Jack the Young Cowboy: An Eastern Boy's Experiance on a Western Round-up

by George Bird Grinnell

  CHAPTER XII

  INDIAN STORIES

  The next day was one of hard work--cutting cattle and brandingcalves; but as the number of cows in this bunch was small, the workof separating the brands and branding the calves was not so great asmight have been expected from the number of cattle to be worked. Therewas an unusual number of strays, as the boys had noticed for severaldays past, and these were all turned into the big bunch which McIntyreproposed to send over to the home range on the Pick Ranch.

  So it happened that night that the boys were less tired than afteran ordinary day's work. Supper came early and they lounged about thefire talking and smoking, for the evening was cool and the warmth ofthe fire pleasant. A sharp shower of rain had fallen in the middle ofthe night before, more or less rousing the sleepers, who had hurriedabout looking up their slickers which they spread over their blankets.The early morning was clear and bright, but cool, and the higher hillsin the distance showed that there the rain had been snow, for theywere white for a long distance below their summits. The cool weathercontributed something to the ease of the day's work, and during themorning there was less dust than usual, although by midday all themoisture had dried, and the powdery clouds of dust were as suffocatingas they usually are when cattle are being handled.

  Jack had not forgotten Mason's promise to tell him John Monroe's storyof the movements of the Blackfeet tribes in early days; and not longafter supper he spoke to him about this. Mason was slow to respond,declaring that Hugh Johnson probably knew the story better than he, andcould tell it if he would. But after some persuasion Mason began.

  "Well, according to old John Monroe, the way I remember what he toldme, it was like this:

  "The old men say that a long time ago, in the time of our grandfathers,or great-grandfathers, or even back before that, the Blackfeetpeople used to live out in the timber country away east of the RockyMountains. In that land they were at war with people, who fought withthem and troubled them. Game was hard to get, for their only weaponswere arrows pointed with bits of stone and with these weapons it washard for them to kill food. They had never been a people that ate fish,but believed that all animals and all birds were fit for food and couldbe eaten.

  "John said that the attacks of their enemies and the difficulty ofgetting food were the things that made them move from that lowercountry up closer to the mountains. He says that when he was a littleboy, and afterward when he was larger, he used to hear in the lodgethe talks between his mother and an old Blood Indian named Su' ta ne.This old man may have been some sort of relation to John, but aboutthat I don't know. At all events, Su' ta ne was then very old, and thetime he used to talk about was when he was a little boy. Su' ta ne hadheard his father speak of the trouble that they used to have down inthe timber country, and said that it was in his father's boyhood thatthey began to move westward, traveling up the Saskatchewan or some ofthe rivers that flow into it. Su' ta ne said that it was when he wasa little boy that they first saw the Rocky Mountains; this, accordingto John, must have been a long time ago. John must be now sixty orsixty-five years old, and he said that Su' ta ne was very old when heused to hear him talk about this. If we say that John heard it fiftyyears ago and that Su' ta ne was born when his father was thirty, itcarries the beginning of the movement back a hundred and thirty or ahundred and forty years, which, according to my guess, would be about1745 or 50, and I reckon that was a long time before any white man gotinto the country where those people used to live. Maybe, though, it wasa good deal longer ago than that. I guess all John meant was that itwas long, long ago, and when Su' ta ne said that it was in his father'stime that they began to move toward the mountains, he may have meantonly that this move was before he knew anything."

  "I guess you're right there, Jack," said Hugh. "Indians are mightyweak on dates, after they get back farther than they themselves canremember."

  "Yes," went on Mason, "I don't believe it's any use to try to fix adate. It's bound to be guesswork. Anyhow, old John said that Su' tane, when he described the country that they lived in, said it wasmostly timbered, with stretches of prairie among the timber--somethinglike big parks, I reckon.

  "It was in Su' ta ne's time, in his young days, as I understood, thatthe Blackfeet, who had been slowly drifting westward, at last reachedthe mountains. When they got to the rough country they found therelots of game of all kinds, and found it very much easier to get closeto than it ever had been before. So they thought that the change theyhad made was a mighty good one; and that's the way they changed froma timber living people to a mountain people. It was a good whileafter this that they got horses and began to travel around out onthe prairie. The old men used to tell John that the time they firstventured out on the prairie was when they began to travel along the oldtrail which still runs north and south along the mountains. Of course,you know the old Red River cart trail, Hugh, and very likely you too,Jack."

