1 70 The Wilderness Hunter 



Lower Kootenais are nominally Catholics. What 

 ever his name he was a good Indian, as Indians go. 

 I often tried to talk with him about game and hunt 

 ing, but we understood each other too little to ex 

 change more than the most rudimentary ideas. His 

 face brightened one night when I happened to tell 

 him of my baby boys at home; he must have been 

 an affectionate father in his way, this dark Ammal, 

 for he at once proceeded to tell me about his own 

 papoose, who had also seen one snow, and to de 

 scribe how the little fellow was old enough to take 

 one step and then fall down. But he never dis 

 played so much vivacity as on one occasion when the 

 white hunter happened to relate to him a rather 

 grewsome feat of one of their mutual acquaintances, 

 an Upper Kootenai Indian named Three Coyotes. 

 The latter was a quarrelsome, adventurous Indian, 

 with whom the hunter had once had a difficulty &quot;I 

 had to beat the cuss over the head with my gun a 

 little,&quot; he remarked parenthetically. His last feat 

 had been done in connection with a number of China 

 men who had been working among some placer 

 mines, where the Indians came to visit them. Now, 

 the astute Chinese are as fond of gambling as any of 

 the borderers, white or red, and are very successful, 

 generally fleecing the Indians unmercifully. Three 

 Coyotes lost all he possessed to one of the pigtailed 

 gentry ; but he apparently took his losses philosoph 

 ically, and pleasantly followed the victor round, un- 



