46 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Aug. 1, 1890. 



A 



BEAVER WOMAN'S CERTIFICATE* 



A Story of the Old Frontier. 



NUMBER of years ago one of the large daily papers 

 . of New York made an attempt to disparage the 

 General of the Army by caricaturing his name. 



"Piegan H. Sheridan" was held up to odium for assum- 

 ing the responsibility of some military operations that 

 resulted in a considerable loss of life among the Piegan 

 Indians. The chief interest in this episode lay in the 

 fact that the soldiers, attacking a camp supposed to be of 

 the Blood tribe at break of day, did not find out that 

 their opponents were iu fact Piegans until the victims 

 were past resuscitation. 



Public attention was turned for a time to the Northern 

 races, which even anions: students of Indian science, 

 have received less attention than their numbers and 

 power would seem to demand. The Blackfoot nation is 

 composed of four families, speaking the same tongue and 

 inheriting the same traditions. One of these families, as 

 well as the whole nation, bears the name of Blackfoot; 

 another family is that of the Bloods, and a third that of 

 the North Piegans. These three branches of the tribe 

 live mostly in Canada, while the fourth, that of the South 

 Piegans, inhabits a reservation in northern Montana. 



A native myth, less coherent than the story of Noah, 

 and perhaps less authentic, tells that the first father of 

 this chosen race sent out his sons to bring in supplies, 

 that the eldest came back over burnt prairie with game 

 which he had captured and earned the name of Black- 

 foot from his sooty moccasins. The second son came 

 back with garments, "pe-gun-ni" in their language, 

 whence the name which we have corrupted into Piegan, 

 while the ancestor of the Bloods got his title from some 

 equally simple distinction. 



All these people are at present well-ordered and peace- 

 able. The Canadian and American governments issue 

 them beef and flour. They have ponies to ride and sell, 

 and some of them work. But chief among the causes of 

 their good conduct is the prohibiting of the sale of 

 whisky. 



This cursed trade, while it brought wealth to the fur 

 dealers, brought ruin to everything else. Occasionally 

 some ill-starred white would suffer from the wild mis- 

 deeds of the maddened savages. More often it was the 

 Indians themselves who fell in the deadly brawls born of 

 liquor, or who, dropping in drunken sleep along the 

 trail, froze to death in the merciless cold of the Montana 

 winter. 



The episodes about to be related took place in the days 

 of the rum trade when two buffalo robes cost half a pint 

 of border spirits, and when, by reason of the vast herds 

 that dotted the prairies, this currency was plentiful 

 enough for quite a poor Indian to buy drink by the 

 gallon. 



These were the times when flourished those famous 

 braves Fire-maker, Very-nearly-a-dog, Buffalo-leggina 

 and The-last- coyote-but-one. They have become men of 

 peace. They have passed to the great majority. They 

 have joined the heroes who lived before Agamemnon, 

 and there is no Homer to stir the dust that covers their 

 memories. May the earth lie light upon them. 



The two forks of the Milk River rise in the desolate 

 foothills that fringe the eastern side of the Rockies in 

 northern Montana. The long stretches of swelling 

 prairie that reach far to the east are here lifted into 

 more broken ridges. The valleys are lined with willow 

 brush, and the ponds, as you go gradually higher, have 

 thickets of small aspens mingled with the lower bushes. 



There is a depressing power in the dismal surround- 

 ings, and when the wind sweeps fiercely down from the 

 west, as it almost always does, life seems but a space of 

 time wasted in weary contention with the elements. 

 The distant mountains, to be sure, have a massive gran- 

 deur that exalts your soul, even though you know that 

 the clouds forever massed in their grim recesses sally 

 forth in endless storms; but the treeless, wind-swept flats 

 are as forbidding as were the Elysian fields to the heroes 

 of the Iliad. 



Far down on one of the forks of Milk River bevond the 

 Sweet Grass Hills, a trader named Pitkin had built a 

 cabin; rather a substantial structure for a cabin, but not 

 quite up to the dignity of its name, for its builder chose 

 to call the house Fort Pitkin. Formerly the place had 

 gone by the name of Merry's Crossing. The original 

 Merry was one of the subordinate officers of the American 

 Fur Company, and, wandering in the pursuit of duty, had 

 one day met a squaw of the Crow tribe who fixed his 

 vagrant fancy. This woman Merry married , and he made 

 his dwelling, as far as pitching a tent can be called so, at 

 the very ford where Fort Pitkin was built later. 



