612 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Ja#, 24, 1881 



you wanted the prize, but I mil vote, and I have picked out 

 twenty nice stones so 1 can get two prizes." 



"But you can only select (en." I ventured. 



""Well, but there are more than teu good ones; a great 

 deal more than ten: more than twenty, but 1 just thought 1 

 would take- twenty so as to leave some for the rest, T don't 

 see why, if they want us to pick out ten good ones and there 

 are twenty just as good, why 1 can't pick them out just as 

 well ] could have picked out thirty, but you went on and 

 picked out ten before I did, and, of course, I didn't pick 

 out that teu because they might think you told me, and you 

 ought to have given me the first chance; It was very selfish 

 for you uot to; ] can tell what is good better than you can. 

 1 will get the prize, too, see if 1 don't. Do vou think they 

 will truly give a prize? I don't believe they will. Well, I 

 have voted anyway. Obi do you think they will put my 

 name in the paper? I would die if they did and any one 

 saw it. They would think I wanted the prize, and f don't 

 care a bit for it; 1 only did it for fuu and to show you that 

 I can enjoy a good story just as well as you can, 'and the 

 stories are'all very aooii. ' I think I will read that paper 

 now when it comes, isn't it awfully long to wait until Feb- 

 ruary to have it decided? and why don't you write some of 

 those absurd things you tell about when ybu go hunting? I 

 am sure they are just as tunny as any of those old 'Flicker- 

 tags. 1 '' 



She has voted. And, as I have before remarked, "you have 

 done it." Mabk North. 



St. Pael, Minn., Jan. 7. 



\ht §$mt8tt[m %ourip. 



LIFE AMONG THE BLACKFEET. 



UV J. T\'I1,I,MD SCIILU.T/.. 



Ninth Paper. 



IN each tribe of the nation are two painted lodges, one 

 colored red, theother white. The owners of them, like 

 the Bear-men, are supposed to be favorites of the gods, and 

 able to cure sickness. The value of one of these lodges is 

 about equal to fifteen heads of horses, and they are fre- 

 quently bought and sold. The tradition regarding them is 

 this: 



Long ago, the three tribes of the Nation were camped on 

 Bow River. One day two young men were sitting by the 

 river making arrow shafts. Directly beneath them, where 

 1he water ran swiftly against a cut bank, was a large whirl- 

 pool. One of the young men happening to look down, saw 

 it large lodge in the bottom of the whirlpool, and he said to 

 his companion, "Oh look! See that beautiful lodge down 

 there;" and his friend looked but could see nothingbut the 

 water ever whirling round and round. Then said the other, 

 "I am going down into that lodge," and his companion tried 

 to dissuade him, saying, "Do not go, for the River people 

 will grasp you and you will never return." But the young 

 man was not afraid, and pulling off his clothes, he dived 

 into the water. 



When he had got to the bottom of the river, he came to 

 the lodge, and it was painted red, and he went round to the 

 doorway and entered it. Only one person sat in the lodge, 

 an old man whose hair was very white and long. He did 

 not speak or look up but kept singing a strange song. Ha uging 

 up. on the inside of the lodge, were many buffalo robes, fine 

 furs, and weapons, all ol lliern painted red, and at the doorway 

 bung a bunch of hoof bells also painted red. Kow, after a 

 long lime, the old man raised his head and lie said, "Why 

 have you come in?" And the young man said, "On the bank 

 iif the river 1 was making arrows, and way down in the 

 water I saw vour lodge; and 1 wished to see the way you 

 live. That is why I came." Then said the old man, "Your 

 heart is brave, return to your people and make a lodge like 

 mine; it shall be .NiU-os'-e (of the sun) and the Sun will be 

 dad." 



When the young man returned to the bank he found his 

 companion weeping and calling him by name, for he thought 

 he was drowned, and he told all that he had seen in the 

 underwater lodge. As they stood looking down into the 

 whirlpool the other young man saw a lodge tit the bottom 

 and quickly dived into the water. After a time he returned 

 and told Id's companion of his adventure; the lodge •which 

 he found was painted white, and inside were white buffalo 

 robes; and white furs, and wlu'te painted weapons, and 

 there was an old man who had spoken just as the other old 

 man had spoken to the first young man who went down. 

