The toiling boats rounded a great bend, and a shout arose.

"There's Clark! He's sighted Injuns, hasn't he?"

"So has Sacagawea! Sure she has! See?"

"Injuns on horseback, boys! Hooray!"

For Captain Clark, yonder up the curve, was holding high his hand, palm front, in the peace sign. Sacagawea had run ahead, little Toussaint bobbing in the net on her back; she danced as she ran; she ran back again to him, sucking her fingers.

"Dat mean she see her own peoples!" panted Cruzatte the chief boatman, who was a trapper and trader, too, and knew Indians. "Dere dey come, on de hoss. Hooray!"

"Hooray!"

What a relief! The Indians were prancing and singing. They made the captain mount one of the horses, and all hustled on, for an Indian camp.

By the time that the hurrying canoes arrived, Sacagawea and another woman had rushed into each other's arms. Presently they and the captain and Chaboneau had entered a large lodge, built of willow branches. The Captain Lewis squad was here, too. The men had come down out of the mountains, by a pass, with the Snakes. The Snakes had been afraid of them—the first white men ever seen by the band. Old Drouillard the hunter had argued with them in the sign language and with a few Shoshoni words that he knew.

It had looked like war—it had looked like peace—and it had looked like war, and death, again. Finally, before he could persuade them, the captain had delivered over his guns, and had promised them to be their prisoner if they did not find, down below, one of their own women acting as the white men's guide.

But now all was well. The token of Sacagawea saved the day. The other woman, whom she hugged, had been captured by the Minnetarees, at the same time with herself, and had escaped.

And the chief of the band was Sacagawea's brother. He had mourned her as dead, but now he and she wept together under a blanket. Truly, he had reason to be grateful to these white strangers who had treated her so well.

Much relieved by this good fortune at last, the captains bought horses and hired guides. The Snakes were very friendly; even engaged not to disturb the canoes, which were sunk with rocks in the river to await the return trip.

There was little delay. The mountains should be crossed at once, before winter closed the trails. To the surprise and delight of all the company, Sacagawea announced that she was going with them, to see the Great Salt Water. Somehow, she preferred the white men to her own people. She had been weeping constantly. Most of her relatives and old friends had died or had been killed, during her absence. Her new friends she loved. They were a wonderful set, these white men—and the Red Head, Captain Clark, was the finest of all.

Six horses had been bought. Five were packed with the supplies; Sacagawea and little Toussaint were mounted upon the sixth, and the whole company, escorted by the Snakes, marched over the pass to Chief Ca-me-ah-wait's principal camp.

From there, with twenty-seven horses and one mule, with the happy Bird-woman and the beady-eyed Toussaint, the two captains and their men took the trail for the Great Salt Water, one thousand miles toward the setting sun. Ah, but a tough trail that proved, across the Bitter Root Mountains; all up and down, with scarcely a level spot to sleep on; with the snow to the horses' bellies and the men's thighs; with the game failing, until even a horse's head was treasured as a tidbit.

And the Bird-woman, riding in the exhausted file, never complained, but kept her eyes fixed to the low country and the big river and the Great Salt Water.

Once, in the midst of starvation, from her dress she fished out a small piece of bread that she had carried clear from the Mandan towns. She gave it to Captain Clark, that he might eat it. A brave and faithful heart had Sacagawea.

Struggling down out of the mountains, at the end of September, they changed to canoes. The Pierced Noses, or Nez Perces Indians, were friendly; and now, on to the Columbia and thence on to the sea, Sacagawea was the sure charm. For when the tribes saw the strange white warriors, they said, "This cannot be a war party. They have a squaw and a papoose. We will meet with them."

That winter was spent a few miles back from the Pacific, near the mouth of the Columbia River in present Washington.

Only once did the Bird-woman complain. The ocean was out of sight from the camp. Chaboneau, her husband, seemed to think that she was made for only work, work, work, cooking and mending and tending baby.

"You stay by ze lodge fire. Dat is place for womans," he rebuked. Whereupon Sacagawea took the bit in her teeth (a very unusual thing for a squaw to do) and went straight to Captain Clark, her friend.

"What is the matter, Sacagawea?"

She had been crying again.

"I come a long way, capitin. I carry my baby, I cold, hungry, wet, seeck, I come an' I no care. I show you trail; I say 'Snake peoples here,' an' you find Snakes. You get hosses, food, guide. When Indians see me an' my Toussaint, dey say 'Dis no war party,' an' dey kind to you. When you get hungry for bread, I gif you one leetle piece dat I carry all de way from Mandan town. I try to be good woman. I work hard, same as mens. Now I been here all dis time, near de salt water dat I trabble many days to see—an' I not see it yet. Dere is a beeg fish, too. Odders go see—I stay. Nobody ask Sacagawea. My man he say 'You tend baby!' I—I feel bad, capitin." And she hid her face in her blanket.

"By gracious, go you shall, Sacagawea, and see the salt water and the big fish," declared Captain Clark. "Chaboneau can stay home and tend baby!"

However, the Bird-woman took little Toussaint, of course; and they two viewed in wonderment the rolling, surging, thundering ocean; and the immense whale, one hundred and five feet long, that had been cast ashore. It is safe to assert that to the end of her days Sacagawea never forgot these awesome sights.

In the spring of 1806 the homeward journey was begun. On the Missouri side of the mountains the Bird-woman was detailed to help Captain Clark find a separate trail, to the Yellowstone River.

And this she did, in splendid fashion; for when the party knew not which way was the best way, out of the surrounding hills, to the plains, she picked the landmarks; and though she had not been here in many years, she showed the gap that led over and down and brought them straight to the sunken canoes.

On August 14 the whole company was at the Mandan towns once more. After her absence of a year and a half, and her journey of six thousand miles, bearing little Toussaint (another great traveler) Sacagawea might gaily hustle ashore, to entertain the other women with her bursting budget of stories.

The captains offered to take Chaboneau and Sacagawea and Toussaint on down to St. Louis. The Bird-woman would gladly have gone. She wanted to learn more of the white people's ways. She wanted to be white, herself.

But Chaboneau respectfully declined. He said that it would be a strange country, and that he could not make a living there; later, he might send his boy, to be educated by the captains. That was all.

So he was paid wages amounting to five hundred dollars and thirty-three cents. Sacagawea was paid nothing. The captains left her to her Indian life, and she followed them only with her heart.

Nevertheless, she did see her great Red Head Chief again. Captain Clark was appointed by the President as Indian agent with headquarters in St. Louis. He was a generous, whole-souled man, was this russet-haired William Clark, and known to all the Indians of the plains as their stanch friend.

So it is probable that he did not forget Sacagawea, his loyal Bird-woman. In 1810 she, the boy Toussaint, and Chaboneau, visited in St. Louis. In 1811 they were on their way up-river, for the Indian country. Life among the white people had proved too much for the gentle Sacagawea. She had tried hard to live their way, but their way did not agree with her. She had sickened, and she longed for the lodges of the Shoshonis. Chaboneau, too, had become weary of a civilized life.

Sacagawea at last returned to her "home folks" the Snakes. No doubt Chaboneau went with her. But there is record that he was United States interpreter, in 1837, on the upper Missouri; and that he died of small-pox among the Mandans, soon afterward.

The Bird-woman out-lived him. She and her boy removed with the Snakes to the Wind River reservation, Wyoming; and there, near Fort Washakie, the agency, she died on April 9, 1884, aged ninety-six years, and maybe more.

A brass tablet marks her grave. A mountain peak in Montana has been named Sacagawea Peak. A bronze statue of her has been erected in the City Park of Portland, Oregon. Another statue has been erected in the state capitol at Bismarck, North Dakota.

So, although all the wages went to her husband, she knows that the white people of the great United States remember the loving services of the brave little Bird-woman, who without the promise of pay, helped carry the Flag to the Pacific.



CHAPTER XVII

THE LANCE OF MAHTOTOHPA (1822-1837)

HERO TALES BY FOUR BEARS THE MANDAN

While the United States was getting acquainted with the Western Indians, there lived among the Mandans in the north a most noted hero—the chief Mah-to-toh-pa, or Four Bears.

Young Captain Lewis the Long Knife Chief, and stout Captain Clark the Red Head, who with their exploring party wintered among the Mandans in 1804-1805, and enlisted the Snake Bird-woman as guide, were the first white men to write a clear account of the curious Mandans; but they did not tell the half.

For a curious people indeed were these Mandans, dwelling in two villages on the Missouri River above present Washburn in central North Dakota.

They were polite, hospitable, and brave. Their towns were defended by ditches and loose timber palisades, not tight like those of the Iroquois and Hurons. Their houses were circular; of an earthern floor sunk two feet, and heavy six-foot logs set on end inside the edge of it, with a roof of timbers, woven willow, and thick mud-plaster; with a sunken fire-place under a hole in the center of the roof, and with bunks, screened by elk-hides or buffalo-robes, along the walls.

These houses were large enough to shelter twenty to forty persons; the roofs were favorite loafing spots, for men, women, and dogs.

The Mandans formed a happy, talkative people, of strange appearance, but exceedingly clean, fond of bathing, either in the river or in wicker tubs. Their hair was heavy, sometimes reached to the ground, and was black, brown, and frequently gray or pure white even on the young. Their eyes were likely to be hazel, blue or gray, instead of black; their skin almost white. They made glassy clay vases and bowls, and remarkable blue glass beads. In fact, they seemed to have white manners, white arts, and white blood. Rumor asserted that they were partly Welsh, descended from the lost colony of the Welsh prince, Madoc.