The inheritor of Merry's name and fortune was his son 

 Jake, a restless, smooth-faced, dark-eyed young man, 

 whose incapacity for repose made him at times a trouble- 

 some neigh bor , J ake traded for skins, prin cipally buffalo 

 robes, sold whisky, powder and blankets, collected horses, 

 sometimes without bill of sale, hunted untiringly, riding 

 a week at a time, took mail contracts, and served as scout 

 for the Government or sided with one Indian party against 

 another in their domestic feuds, as occasion offered. 



Jake was rather a polyglot in language. Crow he spoke 

 and Blackfoot, as by nativity and residence he had good 

 right. A certain amount of trapper French was among 

 his accomplishments, while his English, perfectly fluent 

 and idiomatic, had a peculiar mannerism caught proba- 

 bly from some of his early unconscious tutors in that 

 tongue. Between every few words, often several times 

 in a single sentence, Jake would wedge in the expression, 

 "You bet," giving a laughable effect to his soberest utter- 

 ances. 



The most permanent of Jake's dwellings lay on the 

 other side of Merry's Crossing about a mile and a half 

 from Fort Pitkin. Here bundles r f blankets were stacked 

 around the walla of the room that served for a store, 

 while piles of buffalo robes bought in trade were heaped 

 in the corner, and a keg smelling strongly of whisky in- 

 vited cust omers to brief joy and lasting sorrow. 



Jake had formed a connection, which among the 

 crowned heads of Europe would be called morganatic, 

 with a young Piegan squaw named Beaver Woman. He 

 had been brought to take this step partly by the untutored 

 graces of the young woman, partly influenced by pity 



*Thi£> is one o£ the "Slide Rock from Many Mountains" series. 



and a desire to rescue the girl from the brutal treatment 

 of her uncle, a Piegan brave, known as The-last coyote- 

 but-one. Whatever the original reasons for the union, 

 the couple lived as faithfully and honorably as they could 

 have done if authorized by all the formalities of Egyp- 

 tian rite. 



Jake, indeed, had a superstitious regard for his com- 

 panion too. She had been as a baby one of the few sur- 

 vivors of an epidemic of small-pox which consumed the 

 inhabitants of her village. So virulent was the pest and so 

 fatal the Indian treatment of plunging the fevered patients 

 into the icy river, that there were not people enough left 

 alive to bury the dead or take down the tepees. 



Jake well remembered his shivering terror as a boy, 

 when returning in the evening from a day's hunt, he 

 passed near the lodges of the camp deserted by all but 

 the dead, the skins flapping loose around the poles in the 

 chilly breeze of the darkening twilight, the ragged cones 

 looming spectral in the gathering night, and the dread- 

 ful noises now and then breaking the dismal silence, 

 perhaps of some famished dog or gaunt wolf mangling 

 the plague-smitten carcasses and snarling over the horrid 

 meal, or, thought still more awful, the wailing of spirits 

 of unburied braves. Never had his mind got over the 

 dread that the gloomy scene begot within him ; and Beaver 

 Woman, whose parents were among the victims that 

 there perished, had for this reason some mystic associa- 

 tion with unseen powers in his thought. 



It was dark night when young Pitkin, son of the 

 founder of the fort, turned up at Jake's cabin. The latter 

 was reciting to a few listeners one of the "closest calls" 

 that he had ever experienced. "I was trading robes with 

 the Bloods, you bet," went the story, "and there were 

 some mighty sassy breeds*, you bet. in the outfit, too, and 

 they began poking around in the furs and hauling 'em 

 off, you bet, and it was kind of dark, and there wasn't no 

 moon, and i seen a fellow sneaking around, and I couldn't 

 see the sights, so I says to myself, 'I'll turn loose one just 

 to scare him, you bet,' and by luck and chance I shot his 

 ear about three-quarters off. And in about two minutes, 

 you bet. the whole camp was on top of me, and I'd have 

 turned loose good, only the fellow who was trading with 

 me didn't have no sand, you bet. Big husky fellow, but 

 he didn't have no more sand than a coyote. Says he, 

 'Don't shoot! don't shoot!' you bet; and I just had to 

 keep jawing and palavering and dishing outrum half the 

 night. They wooled me plenty, but I kept my robes, you 

 bet, every time." 



