nations of Europe.

Now this is just the situation as regards primitive peoples. Their history has been wiped out—it was never preserved by themselves or their neighbors. But knowledge of the geographical occurrence of a custom or invention, usually affords rather reliable insight into its history, sometimes into its origin. When the available information shows that Indian corn was grown by all the tribes from Chile and Brazil to Arizona and Quebec, it is evident that the history of native American agriculture is as much of a unit, essentially, as the history of Christianity or of fire-arms. It is a story of invention only at its outset, of diffusion and amplification through its greater length. When pottery is further discovered to possess almost exactly the same aboriginal distribution as maize, it becomes likely that this art, too, was devised but once; and likely, further, that it was invented at about the same time as maize culture and diffused with it.

By evidence such as this, reënforced by the insight gained from the stratification of prehistoric objects preserved in caves and in the ground, native, American history is being reconstructed for some thousands of years past. The outline of this history runs about as follows.

Eight, ten, or twelve thousand years ago, contemporary with the last phase of the Old Stone Age of Europe or the opening there of the New Stone Age, man, for the first time, entered the New World. He came from Asia across Behring Strait, a narrow gap with an island stepping-stone in the middle, and probably frozen over solidly in midwinter. In race he was Mongoloid—not Chinese, Japanese, or Mongol proper, but proto-Mongoloid; a straight-haired type, medium in complexion, jaw protrusion, nose-breadth, and inclining probably to round-headedness; an early type, in short, from which the Chinese, the Malay, and the Indian grew out, like so many limbs from a tree. This proto-Mongoloid stock must have been well established in Asia long before. This is morally certain from the fact that the proto-Negroids and proto-Caucasians were living at least ten to fifteen thousand years earlier, as attested by their discovered fossils, Grimaldi man and Cro-Magnon man.

Well, somewhere about 8000 B. C., then, bands of proto-Mongolians began to filter in through the easy, northwest gate of America. Others pushed them behind; before them, to the south, the country was ever more pleasantly tempting, and life easier. They multiplied, streamed down the Pacific coast, wandered across to the Atlantic, entered the tropics in fertile Mexico, defiled through Panama, and slowly overran South America. Separate groups of entrants into Alaska may have brought distinct languages with them; or, if they all came with one mother-tongue, their migrations to diverse environments and long, long separations provided ample opportunity for differentiation into dialects, languages, and families. The history of speech in the Old World covered by records, is but little more than three thousand years old, just a third of the ten thousand years with which we are dealing in America. Multiply by three the difference between twentieth-century English and ancient Sanskrit or one of its modern representatives such as Bengali, and there is just about the degree of speech distinctness that exists between the American language families, such as Siouan and Algonkin, Aztec and Maya.

So with the racial type. Fundamentally, one physical type stretches from Cape Horn to Alaska. Superficially, it is intricately variegated—here with round heads, there with long—with short faces or hooked noses or tall statures or wavy hair, in this or that group of tribes. In fact, it might seem that during ten thousand years the variety of climates and habitats might have succeeded in moulding the Indian into racial types of even greater distinctness than we encounter; until we remember that he found the two continents empty, and was never subjected to mixtures with white or black or dwarf races, to mixtures such as were experienced by many of the peoples of the eastern hemisphere.

What the first immigrants brought with them in culture was rudimentary. They kept dogs, but no other domesticated animal. They were not yet agricultural, and subsisted on what they wrested from nature. They knew something of weaving baskets and mats; clothed and housed themselves; probably had harpoons and possibly bows; made fire with the drill; cut with flint knives; and believed in magic, spirits, and the perpetuity of the soul.

In and about southern Mexico they prospered the fastest, became most numerous, acquired some leisure, began to organize themselves socially, and developed cults of increasing elaborateness. They “invented” maize-agriculture and pottery; architecture in stone; irrigation; cloth weaving and cotton growing; the smelting and casting of copper, silver, and gold; a priesthood, calendar system, picture-writing, pantheon of gods, and sacrifices; and accustomed themselves to town life.

Gradually these amplifications of culture spread: slowly to the north, more rapidly and completely to the south, into the similar environment of Colombia and Peru. Not all of the civilization devised in Yucatan and Guatemala, was carried into South America. Writing and time reckoning, for instance, never squeezed through the Isthmus, and the Incas got along with traditions and records of strings. On the other hand the South Americans, also growing populous and wealthy, added some culture elements of their own—bronze alloying, the hammock, the Pan’s pipe, the balance scale, the surgical art of trephining the skull, the idea of a vast, compactly organized empire.

In Peru then, and in Mexico, two nearly parallel centers of civilization grew up during thousands of years; sprung from the same foundation, differentiated in their superstructures, that of Mexico evidently the earlier, and, at the time of discovery, slightly more advanced. The Peruvian civilization, if we include with it those of western Colombia and Bolivia, rayed itself out through the whole southern continent, becoming feebler and more abbreviated with increasing distance from its focus.

The South Mexican center similarly diffused its light through most of the northern continent. First its influences traveled to northern Mexico and the Southwest of the United States—Arizona and New Mexico, the seat of the Cliff-dwellers. There they took new root and then spread northward and eastward—altered, diluted, with much omitted. We may compare Mexico to a manufacturing district, where capital, inventiveness, resources and industry, flourish in mutual alliance; the Southwest to one of its outlets, a sort of distributing point or jobbing center, which imports, both for its own consumption and for re-export; the articles of trade in this case being elements of civilization—inventions, knowledge, arts.

Throughout, it was a flow of things of the mind, not a drift of the bodies of men; of culture, not of populations. And the radiation was ever northward, counter to the drift of the migrations which had begun thousands of years before, and which, in part, seem to have continued to crowd southward even during the period of northward spread of civilization. It was much as in Europe fifteen hundred years ago, when Goth and Vandal and Frank and Lombard pounded their way southward into the Roman empire, but the civilization of Rome—writing, learning, money, metallurgy, architecture, Christianity, laws—streamed ever against the human pressure, until the farthest barbarians of the North Sea had become, in some measure, humanized.

Thus the Southwest learned from Mexico to build in stone, to grow and weave cotton, to irrigate, to obey priests, and in some rude measure to organize the year into a calendar. None of these culture elements traveled farther. But the maize-beans-squash agriculture, pottery making, the organization of cult societies, the division of the community into clans, reckoning descent from one parent only, some tendency toward town life and the confederation of towns, all of which the Southwest had also acquired from Mexico, it passed on to its neighbors, notably to those of the Gulf States between Louisiana and Georgia. Here, these institutions were once more worked over and, in the main, reduced, and then some of them passed on northward, first to the Mound-builders of the Ohio valley, and then to the Iroquois of New York. From the Iroquois, in turn, some of their Algonkian neighbors and foes were just beginning to be ready to learn certain betterments, when the white man came and swept their cultures into memory.

We have thus, a series of culture centers—Mexico, Southwest, Southeast, Iroquois, Atlantic Algonkins—of descending order of advancement, and subsequent to one another in time. They constitute a ladder of culture development, and, although undated, represent a real sequence of history.

One area was but haltingly and sparsely infiltrated from the Southwest: the North Pacific Coast, centering in British Colombia. In this mild and rich environment a native culture grew up that, in the main, went its own way. It did not attain to the heights of Mexico, scarcely even equaled the Southwest. Pottery and agriculture failed to reach it. But out of its own resources, it developed, independently, a number of the arts and institutions which the remainder of North America drew from Mexico: clan organization and cult societies, for instance, the beginnings of a calendar and cloth weaving. And it added features, all its own: plank houses, totem poles, a remarkable style of decorative art, a society based on wealth. Here then we have a minor, but mainly independent culture center of the greatest interest.

In a still smaller way, and without as great a freedom from southern influences, the tribes of the treeless Plains, in the heart of the continent, developed a little civilization of their own. This was founded on what they had originally got from the Southwest and Southeast, was remodeled on the basis of an almost exclusive dependence on the buffalo, and underwent a brief and stirring efflorescence from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, after the Plains tribes had got horses from the Spaniards. Here, then, grew up customs and appliances like the tepee, the travois, the camp circle, warfare as a game with “coups” as counters.

Similarly in the far north, along the shores of the Arctic, where the Eskimo spread themselves. Here, almost nothing penetrated from Mexico, but stern necessity forced a special inventiveness on the mechanical side and the way was near for the entrance of influences from Asia, some few of which may have diffused beyond the Eskimo to the North Pacific Coast tribes.

Such, then, are the outlines of the history of the native, American race and civilization. It is a long and complexly rich story, only partly unraveled. Those who wish it in greater fullness will find it in Wissler’s The American Indian. Only enough has been sketched here to show that modern anthropology is an inductive science with a minimum of speculation; that it aims at truly historical reconstructions and is beginning to achieve them; and that it lies in the nature of its tasks to distinguish and analyze the several native culture areas or local types of Indians before proceeding to conclusions based on combinations.

Therefore it is, that many small items of ethnic knowledge acquire considerable importance. From the average man’s point of view, it is of little moment that the Zuñi farm and the Yurok and Nootka do not, or that the former refuse to marry their dead wives’ sisters and the latter insist on it. At best, such bits of facts have for the layman only the interest of idle curiosities, of antiquarian fragments. To the specialist, however, they become dependable means to a useful end, much as intimate knowledge of the position of arteries and nerves serves the surgeon.

But, just as the exact understanding of anatomy which modern medicine enjoys, bulks to infinitely more than any one anatomist could ever have discovered, so with ethnology. No one mind could ever observe or assemble and digest all the cultural facts that are needed. Many workers are busy, have been systematically busy for two or three generations. Though they may, now and then, enliven their toil by a scientific quarrel over this or that set of facts or interpretation, they are inherently coöperating, laboring cumulatively at a great joint enterprise. Sometimes, they divide their interests topically: one specializes on social customs, another on material arts, a third along lines of religion. But, in the main, the cultural context is so important that it has been found most productive for each investigator to try to learn everything possible about all the phases of culture of a single tribe, or, at most, of two or three tribes.

To do this, he “goes into the field.” That is, he takes up his residence, for a continuous period or repeatedly for several years, among a tribe, on its reservation or habitat. He enters into as close relations as possible with its most intelligent or authoritative members. He acquires all he can of their language, reduces it to writing, perhaps compiles texts, a dictionary or grammar. Day after day he records notes from visual observation or the memory of the best informants available on the industries, beliefs, government, family life, ceremonies, wars, and daily occupations of his chosen people. And with all this, there flow in his personal experiences and reactions. The final outcome is a monograph—a bulky, detailed, often tedious, but fundamental volume, issued by the government or a scientific institution.

It is from intensive studies such as these, that the stories which form the present volume have sprung as a by-product. Have sprung as a sort of volunteer crop, it might be said, under the stimulus of the editorial suggestion of Dr. Parsons. The monographs have a way of sticking pretty closely to the objective facts recorded. The mental workings of the people whose customs are described, are subjective, and therefore much more charily put into print. The result is that every American anthropologist with field experience, holds in his memory many interpretations, many convictions as to how his Indians feel, why they act as they do in a given situation, what goes on inside of them. This psychology of the Indian is often expressed by the frontiersman, the missionary and trader, by the man of the city, even. But it has been very little formulated by the very men who know most, who have each given a large block of their lives to acquiring intensive and exact information about the Indian and his culture.

There is, thus, something new, something of the nature of an original contribution, in each of these stories; and they are reliable. To many of us, the writing of our tale has been a surprise and of value to ourselves. We had not realized how little we knew of the workings of the Indian mind on some sides, how much on others.

The fictional form of presentation devised by the editor has definite merit. It allows a freedom in depicting or suggesting the thoughts and feelings of the Indian, such as is impossible in a formal, scientific report. In fact, it incites to active psychological treatment, else the tale would lag. At the same time the customs depicted are never invented. Each author has adhered strictly to the social facts as he knew them. He has merely selected those that seemed most characteristic, and woven them into a plot around an imaginary Indian hero or heroine. The method is that of the historical novel, with emphasis on the history rather than the romance.

There is but one important precedent for this undertaking,[1] and that single-handed instead of collective, and therefore depictive of one people only, the Keresan Pueblos. This is The Delight Makers of Bandelier, archæologist, archivist, historian, and ethnologist of a generation ago; and this novel still renders a more comprehensive and coherent view of native Pueblo life than any scientific volume on the Southwest.