  "Yes," replied Hugh, "I know it; but I don't believe son here has everbeen on it."

  "Old John Monroe believes thoroughly in this story, and he naturallywould, because it comes from his mother, and his relations, but he saysthat all the old Indians in that northern country believe in it justthe same as he does. He believes that the Crees and the Blackfeet arerelations, though he doesn't pretend that they are very close relations.

  "Well, according to old John, a while after the Indians got up closeto the mountains there, up North, the white man came into the country;and when the white men came, the Indians began to get guns. Before thatthey had begun to get horses, maybe through the Kutenais on the otherside of the mountains; and when they got guns and horses they beganto take courage and to venture out on the prairie. They began to findout that they could fight their enemies and take care of themselves.Besides this, they had learned that while there were no horses north ofthem, the tribes to the south had horses; and of course that led totheir going more and more to war, because everybody wanted horses. Theywere about the most valuable things that a man could get hold of. Thesejourneys to war and their fightings led to the Indians moving southalong the foot of the mountains, and out on the prairie.

  "Now of course I'm just telling you what John Monroe told me. I don'tknow anything about it myself."

  "Well," said Hugh, "I guess that's gospel; and it always seemed to methat the names that the Blackfeet have for the different points of thecompass were very good evidence that the Blackfeet did come from thenorth. The Blackfeet word for north means back, or behind, direction;while the word for south means ahead, or before, direction. It seems tome mighty natural that if people were traveling they should call thedirection that they had come from, behind direction, and the one thatthey were going to, ahead direction. Of course the two words for eastand west they called down direction and up direction. That doesn't meananything more than that the streams that they crossed were flowing downhill toward the lower land; while they were flowing from the higherland which lay to the west."

  "I never heard that before," said Mason. "That's mighty funny; and itcertainly seems to back up John Monroe's story about their having comefrom the north."

  "Did John tell you," asked Hugh, "about the story of the people gettingseparated?"

  "Yes," Mason answered. "He told me that all the Piegans believe thatsomewhere off in the southern country, there's a tribe of Piegans--atleast a tribe of people who speak the same language that the Pieganstalk--and they believe that those people are a part of the Piegantribe. I don't just remember how they got separated, but I do recallthat it was when they were crossing a big water that the separationtook place. Do you remember it, Hugh?"

  "Yes," said Hugh. "This was the story, as I heard it. A long time agoa big camp of people, the whole Piegan tribe, were traveling southand they came to a big river and started to cross it on the ice. Ofcourse, in those days the tribe was a big one, and when they marchedthey were strung out over a long distance. Some of the people hadalready crossed the river; some
were yet on the ice; but most of themhad not yet come to the stream. As they were going along, a child sawfrozen in the ice a buffalo horn that was shiny and pretty and criedfor it. Some old woman began to knock it loose, and while she was doingthat, suddenly the ice in the river broke up. Pretty much all theIndians on the ice were drowned; and now there was a big wide swollenstream full of running ice separating the two portions of the tribe.Of course the people could not sit down on the bank and wait for thestream to go down, and starve to death. Each party had to start out andlook for food, and the two parties never met again. So it is that thenorth Indians still believe that somewhere off to the south there area lot of Blackfeet living as a tribe. Men say that in their travels,either on the war-path or visiting other tribes, they have met peoplewho speak a language so much like their own that they could understandthem. Nobody really knows anything about it."

  "Well," said Jack, "that's a great story. Wouldn't it be fun to goaround among the Indian tribes and try to hunt up those Blackfeet andtell them about their relations up North?"

  "Yes," added Mason, "that's a good story. I remember now that that'sjust about what John Monroe told me; but I couldn't have told it theway Hugh did."

  "It's a good story," said Hugh, "but it's a story that a good manytribes of Indians tell. I've heard the Cheyennes tell the same story;and the Sarcees, and the Crows. Now I wonder if it isn't just some oldlegend founded on something that maybe really did happen once, but thathas been adopted by half a dozen tribes that don't seem to be any kinto each other, as far as we know?