"Jake," said young Pitkin when the tale was finished, 

 "don't you want to go for a 'trade and a hunt?' There's 

 a big band of Bloods and Piegans on the St. Mary's, and 

 they say they've struck the main herd." The suggestion 

 chimed well with Jake's humor, and the next morning 

 saw the start of a party bent on. gain and not averse to 

 pleasure. 



A journey of no great length brought the travelers and 

 their wagon to the Indian camp near the junction of a 

 stream, now called Lee's Creek, with the St. Mary's 

 River, 



An unusual amount of amity and brotherhood pre- 

 vailed among the assembled tribes. Crews, of course, 

 were absent. Their long career of oppression and reprisal 

 put them outside the pale of friendship. They never 

 visited the country except when least wanted, and too 

 often retired with scalps and plunder. All the Blackfoot 

 bands, however, were represented: the Kootenays had 

 come from across the mountains far to the northwest to 

 get their yearly supply of buffalo meat; and a few Crees, 

 temporarily waging peace with their rivals, were on the 

 ground. 



It was evening when Jake and young Pitkin reached 

 the village. The autumn, which "had been warm and 

 open until late, had turned cold. The clouds were banked 

 in the west. The last of the buffalo would soon leave 

 and the morrow had been fixed on for a great slaughter 

 in the herd the Indians had been following. 



From the flaps that served as chimneys to the tepees 

 chilly streams of crooked blue smoke issued ; and the flash 

 of the brightening fire could be seen through the skin 

 walls of the council house. The friends entered, greeted 

 the assembly and squatted around the central hearth. 

 An old blind man named Swan-bonnet was engaged in a 

 prayer that was mainly an apostrophe to the Chief Moun- 

 tain, the most conspicuous peak that towered in the 

 range to the westward. The old man raised his sightless 

 eyes as if, looking through the side of the lodge, he could 

 distinguish the rugged pile which had been the guiding 

 monument of many a hunt and foray in his youth. "Tall 

 bull among the herd of mountains," ran the prayer, 

 "many surround thee, but none equals thee. Thy head 

 rises above the clouds as the horns of a lone elk above the 

 willow bushes in autumn. Game hast thou seen in plenty 

 —mountain sheep and blacktail and buffalo— on the 

 plains. To thee the sheep told the wisdom of his tribe, 

 and the deer and the buffalo told the wisdom of their 

 tribes. Much wisdom hast thou, for thou hast many 

 years. Give to us a year of plenty! Many years of 

 plenty lie hid among thy cliffs. Much wisdom hast thou 

 to bless the people, for thou failest not by age. Oh! 

 Chief, bald is thy head and tall. Old artthou and mighty. 

 Broad are thy shoulders, sky- kisser. Thy trailing ro^es 

 reach to the plain and under thy fallen garments the 

 years lie buried." 



When Swan-bonnet finished, the auditors gave grunts 

 of satisfaction and circulated the ceremonial pipe with 

 energy. Some one told the orator of the arrival of the 

 whites, and he straightway turned to them and proposed 

 to pray for luck on their account, also, suggesting in re- 

 turn that the prayer maker should have something warm 

 to drink. Scepticism as to the result of prayer or fear 

 of the maddening effect of alcohol, induced 'the traders 

 to decline this offer. Then the sage offered for similar 

 pay to give the strangers names. An Indian earns his 

 manhood's name only by some deed of horse stealing or 

 man killing, some piece of prowess stigmatized as felony 

 by the narrow statutes of sedentary people, while 

 here was a chance to gain an honorable title without 

 pains or danger; but, in spite of a feeling that he was be- 

 coming unpopular, Jake declined to furnish the required 

 toll and stayed nameless. In truth Jake not only felt 

 that his whisky was valuable for trade, hut he knew so 

 well the consequences of drink on the Indians that he 

 wanted to be all ready to move before he began to dis- 

 tribute liquor. He showed prudence too in keeping out 

 of the way of his kinsman by marriage, L&strcoyote Ant- 



s' Breed is the local contraction for half-breed. 



one, who had brought his squaws and ponies to the 

 gathering to lay up his winter's meat. 