The present book, then, is a picture of native American life, in much the sense that a series of biographies of one statesman, poet, or common citizen from each country of Europe would yield a cross-sectional aspect of the civilization of that continent. France and Russia, Serbia and Denmark, would each be represented with its national peculiarities; and yet the blended effect would be that of a super-national culture. So with our Indians. It is through the medium of the intensive and special coloring of each tribal civilization, that the common elements of Indian culture are brought out most truthfully, even though somewhat indirectly.

There are only a few points at which the composite photograph, produced by these twenty-seven stories, should be used with caution, and these disproportions or deficiencies are unavoidable at present. The first of them is religion. The book is likely to make the impression that some sixty per cent, of Indian life must have been concerned with religion. This imbalance is due to the fact that religion has become the best known aspect of Indian life. Ritual and ceremony follow exact forms which the native is able to relate with accuracy from memory, long after the practices have become defunct. Moreover, once his confidence is gained, he often delights in occupying his mind with the matters of belief and rite that put an emotional stamp on his youth. Social usages are much more plastic, more profoundly modified to suit each exigency as it arises, and therefore more difficult to learn and portray. The mechanical and industrial arts have a way of leaving but pallid recollections, once they have been abandoned for the white man’s manufactures; and to get them recreated before one’s eyes is usually very time-consuming. Thus, through a tacit coordination of Indians and ethnologists to exploit the vein of most vivid productivity, religion has become obtruded; and some excess must be discounted. Yet the over-proportion is perhaps all for the best. For the Indian is, all in all, far more religious than we, and the popular idea errs on the side of ignoring this factor. The stories are substantially truthful in their effect, in that the average Indian did spend infinitely more time on affairs of religion than of war, for instance.

On the side of economics and government, the book is underdone. It is so, because ethnological knowledge on these topics is insufficient. It is difficult to say why. Possibly ethnologists have not become sufficiently interested or trained. But economic and political institutions are unquestionably difficult to learn about. They are the first to crumble on contact with Anglo-Saxon or Spanish civilization. So they lack the definiteness of ceremonialism, and their reconstruction from native memories is a bafflingly intricate task.

As regards daily life, personal relations, and the ambitions and ideals of the individual born into aboriginal society, in other words the social psychology of the Indian, we have done much better. In fact, collectively we have brought out much that is not to be found anywhere in the scientific monographs, much even that we had not realized could be formulated. This element seems to me to contain the greatest value of the book, and to be one that should be of permanent utility to historians and anthropologists, as well as to the public which is fortunately free from professional trammels. The exhibit of the workings of the Indian mind which these tales yield in the aggregate, impresses me as marked by a rather surprising degree of insight and careful accuracy.

Only at one point have we broken down completely: that of humor. One might conclude from this volume that humor was a factor absent from Indian life. Nothing would be more erroneous. Our testimony would be unanimous on this score. And yet we have been unable to introduce the element. The failure is inevitable. Humor is elusive because its understanding presupposes a feeling for the exact psychic situation of the individual involved, and this in turn implies thorough familiarity with the finest nuances of his cultural setting. We could have introduced Indian jokes, practical ones and witty ones, but they would have emerged deadly flat, and their laughs would have sounded made to order. An Indian himself, or shall we say, a contemporary of the ancients, may let his fancy play, and carry over to us something of his reaction: witness Aristophanes, Plautus, Horace. But the reconstructor, if he is wise, leaves the task unattempted. That prince of historical novelists, Walter Scott, for the most part collapses sadly when he tries to inject into his romances of the Middle Ages, the humor that marks his modern novels of Scotland; and so far as he salvages anything, it is by substituting the humor of his own day for the actual mediæval one. Hypatia is a superb picture of the break-down of Roman civilization; but how silly and boring are its humorous passages! A greater artist, in Thaïs, and another in Salammbô, have wisely evaded attempting the impossible, and, at most, touched the bounds of irony. Where the masters have succumbed or refrained, it is well that we scientists, novices in the domain of fiction, should hold off; though we all recognize both the existence and the importance of humor in Indian life. This element, then, the reader must accept our bare word for—or supply from his own discrimination and intuition.

A. L. Kroeber

AMERICAN INDIAN LIFE

Takes-the-pipe, a Crow Warrior

I

Horses neighing, women scurrying to cover, the report of guns, his mother, Pretty-weasel, gashing her legs for mourning,—that was Takes-the-pipe’s earliest memory. Later he learned that his own father, a famous warrior of the Whistling-water clan, had fallen in the fight and that his “father,” Deaf-bull, was really a paternal uncle who had married the widow. No real father could have been kinder than Deaf-bull. If anything, he seemed to prefer his brother’s son to his own children, always petting him and favoring him with the choicest morsels.

When Pretty-weasel needed help in dressing a hide or pitching a tent, her sisters and cousins of the Sore-lip clan came as visitors, often bringing moccasins and gewgaws for their little clansman, Takes-the-pipe. One of the sisters stood out more clearly than the rest, a lusty wench who would pull Deaf-bull by the ear and pour water on his face when he took an afternoon nap. He in turn would throw her on the ground and tickle her till she bawled for mercy. Another salient figure was the grandmother, old Muskrat, who used to croon the boy to sleep with a lullaby: “The dog has eaten, he is smoking. Haha, huhu! Haha, huhu!” Whenever she came to the refrain she raised a wrinkled, mutilated hand, and snapped what remained of her fingers in the child’s face.

The people were always traveling back and forth in those days. Now Takes-the-pipe was throwing stones into the Little Bighorn, then with other boys he was chasing moths in the Wolf Mountains. When he caught one he rubbed it against his breast, for they said that was the way to become a swift runner. One fall, the Mountain Crow traveled to the mouth of the Yellowstone to visit their kin of the River band. All winter was spent there. It was fun coasting down-hill on a buffalo-rib toboggan and spinning tops on the smooth ice. Each boy tried to upset his neighbor’s with his own, and when he succeeded he would cry, “I have knocked you out!” Takes-the-pipe was a good player, but once he came home inconsolable because his fine new top was stolen, and another time a bigger lad had cheated, “knocking him out” with a stone deftly substituted for the wooden toy. His mother comforted him saying, “That boy is crazy! His father is of the Bad-honors clan, that’s why he acts that way!”

Takes-the-pipe was still a little fellow when Deaf-bull made him a bow and arrows, and taught him to shoot. Now he ran about, letting fly his darts against birds and rabbits. There was ample chance to gain skill in archery. The boys would tie together a bundle of grass and set it on a knoll, then all shot at this target, and the winner took all his competitors’ arrows. Whenever Takes-the-pipe brought home a sheaf of darts, his father would encourage him, saying, “You’ll be like Sharp-horn, who always brings down his buffalo with the first shot.” And when his son had killed his first cottontail, Deaf-bull proudly called Sliding-beaver, a renowned Whistling-water, feasted him royally and had him walk through camp, leading Takes-the-pipe mounted on his horse and proclaiming his success in a laudatory chant.

One spring there was great excitement. The supply of meat was exhausted, yet the buffalo remained out of sight. Scouts were sent to scour the country in search of game, but in vain. At last Sharp-horn offered to lure the buffalo by magic. At the foot of a cliff he had the men build a corral. He summoned Deaf-bull to be his assistant. “Bring me an old unbroken buffalo chip,” he said. Takes-the-pipe found one, and together he and his father brought it to the shaman. “Someone is trying to starve us; my medicine is stronger than his; we will eat,” said Sharp-horn. He smoothed the earth in his lodge and marked buffalo tracks all over. He put the chip on one of the tracks and on the chip a rock shaped like a buffalo’s head, which he wore as a neck ornament. This rock he smeared with grease. “The buffalo are coming, bid the men drive them here,” he said.

Deaf-bull went out and issued the orders received from Sharp-horn. On the heights above the corral, old men, women and children strung out in two diverging lines for the distance of a mile or two. The young men rode far out till they sighted the herd, got behind it and chased the game between the two lines nearer and nearer to the declivity. They drove them down into the corral. Some were killed in leaping, others stunned so they could be easily dispatched. That was a great day for Takes-the-pipe. He rode double with his father, and Deaf-bull was a person of consequence. Had he not assisted Sharp-horn? Then, too, he was a member of the Big Dog Society, and the Big Dogs were the police for that season with power to whip every man, woman or child who dared disobey Sharp-horn’s orders.

After the hunt, the meat-racks sagged with the weight of the buffalo ribs, and the people made up for past want by gorging themselves with fat and tongues. One evening the Big Dogs held a feast and dance, the next evening the Fox society, then the Lumpwoods, and so on. There were promiscuous gatherings, too, where the valiant warriors rose to tell the assembled multitude about their exploits, while the old men exhorted the callow youths to emulate the example of their fathers and the camp reëchoed the ancient warriors’ songs:—

Sky and earth are everlasting,

Men must die.

Old age is a thing of evil,

Charge and die!

On one of these occasions Takes-the-pipe was proudly listening to Deaf-bull’s record. He would have been a chief, had he ever wrested a gun from an enemy in a hand-to-hand encounter; in every other essential he more than passed muster. Three times he had crawled into a Piegan camp and stolen horses picketed to their owners’ tents; six times he had “counted coup” on enemies, touching them with his lance or bare hand; twice he had carried the pipe and returned with blackened face as leader of a victorious expedition.

While Takes-the-pipe was listening spellbound to his father’s narrative, he felt a sudden pinch. He turned round to smite his tormentor only to face Cherry-necklace, a boy somewhat older than himself. He was Sliding-beaver’s son and that put a different complexion on the matter, for Sliding-beaver, like Deaf-bull, was a Whistling-water, so their sons might take what liberties they chose with each other and enjoy complete immunity. At present, however, Cherry-necklace had more important business than playing a trick on Takes-the-pipe. “Magpie,” he whispered, “they are playing magpie.” Off both boys dashed to a creek nearby, where some twenty lads were already assembled round a big fire. They smeared their faces with charcoal till one could hardly recognize his neighbor. “Now, we’ll be magpies,” they said, “Takes-the-pipe is a swift runner, he shall lead.” They scampered back to camp. The women, seeing them approach in their disguise, snatched their meat from the racks to hide it inside their tents. But Takes-the-pipe had already fixed his eye on some prime ribs, pounced upon them and carried off his prize, followed by the other boys, each vanishing with what booty he could safely capture.

It was a great gathering about the fireplace by the stream. One of the lads strutted up and down as a crier and announced, “Takes-the-pipe has stolen the best piece!” Then he and a few others who had won like delicacies were granted their choice of the spoils, whereupon all feasted. When they had done eating, the oldest boy declared, “We’ll remain seated here. If anyone gets up, we’ll rub our hands with this grease and smear it over his body.” So they sat still for a long time. At last Cherry-necklace forgot about the warning and got up. In an instant they were upon him like a pack of wolves. Here was a fine chance for Takes-the-pipe to get even for that pinch; he daubed Cherry-necklace’s face all over with the fat. Others followed suit and soon his body glistened with grease. He leaped into the creek to wash it off, but the water glided off the fat.

II

The people were moving along the Bighorn, with the long lodge poles dragging along the ground. Some dozen girls with toy tents were transporting them in imitation of their mothers. Takes-the-pipe was riding with the Hammers, a boys’ club patterned on the men’s societies. The members treated dogs or deer as enemies and practised counting coup on them. Takes-the-pipe as one of the daredevils carried one of the emblems of the organization, a long stick with a wooden hammer-head pivoted some two feet from its top. Suddenly an idea struck him. “Hammers,” he cried, “let us offer a seat on our horses to the girls we like!” No sooner said than done. He himself had had his eye on Otter for some time, and presently the two were riding double.

In the evening when the women of the camp pitched their lodges, the Hammer boys’ sweethearts set up theirs a little way off. They played at married life. Takes-the-pipe sneaked into his mother’s lodge, purloined some meat, brought it near Otter’s tent, and bade her fetch the food, which she then cooked for him. Other boys and girls did likewise. Thus they played every day while on the march. Once Takes-the-pipe killed a young wolf and brought a lock of its hair to the young folks’ camp. He pretended that it was an enemy’s scalp and set it on a pole and all the girls had to dance the scalp dance around it. There followed a recital of deeds; the boys who had struck wolves were allowed to claim coups against the Dakota, and those who had touched deer might boast of having stolen picketed horses.