Now this Madoc, a prince of the early Welsh people, set sail about the year 1180, with ten ships, to found a colony in a new Western continent that he claimed to have discovered.

He never was heard from. He and his ten shiploads vanished. But if he reached North America, and traveled inland, to be swallowed up amidst the red blood, the strange Mandans may have been the proof of his arrival.

Their round boats, of bowl-like wicker-work covered with hide, and their way of dipping the paddle from the front instead of from the rear, were exactly the Welsh method of canoe travel.

In the days of Mah-to-toh-pa the Mandans numbered two thousand, in two towns allied with the towns of the Minnetarees. They were beset by the tough, winter-traveling Assiniboins to the north, and by the treacherous Arikarees and the bold Sioux to the south. Therefore when in 1833 the wandering artist George Catlin of Pennsylvania, who spent eight years painting Indians in their homes all the way from Florida to the Rocky Mountains, made a long stay among the Mandans, they rejoiced him by their brave tales as well as with their curious habits.

According to all the reports, the "bravest of the braves" in the Mandan towns was Mahtotohpa; second chief by rank, but first of all by deeds. "Free, generous, elegant, and gentlemanly in his deportment—handsome, brave and valiant," says Artist Catlin. Such words speak well for Four Bears, but not a bit too well.

Before he arrived at the Artist Catlin lodge to have his portrait painted, the warning ran ahead of him: "Mahtotohpa is coming in full dress!" He was escorted by a great throng of admiring women and children. Now it was twelve o'clock noon, and he had been since early morning getting ready, so as to appear as befitted a noble chief.

His dress was complete: shirt, leggins, moccasins, head-dress, necklace, belt, robe, medicine-bag, tobacco sack, pipe, quiver, bow, knife, lance, shield, tomahawk and war-club. And as he proudly stood erect, waiting, he made a splendid sight.

His shirt was mountain-sheep skins, one before, one behind, sewed together at their edges. They were embroidered with porcupine quills brightly dyed, and fringed with the black scalp-locks of the enemies whom he had slain in combat, and tasseled with ermine tails. They were pictured with his deeds, painted in sign language.

The leggins were of finely dressed deer-skin, worked with the porcupine quills, fringed with the scalp-locks, and fitting tightly from moccasins to thighs.

The moccasins were of buck-skin, armored with the dyed quills.

The head-dress was a crest of two polished buffalo horns set in a thick mat of ermine, from which fell clear to his heels a ridgy tail of countless eagle plumes also set in the ermine fur.

The necklace was of fifty grizzly-bear claws, strung from otter skin.

The belt was of tanned buck-skin, supporting tomahawk and broad-bladed scalping knife with elk-horn haft.

The robe slung from his shoulders like a Roman toga was the softened hide of a young buffalo bull worn fur side in; and on the white skin side all the battles of his life had been painted.

The medicine-bag was a beaver skin, ornamented with hawk-bills and ermine. He held it in his right hand.

His tobacco sack was of otter skin decorated with porcupine quills. In it were dried red-willow bark, flint and steel, and tinder.

His pipe was of curiously carved red pipe-stone from the peace quarries in present Minnesota. The stem was ash, three feet long, wound with porcupine quills to form pictures of men and animals; decorated with wood-peckers' skins and heads, and the hair of the white buffalo's tail. It was half painted red, and notched for the years of his life.

His quiver was of panther skin and filled with arrows, flint pointed and steel pointed, and some bloody.

His bow was of strips of elk-horn polished white, cemented with glue of buffalo hoof, and backed with deer sinews to give it spring. Three months had been required to make it. There was none better.

His lance had a deadly two-edge steel blade, stained with the dried blood of Sioux and Arikaree and Cheyenne and Assiniboin. The six-foot ashen shaft was strung with eagle feathers.

His shield was the hide from a buffalo's neck, hardened with hoof glue. Its center was a pole-cat skin; its edges were fringed with eagle feathers and antelope hoofs that rattled.

His battle-axe was of hammered iron blade and skull-pecker, with ash handle four feet long and deer-sinew grip. Eagle feathers and fur tufts decorated it.

His war-club was a round stone wrapped in raw-hide at the end of a cow-tail, like a policeman's billy.

After his portrait was painted, Mahtotohpa spread out his wonderful robe, and told the stories of the twelve battles and the fourteen scalps pictured on it by his own hand; and these stories included that of his Arikaree lance, and Cheyenne knife.

The lance story came about in this way. In the shaft of the lance, near the blade, there had been set an antelope prong; and when Mahtotohpa posed for his portrait, with the butt of the lance proudly planted on the ground, he carefully balanced an eagle feather across this prong.

"Do not omit to paint that feather exactly as it is," he said, "and the spot of blood upon it. It is great medicine, and belongs to the Great Spirit, not to me. I pulled it from the wound of an enemy."

"Why do you not tie it to the lance, then?"

"Hush!" rebuked Mahtotohpa. "If the Great Spirit had wished it to be tied on, it would never have come off."

Whereupon, presently, he told the story of the mighty lance. This had been the lance of a famous Arikaree warrior, Won-ga-tap. Some years back, maybe seven or eight, the Mandans and the Arikarees had met on horses near the Mandan towns, and had fought. The Mandans chased the Arikarees, but after the chase the brother of Mahtotohpa did not come in.

Several days passed; and when Mahtotohpa himself found his brother, it was only the body, scalped and cut and pierced with an arrow, and fastened through the heart to the prairie by the lance of Won-ga-tap.

Many in the village recognized that as the lance of Won-ga-tap. Mahtotohpa did not clean it of its blood, but held it aloft before all the village and swore that he would clean it only with the blood of Wongatap the Arikaree.

He sent a challenge to the Arikarees; and for four years he waited, keeping the lance and hoping to use it as he had promised. Finally his heart had grown so sore that he was bursting; and again holding the lance up before the village, he made a speech.

"Mahtotohpa is going. Let nobody speak his name, or ask where he is, or try to seek him. He will return with fresh blood on this lance, or he will not return at all."

He set out alone, on foot, like Piskaret, the Adirondack, had set out in his great adventure against the Iroquois. By night journeys he traveled two hundred miles, living on the parched corn in his pouch, until he was seven days hungry when at last he came to the Arikaree town where the lodge of Wongatap was located.

He knew the village well, for there had been brief periods when the Mandans and the Arikarees were at peace; besides, it was a warrior's business to know an enemy's lodges.

The Arikaree towns were much the same as the Mandan towns. Now Mahtotohpa lay outside and watched, until at dusk he might slip through between the pickets, and seek the lodge of Wongatap. He was enveloped in a buffalo robe, covering his head, so that he would be taken for an Arikaree.

He peeped through a crack in the Wongatap lodge and saw that his enemy was getting ready for bed. There he was, Wongatap himself, sitting with his wife in the fire-light, and smoking his last pipe. Pretty soon, as the fire flickered out, he rapped the ashes from his pipe, his wife raked the coals of the fire together, until morning; and now they two crawled into their bunk.

Hotly grasping his lance, and surrounded by the enemy, Mahtotohpa delayed a little space; then he arose and boldly stalked into the lodge and sat by the fire.

Over the coals was hanging a pot of cooked meat; beside the fire were the pipe and the pouch of red-willow smoking tobacco, just as left by Wongatap.

Amidst the dusk Mahtotohpa ate well of the cooked meat; and filling the pipe, smoked calmly, half lying down, on one elbow.

"Who is that man, who enters our lodge and eats of our food and smokes of our tobacco?" he heard Wongatap's wife ask.

"It is no matter," Wongatap replied. "If he is hungry, let him eat."

That was right. By Indian law a person in need may enter any lodge, and eat, and no questions shall be asked until he has finished.

Mahtotohpa's heart almost failed him. Had that not been the killer of his brother, he would only have left a challenge, and gone away. But he thought of his brother, and his vows, and his heart closed again.

When his pipe was smoked out, he laid it aside, and gently stirred the fire with the toe of his moccasin, for more light. He dared to wait no longer. On a sudden he grasped his lance with both hands, sprang up and drove it through the body of Wongatap, in the bunk.

With his knife he instantly snatched off the scalp. Then he uttered the Mandan scalp-halloo, and dived for the door. There he paused, for just a second, to look back, that the squaw might see his face—and in the glimmer of fire-light he noted a feather from the lance sticking in the hole in Wongatap's side.

So back he darted, plucked the feather, and carrying it in his left hand, that the Great Spirit might help him, he ran hard. Wongatap's wife was shrieking; all the village heard and answered, and the warriors streamed out of the lodges.

The whole night Mahtotohpa ran, while the Arikarees vainly searched for his trail. This day he hid, in the brush along the Missouri River. The next night he ran again; and on the sixth morning he panted into the Mandan town, with the dried blood of Wongatap on his lance's blade and the stiffened scalp of Wongatap hanging to its handle.

So that was why he cherished the lance, and that was why he considered the loose eagle's feather to be a strong medicine from the Great Spirit.

But this was only Number Six, in the twelve recorded deeds of Four Bears.