 Then the young men hurried home and told what they had 

 seen, and" they each made a lodge like the ones Ihey had 

 Hound in the whirlpool. 



Nearly all the different tribes of "Western Indians with 

 which the writer is acquainted, build "sweat lodges." The 

 Blaekicet are not an exception, but it is very probable that 

 their traditions regarding the origin of the "sweat lodge" 

 and the purposes for which it is" used are different from 

 those of anv other ludians. According to tradition, the Old 

 Man first built a sweat lodge and told the people to do so 

 that the sun would quickly hear their prayers. 



A sweat-lodge consists of a framework" of light willows, 

 covered with cow skin, ft is in the shape of a hemisphere, 

 about three feet high and six or seven feet in diameter. In 

 the center a small hole is dug in the ground, in which are 

 placed red-hot rocks, Every thing being ready, those who 

 arc to take the sweat crawl "inside, the cow skins are pulled 

 tightly down, so as to exclude all circulation of air, and 

 water is thrown on the hot rocks, causing a dense steam which 

 makes the perspiration fairly drip from one's body. When 

 the sweat is over tit generally lasts for an hour and a half), 

 the cow skins are removed and the framework left for the 

 suu, it never being used a second time. During the process 

 of sweating, prayers are offered by the Bear-man or painted 

 lodge man. 1 f neither of these be" present, the oldest warrior 

 makes the prayer. Occasions for building a sweat-lodge are: 

 To pray for the success of a war party; to pray for the re- 

 covery "of persons from illness, and for a continuance of life. 

 E-nilks-ap-f ! e-nuks-iip-I! "Let me (be) old, let me (be) old," 

 is the constant prayer of every Indian. Women never en- 

 ter a sweat-lodge. 



Mr, Joseph Kipp once told the writer that when the small- 

 pox was raging among the Indians they would crowd into 

 sweat lodges, fake an unusually hard sweat, and then jump 

 into the icy waters of the nvcr. Many, he said, never 

 reached the "bank again; hundreds of them being chilled and 

 powerless to combat the strong current, were swept away. 



Wheu a war party is made up, the one most noted for his 

 bravery and success is chosen for leader. Before starting it 

 is the duty of the leader to build a sweat-lodge for a Bear- 



pipe-man and any others whom the Bear-pipe-man may in- 

 vite. Prayers are offered for the success of the party." and 

 beside the sweat-lodge the leader erects a pole on which is 

 hung a valuable present for the sun. Each member of the 

 war party also makes the sun a present, and sometimes a 

 sacrifice. This sacrifice consists in cutting off a long lock of 

 hair or a piece of flesh, and sometimes a joint of B finger, 

 and giving to the sun. Women also make these sacrifices, 

 the reason for so doing being that, if they give the suu a 

 piece of their body he will be glad and preserve them and 

 their relatives from death. Every day during the absence 

 of a war party the Bear-pipe-man mounts his horse and, 

 rattle in hand, rides all through the camp, calling out in a 

 loud voice the names of the absent ones. He also visits the 

 lodges of the relatives of the absent, war party and sings and 

 prays that they may be successful, the women all joining in 

 the'songs. In 'the event of a war party returning with scalps 

 of the enemy, a war dance or scalp "dance is held. All the 

 women wear the shields, weapons and finery of their hus- 

 bands, and have their hair parted and their faces painted 

 just like a man's. One or more women carry the scalps on 

 slender poles, aud have the lower half of their faces painted 

 black. The men, most of them having drums, form into a 

 line, and opposite them stand the women. All sing, and in 

 time to the music the women gradually advance and come 

 up to the men, then fall back, and again advance, and so on. 

 When an enemy is killed near camp it is customary to bring 

 in his feet and hands, which are shot at aud kicked around 

 by the women, 



When a person dies, and as soon as life is pronounced ex- 

 tinct, the female relatives of the deceased securely wrap the 

 body in cow skins and robes, and having built, a' stout scaf- 

 fold between the branches of an adjacent tree, they fasten 

 the corpse to it with innumerable thongs. Contrary to a 

 statement by John Young, of the Piegan Agency, all per- 

 sons — men, "women tind children — are buried in this manner. 