It was a gay journey. But one evening when Takes-the-pipe had bragged of his mock exploits, Cherry-necklace suddenly appeared on the scene and taunted him before all his playmates, “You think you are a man, because you are as tall as Deaf-bull,” he cried, “you are nothing but a child fit to play with little girls. Have you ever been on the war-path? I went with Long-horse and struck a Piegan.” Takes-the-pipe hung his head. It was only too true. Cherry-necklace was not so much older, yet he had already distinguished himself and might recite his coup in any public assembly. Takes-the-pipe had no answer for he knew nothing to fling back in his “joking-relative’s” teeth, but he resolved forthwith to join a war party at the earliest opportunity.

Not long after this Shinbone let it be known that he was setting out on a horse-raid against the Dakota. Now Takes-the-pipe had his chance. Well provided with moccasins by his clanswomen, he joined a dozen young men starting afoot on the perilous adventure,—perilous because, though Shinbone was a brave man, this was his first attempt at leading a party and it remained to be seen whether “his medicine was good.” They walked for four days. As Takes-the-pipe was the youngest of the company, he had to fetch water and firewood, and one morning when he slept too late they poured water all over him.

Warily the party advanced. On the fourth evening Shinbone ordered them to halt on a little knoll. “Yonder are the Dakota lodges,” he said, “early to-morrow morning we will go there.” He took his sacred bundle, unwrapping a weasel skin stuffed with deer hair, and pointed it toward the camp. “The Dakota are tired,” he said, “they will sleep late.” Before dawn he roused the party. He appointed two young men as scouts. They came back. “Well,” he asked, “how is it?”

“Where you pointed, there are the Dakota lodges,” they replied.

“It is well,” he said. He chose four others to drive all the loose horses out of the camp. They left. They had not gone far when they were overtaken by Takes-the-pipe. “What are you doing? Go back. He did not send you.”

“I am going to the camp to cut a horse or strike a coup.”

“You are crazy! We are older than you and are still without honors. We are here to steal horses, not to score deeds. The one who is carrying our pipe is a new leader, he may not be very powerful and you will spoil his luck. Go back!”

But though they threatened to beat him, Takes-the-pipe would not return and so all five approached the camp. There were the lodges ranged in a circle. The inmates seemed plunged in sleep. Near the edge a herd of horses were peacefully grazing. The scouts quietly stole up to them and began to drive them off toward the rest of their party. In the meantime Takes-the-pipe was getting his bearings in the strange encampment. He cast about for a picketed horse, but there was none to be seen. Then of a sudden, chance favored him. Out of a little tent on the outskirts of the circle a wizened old man came hobbling on a staff. Takes-the-pipe stole up behind him and dealt him a stunning blow. “Hēha!” he cried, counting coup on the prostrate foe. Then he dashed towards his friends, who had watched him from a little distance. As yet there was no alarm, but no time was to be lost. They mounted and drove the horses before them. When they reached Shinbone, the rest of the party got on horseback. “Now we will run!” said the captain.

They had come and gone to the Dakota afoot and slowly enough; now they were mounted, and traveled at top speed, for they knew that before long the enemy would be in their wake. They rode on and on till they got to the brink of a rapid stream. Here, some of their stolen horses turned back, but the greatest number they saved, driving them through the ice-cold water, where they themselves felt as though they must die from the cold. They traveled that day and all through the night without stopping to eat. On the following morning they reached the Crow camp, sore and worn out, but with sixty head of horses. By rights they all belonged to Shinbone, but after the fashion of a good leader, he was generous to his followers and let them have nearly half of the herd. Takes-the-pipe won three horses.

His parents rejoiced when they heard of his coup and his booty. His mother and her sisters at once prepared a magnificent feast, to which all the Sore-lip women contributed. On such occasions it behooved a young man to give lavish entertainment to his father’s kin, so that he might live to be an old man. So Deaf-bull invited all the eminent Whistling-water men, and Takes-the-pipe selected Sliding-beaver from among them, presenting him with a fine bay horse. Then Sliding-beaver trudged through camp, leading Takes-the-pipe’s horse and singing the young man’s praises.

III

He was rolling a hoop and another youth was hurling a dart at it when Shinbone clutched him by the arm. “Come, I’ll make a man of you. You shall take the place of your elder brother.” Takes-the-pipe knew what he meant: a cousin of his belonging to the Fox society had fallen in a skirmish with the Dakota, and his fellow-members had been casting about for a clubbable kinsman.

Now a new sort of life began for Takes-the-pipe. He no longer roamed about aimlessly or consorted with random companions. His fellow-members were now his constant associates. Spare time was whiled away in the lodges of eminent Foxes, beating the drum and singing the songs of the organization. Now and then the younger members took jaunts to the hills with their sweethearts. Again there was a philandering when the Foxes and their girls went berrying or up to the mountains to drag lodge poles to camp. Often enough a wealthy member had a herald invite all the Foxes to his lodges, where they were feasted, and held a dance. There, too, valiant men rose to expatiate on their prowess. The Foxes had done well that year. Shinbone had struck the first coup of the season, thus making his club take precedence of the rival Lumpwood society. By the rules of the game the Lumpwoods had lost the right to sing their own songs, and when they danced they were obliged to borrow those of the Big Dogs, exposing themselves to the mockery of the Foxes. That year Takes-the-pipe joined a number of war parties and succeeded in capturing an enemy’s gun. Now he, too, would rise and tell about his martial experiences.

The following spring there were great doings. The Foxes were electing new officers in place of the last year’s standard-bearers. Three or four of the elders had had a council and now they came to the club lodge where all the members were gathered. Two of the emblems of the society were straight staffs, two were hooked and wrapped with otter-skin. Each was pointed at the bottom, for in sight of the enemy the bearer was obliged to plant it into the earth, and stand his ground regardless of danger or death, without budging an inch unless a companion plucked out the fatal lance. That was why the officers were called “men doomed to die.” If they escaped unscathed by the end of the year, they retired with all the honors of distinguished service; if they died in battle, they were solemnly mourned by their fellow-members and other tribesmen; but if they failed in duty, they became the pariahs of the camp.

There were not many young men eager to undertake so arduous an office. The electors were passing round the circle, offering a pipe to likely candidates, for to smoke it meant acceptance. Some of the faint-hearted ones crouched behind others to escape notice and even some, who were forward enough on other occasions, shrank back. First the elders went to the tried warriors. No trouble was expected with Shinbone, and as a matter of fact he readily consented. Next they came to Lone-pine, Sliding-beaver’s eldest son. He, too, smoked without sign of reluctance. But now the electors were beginning to cast about among the younger fellow-members, for they were coming towards Cherry-necklace. Cherry-necklace was no coward; he had shown his mettle in more than one encounter. Yet he was very fond of having a good time. Would he willingly accept appointment? No, he was squirming uneasily and refused the pipe. Rather, he would have refused it, but Lone-pine, his brother, seized him by the bang of his hair and forcibly made his lips touch the pipestem. Thus Cherry-necklace too was “doomed to die.” And now the elders passed round once more in search of the last officer. Takes-the-pipe’s heart began to beat. What if they asked him? It would be an honor for one so young, but did he wish to die? They were coming straight toward him. He seemed to hear the old song:

Sky and earth are everlasting,

Men must die.

Yes, if he died, what mattered it? He would yield without coaxing and shame Cherry-necklace. He eagerly clutched the pipe and became one of the bearers of a hooked-staff.

While the Foxes were holding their annual election, the Lumpwoods were going through a like procedure. A day or two later, a defiant call was heard from their lodge. They were ready for the annual indulgence in licensed wife-stealing. Only the Foxes and the Lumpwoods took part in this pastime, the other societies being mere spectators. If a Fox had ever had for his sweetheart a Lumpwood’s wife, he was now privileged to kidnap her from her rightful husband, who would only make himself a laughing-stock if he interposed objections, let alone violence. Takes-the-pipe remembered that Otter was now married to a Lumpwood named Drags-the-wolf, so he went to the lodge and called her. Drags-the-wolf was game. He had the reputation of being very fond of his pretty, young wife, but he knew the proper way for a Crow to act. Instead of restraining her, he himself said, “He is calling you. Go!” Takes-the-pipe brought her to his parents’ lodge. His mother and sisters gave her a beautiful elk-tooth dress and other Sore-lip women from all over the camp brought her moccasins and beaded pouches. Then the Foxes selected from their number an old man who had once rescued a wounded tribesman from certain death by dashing into the thick of the fray, and carrying him off on his horse. This man, for none other might venture, rode double with the kidnapped bride, all the other Foxes parading jubilantly behind and twitting their rivals with the capture of so handsome a Lumpwood woman.

IV

Shinbone had come home from a war party with blackened face and taken the rank of chief. No wonder, the people were saying. Had not the Thunder-bird adopted him when as a young man he prayed and thirsted for a revelation? Men must undergo suffering if they wanted supernatural blessing so that they could become great men among their people. Of all the Crow chiefs, only Drags-the-wolf had been in luck: him the Moon visited as he was peacefully slumbering in his tent and granted him invulnerability and coups. The other distinguished warriors had had to mortify their flesh in order to gain favor.

That spring the herald proclaimed that Red-eye was going to hold a Sun Dance. He had lost a brother and was hungering for revenge. What surer way to attain it than to fast and dance before the sacred doll till it became alive and showed him a scalped Dakota in earnest of victory and vengeance? But Red-eye’s announcement was a signal for all the ambitious youths to plan for a public mortification of their flesh at the same time in the hope of winning supernatural favor. So, while the pledger of the ceremony was dancing up and down with his gaze riveted on the holy image in the rear of the lodge, a dozen young men were undergoing torture for their own ends. Some were dragging through camp two buffalo skulls fastened to a stick thrust through holes cut in their backs. Others—and Takes-the-pipe among them—decided to swing from the lodge poles. So he begged Sharp-horn to pierce the flesh above his breasts, run skewers through the openings, and tie the rods to ropes hung from a pole. Thus attached he ran back and forth till he had torn out the skewers. Yet when he had fallen to the ground faint and bloodstained no vision came for all his pains.

He wanted to become a chief like Shinbone, so he went on a mountain peak to fast. Without clothes save his gee-string and a buffalo robe, he slept there overnight. He awoke early, the sun had just risen. He took a piece of wood and put on it his left forefinger. “Sun,” he cried, “I am miserable. I am giving you this. Make me a chief!” With a huge knife he hacked off the first joint. The blood began to flow. He lost consciousness. When he came to, it was evening. His finger ached. He tried to sleep, but the pain and cold kept him awake. Of a sudden he heard a man clearing his throat and a horse’s neighing came closer and closer. A voice behind him said, “The one whom you wanted to come has arrived.” He turned about. He saw a man on a bay horse; his face was painted red and he wore a shirt with many discs cut out from its body, yet hanging from it as though by a thread. From the back of his head rose a chicken-hawk feather. The rider said, “You are miserable. I have been looking for you for a long time but could never quite reach you. I will adopt you as my child. Look! I am going to run.” He began to gallop; the dust flew to the sky. Then the trees and shrubs all about turned into Piegans began shooting at the horseman. Arrows came whizzing by him and bullets flew round him and the enemies were yelling after him, but he wheeled round unscathed. With his spear he knocked down one warrior and counted coup on him. He rode up to Takes-the-pipe: “Though you fight all the people of the world, dress as I do and you need have no fear of death before you are a chief. That man I struck is a Piegan; you have seen his country, go there, I give him to you. As I am, so shall you be; arrows will not hurt you, bullets you can laugh at. You shall be like a rock. But one thing you must not do: never eat of any animal’s kidneys.”

When Takes-the-pipe got back to his people, he was very glad. Two things remained to be done before he might call himself chief: one was to lead a victorious war party, the other to cut a picketed horse. His vision enabled him forthwith to play a captain’s part. He shot a chicken-hawk and took one of its feathers to be worn at the back of his head on his expeditions. He prepared a shirt like the one he had seen and a spear that resembled exactly that borne by his patron. Then he gathered his war party. His sisters and other Sore-lip women made moccasins galore for him. He set out in the dead of night. For several days they traveled north and west. On the Missouri they ran into a few Piegans in a hunting-lodge. They killed them all and took their scalps. Thus they could return with blackened faces. One of the enemies had a thumbless hand, so the year was known ever after as “the winter when they killed the thumbless man.”

V

He had been wounded in the knee. He could not understand it. He had been promised that his body would be like stone. He had worn his feather at the back of his head, as in every fight since the time of his vision, yet his kneecap had been shattered in a skirmish with the Dakota. And it was an ugly injury. Red-eye had salved it with bear root, but the cure-all had failed. Bullsnake, foremost of doctors, blessed by the buffalo, had waded into the river to wash his knee, but all in vain; he remained crippled. Then he knew that he had unwittingly broken his guardian spirit’s rule; there had been a feast before the fatal battle and then he must have eaten of the forbidden food.