His next-biggest deed was as follows, and it is bigger, according to white man's way of thinking. By that deed he won his knife.

Early one morning one hundred and fifty Cheyenne warriors attacked the Mandan town. They took a scalp and many horses before they rode away. The Mandans had been surprised; but Mahtotohpa rallied fifty warriors and pursued.

The fifty warriors led by Mahtotohpa pursued for a day and half a day. At noon they sighted the Cheyennes driving the stolen horses; but the Cheyennes were so numerous that the Mandan warriors lost their hearts and wished to turn back.

Not so, Mahtotohpa! He galloped forward alone; he planted his lance in the earth, to the full length of the blade; and making a circle around it with his horse he tore from his clothing a strip of red cloth and hung that to the lance shaft, for a banner.

"If you are cowards, you may go back to the women," he called to his men. "I stay here, where my lance is firm in the ground."

His men were ashamed, and hesitated. Now the Cheyennes had turned and were coming for battle. Their chief saw the planted lance of Mahtotohpa, and Mahtotohpa waiting beside it, and he galloped forward, alone, on his white horse.

"Who is it that has stuck down his lance, and defies the Cheyennes?" he shouted.

"I am Mahtotohpa."

"That is good. Mahtotohpa is a chief. Does he dare to fight?"

"Is this a chief who speaks to Mahtotohpa?"

"I wear scalps at my horse's bit, and the eagle's feathers."

"You have said enough," replied Mahtotohpa. "Come. Let us meet."

Forward hammered the Cheyenne chief, riding splendidly in circles, until he dashed in and planted his lance, also, at the side of Mahtotohpa's lance. That was his answer.

They each drew off a little way, while the Mandan warriors and the Cheyenne warriors gazed expectant. Then they charged like knights in a tournament, and shot at the same moment with their guns. After they had passed each other, and had wheeled, Mahtotohpa held up his powder-horn. The Cheyenne's bullet had smashed it, so that the powder had flowed out.

Having shown, Mahtotohpa flung away his horn, threw his gun to the ground, and setting his buffalo-hide shield upon his left arm, deliberately strung his bow and placed an arrow upon the string.

The Cheyenne chief was a mighty warrior. He likewise cast aside his powder-horn and gun, adjusted his painted shield, prepared bow and arrow. Again they charged. They circled swiftly about each other, performing many clever feats of horsemanship, while their stout bows twanged so fast that the arrows crisscrossed like darting bees.

Some thudded into the thick shields, and the shields bristled with the feathered ends. Some found legs and arms—but that mattered little. Now Mahtotohpa's horse reeled and fell, an arrow in his heart. Mahtotohpa sprang nimbly off. And off from his own horse sprang the Cheyenne chief, that he might not have the advantage.

They plied their bows, on foot. Soon the brave Cheyenne stripped his quiver from his left shoulder and flourished it. It was empty. He tossed it away, and tossed away bow and shield. Then he drew his knife.

"Ai!" responded Mahtotohpa, gladly; and ridding himself of shield and quiver he rushed forward, feeling for his knife, too.

But his knife was not in his belt. He had lost it, or left it at home! Hah! He could not stop—they had come together—the Cheyenne was upon him. So he fought with his bow. He struck aside the Cheyenne's thrust, and hit him over the head and knocked him down. They grappled. It was a terrible fight.

Mahtotohpa clutched for the knife, and the sharp blade was wrenched through his hand, cutting to the bone. The Cheyenne stabbed him many times, and many times Mahtotohpa clutched the knife blade again, before he could tear the haft from the Cheyenne's fingers.

But suddenly he succeeded, and the Cheyenne died. The warriors of both parties had formed a circle close about, watching. Mahtotohpa staggered up, with the Cheyenne's scalp and knife, and gave the kill whoop—and thus victory rested with the Mandans.

That was Mahtotohpa's most famous battle. In another battle he got his name, Four Bears. The Assiniboins had put all his warriors to flight; but he stood his ground, and shot his gun and killed an Assiniboin, and charged with lance and shield, and made them run off. He took sixty horses, besides the scalp. After this he was called Four Bears, because the Assiniboins said that he charged "like four bears in one."

His worst wound he received from the Sioux. They shot an arrow clear through his body, so that the arrow continued on, dropping blood. But he lashed his horse forward, against them, and won another victory.

Such honorable scars he kept covered with red paint, that all who saw might read.

These stories, and others, as pictured by the robe, Mahtotohpa told to Artist Catlin, while Indian trader James Kipp translated the words, and Four Bears acted out the scenes; and they three sat upon the robe itself.

The Cheyenne chief's knife he gave to Artist Catlin. He also made a copy of the pictures, on another robe, and the knife and the second robe were sent to the Catlin Indian gallery, at Washington, where they doubtless may be seen at this day.

Mahtotohpa's end came to him as follows:

In the summer of 1837, a great death attacked the Mandan towns. It was the small pox. The Sioux hedged the towns so closely that there was no escape into the prairie. The Mandan men, women and children, thus herded together, died by hundreds.

Mahtotohpa was among the last left. He witnessed all his family and friends stretched cold and lifeless, and he decided to try a sacrifice to the anger of the Great Spirit.

So he dragged his wives and children together and covered them decently with buffalo robes. Then he went out to a little hill, and laid himself down, with a vow not to eat or drink, if the Great Spirit would stay the plague.

On the sixth day he was very weak; but he crept back to his lodge, and again laid himself down, in a robe, beside his family. And on the ninth day, he, too, died.

However, the plague was not stayed for many days. Of the sixteen hundred Mandans in the two towns, only thirty-one remained alive; of all the Mandan nation there were scarce above one hundred; and today they number about one hundred and fifty.



CHAPTER XVIII

A SEARCH FOR THE BOOK OF HEAVEN (1832)

THE LONG TRAIL OF THE PIERCED NOSES

The Nez Perces or "Pierced Noses" really were not Pierced Noses any more than any other Indians; for the North American red men, the country over, wore ornaments in their noses when they chose to.

But as the Pierced Noses this nation in the far Northwest was known. They were members of the Sha-hap-ti-an family of North Americans—a family not so large as the Algonquian, Siouan, Shoshonean and several other families, yet important.

Their home was the valley and river country of western Idaho, and the near sections of Oregon and Washington. The two captains, Lewis and Clark, were well treated by them along the great Snake River, above the entrance to the greater Columbia.

They were a small Indian; a horse Indian who lived on buffalo as well as fish, and scorned to eat dog like the Sioux; a brave fighting Indian; and withal a very honest, wise-minded Indian, whose boast, up to 1877, was that they had never shed the white man's blood.

They used canoes, but they used horses more. Horses were their wealth. They raised horses by the thousand, and the finest of horses these were. A fat colt was good meat, but without horses they could not hunt the buffalo and the buffalo supplied stronger meat.

Once a year, when the grass had greened in the spring, they traveled eastward, across the Rocky Mountains by the Pierced Nose Trail-to-the-buffalo, and hunted upon the Missouri River plains, in the country of their enemies the Blackfeet.

The Blackfeet, in turn, sought them out, west of the mountains, to steal their horses. With the Blackfeet and the Sioux, and sometimes with the Snakes, they fought many a battle; and when they had anything of a show, they won out. It took numbers to whip a Pierced Nose warrior. Like most peace-lovers, he made the hardest kind of a fighter.

The early whites in the Northwest had nothing but praise for the Pierced Nose Indians. The trapper who married a Pierced Nose woman thought that he was lucky. She would be a good wife for him—gentle, neat and always busy. Besides, as a rule the Nez Perces women were better looking than the general run of Indian women.

The early fur-hunters and explorers found that the Pierced Noses were very religious, in a way akin to the Christian way. They did not eat, drink nor sleep without first giving thanks to God. They had one day each week, like Sunday, when they did not hunt or fish or work, but listened to talks by their priests or medicine-men.

It was said that they had been taught first by a Christian Iroquois Indian, who in 1816 came in from Canada and told them the things that he had been told by the French priests. At any rate, when the Roman Catholic priests themselves arrived to live among them, these Pierced Noses already had learned a great deal. They were anxious to learn more.

However, before the missionaries of any church visited them, the Pierced Noses tried to learn more, by themselves. In particular, they wanted a copy of the Book of Heaven. And what started them on the trail of the Book of Heaven, was this:

Among the leaders of white fur-hunters in beaver-trapping days in the west, there was Trapper-Captain Jedediah S. Smith—the Knight in Buckskin. This Captain Jedediah Smith was fearless and upright. Hunting beaver, he traveled far and wide, from the Missouri River to California, and from New Mexico to the Columbia, protected only by his rifle and his Bible.

Wherever he carried his rifle, he carried his Bible; used them both, and no man but that respected him. The Comanches of the Southwest finally killed him, in 1831, when fighting alone against great odds he died a real hero's death.

He had spent the winter of 1824-1825 in the Pierced Noses' country. Of course he told them much about the white man's religion. They saw him frequently reading in his little, black-leather book, which, they said, must be the White Man's Book of Heaven. He would not sell them the book, for any amount of horses or beaver skins. When he had left, they took counsel together and decided that they should get such a book.

Twice they sent into the East for it; and no word came back. But the Pierced Noses did not give up. They were still without the wonderful Book of Heaven which, had said Captain Jedediah Smith the trapper, guided the white men on the straight trail to the Great Spirit above.

