Read Ebook: Blackfeet Tales of Glacier National Park by Schultz James Willard

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Ebook has 611 lines and 50091 words, and 13 pages

"On an evening in her twentieth summer a large party of warriors started out to cross the mountains and raid the Flatheads. They traveled all night, and when daylight came found that Weasel Woman was with them.

"'Go back! Go home!' the war chief told her. But she would not listen.

"'If you will not let me go with you, I shall follow you,' she said.

"And then spoke up the medicine man of the party: 'Chief,' said he, 'I advise you to allow her to go with us; something tells me that she will bring us good luck.'

"'Ah! As you advise me, so shall it be,' said the war chief; and the woman went on with them. No man of that party teased her, nor bothered her in any way: every one of them treated her as they would a sister. It was the strangest war party that ever set forth from any tribe of the plains!

"It was at the edge of Flathead Lake that they discovered the enemy, a large camp of the Flatheads and their friends, the Pend d'Oreilles. When night came they went close up to it, and the woman said to the war chief: 'Let me go in first. Let me see what I can do. I feel that I shall be successful in there.'

"'Go!' the chief told her, 'and we will wait for you here, and be ready to help you if you get into trouble.'

"The woman went into the camp, where all the best horses of the people--their fast buffalo runners, their racers, and their stallions--were picketed close to the lodges of the different owners of them. If she was afraid of being discovered and killed, she never admitted it. The dying moon gave light enough for her to see the size and color of the horses. She took her time and went around among them, and, making her choice, cut the ropes of three fine pinto horses, and led them out to where the party awaited her. There she tied them, and went back into camp with the chief and his men and again came out with three horses. Said she then: 'I have taken enough for this time. I will await you here and take care of what we have.'

"The men went back several times, and then, having all the horses that they could drive rapidly, the party struck for the mountains, and in several days' time arrived home without the loss of a man or a horse.

"After that Pi?tamakan, as we now may call her, did not have to sneak after a party in order to go to war with them: she was asked to go. And after two or three more successful raids against different enemies, the Crows, the Sioux, and the Flatheads, she herself became a war chief, and warriors begged to be allowed to join her parties, because they believed that where she led nothing but good luck would come to them. She now wore men's clothing when on a raid. At home she wore her woman clothing. But even in that dress she, like any man, gave feasts and dances, and the greatest chiefs and warriors came to them, and were glad to be there.

"On her sixth raid, Pi?tamakan led a large war party against the Flatheads, and somewhere on the other side of the mountains fell in with a war party of Bloods, one of our brother tribes of the North. For several days the two parties traveled along together, and then one evening the Blood chief, Falling Bear, said to Pi?tamakan's servant: 'Go tell your chief woman that I would like to marry her.'

"'Chief, you do not understand,' the boy told him. 'She is not that kind. Men are her brothers, and nothing more. She will never marry. I cannot give her your message, for I am afraid that she would be angry with me for carrying it to her.'

"On the next day, as they were traveling along, the Blood chief said to Pi?tamakan: 'I have never loved, but I love now. I love you; my heart is all yours; let us marry.'

"'I will not say "yes" to that, nor will I say "no,"' the woman chief answered him. 'I will consider what you ask, and give you an answer after we make this raid.'

"And with that the Blood chief said no more, but felt encouraged: he thought that in time she would agree to become his woman.

"That very evening the scouts ahead discovered a large camp of Flathead and Kootenai Indians, more than a hundred lodges of them, and when night came both parties drew close in to it. Pi?tamakan then ordered her followers to remain where they were and told the Blood chief to say the same thing to his men. She then told the Blood chief to go into the camp and take horses, and he went in and returned with one horse.

"'It is now my turn,' said Pi?tamakan, and she went in and brought out two horses.

"The Blood chief went in and brought out two horses.

"Pi?tamakan went in and brought out four horses.

"The Blood chief went in and brought out two horses.

"Pi?tamakan went in and brought out one horse. And then she said to the Blood chief: 'Our men are becoming impatient to go in there and take horses. We will each of us go in once more, and then let them do what they can.'

"So the Blood chief went in for the fourth and last time, and came back leading four horses, making nine in all. And then Pi?tamakan went in and cut the ropes of eight horses, and safely led them out, making in all fifteen that she had taken. The warriors then went in, making several trips, and then, with all the horses that could be easily driven, the big double party headed for home.

"On the next day, as Pi?tamakan and the Blood chief were riding together, he said to her: 'I love you so much that I can wait no longer for my answer. Give it to me now. I believe that you are going to say, "Yes, I will be your woman."'

"Said Pi?tamakan: 'I gave you your chance. It would have been yes had you taken more horses than I did from the camp of the enemy. But I took the most; therefore I cannot marry you.'

"That was her way of getting around saying 'no' to the chief. She had beaten him, an old, experienced warrior, in the taking of the enemy's horses, and he could not ask her again to become his woman. It is said that he felt very badly about it all.

Okan, his vision, is the name the Blackfeet have for the great lodge which they annually give to the sun, and for the four days of ceremonies attending its erection and consecration. In our vernacular it is the medicine lodge. I asked Yellow Wolf this afternoon why this river was named Nat?-ok-i-o-kan, or, as we say, Two Medicine Lodge River, and he replied that when the Blackfeet first took this great country from the Crows, they built a medicine lodge on the river, just below the buffalo cliffs. The next summer they built another one in the same place, and owing to that the river got its name.