Soon there came surety. In a dream appeared the man on the bay horse and said: “I told you not to eat kidney, you have eaten it. You shall never be chief.” Takes-the-pipe had now struck many coups and captured guns and carried the captain’s pipe. His record surpassed that of any man of his age, but he lacked the honor of cutting a picketed horse. How could he ever gain it now? Horse-raiders started on foot, and he could only painfully limp across the camp.

Young women, drawn by his fame, often visited him in his tent, but their attentions soon palled on him. His mother tried to console him. “Of all the young men you are the best-off; you have struck more coups than the rest and own plenty of horses; the young women are crazy about you. You ought to be the happiest man in camp.” But he would watch the bustle of preparations for new raids that he could not join; he would ride about of an evening and chance upon the foot-soldiers setting out from their trysting-place, and would look after them, wistful and envious and sick at heart.

Sharp-horn, the aged sage, advised him to go for another vision; possibly the guardian spirit would relent. So Takes-the-pipe started out on horseback and rode far away towards the mountain where he had prayed before. At the foot he hobbled his horse and painfully climbed to the summit. He lay down, with outstretched arms, facing the sky. “Father,” he wailed, “I am miserable, take pity on me.” He lay there during the night but at the first glimmer of dawn there was still no message from the mysterious powers. All day he stayed about the jagged bowlders without drink or a morsel to eat.

Long after nightfall a muffled tread became audible and as it came closer it was the tramp of a buffalo. Then a bull was standing over him, scenting his breath and caressing his naked breast with shaggy fur. At last he spoke in Crow. “I will adopt you my son. I have seen you suffering from afar. What other Indians have prayed for shall be yours. Look at the inside of my mouth.” He looked and there was not a tooth to be seen. “So long as you have teeth, my son, you shall not die. You shall marry a fine, chaste, young woman and beget children and see your grandchildren about you. When you die you shall be so old that your skin will crack as you move from one corner of the lodge to another.”

But Takes-the-pipe shook his head and said, “Father, it is not because I crave old age that I am thirsting; I want to be a chief like Shinbone.”

“My son, what you ask is difficult. As I hurried to you from my home, I overtook another person traveling towards you; perhaps you will still be able to get what you desire.” Takes-the-pipe sat up to ask further counsel, but the bull was gone and nothing but a bleached buffalo skull was gaping at him in the gloaming.

All next day he fasted and prayed on his peak, addressing now the Sun, then the Thunder, then again the Morningstar. His throat was parched when he lay down at dark in his old resting place. He did not know how, but of a sudden the darkness was lifted and the hilltop shone with a gentle radiance. An old woman was standing at his feet, resting on a digging-stick; she wore a splendid robe with horsetracks marked on it in porcupine-quill embroidery. “My child,” she said, “you have not called me, nevertheless I am here. I heard your groans and started towards you but another person passed me on the road. I am the Moon. When children fall sick, doctor them with this root; their parents will give you horses. I will make you the wealthiest of all the Crows.”

But Takes-the-pipe shook his head and answered, “Grandmother, I am not suffering to gain wealth, I want to become a chief like Shinbone.”

“My dear child, you are asking for something great. As I came hither, I saw another person starting to come here. Perhaps he has more power than I, and can grant your wish.” He was eager to ask her more, but her form faded into nothing and only the sheen of the waning crescent remained visible.

Another day he fasted and drank no water. He was now very weak, so that he dragged himself about with the aid of a cane. Was there no power to help him in his distress? Night came as he lay wailing and peering into the darkness, when a handsome young man stood before him. “I was sleeping far away, you have roused me with your lamentations,” he said. “I have come to help you. You shall be my son. Do you recognize me? I am the Tobacco your old people plant every year. So long as they harvest me, the Crow shall be a great tribe. They have forgotten the way to prepare the seed, their crops will be poor. I will show you how to mix it before planting. Then you will make your tribe great and teach others and receive all sorts of property in payment.”

And Takes-the-pipe answered; “Father, I am not suffering in order to plant tobacco and gain property, I want to be a chief like Shinbone.”

Then the man replied, “My son, everything else in the universe is easy for me, only what you ask for is hard. That one who used to be your father is very strong. ‘Don’t eat kidney,’ he said. You have eaten it. I cannot make you chief. Listen, my son. All things in the world go by fours. Three of us have come to help you. We have been powerless. A fourth one is coming, perhaps he can do it.”

The next day Takes-the-pipe could hardly crawl on all fours. His head swam. He seized his knife and chopped off another finger joint on his left hand. Then holding aloft the bleeding stump he cried, “Fathers, I am giving you this. Make me a chief!”

Suddenly a huge figure came panting toward him, shaking a rattle and singing a song. “I am the last,” said a big bear; “though I am heavy and slow, I have arrived.”

Takes-the-pipe called out to him joyfully, “Father, I knew you were coming. Cure my knee so that I can go out to cut a picketed horse and become a chief.”

“My son, the one who used to be your father is very strong. He does not want you to be a chief. Well, I too am strong. If you are a man, I can help you. If you are faint-hearted, I am powerless.”

“Father,” said Takes-the-pipe, “make me great; make me greater than other men, and if I die what matters it?”

“My son, there are many chiefs in camp; of your kind there shall be but one. Tell me, have you ever seen the whole world?” Without waiting for an answer, the bear lifted him up. Mountains and streams and prairies and camps came into his vision. The berries were ripe and the Crow camp loomed in sight and the Tobacco society were harvesting the precious seed. Far away were hostile lodges. Then the leaves were turning yellow and the enemy were setting out to raid Crow horses. One Crow all alone was riding towards them. “My son, do you see that horseman with trailing sashes? They were trying to hold him back, he has broken loose. He could not be a chief; he wants to die. He is a Crazy Dog. He speaks ‘backward’; he cares little for the rules of the camp. Where there is danger, he is the foremost. Dress like him, act like him, and you shall be great. The people will speak of you so long as there are Crows living on this earth. This I will give you if your heart is strong.”

“Thanks, father, thanks! What you have shown me is great; I will do it. I wanted to live and be a chief. It cannot be. There is no way for me to live; I shall die as a Crazy Dog.”

Then the bear vanished.

VI

The people were gathered near the mouth of the Bighorn. There was merriment in camp after a successful hunt. Suddenly was heard the beating of a drum and the chanting of a strange song. All ran out of their lodges to see what was going on. Who is that man on the richly fitted-out horse? He approaches the center of the circle, shaking a rattle. Two sashes of deerskin, slipped over his head, descend to the ground. Sliding-beaver is leading the horse, halting from time to time, and beating a drum. At the fourth stop he cried aloud: “Young women, if you would be this man’s sweethearts, you must hasten, he is about to die!” Then he beat his drum and addressed the rider: “Remain on horseback, do not dance!”

Forthwith Takes-the-pipe dismounted and danced in position. Then because he did the opposite of what he was told everyone knew him for a Crazy Dog pledged to court death. Straightway Pretty-weasel began to lament: “I begged him not to do it; he has done it!” But the other women cheered lustily, and Sliding-beaver sang his praises aloud as he slowly led him outside of the camp circle.

Then for a while he appeared every evening, dancing and shaking his rattle. He would ride through camp like a madman. When a few were gathered eating some meat, he would walk his horse into their very midst as if to run over them. Then they would cry out, “Trample on us.” And the Crazy Dog would turn aside and let them eat in peace. At night the best-looking young women paid him visits; even married women went there and their husbands did not mind it. Sometimes two or three would come of a single night. Famous Whistling-waters came to tell him what a great thing he was doing. All the eminent warriors in camp, Drags-the-wolf, Red-eye, and Shinbone, were looking on him with envy.

The cherries had ripened and one day a woman offered him some. He said, “When I decided to do this, the grass was sprouting. I did not expect to live so long, yet to-day I am eating cherries. Well, I will see whether I can achieve what I wish.” When they went hunting the next time, he got some buffalo blood and mixed it with badger blood and water. In the mixture he saw his image with blood streaming down his face. “Yes,” he cried, “I have seen it. What I am longing for is coming true!”

The leaves were turning yellow when a tribesman caught sight of some Dakota raiders. The young men drove them off and the enemy took refuge in the dry bed of a stream. There, the Crow warriors were going to attack them. They were getting ready when Pretty-weasel rushed into their midst, crying, “Bind my son! Don’t let him go!” They looked for him. He was not to be found. All alone he was dashing toward the enemy. They galloped after him. He was close to the coulée, shaking his rattle and singing his song:—

Sky and earth are everlasting,

Men must die.

Old age is a thing of evil,

Charge and die!

He rode straight up to the enemies’ hiding-place. At the edge he dismounted. Several Dakotas were peeping out. “There is no way for me to live,” he cried, “I must die!” He shot one foe and struck him with his rattle. Then another Dakota shot him in the left temple, and Takes-the-pipe fell dead.

The Crow warriors caught up, and killed every man in the raiding party. Pretty-weasel reached the spot and wiped the blood from her son’s forehead. The men put him on a horse and brought him to camp. Wailing, they went home. There the Sore-lip women clipped their hair and gashed their legs. The Whistling-water men rode up and down singing the praises of the dead Crazy Dog. His fellow-Foxes propped up the corpse against a backrest, knelt before it and wailed. Their officers ran arrows through their flesh and jabbed their foreheads till the blood flowed in streams. Then they set up a scaffold on four posts, wrapped the body in a robe, and placed it on top. Beside the stage they planted a pole. From it was hung his drum, and his sashes swept down as streamers blowing in the wind. His rattle they put into his hand. Then the camp moved.

Robert H. Lowie

A Crow Woman’s Tale

“A story, grandmother, a story!”

“What, in the daytime, outdoors? And in the summer too? Don’t you know that we tell tales only of a winter night?”

“Oh, grandmother, those old rules are gone. Do tell us a story to keep us awake on this hot day.”

“Well, what shall it be? Shall I tell you how Old-woman’s grandchild conquered the monsters that haunted the earth?”

“No, you’ve told us that one many times. Tell us a new one.”

“Well, you shall hear one you have never heard before; a new story and yet a true one.”

There was a young Crow maiden named Beaver-woman who was as good-looking as any girl the Crows had ever known. She was neither too tall nor too short, her waist was slim, and her nose was as straight as a nose can be. She made the finest moccasins in all the tribe and knew how to embroider them with the prettiest quill designs. Throughout the camp there was no one for whom she did not have a kind word. The young men respected her for they knew she would not romp with them as some girls did, and those older ones who had been on the war-path were eager to take her to wife. Yet though one suitor after another came to offer horses to her father, the beautiful girl refused them all. At length her parents grew impatient and scolded her. “What are you waiting for? Your brothers have need of horses. Do you expect Morningstar to come down from the sky and woo you?”

Then for the first time she spoke of her hopes. “One day when the grass was sprouting, I went to the creek to fetch some water. There my eldest brother’s comrade, the one they call White-dog, spoke to me and courted me, then left with a war party. I have seen him in my dreams, returning with booty. He is bringing home horses; he will offer you more than all the other suitors together who have tried to buy me.”

Then one of her brothers laughed in derision, and another good-naturedly, and still others kept their peace, while her mother mumbled, “Some dreams have come true and some only mock one. I liked the looks of the horses you refused.”

But a few days later, when the cherries were ripe, White-dog came back with his party, driving eighty head of horses stolen from the Sioux. Many he allotted to his followers and many he gave away to his father’s clansmen; but of the remainder he offered the twenty finest to Beaver-woman’s parents. Then she was happy and said, “My dream has come true.” Her parents, too, were very glad, and she went to live in her husband’s lodge.

White-dog had an older wife named Turtle, whom he had inherited from a brother killed in battle. Turtle did not like the newcomer, but White-dog would not allow her to abuse Beaver-woman. He was very proud of his young and beautiful wife. When the people moved camp, it was Beaver-woman who bore his buffalo-hide shield; and when he came back from the enemy with spoils, she was the one to dance with his bow or spear while Turtle and other women looked on with envy. There was one thing he prized even higher than her good looks, and that was her virtue. Other men were having all sorts of trouble with their wives, but he was sure of his. When he heard of a married woman eloping with her lover, he would say proudly, “My wife will soon be the only one who shall dare chop down the tree for the Sun Dance lodge”; for only a wife who had never erred was allowed to take part in this sacred rite.