In the early part of 1832 they called a council of the nation, and chose four men, to set out, again, for the big, unknown village where dwelt the Red Head Chief, and where, they hoped, a copy of the Book of Heaven might be found.

The snows had scarcely melted when the four men started. Two of them were old and wise; their names are not written. Two of them were young and strong; their names were Rabbit-skin Leggins and No-horns-on-his-head.

A long, long, dangerous road lay before them: three thousand miles, across the mountains into the Blackfeet country, and across the plains guarded by the Blackfeet and the Sioux and other hungry people as bad.

But they got through all right, for they were clever and in earnest. They arrived at St. Louis in the summer.

St. Louis was then nothing like the St. Louis of today; but to the four strangers from the Columbia River basin it was amazingly large. Never had they dreamed of seeing so many white people. No one spoke their tongue; still there were trappers and Missouri River boatmen who understood signs, and by the sign language they inquired for the Red Head Chief.

The kind-hearted Governor William Clark was glad to greet them. Their fathers, almost thirty years before, had helped him and Captain Lewis the Long Knife; he remembered the two old men when they were young. The Indians of the West might always depend upon their friend the Red Head.

So he took charge of the four Pierced Noses, and entertained them. He showed them the sights of the white man's big village beside the big rivers. They were entertained by banquets and balls and the theatre. They went to services in the Roman Catholic church, where the white people worshipped—for Governor Clark was a Catholic.

And they saw copies of the Book of Heaven—the Roman Catholic testament, and the Bible: but the books did not speak their language!

In all the white man's village there was no one who might read from the Book, in their own language.

After a few months they began to despair. The food of the white man and the close air of the lodges made them ill. The two old men died. Rabbit-skin Leggins and No-horns-on-his-head were homesick for their country beyond the mountains. In the winter they prepared to go.

A farewell banquet was given to them, but they were tired of banquets. They wanted a Book of Heaven that could talk to them. No-horns-on-his-head delivered a speech, as best he might, in sign language and broken English, through an interpreter.

I have come to you over the trail of many moons from the setting sun. You were the friends of my fathers, who have all gone the long way.

I came with an eye partly open for my people, who sit in darkness; I go back with both eyes closed. How can I go back blind, to my blind people? I made my way to you with strong arms through many enemies and strange lands that I might carry back much to them. I go back with both arms broken and empty.

Two fathers came with us; they were the braves of many winters and wars. We leave them asleep here by your great waters and wigwams. They were tired in many moons and their moccasins wore out.

My people sent me to get the "White Man's Book of Heaven." You took me to where you allow your women to dance as we do not ours, and the book was not there. You took me to where they worship the Great Spirit with candles, and the book was not there. You showed me images of the good spirits and the picture of the good land beyond, but the book was not among them to tell us the way.

I am going back the long and sad trail to my people in the dark land. You make my feet heavy with gifts and my moccasins will grow old carrying them, yet the book is not among them. When I tell my poor blind people, after one more snow, in the big council, that I did not bring the book, no word will be spoken by our old men or by our young braves. One by one they will rise and go out in silence.

My people will die in darkness, and they will go a long path to other hunting grounds. No white man will go with them, and no White Man's Book make the way plain. I have no more words.

They left. Rabbit-skin Leggins reached his people; No-horns-on-his-head fell upon the trail and died.

But his words lived. As translated into English, they were printed in Eastern papers, and aroused great desire among the churches to give them the right answer. Should these Indians beyond the mountains remain in darkness? No!

Missionaries were called for, to carry the Book and the Word to the Columbia River. In the spring of 1834 the first party, of four Methodists, set out; others followed, the next year; soon the Roman Catholic church sent its Black Robes; and the Pierced Noses and their kin the Flatheads were made glad.

Not in vain had their warriors died, while seeking the road to the white man's heaven.



CHAPTER XIX

A TRAVELER TO WASHINGTON (1831-1835)

WIJUNJON, THE "BIG LIAR" OF THE ASSINIBOINS

The Assiniboins are of the great Sioux family. Today there are in the United States about one thousand of them. But when they were a free and powerful people they numbered as high as ten thousand, and ranged far—from the Missouri River in northern North Dakota and northern Montana clear into Canada, above.

This cold, high country of vast plains made them hardy and roaming. In their proud bearing and good size they resembled the Dakota Sioux, but with the Sioux they had little to do, except in war. They were at war with the Mandans also, and other nations to the south. In the north they mingled with the Ojibwas or Chippewa people who had journeyed westward into Canada. The Ojibwas had given them their name, As-si-i-bo-in, meaning "They-cook-with-stones."

The Assiniboins were horse Indians and buffalo hunters. They had two peculiar customs. They did cook their meat with stones, just as the Chippewas said. Instead of using kettles, they used holes. They dug a hole about the size of a large kettle; then they pressed a square of raw buffalo-hide into it, for a lining. This they filled with water; they put their meat in, and heating stones, dropped them in, too, until the water was boiling.

Their other peculiarity lay in their style of hair. The longer the hair, the better. They divided it into strands, and plastered the strands with a paste of red earth and hoof glue, in sections of an inch or two.

When the hair did not grow long enough to suit, they spliced it by gluing on other hair, sometimes horse-hair, until it reached the ground.

In the year 1831 Wi-jun-jon, or Pigeon's-egg Head, was a leading young warrior among the long-haired Assiniboins. It was a custom of those days to have chiefs and warriors from the various Indian tribes sent to Washington, to talk with their White Father and see how the Americans lived.

This was supposed to teach the Indians the value of white man's ways, and to show them how useless was war with the white race.

The Assiniboins were still a wild people. They were located so far from St. Louis that they knew nothing about white man ways, except such as they noticed at the fur-trading posts—and here the ways were mixed with Indian ways.

So in the fall of this year Major J. F. A. Sanborn, the Indian agent at the American Fur Company's trading-post of Fort Union, where on the border between North Dakota and Montana the Yellowstone River empties into the Missouri River, decided to take a party of Indians to Washington.

The Assiniboins, the Cheyennes, the Blackfeet, the Crows—they all came to Fort Union, to trade their furs for powder, lead, sugar and blankets.

Major Sanborn asked the Assiniboins for a warrior. They appointed Wijunjon and another.

Now, this was to be a long journey, among strangers. To be sure, from the Mandans, down-river, old Sha-ha-ka, or White Head, had made the trip, in 1806, when the Red Head Chief and the Long Knife Chief were bound home from the salty water; and he had returned unharmed. Others had gone since, from the upper Missouri, and others had died; Sha-ha-ka himself had almost been killed by the Sioux.

Nobody had gone yet, from as far away as the Assiniboin country; therefore young Wijunjon feared, but was brave. He bade his wife, Chin-cha-pee, or Fire-bug-that-creeps, and his little children goodby, and with the other Assiniboin and chiefs from the Blackfeet and Crows, set out on a fur company flatboat under protection of Major Sanborn. The Assiniboin women on the shore wept and wailed. His people scarcely expected to see him again.

It was one thousand miles by river through the enemies of his nation, thence on to the great village of St. Louis; but he passed in safety. And when he began to see the first smaller villages of the Americans in Missouri, Wijunjon started in to count the houses, so that he might tell his people.

He had promised to report everything.

He commenced to count by making notches in his pipe stem—one notch for every lodge. The cabins became thicker, along the river banks, and his comrade needs must call off the lodges while he made the notches. Soon there was no more space on the pipe stem, and Wijunjon changed to his war club. Speedily he had filled this also.

Luckily, the barge tied up at the shore, while dinner was cooked. This gave him chance to cut a long willow stick, which surely would be enough.

In fact, so certain he was that the end of the white man's lodges must be close before them, that he worked hard to recut the pipe stem notches and the war club notches, in his willow stick, to have all together. But this very day he had filled the willow stick, and the lodges before them seemed more numerous than those behind!

Ere they arrived in sight of St. Louis itself, he and his comrade had an arm-load of willow sticks—all filled with notches. And here was St. Louis! How many people? Fifteen thousand! How many lodges? Thousands of lodges!

Pigeon's-egg Head pitched the bundle of willow sticks over-board. His knife was worn out, and his hand and brain were tired.

At St. Louis he stood for his portrait, painted by the same Artist Catlin who the next year, in the Mandan towns, listened to the hero tales of Mah-to-toh-pa. He was a great man at painting Indians, this Artist Catlin.

Wijunjon was somewhat confused by so many sounds and sights, but he made a fine figure of a chief—in his mountain-goat skin leggins and shirt, decorated with porcupine quills, and with scalp locks from his enemies; his long plaited hair, which reached to the ground; his war bonnet of eagles' plumes; his buffalo-hide robe, painted with the battles of his career; his beautiful moccasins; and his quiver and bow and bull-neck shield.

Having had his portrait painted, he continued on the long trail, of two thousand more miles by water and by stage, to Washington. And as every mile of it was amidst still more lodges of the white man, he soon saw that all the willow sticks of the Missouri River could not have counted their numbers.

This winter Wijunjon and his companions had a wonderful time among the white men. The Pigeon's-egg Head was the foremost. He was the first to shake the hand of the Great White Father. He declined nothing. The sights of Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York—he inspected them all. He scarcely rested, night or day. He learned so much that when, in the spring of 1832, he turned homeward, he was filled to bursting.