 Sometimes, however, chiefs are buried in their own lodges. 

 Tin re are two ways of burying in lodges; one is to suspend 

 the deceased on a platform high enough from the ground to 

 prevent the wolves from reaching it; the other method, as 

 described by Mr. Kipp, is to dig a .grave directly under the 

 accustomed sitting place of the chief. After the body has 

 been laid in it a strong platform is built just above it aud 

 covered over with stones and dirt. The weapons of a dead 

 person were always buried with him, and in the graves of 

 women aud chilthen articles of housewifery aud toys were 

 always placed. At the burial place of a chief or a noted 

 warrior several horses were generally killed. At the burial 

 lodge of a chief which the writer once found, were the skel- 

 etons of four horses. Mourning observances devolve chiefly 

 upon the women. The wife, or mother of a deceased per- 

 son lacerates the calves of her legs, cuts off her hair and a 

 joint of a finger to show her grief. The father or husband 

 cuts off part of his hah and goes without leggins for a num- 

 ber of days. 



For the first few days succeeding a person's death all the 

 near relatives of the deceased spend the greater part of the 

 time on hills adjacent to the camp, where they sit and 

 mourn, calling the name of the dead person over and over 

 again, until they become so hoarse they cannot speak. After 

 a short period the men give up mourning altogether. A 

 wife or mother, however, mourns for a year or two, not 

 daily, but at irregular periods. 



BETWEEN THE LAKES. 



First Paper. 

 slGAKClttNG FOB A CAMPING GROUND. 



LAST June the. Judge, the Greek Professor and the writer 

 set out for a vacation tour in the Upper Peninsula of 

 Michigan The Judge had been in the country before, but 

 to thc'llreek Professor aud me it was a veritable I, 

 vila. hike most men, the Judge has a hobby. He is an old 

 camper-out, and his hobby is jus tent. In the remote past 

 he suffered from an ailment of some sort, and relief came to 

 him in his tent, and he not only believes that the tent life 

 cured him, but that it, will cure any ailment. No matter 

 what the bodily complaint of a friend, he invariably pre- 

 scribes "camp life in the woods." And to that prescription 

 isduetbe fact, that the Greek Prosessor and I went to the 

 woods the past summer. The Greek Professor had a "lump 

 in his throat." a veritable, old, hot. dyspeptic lump, more 

 troublesome to eradicate than the worst Greek root he ever 

 ran across; and I was dizzy -headed, so dizzy at, times that 

 1 had to sit down right on the curbstone and wait for it to 

 pass off, and 1 didn't feel comfortable over it at all, aud the 

 doctor's stuff didn't seem to do a bit of good either, and so 

 when the Judge in his confident maimer prescribed his sov- 

 ereign remedy for us we said, "Yes. we will try your pre- 

 scription if you will only show us the way; aud thereupon 

 he proposed a t routing expedi I ion in the Upper Peninsula, 

 aud that is the way we came to go. 



"The middle of June is too early by just one month," said 

 the Judge, "to go into the pine woods. That, is the height 

 of the trouting season, it is true, but then at that very time 

 the mosquitoes and the 'no-see-'ems' are having it all their 

 own way. But," he added, "I know of a camping ground 

 on Lake Superior where the insects seldom molest, and if 

 we find them too hot for us in the interior, we wili go there." 

 And so we determined to set out on our journey as soon as 

 Court, and Commencement were done with, and we didjso. 



Before leaving, however, the Judge said that, in making 

 up an outfit, there were three classes of things to 1H tohsid- 

 ered : First , l hings absolutely necessary ; second things con- 

 venient to have along; and, third, things that under QD cir- 

 cumstances must, be taken. We found a good many things 

 enumerated in the third class by him which we would have 

 put in the first; but we submitted to his dictation in all 

 thiugs, even as to the exact quantity of whisky to betaken, 

 and that the Greek Professor, who was the only preacher iu 

 the party, should be burdened with the care of it. 