All went well until one spring soon after Beaver-woman had borne her first child. You young men have your dancing-clubs to-day, some of you are Hot Dancers and others belong to the Big-Ear-Holes. That’s the way we Crows used to have it in the old days, only we had real societies, the Foxes and the Lumpwoods. They didn’t just dance and feast; they tried to be brave in war and each society sought to outdo the other. But they fought in another way, too. Sometimes it happened that a Lumpwood or a Fox had once had a mistress who afterwards married into the other society. Then for a few days in the early spring he was allowed to kidnap her. No matter how badly he felt about it, her husband durst not protect her, it would have been a terrible disgrace. He must never take her back so long as he lived, or the whole camp would jeer at him for the rest of his days. Often a man might feel like fighting, but he would control himself and say, “She is nothing to me, take her.” Then the people would praise him, saying, “That one has a strong heart.”

Well, one day in the spring, a hooting was heard in camp. The Lumpwoods, headed by Red-eye, were ready to steal the Foxes’ wives, and the Foxes had answered the call of challenge. White-dog was not greatly interested in these doings. He was lounging in his lodge, talking to his younger brother, Little-owl, while Beaver-woman was crooning a song over her baby. Of a sudden the tramping of feet was heard, the door flap was rudely lifted, and Red-eye’s head was thrust through the opening. Beaver-woman faced him calmly. “What’s the matter?” she asked.

He answered with a song:

“My sweetheart is the one I love,

I am taking her away.”

“Go away, you’re crazy,” she said, “I have never been your sweetheart!”

“What, don’t you remember what happened at the spring?”

“Yes, you were going to hug me and I drenched you with water. Go away to your real sweetheart.”

But now Red-eye had entered the lodge with two of his companions and was about to lay hands on her. Then she knew that it was no jest, that he was falsely claiming her as a one-time mistress and she screamed aloud at her husband.

“He is lying, you know he is lying! Help me!” All this time White-dog was sitting in the rear of the lodge, stiff and silent. He knew the charge against his wife was false, and hatred filled him against her wanton accuser. He also knew that unless he fought for her now she was lost forever. But it was not a man’s part to show resentment at such times. Just because no one in camp would believe in Red-eye’s tale, he, White-dog, would be all the greater for having shown a strong heart. So with stern face he turned to his wife and said, “They are calling you, go.” But as they seized her, up sprang Little-owl, White-dog’s younger brother, a gentle young man who loved Beaver-woman and had always shown respect for her instead of teasing her as most brothers-in-law do with their brothers’ wives. He picked up a large butchering knife from the ground and rushed at Red-eye crying, “You lie, you lie!” But now White-dog, too, leaped up and with his greater strength pinioned his brother’s arms behind his back. He wanted no scuffle when his wife was being kidnapped; it would have been a disgrace. Thus Red-eye dragged Beaver-woman away without interference.

The Lumpwoods had a grand feast and a dress parade on horseback, and Beaver-woman had to ride double with the greatest warrior in the society. They had dressed her up in the finest elk-tooth dress and everyone admired her good looks, but she was sad and could not hold back her tears. All the Foxes stood round about to see the spectacle, and among them was White-dog, looking on as if nothing had happened. For he wanted to show what a strong heart he had.

When the celebration was over, Beaver-woman had to live as the wife of Red-eye, whom she hated. One night she stole to White-dog’s lodge and begged him to take her back. But White-dog got angry and bade her depart. “Do you believe he was ever my lover?” she asked.

He answered, “I do not believe it, but he has made the charge and seized you. Go back. I do not want people to sing songs in mockery of me.” And when she lingered he thrust her out and struck her a blow,—he who had never beaten her before. Then she mournfully retraced her steps towards her new home. But before she had gotten very far she felt a light tap on her shoulder. She turned about and faced not White-dog but his younger brother.

“The people here are bad,” said Little-owl, “come, let us two flee. By the mouth of the Yellowstone there are Crows too, and down the Missouri are the villages of the Corn-eaters. I have relatives among both; let us go and live with them.” So in the same night they packed some dried meat and other necessaries and they started northward down the Yellowstone without being detected in camp.

But on the second day’s journey they were espied by a group of scouting Cheyenne. Little-owl fought bravely but was killed and scalped. Beaver-woman with her baby became a captive of the hostile tribe, and the leader of the party took her as his wife, when they got back to the Cheyenne camp. Her new husband was a great warrior and treated her kindly, but he was an elderly man and she could not love him as she had loved White-dog. She grieved, too, for gentle Little-owl who had died for love of her, and she longed to go back to her own people.

About a year later another Crow woman was brought to camp as a captive. That was a joyful day for Beaver-woman. Now she learned all the news about her own people. She heard that Red-eye was dead, killed by lightning, and all the Crows said it was because he had abducted an innocent woman. White-dog had not married again; he had even sent away Turtle, his elder wife. He was more famous as a brave than ever, for he had struck several enemies and stolen two picketed horses from the Sioux. The people talked about his recklessness and thought he would surely become a chief.

When Beaver-woman heard about her people, she was filled with a great longing to go back to them. “We are not far from our own people,” she said, “let us run back there together. My husband is setting out against the Sioux; then we can escape.” So they made their get-away and arrived in safety among their own tribe. Beaver-woman went straight to her first husband’s lodge. She found him alone, smoothing an arrow-shaft. “They told me that other man was killed by lightning; I have come back,” she said. But he hardly looked up.

“A man does not take back a kidnapped wife,” he said, “go away.” Then she saw that she had come in vain and, weeping, she went to her parents’ home.

White-dog had always had a strong heart. But now the people were saying that he was positively foolhardy. When enemies were entrenched, he was the first to lead the attack; when a hostile camp was to be entered, he was the first to volunteer; he was always planning a raid against the Cheyenne or Sioux. But one time a Crow party returned wailing: White-dog had fallen in a reckless charge and they were bearing his corpse for burial among his people. His kinsfolk and the Foxes and all the tribe mourned his death, and the women in his family gashed themselves with knives to show their grief. But none grieved more, or inflicted more cruel wounds upon herself than Beaver-woman, and for a whole year she wore ragged clothes, and let her hair hang down disheveled. Then, because she was still good-looking, men came once more to woo her, and at length, because her brothers urged her, she married an oldish man and bore him children. And her children, as they grew up, married and had children too. But all her life she could not forget those early days when White-dog came and took her as his wife.

The old woman paused.

“Thanks, grandmother, yours is a good story and a new one, too. What times! Aren’t we happy now to live in peace, without being disturbed by Sioux or Cheyenne and without the women being kidnapped by a society of our own?”

The old woman straightened up and looked at the youth with a disdainful glance. “You boys who go to school don’t understand anything. The longer you stay there, the less sense you have. I once hoped to cut down the sacred tree in the Sun Dance! I bore White-dog’s shield when the camp moved! I danced, holding his spear, with Turtle and all the other women looking on in envy! Little-owl died for love of me! White-dog threw away his life because he could not take me back!”

Robert H. Lowie

A Trial of Shamans

Big-dog was troubled; he knew he should not sleep that night. White-hip, blind old White-hip, had passed him with a taunt. He did not mind the old fellow’s gibes, yet....

It all happened long ago. White-hip was stretched out in his lodge one night when a young kinsman named Shows-his-horse burst in upon him.

“They say you are a great medicine man, take pity on me, I am in distress.”

“Well, what ails you?”

“As I approached my tent this evening, a man came out, wrapped in his robe. He has stolen my wife; I want revenge.”

Then White-hip said, “You are my younger brother; I will help you. Who is it that has stolen your wife?”

Shows-his-horse replied, “It was Big-dog.”

Then White-hip shrank back and asked, “Are you sure it was Big-dog? The night is dark, you may have made a mistake.”

But the young man answered, “It was still light when I saw him,—a short, stocky man with the wolf-tails at his heels plainly visible dragging along the ground.”

White-hip said, “My younger brother, it is wrong for a man to mind the loss of a woman. If your joking-relatives should hear of this, they will sing songs in mockery of you. This is dangerous business. The Thunder himself has adopted Big-dog as his child.”

Then Shows-his-horse flared up. “They told me you were a great medicine man, that is why I came to you in my grief. I see you are afraid; your medicine is worthless.”

Then for a long time White-hip spoke not a word. At length he said, “It will be very difficult, but my medicine is strong. Though the Thunder himself be his father, I will lay him low.”

It happened that a few days later Big-dog set out on a war party against the Sioux. Then White-hip prayed to the sacred stone that was his medicine. And Big-dog’s war party was met by a superior force of Sioux that killed one of his followers and scattered the rest. There was grief in the Crow camp and the people were wondering about Big-dog’s first failure. But Shows-his-horse brought his three best horses as a gift to White-hip, and slowly the news leaked out that a trial of strength was on between the two great shamans of the tribe.

Soon after this event White-hip, too, wanted to go on the war-path, and the men who had been thwarted by Big-dog’s failure were eager to join him. But the very night they set out, Big-dog prayed to the Thunder: “I do not want you to afflict my people; only he that leads them shall meet with disaster.” And it rained and stormed in the war party’s path, and a tree, felled by lightening, grazed the captain’s shoulder. Then the braves were alarmed and insisted on turning back.

Thus, when either of the shamans had set out against the enemy, the other was sure to thwart him, till neither ventured on a war party, and the whole camp were wondering who should conquer in the end. At last Big-dog could contain himself no longer. Once more he addressed the Thunder: “These scars are from the flesh I cut as an offering to you, these finger-joints were chopped to make you a present. You made me your child. That one is mocking me and you. He thinks his is the greater medicine; smite him with blindness.”

And before the cherries had ripened, White-hip had lost his sight. Then Big-dog triumphed and the Crows all said that he was the greatest shaman they had ever had and that his medicine was the most powerful of all; and White-hip was deserted by all but his next of kin, and became so poor that for a while a rope served him for a belt.

But the blind man still had faith in his medicine and one day he thus invoked it: “His father has made me blind and miserable. I do not care if you can make him miserable too. He has three sons. Kill them all and make him live till his skin cracks from old age and force him to beg his food from strangers.”

Then on the next war party Big-dog’s eldest son was slain by the Blackfoot; and people began to say that perhaps White-hip had not been conquered for good. And a year later his second eldest son died from sickness. Then the Crows all said it must be White-hip’s work. And before the leaves had turned yellow, the shaman’s last son was drowned in the Yellowstone. Then some said that, for all that, Big-dog had won, for he himself was well, while his enemy was blind. But others thought that White-hip, despite his blindness, had shown himself superior.

And as years passed, Big-dog grew infirm. He outlived his nearest kin and those more remote till no clansfolk remained. He would wander about from lodge to lodge, feasting on what strangers offered him in sheer compassion. He would hear mothers whispering to their children, “Big-dog was a great medicine man once and the whole tribe stood in awe of him, but White-hip had the greater medicine and laid him low.”

And just now White-hip had passed him with a taunt. He did not mind the blind fellow’s mockery, but one thought troubled and racked him and would not let him sleep at night: “Whose medicine was really the greater? Who had won?”

Robert H. Lowie

Smoking-star, a Blackfoot Shaman

It was one evening in summer, the time of the long day, when the twilight is equally long, that I sat before the tepee fire of my host, Smoking-star. According to his own belief, he had seen the snows of nine times around his hands, or ninety years, as we count it. He was regarded as by far the oldest living Blackfoot, but his eye was bright and his memory good. That evening as we smoked in silence, I mused on the cross-section of man’s history this venerable life would reveal, if it could be read. I told him how I felt, and my pleasure if he would tell his story for me. He sat long and silently, as is the way of his people; then rose, and with great dignity, left the tepee. Presently he returned and when seated, said, “The Smoking-star, Mars, is high. He shines approvingly. I have long lived by his power. I believe He will not be offended if I tell you the story of my life.”

So runs the tale of old Smoking-star as near as my memory can follow:

My father’s name was Old-beaver, chief of the Small-robe band, to which band I still belong. My mother came from the Fat-roasting band, she was the younger wife of my father, her older sister being the first, or head-wife. A child always calls each of his father’s women mother and also all the women married to father’s and mother’s brothers; just why this is we do not know, but it is our way. My father was very kind to me, but my older mother was cross.