At St. Louis the first "through" steamboat, the Yellowstone, was waiting to ascend to Fort Union and the Assiniboin country. Artist Catlin was aboard. This was to be his first trip, also.

The steamboat Yellowstone made a huge sensation, as it ploughed the thick muddy current of the Missouri, frightening the Indians and buffalo along the shores.

It moved without sweeps—it nosed for the deepest channels—and the Indians called it "Big-medicine-canoe-with-eyes." It spoke with its guns, and belched much smoke—and they called it "Big Thunder-canoe."

But Wijunjon feared not at all. He was used to thunder-canoes, now; and he had seen many great sights, back there in the villages of the white men. In fact, he was a sight, himself, for on the way up he had changed his clothes, that his people might know hint for a wide traveler.

Gone were his fringed and quilled goat-skin leggins and shirt; gone his war bonnet and painted robe and handsome moccasins, his bow and quiver and shield.

Instead, he wore a badly fitting colonel's uniform, of the United States Army, given to him by the Great White Father: wrinkled trousers and coat of bright blue, with gilt epaulets upon the shoulders, and a stiff collar that reached above his ears. Atop his long painted hair there was settled, to the coat collar, a stove-pipe hat, with a silver-braid band and a red wool plume two feet high. His feet were squeezed into high-heeled military boots, of shiny leather. Around his neck was a tight black stock, or collar. Around his waist was a red sash. Upon his hands were loose white cotton gloves. Upon his chest, and the ruffles of a white shirt, dangled a silver medal, on a blue ribbon. Hung by a belt across one shoulder, at his log dangled a huge broad-sword. In one hand he carried a blue umbrella, in the other a fan, and in his arms a keg of rum.

Thus Wijunjon, the big brave, proudly strode the deck of the steamer Yellowstone, and impatiently looked forward to the moment when he might step off, among his people.

The moment came. Two thousand Indians had gathered on the prairie at Fort Union, to greet the thunder-canoe and the returning travelers. Wijunjon led the procession down the gang-plank.

It was not Indian etiquet to make an ado over the return. Wijunjon was roundly eyed, but nobody spoke to him. His wife, the Fire-bug-that-creeps, was here; so were his children, who scarcely knew him; so were his old parents. He felt that he was admired and that his family and friends were glad to see him; but they let him alone and he only stalked about in his glory, whistling the American war-cry of "Yankee Doodle."

After due time, of course they all loosened up. This night in his lodge in the Assiniboin village he commenced to tell his stories. But he could not tell one tenth—and yet, with the very first, several of the old men and chiefs arose and went out.

They said that this Wijunjon was a liar, and that they would not listen to him. The white people were known to be great liars, and he had learned from them!

In vain, the next day, and the next day, the Pigeon's-egg Head tried to make himself popular.

First, he let his wife cut off the tails of his frock coat, to fashion herself a pair of nice blue leggins. His silver-lace hat-band she took for garters. The rest of his coat he gave to his brother; and now he wore his white shirt with the tails outside.

He gave away his boots—which hurt his feet. He gave away the tails of his shirt, also his brass studs and sleeve-buttons. And with his keg of rum, and his broad-sword dragging and tripping him, he paid visits from lodge to lodge, and whistled "Yankee Doodle."

Pretty soon he had nothing left but his blue umbrella. That was the only thing he kept. Even his hat was gone; his sword was used by his wife, as a meat chopper. And still he was not popular.

Each night men and women gathered from near and far, to hear him talk, in his lodge. They sat silent and critical, while he told them the honest truth.

He worked very hard. He labored to describe the long journey, and the marvelous number of white man's lodges, and villages, and the stage coaches, and the railroads; the forts, and the ships-of-many-big-guns, and the tremendous "council-house" at Washington; and the patent office (great-medicine-place, filled with curious machines); and the war parade of American soldiers, and the balloon—a huge ball which carried a man to the Great Spirit in the sky; and the beautiful white squaws with red cheeks.

The people listened; and when they went out they said among themselves: "Those things are not true. The Pigeon's-egg Head is the greatest liar in the world. The other nations will laugh at the Assiniboins."

Wijunjon did not despair. He was so full of words that he simply must talk, or burst. He wished that he might bring forward the other Assiniboin who had been with him and who knew that all these stories were true; but the other Assiniboin had died on the way home. That was too bad.

However, he stuck to his stories, for he knew that he was right. His people had sent him to see, and he had seen, and he spoke only true words.

After a while, the Assiniboins took a different view of Wijunjon. Any person who had such stories in his brain was certainly great medicine. No common liar could invent these stories about impossible wonders.

Yes, Wijunjon was doubtless taught by a spirit. He had dreamed.

Now the Assiniboin people looked upon Wijunjon with awe and fear. A person equipped with such power might be very dangerous. They decided that he ought to be killed.

Meanwhile Wijunjon went right on telling his stories. He still had hopes—and besides, it was pleasant to be the center of a gaping circle, and to walk around with folks gazing so at him.

There was a young man who agreed to rid the Assiniboins of this wizard. Beyond question, Wijunjon was too great medicine to be killed by an ordinary bullet; another way should be found.

This young man, also, was a dreamer. And in his dreams he was told, he said, how to kill Wijunjon. The wizard must be shot with an iron pot handle! Nothing else would do the work.

Accordingly, the young man appointed to kill Wijunjon for being bad medicine, found an iron pot handle, and spent a whole day filing it down to fit into the muzzle of his gun. Then from behind he shot the terrible Pigeon's-egg Head and scattered his lying brains about, and the wizard fell dead.



CHAPTER XX

THE BLACKFEET DEFY THE CROWS (1834)

"COME AND TAKE US"

Southwest from the Mandans there lived the Crow nation. They roved through the Yellowstone River country of southern Montana to the Rocky Mountains; and southward through the mountains into the Wind River and Big Horn country of western Wyoming.

West from the Mandans there lived the Blackfeet nation. They roved through the Missouri country of northern Montana, and north into Canada.

The land of the Crows and of the Blackfeet overlapped. The two peoples were at war, on the plains and in the mountains.

By reason of their wars, the Crow nation had shrunk until they were down to seven thousand people, with many more women than men. But their warriors were tall and stately, their women industrious, their garb elegant. Their buffalo-hide lodges and their buffalo-robe clothing were the whitest, finest in the West. They had countless horses. And the long hair of their men set them high in dignity.

Oiled every morning with bear's grease, the hair of a proud Crow warrior swept the ground behind him. The hair of Chief Long-hair measured ten feet, seven inches, and rolled into a bunch it weighed several pounds. When it had turned white, he worshipped it as his medicine.

The Crows' name for themselves was Ab-sa-ro-ke—Sparrow Hawk People. They were of the Siouan family and cousins of the Minnetarees, the Bird-woman's captors. They had no villages, except where they camped. They were dark, as high and mighty in their bearing as the Mohawks or Senecas, were wonderful riders and looked upon the white men not as worthy enemies but as persons who should be plundered of horses and goods.

In the white men's camps they were polite—and took away with them whatever they could. However, many white traders spoke well of the Crows.

The name of the Blackfeet was Sik-sik-a, which means the same. It referred to their black moccasins. They were Algonquins, and in power ranked with the Iroquois of the East. The Blackfeet, the Bloods and the Piegans formed the league of the Siksika nation. They warred right and left, with the Crees, the Assiniboins, the Sioux, the Crows, the Pierced Noses, and with practically all tribes; they were hostile to the white Americans who hunted in their country; but their wars had not cut them down, for they numbered close to forty thousand people.

Like the Crows their enemy-neighbors they were rovers, never staying long in one spot. They were unlike the Crows in appearance, being shorter, broad-shouldered and deep-chested. No warriors were more feared.

In November of 1834, amidst the Wind River Mountains of western Wyoming five hundred Crows were ahorse, at early morning, to chase the buffalo. And a gallant sight they made as they rode gaily out; in their white robes, their long plaited hair flying, their best horses prancing under them and decorated with red streamers.

Chief Grizzly Bear led. Chief Long-hair, now almost eighty years of age, was with another band.

In this Chief Grizzly Bear band there rode a party of white beaver-hunters who were to spend the winter with the Crows. They now were to be shown how the Crows killed buffalo.

Pretty soon, while the Crows cantered on, they sighted a group of moving figures at the base of the hills two or three miles distant across the valley. Everybody stopped short to peer. Buffalo? No! Indians, on foot and in a hurry—Blackfeet!

How, from so far away, the Crows could tell that these were Blackfeet, the white men did not know. But with a yell of joy and rage, every Crow lashed his horse and forward they all dashed, racing to catch the hated Blackfeet.

The white hunters followed hard. It was to be an Indian battle, instead of an Indian buffalo-chase.

The Blackfeet numbered less than one hundred. They were a war party. Were they hunting buffalo, they would have been on horseback; but even among the horse Indians the war parties were likely to travel on foot, so as to be able to hide more easily. They counted upon stealing horses, for the homeward trail.

These Blackfeet had been very rash, but that was Blackfoot nature. They had sighted the Crows as soon as the Crows had sighted them, and were hustling at best speed to get back into the hills.

The Crows, whooping gladly and expecting to make short work of their enemies, first made short work of the distance. Their robes were dropped, their guns loaded, their bows were strung, they spread out wider—the Blackfeet were cut off and desperately scrambling up a rocky slope—could never make it—never, never—they had halted—what were they doing?