Yes, this was once the country of the Crows. But the Blackfeet saw and coveted it. It was about two hundred years ago, as near as I can learn, that they came into it from their original home, the region of Peace River and the Slave Lakes, and little by little forced the Crows southward until they had driven them to the south side of the Yellowstone, or Elk River, as it is known to the various Indian tribes of the plains.

Perhaps, in the first place, the Blackfeet coveted more than anything else the cliffs on the Two Medicine,--just above Holy Family Mission,--where the buffalo were decoyed in great numbers and stampeded in a huge waterfall of whirling brown bodies to death on the rocks below.

When I first saw the place, there were at the foot of the cliffs tons and tons of buffalo horn tips, the most time-resisting of any portion of a buffalo's anatomy.

Last night, while the pipe was going the rounds, I asked what had become of old Red Eagle's Thunder Medicine Pipe, and was told that it was still in the tribe, Old Person at present being the owner of it. Said Two Guns: "That is one of the most ancient and most powerful medicines we have. Do you know how it came into our possession?"

THE STORY OF THE THUNDER MEDICINE

"It was in the long ago. Our fathers had no horses then, but used dogs to carry their belongings.

"One spring, needing the skins of bighorn to tan into soft leather for clothing, the tribe moved up here to the foot of the Lower Two Medicine Lake, and began hunting. Many men would surround and climb a mountain, driving the bighorn ahead of them, their dogs helping, and at last they would come up to the game, often several hundred head, on the summit of the mountain. The dogs were then held back, and the hunters, advancing with ready bow and arrows, would shoot and shoot the bighorn at close range and generally kill the most of them.

"One day, while most of the men were hunting, three young, unmarried women went out to gather wood, and while they were collecting it in little piles here and there, a thunderstorm came up. Then said one of them, a beautiful girl, tall, slender, long-haired, big-eyed, 'O Thunder! I am pure! I am a virgin! If you will not strike us I promise to marry you whenever you want me!'

"Thunder passed on, not harming them, and the young women gathered up their firewood and went home.

"On another day these three young women went out again for firewood, one ahead of another along the trail in the deep woods, and Mink Woman, she who had promised herself to Thunder Man, was last of the three. She was some distance behind the others and singing happily as she stepped along, when out from the brush in front of her stepped a very fine-looking, beautifully dressed man, and said: 'Well, here I am. I have come for you.'

"'No, not for me! You are mistaken. I am not that kind; I am a pure woman,' she answered.

"'But you can't go back on your word. You promised yourself to me if I would not strike you, and I did not harm you. Don't you know me? I am Thunder Man.'

"Mink Woman looked closely at him, and her heart beat fast from fear. But he was good to look at, he had the appearance of a kind and gentle man, and--although thoughtlessly--she had made a promise to him, a god, and she could not break it. So she answered: 'I said that I would marry you. Well, here I am, take me!'

"Her two companions had passed on; they saw nothing of this meeting. Thunder Man stepped forward, and kissed her, then took her in his arms, and, springing from the ground, carried her up into the sky to the land of the Above People.

"But the two young women soon missed her. They ran back on the trail, and searched on all sides of it, and called and called to her, and of course got no reply: 'She may have gone home for something,' said one of them, and they hurried back to camp. She was not there. They then gave the alarm, and all the people scattered out to look for her. They hunted all that day, and wandered about in the woods all night, calling her name, and got no answer.

"The next morning Mink Woman's father, Lame Bull, made medicine and called in Crow Man, a god who sometimes lived with the people. 'My daughter, Mink Woman, has disappeared,' he told the god. 'Find her, even learn where she went, and you shall have her for your wife.'

"'I take your word,' Crow Man answered him. 'I believe that I can learn where she went. I may not be able to get her now, but I will some time, and then you will not forget this promise. I have always wanted her for my woman.'

"Crow Man went to the two young women and got them to show him where they had last seen Mink Woman. He then called a magpie to him, and said to the bird: 'Fly around here and find this missing woman's trail.'

"The bird flew around and around, Crow Man following it, and at last it fluttered to the ground, and looked up at him, and said: 'To this spot where I stand came the woman, and here her trail ends.'

"'Is it so!' Crow Man exclaimed. 'Well stand just where you are and move that long, shining black tail of yours. Move it up and down, and sideways. Twist it in every direction that you can.'

"The magpie did as he was told, and Crow Man got down on hands and knees, and went around, watching the shifting, wiggling, fanning tail. Suddenly he cried out: 'There! Hold your tail motionless in just that position!' and he moved up nearer and looked more closely at it. The sun was shining brightly upon it, and the glistening black feathers mirrored everything around. They were now spread directly behind the bird's body, and reflected the tree-tops, and the sky beyond them. Long, long, Crow Man stared at the tail, the people looking on and holding their breath, and at last he said to Lame Bull, 'I can see your daughter, but she is beyond my reach: I cannot fly there. She is up in sky land, and Thunder Man has her!'

"Lame Bull sat down and covered his head with his robe, and wept, and would not be comforted.

"Thunder Man took Mink Woman to sky land with him, and somehow, from the very first she was happy there with him; she seemed to forget at once all about this earth and her parents and the people. It was a beautiful land up there: warm and sunny, a country just like ours except that it had no storms. Buffalo and all the other animals covered the plains, and all sorts of grasses and trees and berry-bushes and plants grew there as they do here.

"But although Mink Woman was very happy there, Thunder Man was always uneasy about her, and kept saying to his people, 'Watch her constantly; see that she gets no hint of her country down below, nor sight of it. If she does, then she will cry and cry, and become sick, and that will be bad for me.'

"'Oh, no! Don't go! We will dig for you all that you can use,' the women told her, but she would not listen.

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