I suppose I was born in a small tepee set up outside, for such is the custom. Also I suppose that for a time my mother laid aside all ornaments and affected carelessness of person. If anyone should gaze at her, she would say, “Don’t. My child will look like you; you are ugly, etc.” She was attended by women only, for men should not approach the birthplace. Even my father was not permitted to enter and it was many days before he saw me. In due time, I suppose, I was strapped to a cradle board. Later, a name was conferred upon me by my father, he being a chief. Unless a man is great, he does not name his child, but calls some man possessing these qualifications. Having once captured two guns from the Cree, my father told the story of that deed, or coup, and named me Two-guns. It is the belief that the qualities of the namer and the name itself pass to the child; hence great importance is given to the name and the conferring of it is a solemn occasion. The black-robe (priest) tells me it is much the same with your people.

Also, I suppose that when I got my first tooth, my grandmothers reminded my parents that it was time to do something. So a feast was made, presents given, and prayers offered. This was, no doubt, repeated when I took my first step and when I learned to speak. But I do remember having my ears pierced. That is the first memory of childhood. I can still see a terrible looking old grandmother standing up before me, holding up a bone awl. I was never so frightened in my life. You have seen how it is done at the sun dance, where some old woman cries out, “I quilled a robe, all with these hands. So I have the power to do this.” Just like a warrior recounting a coup.

My real mother never reproved me, but when I began to run about, my older mother did not like to have me meddling with her things. Often she would make threats to me in a kind of song, as—“There is a coyote outside. Come coyote, and eat up this naughty baby.” Again, “Come old Crooked-back woman; bring your meat pounder; smash this baby’s head.” The woman referred to was a crazy cripple who terrorized the children because some of them teased her. I was very much afraid, so that usually all my older mother need say was, “Sh-h-h!” and mumble something about the coyote or the woman. I have noticed that among your people, parents strike their children. That is not our way. If they will not listen to advice, an uncle may be called upon to exercise discipline and if necessary he will punish, but whipping is the way of the police societies. Once I saw the police whip a chief because he broke the rules of the buffalo hunt.

Soon I began to play with the older boys; in winter we spun tops on the ice and in the snow, coasted the hills on toboggans made of buffalo ribs, or just stood up on a dry skin, holding up the end. In summer there were all kinds of games: racing, follow-the-leader, arrow games, the wheel game, etc. I had a hobby-horse, made of a bent stick, with a saddle and bridle, upon which I played running buffalo and going to war. I even learned to play tricks upon old people. Sometimes we would be playing where old women came to gather firewood and when one of them had a great heap of wood on her pack line, she would squat with her back against the wood, the lines in her hands, and call for us to help raise the load; occasionally, we would assist until she reached her feet and then, with a quick push, send her sprawling with the wood on top. Then we would run away to escape a beating. Again, as water was carried in pails made of buffalo paunch, some boys would ambush the path and shoot an arrow into the pail, letting out the water. But usually we let older people alone, for, if caught, we were severely handled.

When about six years old one of my grandfathers made me a bow; he prayed for me and said if I killed anything I should bring in the scalp to prove it. He told me the story of Scar-face and the dangerous birds. Some time after this I killed a bird, my first, and my father made a feast, calling in many great men, who smoked many pipes, told of great deeds and predicted that I would be a great warrior. The skin of the bird was put into my grandfather’s war bundle.

When we traveled my mother carried me on her saddle or put me on a travois, hitched to a dog or some trusty old mare. But when I was old enough to ride alone, my father went on the war-path to the Assiniboin country and brought back six horses; one pony he gave to me. Before I learned to ride it well, it was stolen by the Cree. At the same time my older mother was killed and scalped while out picking berries. All this made a deep impression upon me and I resolved to prepare for the war-path and to take vengeance on the Cree, particularly for the loss of my pony. In the meantime my father gave me another pony.

One morning when I was about eleven years old, I was terribly frightened to find a man from a police society standing at the door, shouting for me to come out at once. It was cold and stormy, but he ordered me to the water for a plunge and when I stood on the bank whimpering, he threw me headlong into the icy current. The older boys were splashing about gaily, but it was hard for me. When I crept back to the tepee, shivering, my old grandmother began to sing a derisive song about a would-be warrior who turned to an old woman. After that I went daily to the bath and soon became hard and strong.

The next summer our people were camped on Milk River where buffalo were plenty. The berries were just turning. One day while herding the horses I fell to eating berries and that night became ill. The next day I was very sick and a doctor was sent for. Old One-ear came, a man all of us feared, sat by my bed, beat upon a drum, sang in a loud voice, then turned down the robes that covered me, held a tube of bone against my breast and sucked violently. Then he arose and spat out a grasshopper. Everyone said that I would soon be well, and I was. But while I was too weak to go out, my grandfather came in and told me tales of the war-path and occasionally of the Lost Children, the Woman-who-went-to-the-sky, Morningstar, Scar-face, Blood-clot, and other tales. I came to take a deep interest in these tales and to think more and more of going to war. When I could go out, my people were holding the sun dance and one evening I heard my father reciting his coups, putting on the fire a stick for each. At last when there was a great blaze from so much wood, the people all shouted. It was a proud moment for me and from then on I began to train for the war-path.

Before cold weather our people separated, as was their custom, and our band, with the Fat-roasters and the Many-medicines, made winter camp on the Two Medicine River. It was a cold winter, but buffalo were plenty and we did not mind. In the spring my father led a war party against the Crow. I knew nothing of it until they had gone, but even had I known, he would not have taken me. I felt very sad and spent most of the time sitting on a hill, meditating. One day, on coming to camp I heard the women and even old men wailing. I saw my mother before our door hacking her bare leg with her butchering knife. Then I knew what had happened. The camp crier began to shout out that a runner had come in from a distant camp to say that Old-beaver and all his party had been killed by the Crows. When I met my old grandmother, with blood streaming down her bare arms, the sight sickened me and I fled to the hilltop and meditated further. As I thought of how coup had been counted on my father, my anger grew and I vowed to take a Crow scalp at the first opportunity.

Our camp mourned long after this. It was also necessary to select a new chief. One Good-runner was well thought of and was our choice, but an evil-minded fellow named Crow-eye sought the place. Finding that he was in disfavor, Crow-eye secretly loaded a gun, entered the tepee of Good-runner and shot him down. Crow-eye’s relatives put him on a horse and sent him away for a few days, while they made presents to the relatives of Good-runner. Well, in the end Crow-eye became chief, but it was a sorry time for us all.

As was the custom, my mother went to live with her people, or the Fat-roasting band. My mother’s brother now took an interest in me. He gave me a gun. Guns were scarce in those days. My grandfather remembered when the first gun came to us and said that his father knew when the first horse came. I now spent much of my time with my uncle, though I still looked upon the Small-robes band as my band. He helped me to buy a place in the Pigeon Society and every spring and summer I danced with them and sometimes helped guard the camp at night when the great camp circle was formed.

It was during the summer following my father’s death that I was taken on my first buffalo hunt. Sometimes boys were severely whipped by the police if found joining in running buffalo before they were old enough. But now my uncle took me with him. As guns were scarce, we kept them for war, and killed buffalo with arrows. When we rode at the herd, I took after a young cow. She was very fleet, but at last I drew alongside and sent an arrow into her. When she fell I stood by in awe. My relations praised me and my mother tanned the skin to make a robe for me. I was now a hunter and always joined in the killing unchallenged.

That autumn my mother ceased to mourn and married a man in the Lone-eaters band. After this I saw little of her, for they camped apart and I stayed with my uncle, but danced with my father’s band, the Small-robes. About this time my uncle explained to me the ways of women and the duties of a man, so I began to look forward to having a woman of my own. I began to practice on the flageolet and to seek meetings with the girls of the camp on the path to the water hole; but I knew that though I had become a hunter, I had yet to go to war and to become a man. The opportunity soon came, for I was now about fourteen years old.

One day my uncle said, “Now it is time for you to go to war. When the moon is full, I shall lead a party to the Crow country. You can be the water boy.” You know how it was with us, a boy might be taken to war to do errands. This is how he got his experience.

My uncle had a war bundle, or medicine, in which were a collar of coyote skin, a bird to tie in his hair, some tobacco, a pipe, paints, a whistle and a rattle. Every night we gathered in his tepee to sing the songs of his bundle and to work out the plan for our raid. At last, we were off, eight of us. Though still a boy, I was permitted to take my gun, my bow, and a knife. As we were leaving the tepee my old grandmother asked me not to go; she took my hand and began to wail, but I pulled away. At the edge of the camp stood my uncle’s father-in-law. He pled for all to return. Said he, “I have many horses, more than you can get from the Crow. Take what you want and stay at home. I am old and have not long to be with you.” But we marched by in silence.

Pranks are usually played upon a boy on his first war excursion. The first night one of the warriors said, “Take this pail and run down that path for water, it is far.” I set out briskly only to step into a a deep pool of ill-smelling mud. About this I was teased, and all manner of jokes were made. Of course, the warriors knew the pool was there. They joked about my new paint, my new way of deceiving an enemy, my new perfume (love medicine), and so on. Finally one man in a very solemn manner conferred a new name upon me—Stinking-legs. From that time on, all of them called me by that name.

But by the next night we were in the open country and there was little hilarity. My uncle opened his bundle and performed the ritual for it, all of us singing in a low subdued tone. After this we traveled mostly by night and slept by day, though the warriors took turns scouting. On the fourth day, a scout reported the enemy.

“Now,” said my uncle, “it is time to sing the ‘tapping-the-stick.’” So we all sat in a circle and my uncle began singing very softly, keeping time by tapping lightly on the stock of his gun with the end of his pipe-stick. He sang about a love affair and at the end named the woman. So it went around the circle. The last man, next to me, sang, and then named a young girl I was very fond of. Instinctively, I grasped my knife, but then, Oh shame! I was not yet a warrior, for here no one must resent. So I desisted, but I lay awake the rest of the day struggling with my anger. This was all very foolish, for the man was only teasing me; yet few men would venture to jest in such songs.

That night we stole out and found the Crow camp unguarded. So we took all the loose horses grazing outside and made off with them. Not even a dog barked. When at a safe distance my uncle told us to follow a warrior named Running-crane, that he and one man were going back to get scalps to pay for my father’s death, that they would join us at the rendezvous later. My uncle was accompanied by the man who sang about my girl. On the third day my uncle overtook us, but he was alone. What became of his companion he knew not; he was never seen after they separated to steal into the Crow camp. That was what came of jesting with medicine songs. All holy things must be respected. But my uncle had brought a scalp, a shield, and a gun. So we were happy.

When we got home there was feasting and scalp dancing for all. Finally, my old grandmother drew me out into full view, harangued the crowd upon my greatness as a warrior and said, “Now you must have been given a new name. What is it?” I hung my head for shame, “Oh!” she said, “my grandson is modest.”

Then my uncle came forward and told the story of the mud hole and called me, “Stinking-legs.” Then merriment broke loose and for a long time I was teased about it.

Two of the captured horses were allotted to me: one I gave to my grandfather. Not long after my uncle told me it was time to seek power. This meant that I must fast and sacrifice, seeking a vision. So I took my other Crow horse to old Medicine-bear, a shaman, offered him a pipe, and made my request. My instruction took many weeks. I was introduced to the sweat house and other ceremonies, learned how to make the pipe offering, to cry for power, and so forth. At last all was ready and old Medicine-bear left me alone on a high hill to fast, dance, and pray. Each evening and morning he came and, standing afar off, exhorted me to greater efforts. By the third day I was too exhausted to stand. That night I lay on my back looking up at the sky. Then I saw the Smoking-star.[2] And as I gazed it came nearer and nearer. Then I heard a voice, “My son, why do you cry here?” Then I saw a fine warrior sitting on the ground before me, smoking my pipe. At last he said, “I will give you power. You are to take my name. You must never change it. Always pray to me and I will help you.”

The next morning when old Medicine-bear came and stood afar off I said, “Something has been given me.” Then he prayed and took me home. In due time he heard my story, composed a song for me, gave me a small medicine bundle and announced my new name. I was now a man of power. Many young men offered to go to war with me, so I soon began to lead out parties. Many coups I counted as the years passed, but all came by the power of the Smoking-star. Only once did this power seem to fail me on the war-path. I was alone and surrounded by the Cree. At last I called upon the Sun, offering to give him my little finger. Then I overcame my enemies. So at the next sun dance I chopped off this finger (the left) and offered it to the sun to fulfil my vow. But this belongs to the second period in my life, of which I shall speak later.