  "One time, when I was younger and heard this same story told by twotribes, I thought maybe I'd found the people that used to belong to theBlackfeet; but I reckon that's not so. You know, if you've traveledaround, that you'll find lots of different tribes that have the samestory and each tribe thinks the story belongs to it. Nobody knows wherethat story originally came from, nor to whom it actually belongs."

  "Say, Hugh," Mason asked, "did you ever hear that story told by JohnMonroe, about the first time the north Indians saw the white people?"

  "Yes," replied Hugh, "I've heard that story; but a good while ago, andI don't feel sure that I could tell it. Do you remember it well enoughto give it to us?"

  "Well, I don't know that I do; but, if you'd like, I'll try it."

  "Pitch in," said Hugh; and McIntyre added, "Go it, Mason."

  "This happened a long time ago, old John Monroe said, but how long, ofcourse, I can't tell, any more than he could; but, according to thestory, this was the first time the Blackfeet ever saw any white people.John said that old Su' ta ne told him the story and Su' ta ne said thathis grandfather was one of the Blackfeet people. It happened when theBlackfeet were living up North, as I've just told you about. Here's thestory:

  "A party of Indians were traveling south, and while they were goingthrough a big patch of timber on the north of some big river, they sawsomething that they could not understand. It looked like beaver workwhere beavers had been cutting down trees, but when they looked at thestumps and the cuttings they could see that no beaver that they knewanything about could possibly have opened its mouth wide enough to cutsuch chips. They talked and wondered about this and finally concludedthat the tree must have been cut down by some mysterious animal. Youknow the Blackfeet are great fellows for believing that there arestrange animals and people living under the water, and they thoughtthat this work must have been done by under-water animals.

  "Presently they came to a place where one of the trees that had beencut down, after having its branches lopped off, had been dragged alongthe ground. They followed the trail, anxious to find out what washappening, and as they followed it they saw that all through the timberthere were many other trails like this, and that presently they allcame together in one big trail, and in this trail they found tracksthat looked like the tracks of people, but they were not shaped likethe track of a human foot, and besides that, at the back of this trackthere was a deep mark.

  "Well, they followed the trail which was now getting to be a big one,and presently they came to where they could see that the timber endedand there was an open spot beyond, and as they looked out through thetimber they saw some animals walking around on their hind legs. For aminute they thought that they were bears playing with sticks, but thenthey saw that these looked like people, and that they were lifting uplogs and putting them in a great pile. As they looked, they saw thatsome of these animals had a great deal of hair or wool on their faces;they seemed to be naked, for they wore no robes. Some had red bodiesand some black ones. So they saw that they could not be people. Asthey talked about it, they concluded that these were certainly someunder-water animals, but they wondered what they could be doing withthese sticks.

  "They were frightened by what they saw, and fearing that these animalsmight discover them and hurt them, they finally started away and wentback to their own country without being seen. When they reached homethey told their story and the people who heard it could not understandit, for they were told of something that was wholly outside of theirown experiences. Here were people who were naked, who had red bodies,or again were dark colored everywhere, except for a red stripe aroundthe body and a red tail.

  "The story was so strange that pretty much all the men in the campwanted to know more about it--to see this wonderful sight forthemselves; and so quite a party started back to the place. When theyreached the open part of the timber, these mysterious animals werestill at work there. The head man of the Blackfeet must have been apretty plucky fellow, for he ordered all his party to stay where theywere, and said that he would go out and meet these animals and tryto find out something about them. But he told his men that if thesestrange creatures attacked him, they must come out and help him.

  "That Indian sure had plenty of sand. He walked down toward thesepeople; and when they saw him, one of them walked up to him and stuckout his hand and took the Indian's hand and moved it up and down. TheIndian looked at the white man and at the white man's hand, but he hadno idea what this meant, and did nothing. Presently other white mencame up to him, and the Indian discovered that they were people likehimself, except that they had different voices and different coloredskin and hair.

  "After a while, when the Indians in the timber saw no harm had come totheir chief, they came out a few at a time and went down toward thewhite people. The white people talked to them and made signs to them,but the Indians could not understand what they meant. At last, however,the whites managed to make some of the Indians understand that theywanted them to go into the house with them, and a number of them wentin; and as some time went by without anything terrible happening, allthe Indians began to take courage.