Aha! From the hill slope there arose answering whoops; a few guns cracked; and at the base and half-way up, the Crows stopped and gazed and yelled.

The plucky Blackfeet had "forted." They were in a natural fort of rock wall. On either side of them a rock out-crop in a ridge four feet high extended up hill, to meet, near the top, a cross-ridge ten feet high.

While half the warriors defended with guns and bows, the other half were busily piling up brush and boulders, to close the down-hill opening.

Now whoop answered whoop and threat answered threat, while the Crows rode around and around, at safe distance, seeking a weak place. Chief Grizzly Bear held council with the sub-chiefs. Away sped an express, to get reinforcements from the camp.

At the first charge upon the fort, three Crows had been killed, and only one Blackfoot. That would never do: three scalps in trade for one was a poor count, to the Crows.

They were five hundred, the Blackfeet were only ninety; but the Crows held off, waiting their reinforcements, while from their fort the Blackfeet yelled taunt after taunt.

"Bring up your squaws'! Let them lead you. But our scalps will never dry in a Crow lodge!"

Here, at last, came the people from the camp: the old men, women, boys—everybody who could mount a horse and who could find a weapon; all shrieking madly until the whole valley rang with savage cries.

Matters looked bad for the Blackfeet. At least two thousand Crows were surrounding them, hooting at them, shaking guns and bows and spears at them. And the Blackfeet, secure in their fort, jeered back. They were brave warriors.

Chief Grizzly Bear called another council. In spite of all the gesturing and whooping and firing of guns, the Blackfeet were unharmed. The Crows had little heart for charging in, upon the muzzles of those deadly pieces with the fierce Blackfeet behind.

The white beaver-hunters, not wishing to anger the Blackfeet, and curious to see what was about to happen, withdrew to a clump of cedar trees, about two hundred yards from the fort. The white men had decided to be spectators, in a grand-stand.

Presently Chief Grizzly Bear and his chiefs seemed to have agreed upon a plan of battle. Had they been white men, themselves, they would have stormed the fort at once, and carried the fight to close quarters; but that was not Indian way.

To lose a warrior was a serious matter. Warriors were not made in a day. And without warriors, a tribe would soon perish. "He who fights and runs away, may live to fight another day," was the Indians' motto. They preferred to play safe.

Now the Crows formed in line, two or three hundred abreast, and charged as if they were intending to run right over the fort. It was a great sight. But it did not frighten the Blackfeet.

Up the hill slope galloped the Crow warriors and boys, shooting and yelling. The stout Blackfeet, crouched behind their barricade, volleyed back; and long before the Crows drove their charge home, it broke.

Soon several more Crow warriors were lying on the field. The wails of the squaws sounded loudly. No Blackfeet had been hurt.

The Crows changed their tactics. They avoided the fort, until they had gained the top of the hill. Then in a long single file, they tore past that end of the fort, letting fly with bullet and arrow as they sped by.

Each warrior threw himself to the opposite side of his horse, and hanging there with only one arm and one leg exposed to the fort, shot under his horse's neck.

It was an endless chain of riders, shuttling past the fort, and shooting—but that did not work.

The Blackfeet arrows and bullets caught the horses, and once in a while a rider; and soon there were ten Crows down.

The Crows quit, to rest their horses, and to talk. Their women were wailing still more loudly. War was hard on the women, too. For every relative killed, they had to cut off a finger joint, besides gashing their faces and hands with knives.

In their little fort, the Blackfeet were as boldly defiant as ever.

"Come and take us!" they gibed. "Where are the Crow men? We thought we saw Crow men among you. Come and take us, but you will never take us alive!"

"What will be done now?" the white men queried of a black man who had joined them, in the clump of cedars.

He was not all black. He was half white, one quarter negro and one quarter Cherokee. He had lived over twenty years in the Indian country of the upper Missouri River; mainly with the Crows. Edward Rose had been his name, when young; but now he was a wrinkled, stout old man, called Cut-nose, and looked like a crinkly-headed Indian.

"The Crows are losing too many warriors. They have no stomach for that kind of work," answered the old squaw-man.

The Crow chiefs and braves were seated in a circle, near the cedars, and listening to the speakers who stood up, one after another.

"Our marrow-bones are broken," some asserted. "The enemy is in a fort; we are outside. We will lose more men than he. Let us draw off; and when he is in the open, we can then attack as we please."

"He is few; we are many. Our slain warriors and their women cry for vengeance," asserted others. "We will be called cowards if we retreat. If we charge all together we may lose a few braves, but there will be no Blackfeet left to laugh at us."

These seemed to be the voices that carried. The pipe was passed around the circle, every man puffed at it, and the council broke up in a tremendous yelling.

Now the end of the Blackfeet loomed large. Ahorse and afoot the Crows massed, to charge from below and on either flank. Their chiefs hastened hither and thither, urging them. The women and children shrieked encouragement.

In their little fort the Blackfeet also listened to their chiefs. They showed not the slightest sign of fear. Their fierce faces glared over the ramparts. Their weapons were held firmly.

The Crows had aroused themselves to such a pitch that they acted half insane. Forward they charged in howling masses—but the bullets and arrows pelted them thickly, more warriors fell—they scattered and ran away. The Blackfeet hooted them.

This made old Cut-nose mad. He hastened out to where the Crows were collected in doubt what next to do, and climbed upon a rock, that they all might see him.

"Listen!" he shouted. "You act as if you expected to kill the enemy with your noise. Your voices are big and your hearts are small. These white men see that the Crows cannot protect their hunting grounds; they will not trade with a nation of cowards and women; they will trade with the Blackfeet, who own the country. The Blackfeet will go home and tell the people that three thousand Crows could not take ninety warriors. After this no nation will have anything to do with the Crows. I am ashamed to be found among the Crows. I told the white men that you could fight. Now I will show you how black men and white men can fight."

And he leaped from his rock, and without glancing behind him he ran for the fort. The Crows did not delay an instant. Pellmell they rushed after him, caught up with him, swarmed against the brush and rock walls—the Blackfeet met them stanchly, and gave way not an inch—and the fighting was terrible.

But over the barricade poured the Crows. In a moment the whole interior was a dense mass of Indians, engaged hand to hand, and every one yelling until, as said the white men, "The noise fairly lifted the caps from our heads."

Guns and hatchets and clubs and knives rose and fell. The Crow women were pressing to the outskirts, to kill the wounded enemy. Gradually the weight of the Crows forced the Blackfeet back. The Blackfeet began to emerge over the upper end of the fort—their faces still to the foe.

Presently all who might escape, were outside—but their enemies surrounded them at once. The Blackfeet remaining were not many. They never faltered nor signed surrender. They only sang their death chants; and forming in close order they moved along the ridge like one man, cutting a way with their knives.

By the half dozen they dropped; even those who dropped, fought until they were dead. Soon the platoon was merely a squad; the squad melted to a spot; there was a swirl, covering the spot; and the spot had been washed out.

Not a Blackfoot was left, able to stand. The wounded who had lost their weapons hurled taunts, as they lay helpless, until the Crows finished them also. Truly had the Blackfeet yelled: "Come and take us! But you will never take us alive!"

This night there was much mourning in the Crow camp. Thirty chiefs and braves had been killed, twice that number wounded, and many horses disabled. No prisoner had been brought in, to pay by torture. The Blackfeet nation would look upon the fight as their victory.

So the Crow dead were buried; and into each grave of chief or brave were placed his weapons and the shaved off mane and tail of his best horse—for every hair would become a horse for him, in the spirit world.



CHAPTER XXI

THE STRONG MEDICINE OF KONATE (1839)

THE STORY OF THE KIOWA MAGIC STAFF

The Kiowas are of the great Athapascan family of Indians. In their war days they ranged from the Platte River of western Nebraska down into New Mexico and Texas. But their favorite hunting grounds lay south of the Arkansas River of western Kansas and southeastern Colorado.

It was a desert country, of whity-yellow sand and sharp bare hills, with the Rocky Mountains distant in the west, and the only green that of the trees and brush along the water-courses. Nevertheless it was a very good kind of country.

It had plenty of buffalo. The timber and the streams supplied winter shelter. The wagon-road of the white merchants, between the Missouri River and Santa Fe of New Mexico, ran through the middle of it and furnished much plunder. In the south, where lay Comanche land and Apache land, there were Mexican settlements that furnished horses.

With the Comanches and Apaches, and with the Cheyennes and Arapahos north, the Kiowas were friends. To the Pawnees they were enemies, and their name carried dread through many years of fighting.

Now in the summer of 1839, twenty Kiowa warriors left their village near the Arkansas River in present southern Kansas, to go down across Comanche country and get horses and mules from the Pasunke, or the Mexicans of El Paso, which is on the Rio Grande River border between northwestern Texas and Mexico. However, in those days all that region was Mexico.

The head chief of the party was old Do-has-an, or Bluff. But he did not command. Gua-da-lon-te, or Painted-red, was the war chief. Dohasan would take command only in case Gua-da-lon-te was killed. Among the warriors there were Dagoi, and Kon-a-te, whose name means "Black-tripe."

After several days' travel horseback clear across New Mexico they came to El Paso town, where many goods were stored on the way between New Mexico and Old Mexico, and where the people got rich by trading and by making wine from grapes. But they could see soldiers guarding El Paso; so they did not dare to charge in and gather horses and mules from the frightened Pasunke.