Shortly after I saw the Smoking-star, I took a woman. My uncle and my grandparents had often hinted of marriage. I was particularly fond of a girl in the Small-robe band, but could not court her openly because that was my band by right of my father, though I lived with the band of my mother, the Fat-roasters. It is not good for a man to marry in his own band where most of his relatives live, but he can freely marry a woman of his mother’s band, if not too closely related to her. I could have joined my mother’s band, as my uncle urged, and then married the girl, but that seemed to me like evading my duty to uphold the honor of my father and to take revenge for his untimely death. People would talk about it. So I courted a girl in my mother’s band. As she was not closely related to me, there was no hindrance. Our courtship was secret, as is often the custom; when I led out my first war party she slyly passed me a pair of moccasins. I think no one knew of our attachment. You see my mother’s people all looked upon me as one of their band, though they should not have done so, and so looked elsewhere for my future woman. Long afterward I learned that they had picked a woman for me from the Blood band, the widow of a young warrior, a good woman some ten years older than I, but it turned out otherwise.

The girl I courted was named Elk-woman. She and I were nearing twenty and it was time for her to marry, past time in fact. So her relatives arranged to give her to a man of the They-don’t-laugh-band. The relatives of both parties had feasted and talked over the affair and were about ready to exchange the first presents, when Elk-woman’s relatives first suggested the marriage to her. She asked for time to think it over. That evening when I met her as usual in a secret place, she told me the story and cried. Such a marriage was repugnant to her. I knew the man and had already come to dislike him. So that night we ran away. I took my horse, gun, and bow. We rode double. We went far up into the foothills of the mountains and made a secret camp.

Some two weeks later my uncle trailed us and we had a talk. He said I had done a very foolish thing; that all of my woman’s relatives were angry and that the prospective husband vowed vengeance. However, as he had himself made the man a present of a horse and smoked a pipe with him, his anger was waning. He thought that since I had always adhered to my father’s band I should go there to live. Anyway my father’s people would then protect me. In due time presents could be made to my parents-in-law. You see when a man takes a woman, he is required to give many presents to her parents; this is called paying for her. So, I had stolen my woman because nothing had been paid. This would always stand against me in the minds of the people.

The next day we went back to my father’s band. A poor old woman, an aunt of my father, one of my grandmothers, as we say, took us in as we had no tepee. No one seemed to take notice of us. When I hunted I took some of the meat and left it by the door of my father-in-law, as was the custom. Finally, my uncle’s relatives got together and collected six horses, a few robes, a warrior’s suit, and a great lot of dried meat. In solemn procession they paraded over to the camp of my parents-in-law. Then followed a feast and a reconciliation.

Not long after this I happened to meet my mother-in-law in a path. No one must see the face of his mother-in-law; if he does he must make her a present to cover her shame. This accident cost me my gun. It was a grievous loss as we were still poor. My woman had not so much as a travois-dog to bring wood.

At this point the narrator paused and began to fill his pipe. Presently he said, “The Smoking-star is still overhead. We have reached the fork of the first trail; the boy becomes a hunter, goes to war, has a vision, he joins the Pigeons, then marries and takes his place among the men of his band. So far he travels but one trail. Thenceforth it is different with us, some become warriors, some medicine men, some are chiefs. It is well that we rest here a little while, before I go on.”

When the pipe was burned out the story began thus:—

Some time before I was married I bought into the Mosquito society when they sold out to the Pigeons. It was this way with us: There were nine societies for men, of different rank as follows; Mosquitoes, Braves, All-brave-dogs, Front-tails, Raven-bearers, Dogs, Kit-foxes, Catchers, and Bulls. Lower than all was a boy’s society, the Pigeons. To enter these societies you first bought into the Pigeons; that is, you gave presents to an older member who in return transferred his membership to you. Every four years each of the nine men’s societies sold to the next lower; so one might finally, if he lived to be an old man, become a member of the Bulls. These societies were spoken of as the All-comrades. Each had its own songs, dances, regalia, and ritual. When the whole tribe came together for the summer hunt and the sun dance, these societies were called upon to guard and police the camp. Their parades and dances through the camp were very impressive. As all the members of a society were near the same age, these organizations are often called age-societies by the white people.

In time I passed through all of the societies and became a Bull. When in the Raven-bearers we gave a dance at a trading post where Fort Benton now stands and two strange white men watched us. One of them drew a picture of us and afterwards the older man asked questions of me through an interpreter and wrote something in a book. I heard that he came from across the great water as did the first white people, but I never saw him again.[3]

When with my comrades in the Bulls we sold out to the Catchers, I became one of the old men to sit in council and advise the people. There are two leaders for each society. I was never a leader, because the leaders of one always sold to the leaders of the lower, and it so happened during my life that the same two men lived to reach the Bulls. So there was no chance for anyone else to lead. But we are now far ahead of my story, I must begin with my life as one of the young married men.

After I came back with my woman to live in my band, old Medicine-bear often sat in our tepee. (My woman soon tanned skins from my hunting and made a large fine tepee of our own.) He wished me to become a shaman like himself. You see I had experienced a real vision, few men who fasted received such power as came to me. I had the power to become a shaman, but I held to my vow to be a warrior. I was poor. So I led war parties against the Cree, Assiniboin, Snake, and Crow. Many horses and guns I took. Coups I counted and took three scalps from the Crow. But I meditated often upon the powers in the air, water, and earth. They are the great mysteries. Everything is done by them. About this time two things happened to me that turned my thoughts from war.

Our chief led a party against the Cree and invited me to go. The chief was jealous of me. As I told you, he was a bad man, but I could not refuse. Medicine-bear, the shaman, went with us to give us power. When we reached the Cree country I was ordered out as a scout. It was dark. As I went along I saw a tepee all by itself. I went up to it quietly and looked in. There was no one in the tepee except a man, his wife, and a little child. The little child could just walk and was amusing itself by dipping soup from the kettle with a small horn spoon. The man and his wife were busy talking and paid no attention to the child. Now the child looked up and saw me peeping through the hole, toddled over to the kettle, dipped up some soup in the spoon and held it to my lips. I drank and the child returned to the kettle for more. In this way the child fed me for many minutes. Then I went away. As I went along to my own party, I thought to myself, “I do not like to do this, but I must tell my party about this tepee. When they know of it, they will come and kill these people. This little child fed me even when I was spying upon them, and I do not like to have it killed. Well, perhaps I can save the child; but then it would be too bad for it to lose its parents. No, I do not see how I can save them, yet I cannot bear to have them killed.” I sat down and thought it over. After a while, I went back to the tepee, went in, and sat down. While my host was preparing the pipe, the child began to feed me again with the spoon. After we had smoked, I talked to the man in the sign-language, told him all about it, how I had come as a scout to spy upon them, how I was about to bring up my war party, but that they had been saved by the little child. Then I directed the man to go at once, leaving everything behind him in the tepee.

The man was very thankful and offered to give me a medicine bundle and a suit of clothes; but I refused, because I knew that my party would suspect me. Then the man suggested that he might place the bundle near the door, behind the bedding, so that when the war party came up and dashed upon the tepee, I would be the first to capture the bundle. (All the important property of the tepee is always kept at the back, opposite the door, and, when a war party rushes in, the swiftest runs to this place.)

Then I reported to my chief, telling him that I had discovered a camp of the enemy but that I had not been up to it or seen anyone. He started out at once, all of us following. When we had surrounded the tepee, we gave a whoop and rushed upon it. I kept behind and while the others were busy counting coup upon the things in the back of the tepee, I seized the bundle by the door. The chief was angry, but said nothing. When we were again in camp old Medicine-bear began to unwrap his war medicine pipe to make a thank offering for our success. Then the chief faced me and denounced me as a traitor, accused me of warning the enemy and secreting the medicine bundle. My anger rose, I drew my knife, but at that moment old Medicine-bear sprang between us, holding the holy pipe in both hands. This is the custom, no one can fight over a holy pipe. The shaman made us each take the pipe and vow to put away our anger and hold our silence. So it was.

Never have I forgotten that little child. Some great power was guarding it. Its medicine was strong. Many times have I prayed to that power and sometimes it helped me, but I do not yet know what power it is. Yet somehow I took little interest in war, the child’s medicine did that to me.

The next year I felt sad and gloomy. So I decided to go to war anyway. I led out a party of my own against the Crow. The fourth night I went out to scout. It was cloudy and rather dark. As I was stealing along a marshy place, a star rose out of the earth and stood before me. It was the Smoking-star. Something in me said, “Follow.” Then the star led off slowly; gradually it took me to the back trail and then swiftly faded away, as it moved toward my woman’s tepee at home. I sat down and prayed. In my mind the Smoking-star was telling me to go back.

When dawn came I returned to my party. I told my story. All agreed that we should go home for the signs were against us. When I got into our camp I saw many people standing about my woman’s tepee and heard a doctor’s drum. My son, my first born, was very ill. Three doctors had been called, one after the other. I gave them all my horses. As is their way, when they feared the sick one would die, they departed. At last, I went out to the top of a hill to cry to the Smoking-star. Surely, I thought, he would help me, but clouds overcast the sky and there was no answer to my appeal. That morning the boy died.

In the afternoon the body was wrapped in a robe and placed in a tree near our camp. As he died in the tepee, we could not use it again so we placed it at the foot of the tree. I cropped my hair and mourned many days. Now I was poor. All my horses went to the doctors. My woman’s tepee was gone and once again we lived with our poor old grandmother in her little ragged tepee; but in a few days my woman’s relatives gave her another tepee and after a time we again accumulated horses.

About this time Medicine-bear became a beaver bundle owner. My misfortunes turned my mind more and more to the mysteries of the powers around us and I began to learn the songs and the teachings of the beaver men. The ritual for the beaver bundle is long and difficult. There are more than three hundred songs to be learned before one can lead the ceremony of the beaver. In the bundle are the skins of beavers, otters, and many kinds of birds and water animals. With each of these there are songs, for each brought some power to the man who first saw it in a vision. My people did not plant corn, as did the Mud-houses (Mandan and Hidatsa), but the beaver men planted tobacco. At the planting and the gathering of the tobacco, the beaver bundle is opened and the ritual sung. The garden and the plants are sacred, for tobacco must be offered to all the powers of the earth, and of the water. A beaver man must keep count of the days, the moons, and the winters. For this he keeps a set of sticks like those sometimes found in a beaver’s house. At all times he must be ready to tell the moon and the day; he must say when it is time to go on the spring hunt, to hold the sun dance, etc. Then he must watch the sun, moon, stars, winds, and clouds so that he may know what the weather will be. If he is holy and good, he will have visions and dreams of power and so become a shaman.

So after my son died I often sat with the beaver men. In time I learned many of the beaver songs and became chief assistant to Medicine-bear in the ceremonies. When I was an old man, Medicine-bear died; it was the year before I sold out of the Bull society (the year we saw the first steamboat). Then I became the leading beaver man, as I am still.

When I first began to study the beaver medicine, I spent hours on the hilltops and near the waters, meditating and watching the birds, animals, and the heavens. Yet such solemn thoughts did not occupy all my time as a young married man.

There was much sport in the winter camps. Many men played the wheel and arrow game and again the hand game. These were the favorite gambling games. The first was for two players, but the latter permitted team playing. Some men gambled away all their belongings and even their women. I never went so far. Once I remember two young men played the wheel game until one lost all his possessions except his moccasins and his breechcloth, finally losing these, to the great merriment of the whole camp.

My band had a great reputation for jokes. In this I was a leader. Once in the spring we fooled a man named Bow-string. This man had a favorite race horse which he guarded very carefully, picketing him outside his tepee. One day I dressed myself to look like a Crow, and while Bow-string was inside playing the hand game, untied his horse and led him off up the hills across the creek. Then a confederate gave the alarm. All ran out to see a Crow going off with the horse in broad day. Of course, everyone knew the trick, but Bow-string. Care had been taken to send all the other horses of the camp out to pasture with a herder. So Bow-string took a gun and set out with a pursuing party, afoot. Everybody in camp appeared to be greatly frightened, women screamed, and all the dogs began to bark. As the supposed Crow, I sprang upon the horse, waved a defiance and dashed over the hill.

Once out of sight I rode quickly around the hills and got back to camp after the pursuers had passed over the ridge. After a fruitless search for the trail, the party came back, Bow-string looking very sad. But there stood his horse tied as before! Then there was great uproar and jesting.