At the appointed time wc bid our respective families fare- 

 well aud made for the nearest station on that great "Fishing 

 Line," the Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad, which carried 

 us direct to Mackinaw City, whence we crossed over to St. 

 Ignaee, on the north side of the Straits, a delightful old vil- 

 lage, which has recently been startled into a show id' activity 

 by the whistle of the locomotive, 1 have no interest iu any 

 railroad per ge, and it is, therefore, immaterial to me what 

 road gets the benefit of a sportsman's money, but I do have 

 a "fellow feeling" with all men who go a-flshing, aud I can- 

 not help but advert to the fact that one can take a coach tit 

 Cincinnati and keep the same seat, if he so wishes, until he 

 reaches Mackinaw City, the extreme northern point ol the 

 Lower Peninsida, provided that eciach ruus on the Grand 

 Rapids line. 



St. Ignaee is a place of more historical interest than most, 

 people are aware. Indeed the entire region of the Sir: 

 one brimful of historical matter attractive to the histori 

 and the reader. From lime immemorial the 

 their lodges at the Point, aud il is said that i'hr <',. ,■•■■-. 

 rhi Sou and Jesuit Missionaries as early as id 



the Pilgrim Fathers landed, visited here, but I do not 

 tind the saying verified by any credible hist oi ian. Twenty- 

 one years after that date, however, the Picter • 7, 

 the south shore of Lake Superior were visited, and foitv- 

 nine years after Father Marquette, the fearless priest and in- 

 trepid discoverer — the first of white men to look upon the 

 Upper Mississippi— established a mission here and bestowed 

 the name of St. Ignaee in memory of Bt. Ignatius, a saint 

 in the Roman calendar, and this is the dait- of its first set- 

 tlement by white men. Six years after establishing his mis- 

 sion the good father died at the mouth of a little river on (la- 

 east shore of Lake Michigan, not far south of the promontory 

 called "Sleeping Bear," and winch wits long kin , 

 name. He was there bmied. and it is related thai one of the 

 two Frenchmen who were with him at the time of I 

 was so overcome with griel thereat thai III had a piortaJ i 

 tack of colic, but ere the disease had done its worst , bethink- 

 ing, himself, he applied a handful Of earth from tilt rood 

 priest's grave to the seat of the pain, and al ojiet 

 made well. Two years after his death the grateful I lidians 

 of the St. Ignaee Mission unearthed bis bones ta 

 them with great pomp to St. Ignaee, Thiity eana l Wfli 

 in procession, each manned by a crew of painted wfirriprft 

 and when the cud of the journey was readied the acred 

 bones "were received with solemn ceremony and but id I be 

 neat,)! the floor of the little chapel of tie- BUS idjl ' In i 871 

 just two hundred years after the burial, an oxcavutii n 

 'made on the supposed site of the ancient chapel, and inclose, I 

 in fragments Of a birch-bark ootliu. human bones, v. ; 1 1 

 supposed to have been the remains of thegrea.1 discoverer, 



A purpose has been expressed by the Michigan people Of 

 erecting at some suitable point, a rnormmonl of stone ill 

 honorof the discoverer whose name is bo houorabh linked 

 with that of iheir own State. While it ma-, bu BUM to a* 

 sume thai that monument will never be built, yet it is pleas- 

 ant to remember that the most, delightfully situated of all 

 the Lake Saperior.towns and one which is destined to ever 

 stand high up in the scale of Lake Superior comne i p 

 petuates in its name the memory of the discoverer. And 

 after all how much better it is to have one's name perpetuated 

 iu a beautiful little city like Marquette, than in a si tafl 

 stone and mortar. 



At the hotel in St. Ignaee we met a party of Pittsburgh 

 gentlemen, from the woods. They were very boisterous and 

 badly mosquitoe bitten. The v plied each other r H 

 stupid jokes, very, in the breezy an of St. Ignaee, but which 

 may have sounded well enough around the camp-fire. I was 

 a good deal astonished at the pertness ol these lishermen, but 

 I now see that the oidy trouble with them was that, they did 

 not know that a good camp-tire just loses much of its lustre 

 when exhibited in a drawing room. 