Dohasan, who was wise as well as brave, advised against it.

"Another time," he said. "We are too few, and we are a long way from home. Let us go, and come again. Maybe on the way tip we will meet with luck among the other villages."

They rested only the one night, and turned back, thinking that they had not been discovered. At the end of a day's journey through a bad, waterless land, they halted and camped by a spring, of which they knew.

It was a big rock-sink or round, deep basin, with, a pool of water at the bottom, and a cave that extended under a shelf.



The Mexican soldiers must have struck their trail, or perhaps had followed them from El Paso; for early in the morning there was a sudden shooting from all around, and much yelling. Bullets whined and spatted, and horses screamed and fell over.

"Into the cave!" shouted Painted-red. "Quick!"

Hustled by old Bluff and Painted-red, into the cave they bolted. Nobody had been hurt, and the soldiers were afraid to venture in after them, but right speedily they found themselves badly off.

The soldiers camped along the edge of the well, above, so as to kill them by thirst and hunger. Only in the darkness might the Kiowas, two or three at a time, crawl out of the cave, gulp a few swallows from the pool, maybe slash a strip of horse-meat, and scuttle in again.

While doing this, Dagoi was shot in the leg, so that he could not walk. In a couple of days the dead horses began to decay, for the sun was very hot. The smell grew sickening. The flesh was sickening. One or two of the dead horses lay in the pool, and the water got sickening. The Mexican soldiers stayed close and watchful, and yelled insults in Spanish.

But they had with them several Apache scouts; and one of the Apaches called in Comanche, so that the soldiers would not understand.

"Be of good cheer, brothers," he called. "Be strong and hold out, until these dogs of Mexicans tire."

The Kiowas had no thought of surrendering. They would rather die where they were, because if they surrendered, they would be killed anyway. Old Dohasan and others among them belonged to the society of Ka-itse-nko or Real Dogs—whose members were under a vow never to surrender.

Part of them guarded the cave's mouth, and the rest explored back inside. At the very end there was a hole which let in daylight. Konate was boosted up; but when he stuck his head through, a soldier saw it and he had to duck down. Thereupon the soldiers stopped the hole with a large rock.

When ten days and nine nights had passed, they all decided that they would either escape or be killed. The horse meat could not be touched; neither could the water. It was better to die in the open, like men, than to die in a hole, like gophers.

The soldiers guarded the only trail that led up the side of the cliff wall, out of the well; but at another side there was a cedar which had rooted in a crack and almost reached the rim. By hard climbing a man might manage to scramble up and gain the open.

But what to do with Dagoi, who had only one leg and was weak from pain?

"You will not leave me, my brothers?" implored Dagoi. "It is true I am wounded, but if you leave me, I shall surely die. Perhaps you can carry me on your backs. Or wait a day or two, and the soldiers will grow tired."

"No," said old Dohasan. "That is impossible. We must move fast, and to get you up the tree would make noise. If we wait, or if we stay, we will all die, and it is better that one should die than that all should die. Have a strong heart, my son. You are a warrior, and you must die like a warrior."

Dagoi bowed his head.

"Those are good words," he answered. "I hear them and they make me strong. I am a man, and I am not afraid. When you get home, tell my friends to come and avenge me."

In the darkness Dagoi dragged himself to the pool, and sat beside it, waiting for daylight and the bullets of the soldiers.

Old Dohasan sang the death-chant of the Real Dogs. Then he stepped silently out, leading the file of warriors to the wall under the tree, that he might be the first to climb and meet the soldiers in case they were on watch.

Up he went, into the cedar, and on; up went all, one after another, as fast as they could. The camp-fires of the Mexican soldiers were glowing, right and left and behind and before, along the rim; but without a sound the nineteen gaunt Kiowas, bending low, stole swiftly forward, at the heels of Dohasan.

They succeeded. But in finding horses, somebody made a little noise, and the Mexicans fired wildly into the darkness. However, answering not, and leading the horses out a short way, step by step, they were ready to vault on.

"Anybody hurt?"

"A bullet has gone through my body," said Konate. "But I will try to ride."

"We must hurry," spoke Painted-red. The camp was all aroused. "Someone help Konate."

Away they dashed, several riding double, and Konate supported in his seat by a comrade. Behind, in the well, Dagoi sat beside the pool and kept his heart strong for the end that would come by daylight.

All that night and all the next day they rode, making northeast toward the desolate desert region of the Staked Plain, on the homeward way across western Texas. No Mexican soldiers would follow into the Staked Plain.

When after hard riding they arrived at Sun-mountain Spring, on the top of a high, bare-rock hill near the Staked Plain, Konate's wound had spoiled in him and he could not sit upright on his horse. He was very ill.

"I am about to die, friends," he gasped. "Do not try to carry me farther. But go, yourselves; and some day come back for my bones."

He spoke sense. Any one might see that he had only a few hours to live, and that soon his comrades would be carrying only a body across the Staked Plain, where the sun beat hotly and water was far apart.

It was better that they leave him here, at the spring where they might find his bones. So on the water's edge they built a shade for Konate, with a few crooked cedar branches, and bidding him goodby they rode on, into the great Staked Plain.

They expected that they would never seen him again.

What happened now to Konate, he often told, and he told it always the same; therefore it must be true. For the rest of the long day he lay there, with the sun beating down around him, and his mind and body very sick from his wound. He was unable to sleep. The sun set, and the air changed to cool, the twilight deepened to dusk; alone on his hilltop he closed his eyes, and waited for the spirit of the tai-me, or Sun-dance medicine, to bear him to his fathers.

In the star-light he heard a wolf howl, far off. He listened, and the howl sounded again, nearer, from another direction. Then he knew that the wolf had scented him and was ranging to find his spot. That would be bad—to be eaten by a wolf and have one's bones scattered!

Konate groaned. His heart had been strong, until this moment. He had hoped that his bones would be cared for.

Soon he heard the wolf, at hand; there was the soft patter of its pads, and the sniffing of its inquiring nose, seeking him out. And now he saw the wolf, with shining eyes peering into the bough shelter where he lay helpless, unable even to speak.

That was an agonizing moment, for Konate. But lo, instead of jumping upon him, the wolf trotted forward, and gently licked his wounds, and then lay quietly down beside him.

Konate was amazed and thankful. While the wolf lay there, next he heard another sound, in the distance: the shrill eagle-bone-whistle music of the great Sun-dance of the Kiowa nation. The music drew nearer, and he heard the Sun-dance song; and while he listened, strong of heart again, he saw the medicine spirit of the Sun-dance standing before him, at the entrance to the shelter.

"I pity you and shall not let you die," said the medicine spirit. "You shall see your home and friends."

Then the medicine spirit brought down a rain, to wash Konate's wounds and cool his fever. The medicine spirit sat with Konate most of the night, and told him many things: told him how to make a new kind of Sun-dance shield, and also an a-po-te, or sacred forked staff, that should be a medicine staff and have magic powers.

Toward morning the medicine spirit left, saying:

"Help is near."

Every bit of this Konate firmly insisted was true, although white men claimed that he dreamed. For, listen:

Meanwhile the Painted-red party were riding on, and in the Staked Plain they met six Comanches, bound to Mexico after plunder. They spoke to the Comanches regarding Konate, and asked them to cover his body so that the wolves should not get it.

This the Comanches promised to do, and continued to the Sun-mountain Spring where Konate had been left to die.

But when they reached the spring, they found Konate alive and stronger than when his comrades had bid him goodby! That astonished them. They then knew that he was "medicine." Therefore they washed him, and gave him food, and putting him on an extra horse they turned back and took him home.

The village, and all the tribe, also, were astonished to see him again. As proof that he had been visited by the medicine spirit, he made the medicine shield, of a new design, and the apote, or sacred forked stick. He took the name Pa-ta-dal, or Lean Bull. After that the keepers of the medicine stick bore the same name.

Konate carried the medicine stick in the Sun-dance, for several years, and then handed it on to his nephew K'a-ya-nti, or Falls-over-a-bank, who became Lean Bull the second—but the white people called him Poor Buffalo.

This apote was a two-pronged stick about four feet long, decorated with wild sage. It was smooth and had no bark, and was brought out only once a year, for the Sun-dance. The keeper of it used it for beating time, in the dance. At the close of the dance it was stuck, forks up, in the ground in the center of the medicine lodge, and left until the next year.

When the stick was eighteen years old Konate's nephew planted it as before, at the close of the Sun-dance, in the center of the medicine lodge on the plain; and when the Kiowas returned, the next summer, for another Sun-dance, they discovered that the apote had been planted the other end up, and was putting forth green leaves!

For a stick eighteen years old, without bark, to do this, was certainly great medicine. No one now might doubt the story of Konate, to whom the taime spirit had talked, under the bough shelter by the Sun-mountain Spring.

None of the Kiowas dared to touch the apote, this time—or to stay near the medicine lodge. The dance was held at another place.

When, ten years later, or in October, 1867, the Kiowas met in a treaty council with the United States, near the present town of Medicine Lodge on Medicine Lodge Creek, southern Kansas, they were enabled to show that the apote had grown to be a large tree.

Such had been the strong medicine of Konate, to whom, about to die from his wounds, in his shelter by the Sun-mountain Spring beyond the Staked Plain, the taime spirit had talked.