A favorite trick of mine was often played upon visiting strangers, especially upon dignified old men. I would invite the guest to my tepee to feast with a few of my friends. Then I would pretend to quarrel with my woman and we would fall to fighting. The others would try to separate us and so all begin to struggle, taking care to fall upon and thoroughly muss up the puzzled visitor.

Our people were fond of liquor, which could be had when we went to the trading posts in summer. At such times there was much fighting. We all wanted liquor because we believed that some mysterious power could be had in that way. Some men had visions while drunk, that made them shamans or doctors according to the powers that were given them. Sometimes I drank liquor too. Once when my woman was drunk also, we quarreled and I threatened to tomahawk her smallest child, but she snatched a burning stick from the fire and thrust the glowing end against my neck; you see the scar. After that I did not drink much. I was glad when the Great Father stopped the trading of liquor, it did us much harm.

Once a year in summer all the bands of our tribe camped together. A great circle of tepees was formed and the societies had charge of the camp. At this time the sun dance was held. It was very sacred and lasted many days. No man was wise enough to know how all parts of it were conducted, so many medicine men were needed for the different rituals. Some men would vow to torture themselves at this time. I once gave a finger to the sun, but that is not the real sacrifice. Those who made the vow have holes cut in the skin of their breasts and shoulders, through which sticks are thrust and cords attached. The ends of these cords are fastened to the center pole in the sun dance lodge, where these devotees dance and cry for power until they tear themselves free or fall in a swoon: I never made this sacrifice. I was afraid, for it is very holy. Yet many times have I given bits of my skin to Natos (the sun) as the scars upon my body show. These were not given in the sun dance, but when I was fasting alone in the hills.

A good and virtuous woman may often save the lives of her relatives by making a vow to take the tongues at the sun dance. My woman did this in the year known as “Gambler-died-winter” (about 1845, according to most tribal counts). Her brother was about to die. So she went outside, looked up at the sun, and said, “I will take the tongue at the sun dance.” Her brother got well. If she had not been a pure and good woman, he would have died. In due time old Medicine-bear, the beaver bundle man, was given a horse and called in to prepare her for the ordeal. During the spring a hundred buffalo tongues were sliced and dried. Only true women are permitted to slice them. If a woman cuts her finger or cuts a hole in her slice, she is turned out because she has not been true to her husband. At the proper time in the sun dance, as the sun is setting, the women who have vowed to take the tongues go forward and in turn, take up a piece of tongue and holding it up to the sun, declare their purity. It is the duty of any man, who knows the claim to be false to come forward with a challenge. My woman was not challenged. Everyone knew her to be pure and good.

Once she was the holy woman to give the sun dance. It was in the deep snow winter (about 1851) that she became ill. Many people were starving, for the buffalo had drifted far before the snowstorms. Then my woman addressed the sun, saying that she would give the sun dance, next year. Soon the people found buffalo and she got well.

A woman cannot give the sun dance alone, her man must also be good and brave. Both must fast four days and sit in the holy tepee. The holy natoas bundle must be opened and the woman wear its sacred headdress, with the prairie turnip and carry the digging-stick used by the Woman-who-married-a-star. That winter we were camped on the Missouri. The following summer we went to Yellow River to give the sun dance.

Now, it is our way, that the woman who vows to give the sun dance must buy a natoas bundle. The power and right to the ritual thus come to her. For this, many horses, robes, and dried meat must be given. When we came to bring our bundle all the people of our band and our relatives in other bands were called upon to help us by gifts. After the sun dance we kept the natoas bundle in our tepee and cared for it as the ritual required. My woman was now a medicine woman. She did not sell her bundle. In the Blood-fought-among-themselves winter she died (about 1858). I put the bundle in her robe, set up her tepee on a high hill and left her there. That is our custom.

She was a good and true woman. After that I went to live with my son, as you now see. I never took another woman because the Smoking-star appeared to me in a dream and forbade it.

In the course of time everyone came to look upon me as a shaman. No one will now walk before me as I sit in a tepee. In my presence all are dignified and orderly and avoid frivolous talk. Four times in my life the Smoking-Star has stood before me. All visions are sacred, as are some dreams, but when a vision appears the fourth time, it is very holy. Even a shaman may not speak of it freely. Many times have I gone to lonely places and cried out to the powers of the air, the earth, and the waters to help me understand their ways. Sometimes they have answered me, but all the truly great mysteries are beyond understanding.

In the year of the Camp-at-bad-waters-winter the Bull society sold out as I have said. That was the end of that society; there were but three of us left when we sold to the Catchers and those to whom we sold soon died. The ways of the white man were coming among us and many things were passing away. I was now an old man, fit only for sitting in council. I could no longer run buffalo, no longer go to war. So we have come to the last fork in the trail. I have smoked many pipes. I have sat in many councils, I have made many speeches to restrain our young men from rash and unjust actions. We are near the end. The Smoking-star will soon pass down in the west. Soon it will lead me to the sand hills where my spirit will wander about among the ghosts of buffalo, horses, and men. Your way is not our way, but you have loved us. Perhaps your spirit also may return to wander with us among the sand hills of our fathers. I pray that it may be so. Now, it is finished.

Thoughtfully I left that fireside to find my blankets. As I passed out through the night, I saw the “Smoking-star” sinking in the west. It shone to me with a new light. The next winter my old friend passed into the beyond. His body was laid on a tree scaffold near the favorite haunts of his band on Two Medicine River.

Clark Wissler

Little-wolf Joins the Medicine Lodge

I
IN THE LODGE OF THE MASTER

Matcikineu, Terrible-eagle, sat dozing in the dusk in his round, rush-mat wigwam. The fire smouldered, but random drafts, slipping in through the swinging mat that covered the door, encouraged little dancing flames to spring up, and these illumined the far interior of the lodge, so that it was possible to observe its furnishings down to the mustiest cranny.

Around the inner circumference of the wigwam, ran a broad rustic bench, supported by forked sticks and thickly strewn balsam boughs on which lay bearskin robes. The inner wall of the home was hung with woven reed mats, bearing designs in color, of angular figures and conventional floral motifs. Over Terrible-eagle’s head, on smoke encrusted poles, swung several mat-covered, oval bundles, festooned with age-blackened gourd rattles, war clubs, and utensils and weapons of unusual portent. These were his sacred war and hunting bundles, packets of charms whose use and accompanying formulæ he had obtained personally from the Gods, while fasting, or purchased at a great price from others more fortunate than he. For Terrible-eagle was a renowned war leader, a hunter, and the greatest of all Mätc Mitäwûk, Masters of the Grand Medicine Society, a secret fraternal and medical organization, to which, in one form or another, nearly every Indian of influence in all the Great Lakes and Central Western region belonged.

The door covering was quietly thrust aside and Anäm, a wolf-like dog, trotted in to curl up by the fire, while after him, first dropping a load of faggots from her shoulders, stumbled Wábano-mitämu, Dawn-woman, wife of Terrible-eagle, who crouched down grumbling to enter the lodge, and turned on her time-gnarled knees to drag the kindlings in after her.

Roused by the noise, Terrible-eagle stretched and yawned, then reached over his head and took down a calabash-shell rattle, which he began to shake gently, while Dawn-woman shoved aside the birch-bark boxes that cluttered the floor, stirred up the fire in the round, shallow pit where it was glowing, and set among the hot embers a large, round, deep, pointed-bottomed kettle of brown earthenware, the base of which she screwed into the ashes by a quick, circular twist of the rim. Into this kettle she poured some water from a birch-bark pail; and, when it began to simmer, added a quantity of wild rice, smoked meat, and dried berries, which she stirred with an elaborate wooden-spoon paddle.

The random swish of Terrible-eagle’s rattle now began to articulate itself in the form of a tune, the motif of which might have been borrowed from the night babblings and murmurings of a woodland brook. It rose like the prattle of water racing down stony riffles; it fell to the purring monotone of a little fall burbling into a deep pool.

Then, suddenly, Terrible-eagle raised his voice in song—a song without meaning to the uninitiated—yet a song potent with the powers of Manitous, and ancient as the pine forests.

“Ni mánituk, häwatûkuk, kê’nêäminûm.”

“You, my gods, I am singing to you!”

“Look you, old fellow,” cried Dawn-woman, squatting beside her cooking, “why do you sing that sacred song? There is no need to rehearse the chants of the Manitous when ice binds the rivers, and snow blankets the land! When new life dawns with the grass blades in the spring, then we will need to refresh our memories; not now, while the gods sleep like bears.”

“Silence, old partner! You do not know everything! Even now there comes one seeking the knowledge of the path our brethren and fellows have trod before us. Listen!”

The lodge was hushed with the heavy silence of the Wisconsin forest in midwinter. Then came the crunch and squeak of approaching snowshoes slipping over the crusted drifts.

“N’hau, Dawn-woman! Prepare the guest place, spread robes behind the fire, dish out a bowl of soup! Some one of our people desires to enter!”

The noise ceased before the doorway, and Terrible-eagle, now hunched before the fire, paused before dropping a hot coal on the tobacco in his red stone pipe, to bid the guest to enter. “Yoh!” came the hearty response, and a tall, dark warrior, bareheaded save for a fillet of otter fur around his brows, ducked under the doorway and silently passed round the fire, on the left, to the guest place, where he seated himself, cross-legged, on a pile of robes. He was clad in a plain shirt of blue-dyed deerskin, deeply fringed on the seams, in flapping, leather leggings, high soft-soled moccasins, and a leather apron handsomely embroidered with colored porcupine quills wrought in delicate, flowered figures. He bore no weapon, and on his swarthy cheeks two round spots of red paint were seen in the firelight.

After the newcomer had eaten a bowl of steaming stew with the aid of a huge, wooden ladle, he lay back among the robes, puffing comfortably on a long-stemmed pipe with bowl of red stone, filled and lighted for him by the old man. As the cheerful odor of tobacco and kinnikinick permeated the lodge, the stranger began to speak. He informed the old people that his name was Muhwäsê, Little-wolf, of the Wave clan of the Menomini, that he had come all the way from Mätc Suamäko, the Great Sand Bar village on the Green Bay of Lake Michigan; that the young men had opened their war bundles, and danced preparatory to going to war against the Sauk, but that the Sauk had heard the news and fled southward. He ended with all the gossip and tittle-tattle of his band.

It was not until Dawn-woman slept, and the stars were visible in the winter sky through the smoke hole of the lodge, that Little-wolf went out abruptly, and returned bearing a huge bundle which he dumped on the floor at the feet of Terrible-eagle, and silently took his place on the lounge once more.

With trembling hands the old man undid the leathern thongs and unwrapped the bearskin with which the bundle was enclosed, and spread before him an array of articles that brought an avaricious sparkle to his red-rimmed eyes.

“Nimá, nékan! Well done, my colleague!” he exclaimed. “These are valuable gifts, and in the proper number. Four hatchets, four spears, and four knives of the sacred yellow rock (native copper), four belts of white wampum, and four garments of tanned deerskin, embroidered with quillwork, with much tobacco. Surely this gift has a meaning?”

“Grandfather! You to whom nothing is hard,” replied the visitor. “It is true that I am nobody. I am poor—the enemy scarcely know my name. Yet I am desirous of eating the food of the Medicine Lodge, as all the brethren have done who have passed this way before me!”

“N’hau, my grandson! I shall call together the three other Pushwäwûk, or masters, for their consent. What you have asked for, may seem as nothing to you—yet it is Life. These songs may appear to partake of the ways of children—yet they are powerful. I understand you well; you desire to imitate the ways of our own ancient Grand Master, Mä’näbus, who was slain and brought to life that we might gain life unending! Good! You have done well. In the morning I shall send invitation-sticks and tobacco to summon the leaders here, that your instruction may begin at once!”

II
THE INSTRUCTION

It was an hour after sunset. In the rear of the lodge sat Terrible-eagle and three other old men, with Little-wolf at their left. Before them lay the pile of valuable gifts, and, on the white-tanned skin of an unborn fawn, stood the sacred towaka or deep drum, hollowed by infinite labor from a short section of a basswood log, holding two fingers’ depth of water to make its voice resonant, and covered with a dampened membrane of tanned, buck hide. Across its head was balanced a crooked drumstick, its striking end carved to represent a loon’s beak. Before the drum, was placed a wooden bowl in the shape of a minature, log canoe heaped with tobacco, and four gourd rattles with wooden handles which shone from age and usage. A youth tended the fire and kept the air redolent with incense of burning sweet grass and cedar. Dawn-woman and Anäm, the dog, guarded the door.