The Pittslmrgers had evidently seen a hard time of it, and 

 they drew heavily upon their vocabulary for adjectives and 

 expletives in their vain effort to paint the tortures inflicted 

 by mosquitoes and no-see-'ems. No need for that, bowel i r, 

 for their neck?, ears, tprehe 



wrists, though mute witnesses, told the story of their auffi r- 

 ings better than their inflated speech. But, then they had 

 caught trout "till there was no fun in il. : tiny jnid and J 



they sat around the bar-room stove, thai breezy Jap 



tag, it was plain to be seen that in the future the memory of 

 the biting trout would be growing greener as the memory of 

 the biting insects would be' fading dimmer. 



The Detroit, Machine and M-oi.pietre Railroad takes up the 

 Grand Bapids and Indiana passenger at St. Ignaee. and car- 

 ries him One hundred and fiftj mil.-- through the Upper 



Peninsula, aud lands him at Marquette or Lake Superior 



This is not only a new road, but. it runs through a truly new 

 country. When we rememberihat settlements of while men 

 on the Upper Peninsula antedated like settlements by ninny 



years in Ohio. Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois, , 

 strange that the interior of the region should have remained 

 an unknown region to all save the hunter and trapper until 

 within a very few years. But such is the fact. 



The early explorers kept to the water ways. Their mis- 

 sions and ullages were established on the shores of lakes 

 and banks of streams. There was nothiug to lure men 

 out into the pine and bardwoud forests, into the inaish> 

 plains, and into the tamarae swamps, save- the game and fur 

 that there abounded, aud so it happened thai for over two 



hundred years after the tirst settlement was made, the sjrioi 



remained a practically unexplored region. When the 



engineers came to run the line between Bt. Iguace and Mar- 

 quette, they traversed the one hundred and titty miles »f 

 plain and s'wampand forest land lnterveningwilhout passing 

 the door of a single permanently inhabited cabin. It was a 

 veritable wilderness then and it is not a great deal betl 



The map shows towns planted along the road at 



distances from each other: but, with only ihvee foUl 

 exceptions, these towns amount to no more than a single 

 cabin in which a gang of section men are lodte-d. 



Such a country, when well stocked with deer and fish, afl 

 is the Upper Peninsula, must be! i unlry supremely inter 



csting to the a lOrtsman, and ll in tbi y dJ tin | 



of this series whi b mayfolle'W, there should seem to any 

 one to boa neediest prolixity, I trust n I 111 

 fared that the main purpose of the writer is 

 tion to brother sportsmen. 



To cut my Story short, We WGl Olll the railroad a hundred 

 miles to Mu'nistng Station, whence we went down to Munis- 

 me T.sv on Lake" Superior, four miles from the raiirc id I 

 i here we met Mr. Edward Uox, who generous]}' loaned us 

 the Sand Piper, which John Clm-I:. an Indian preacher, 

 i) is down to Miner's Creek, si\ mile-, east of the 

 placeof our embarkation, where we went into 

 spent a week, part of which was made miscraid , 

 Insects. As we were borne over the plains and through 

 the swamps and woods lying '• itl I HI St. ignaee aud Munis- 

 ing Station, wc took notice that the bunk full, 



and that all the low places were flooded. An unprecedented 

 rainfall had visited the region all through the early -auumc: . 

 a circumstance by no means calculated to repress mosquito- s, 

 gnats, and flies, as every sportsman knows, ami now when 

 we had made our camp" near the lake shore, we M 

 even there we were so fiercely assailed that In 

 burden, and more than that, the "waters were so high in the 

 Ke-che-kah-sak-pe-kah-se-pe or Miner's Check, that the I rout 

 disdained to rise to fly, or nibble at a worm. 



Our stay here, however, was uot wholly devoid Of -inci- 

 dent, The Judge conceived of a plan wheier, j 

 circumvent our tormentors during the night time at, least. 