Konate was dead; but K'a-ya-nti, his nephew, the other keeper of the stick, was still alive; and he knew.



CHAPTER XXII

RED CLOUD STANDS IN THE WAY (1865-1909)

THE SIOUX WHO CLOSED THE ROAD OF THE WHITES

The name Sioux comes down from a longer Chippewa word meaning "adder" or "enemy." The Indians who bore this name were the powerful Dakotas—the true Sioux of history.

The wide Nation of the Lakota, as these Sioux called themselves, was a league of seven council fires.

The four divisions of the Santees lived in Minnesota; the two divisions of the Yanktons lived between them and the Missouri River; the one large division of the Tetons lived in their Dakota country, west of the Missouri River.

The Santees, the Yanktons and the Tetons spoke their own dialects. They differed in appearance from one another. They were separated into tribes and bands.

Even as late as 1904 they numbered twenty-five thousand people in the United States. By mind, muscle and morals they have been rated as leaders of the Western red men. They roamed hither-thither, and depended upon the buffalo for food. They waged stout war.

The Tetons were the strongest, and formed half of, the Dakota nation. It was chiefly they who fought the United States soldiers for so long. The war opened in 1855, over the killing of a crippled cow by a Min-i-con-jou, at Fort Laramie of Wyoming, on the Oregon Trail of the emigrants.

The Brules, or Burnt Thighs; the Og-la-las, or Scatter-one's-own; the Hunk-pa-pas, or Those-who-camp-by-themselves; the Min-i-con-jous, or Those-who-plant-beside-the-stream; the Si-ha-sa-pas, or Black-moccasins: these were the Teton Sioux who battled the hardest to save their buffalo and their lands from the white man.



Red Cloud at first was chief of the Bad Faces band of Oglala Sioux. They were a small fighting band, but he was a noted brave. His count showed more coups, or strike-the-enemy feats, than the count of any other warrior of the Oglalas. Before he retired from war, his coups numbered eighty.

He was born in 1822. His Sioux name was Makh-pia-sha, meaning Red Cloud. In the beginning it probably referred to a cloud at sunrise or sunset; later it referred to his army of warriors whose red blankets covered the hills.

When he was forty years old, there was much excitement among the white men to the west of the Sioux range. From the mines of Idaho the gold-seekers had crossed to the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains in western Montana. Mining camps such as Helena, Bozeman and Virginia City sprang up.

The Oregon Trail of the emigrants already passed through the Sioux country, and the Sioux had agreed to let it alone. Now the United States asked permission to make a new road, which from Fort Laramie of southern Wyoming would leave the Oregon Trail, and branch off northwest, through the Powder River and the Big Horn country of Wyoming, and on west across Montana, as a short-cut to the gold-fields.

This part of Wyoming really was Crow Indian country; but the Sioux had driven the Crows out, and with the Northern Cheyennes were using the region for a hunting ground. The white man's trails to the south had frightened the buffalo and reduced the herds; the Powder River valleys were the only ranges left to the Sioux, where they might hunt and always find plenty of meat.

Some of the Sioux chiefs did sign a treaty for the new road. The only Oglalas who signed were subchiefs. Red Cloud did not sign. The United States went ahead, anyway. Troops were sent forward, to begin the work of building the road. Red Cloud, with his Oglalas and some Cheyennes, surrounded them and captured them; held them prisoners for two weeks, until his young men threatened to kill them. Then he released them, with a warning.

"I shall stand in the trail," he said. Those were the words of Pontiac, to Major Rogers, one hundred years before.

United States officials were ordered to Fort Laramie, to talk with the angry Red Cloud. He declined to meet them.

But already a number of white gold-seekers had entered by this Bozeman Trail, as it was known. In June, of the next year, 1866, the United States tried again to get Red Cloud's name on the paper. A council was called at Fort Laramie.

During the last year, another fort had been located. It was Fort Reno—the first out-post of the new trail, at the Powder River, one hundred and sixty-seven miles along from Laramie.

Red Cloud, and his lieutenant, They-fear-even-his-horses, came in to talk with the United States, at Fort Laramie. A great throng of Indians was present, for Fort Laramie was a busy post.

Nothing could be done with the Red Cloud band. The United States was willing to promise that nobody should be allowed to leave the new road, or to disturb any game. Red Cloud only shook his head. He well knew that the white travelers would not obey the law. They would hunt and camp, as they chose.

"Wah-nee-chee!" he said. "No good! Why do you come here and ask for what you have already taken? A fort has been built, and the road is being used. I say again, we will not sell our hunting grounds for a road."

But the United States had decided. The Government had been assured by the treaty makers that all the Sioux would finally yield. There was last fall's treaty, as a starter. The Sioux from every band had signed. Besides, the Government could not give up the right to open roads. A railroad had the power to take right-of-way through towns and lands; and a Government wagon road should have the same license.

So certain was the Government that the road would be opened, that even while the council with the Red Cloud Oglalas was in session, there arrived at Fort Laramie Colonel Henry B. Carrington of the Eighteenth Infantry, with seven hundred soldiers.

Red Cloud saw the camp.

"Where are those soldiers going?"

"They are sent to open the new road and build forts."

"The Americans seek to steal our land whether we say yes or no!" angrily uttered Red Cloud. "They will have to fight."

He and They-fear-even-his-horses (whom the white men called "Young-man-afraid-of-his-horses") seized their rifles, and rode away, and three hundred of their warriors followed them.

"Red Cloud means war," warned the Indians who remained. "The Great Father makes us presents, to buy the road; but the white soldiers come to steal it first. In two moons the white war chief will not have a hoof left."

An express sent after Red Cloud, to ask him to return, was whipped with bows and ordered to get out and tell the white chiefs that Red Cloud would not talk about the road.

Colonel Carrington marched on, into the forbidden land. The officers' wives were with them. Traders along the line insisted that the Indians were determined to fight; but some of the emigrant outfits bound over the trail to the mines were scornful of danger. One emigrant captain laughed, when the women were timid.

"You'll never see an Injun unless he comes in to beg for sugar and tobacco," he said. "I've been on the plains too long to be scared by such trash."

This was at Fort Reno. That very morning, in broad daylight Red Cloud's band ran off all the post sutler's horses and mules while the soldiers looked on. Eighty men pursued, and captured only one Indian pony loaded with goods obtained at Fort Laramie.

Colonel Carrington left a detachment here at the Powder River, to build a better Fort Reno. He marched on.

Meanwhile Red Cloud had been growing stronger. Sioux warriors were hastening to join him. Spotted Tail of the Brules had declined to accept the treaty for opening the road—he waited for Red Cloud; but he was wisely staying at home. However, his Brule young men were riding away in large numbers, and he told the white people at Fort Laramie that if they "went far on the trail they had better go prepared to look out for their hair."

Red Cloud was watching the march of the soldiers. He did not attack; but when he saw them pushing on, and finally making camp to locate another fort, fifty miles northwest of Reno, on Piney Fork of Lodge-pole Creek, in the Big Horn Mountains of northern Wyoming, he again sent a message, by a party of soldiers whom he met and turned back.

"The white chief must take his soldiers out of this country. Let him decide for peace or war. If he wants peace, he can go back to Powder River. The fort there can stay. But no forts shall be built farther on the road, and no soldiers shall march over the road which has never been given to the white people."

Red Cloud wanted an answer at once. He also asked that the white chief come to him with an interpreter, and settle matters in a council. But the messenger was held at the fort for a short time, and Red Cloud moved his warriors to a new place.

Colonel Carrington invited the Sioux to come to the camp; and went ahead building his fort. Some bands of Northern Cheyennes appeared for a talk. They said that Red Cloud had urged them to join the Sioux in keeping the white men out of the hunting grounds, and that he knew what the soldiers had been doing every hour since they left Fort Laramie.

The Cheyennes seemed a little fearful of the Sioux; but said that if they were given provisions, they would stay away from the white trail.

When the Cheyennes returned to the Sioux, Red Cloud asked them what the white chief had said.

"Is he going back to the Powder River?"

"No," answered Black Horse, of the Cheyennes. "The white chief will not go back, and his soldiers will go on."

"What presents did he give you?"

"All we wanted to eat. He wishes the Sioux and the Cheyennes and all the other Indians to go to Fort Laramie, and sign the treaty, and get more presents. I think that we had better take the white man's hand and presents, rather than fight him and lose everything."

"No!" replied Red Cloud. "The white man lies and steals. My lodges were many; now they are few. The white man wants all. He must fight, and the Indian will die where his fathers died."

With that, the Sioux unstrung their bows and whipped the Cheyennes on the face and back, crying, "Coup!" as if they were striking the enemy.

So Black Horse sent word that the Sioux intended war.

The fort was named Fort Phil Kearney. It was built of timber cut in the pine woods seven miles distant, and was surrounded by a palisade or high fence of thick pickets set upright.

Saw mills were placed in the woods, and the wood-camps were protected by block-houses. Almost one hundred wagons were used, to haul the logs and boards.

One hundred miles onward, another fort was started: Fort C. F. Smith.

The Crows informed Colonel Carrington that Red Cloud had tried to enlist even them—that all the Sioux were uniting to drive out the white men from this region, and that in the fall there would be a "big fight" at the two forts.