  "In this house there were a great many wonderful things. The whitepeople carried knives in their belts and showed the Indians how thesewould cut. The Indians were nearly tickled to death with the knives.Then a great big white man showed them an ax, and while they stood byhe cut a big log in two in a very short time; and when the Indians sawthe chips fly they began to understand the strange beaver work thatthey had seen.

  "One of the white men took down from the wall something that theIndians thought was a long, straight stick but when the man showed itto them they could see that while part of it was made of wood a partwas made of a hard black stone. The white man kept making signs aboutthis stick, but they didn't know what he meant. Pretty soon the mantook a white cow's horn, and out of it poured some black sand intohis hand and poured this into a hole at the end of the stick. Then hemade a little ball of grass and pushed this into the hole with anotherstick; then out of a bag he took something that was round and heavyand put that into the hole, and pushed down some more grass; then hepoured some of the black sand into the side of the stick. The Indianswatched him do all these things, and of course had no idea as to whatit all meant. After he had finished doing these things, the white manmade signs to the Indians and made a great noise with his mouth, andpointed to the stick. He put the stick to his shoulder, holding it outin front of
him, and made motions of many kinds. Presently he gave thestick to one of the Indians, and put his finger on a little piece ofstone sticking out from beneath it. When the Indian touched this underpart, the stick made a terrible noise and a big smoke, and flew out ofthe Indian's hands, and he nearly fell down.

  "All the Indians were very much scared, and some of them fell down, butall the white men laughed and nodded, and made signs, but of course theIndians did not understand them.

  "Now the white man picked up the stick from the ground where it hadfallen and again took the horn of black sand and did the same thingsto the stick as before, but this time the Indians all stood away fromhim. They didn't know what was going to happen. After the white manhad finished doing these things, he persuaded them to come out ofdoors with him. Then he sat down on the ground and put the stick tohis shoulder, pointing it toward a log that was lying on the ground.Again the terrible noise was heard, but the white man didn't let go thestick. He held it in his hand. Then he got up and walked over to thelog and showed the bullet hole, and pushed a little stick into it. Thenhe loaded the gun again.

  "By this time the Indians were beginning to understand the power ofthis stick; and at last, after the white man had loaded the gun againand encouraged the Indians, he took one of them close to the log andshowed him how to point the gun and how to pull the trigger. The Indianfired and hit the log. I reckon when he found that he had hit it hethought that he was one of the biggest men in the country.

  "Well, after a while the Indians and the white men got to be prettyfriendly. The Indians could see that knives and axes and copper cups,to say nothing of guns, were a heap better than anything they had; andthe white men on the other hand wanted the furs and dresses that theIndians wore. They traded for them, and after a while the Indians andthe white people got to know each other pretty well, and commenced totrade regularly.

  "And that's the story as I heard it."

  "You told that mighty well, Mason," commented Hugh; "a great dealbetter than anybody else could tell it, except perhaps old John Monroe,or some of those old Piegans."

  "But I want a lot of explanation," said Joe. "What about those fellowswith the red tails? I don't savvy that a bit. I can understand aboutthe red bodies, because I suppose that means they wore red shirts, butwhat about the red tails?"

  "Well, Joe," replied Hugh, "you've never been out in that northerncountry or else you wouldn't ask a question like that. The oldvoyageurs and people in the North always used to wear a red sash tiedaround their waist with the long ends hanging down in front. When theywere working, to get these ends out of the way, they used to pass themaround their body, and then under the sash, so that they hung downbehind."

  "Well," laughed Joe, "that certainly is the limit."

  "And," Jack said, "just think of their taking a tree chopped downwith an ax for one cut down by a beaver; and their not knowing thefoot-prints of a person wearing a shoe!"

  "Sho," drawled Hugh; "haven't I told you time and again that we allof us measure up things by what we ourselves have seen, and we findit hard to believe anything that's outside the range of our ownexperience. If there was any way of proving it, I'd be willing to bet agood horse and saddle and bridle that if we'd been there we'd all haveacted just the way those Indians did."