Whether Chief Mountain was pleased to exert its wan- 

 ing power by answering the petition of one of its few re- 

 maining worshippers, or whether other causes contributed 

 to the success of the hunt cannot be exactly determined. 

 Certain it is that meat and furs already abounded, and 

 the closing scene did not fall behind the rest of the per- 

 formance. 



The last day of the chase began with clouds and wind. 

 Far along the rolling bluffs the Indian line of riders 

 strung out. Soon the buffalo sighted the advance and 

 were off. The herd pursued was no compact body, but 

 groups of two and three grazing, far and wide. The In- 

 dians rode at full speed, incited both by greed and honor, 

 racing madly for the first and perhaps the only chance. 

 For the buffalo, lumbering as they looked, would beat 

 all the ponies going down hill; indeed, would slide and 

 scuffle at high speed down slants so steep that a horse- 

 man hardly dared ride. On the level too the great beasts 

 held their own well and only on rising grades would the 

 hunters be able to close in. 



Jake himself, though the gains he hoped for were 

 chiefly those of commerce, shot much game. He rode a 

 buckskin pony famed for speed, a pony which had been 

 taught with some trouble to eat oats, and sustained by 

 that tonic diet outdid even his former feats. In other 

 ways the pony was noted. It was the very jewel of 

 Jake's bunch, and had been stolen again and again from 

 its owner, though he had always got it back by force or 

 fraud. Indeed the horse bad been taken and retaken so 

 often that he had grown thin in the process, and only 

 his exceptional fare kept him fit to retain his reputation. 

 Thus mounted then, Jake led the line without much 

 effort, singled out the fattest cows for himself, and, be- 

 fore the hunt was over, had killed 13 head to his own 

 rifle, more than twice as many as any other hunter had 

 secured. 



This success begot envy. The Indians of heraldic learn- 

 ing now remembered that Jake could cliim a Crow 

 quartering in his escutcheon, and the Crow is an abom- 

 ination to the Blackfoot. That buckskin pony, too, 

 proving by his insolent presence the skill of tho half- 

 breed at their own game of horse stealing, was a thorn 

 in the savage side. The refusal of the trader to give 

 whisky to the Medicine Man the night before had angered 

 the council of sages, and the clouds were beginning to 

 sprinkle on the wind sharp icy flakes very irritating to 

 the temper. 



Last-coyote-but-one on his return to camp, filled with 

 the sorrows of his race, fired by his own wrongs and his 

 desire for liquor, went at once to the trader's wagon 

 and demanded a ransom of whisky to soothe his injuries. 

 Jake had not got back, and young Pitkin, who lacked the 

 courage and decision of his companion, weakly yielded 

 to the chief's insistance. The mischief was done. Jake, 

 on his return, found the Indians to be sure in temporary 

 retirement engaged in sampling the first fruits of their 

 enterprise, but the attitude of the camp was unmistak- 

 ably hostile. Surly looks, insolent demands, covert 

 abuse, showed that the time for trade had passed, and 

 that retreat was imperative. Night had fallen, and it 

 might have been possible to get away with the wagon if 

 caution and decision had been combined, but young Pit- 

 kin's courage, before doubtful, had ceased to leave any 

 room for surmise. His nervous desire to conciliate the 

 drunken hunters, led to fast increasing boldness on their 

 part. The famous buckskin pony was taken, the wagon 

 captured and the traders felt happy to get away in the 

 snow and darkness on two horses, borrowed for the occa- 

 sion. Nor was there much time left for mourning, after 

 the weary riders had at length reached Jake's cabin. The 

 elder Pitkin, who happened to be in the house at the. time, 

 said he was sure that the Indians would not rest satisfied 

 with their cheap success. In fact, in this instance, the 

 Blackfoot bands were stirred up by the efforts of Last- 

 coyote-but-one as well as by their own longings for 

 plunder and renown. The Kootenays had gone home, 

 feeling that the matter was no funeral of theirs, but the 

 rest of the hunting tribes not only coveted the contents 

 of Jake's store and. the scalps of its occupants for their 

 comfort and honor, but they accused Jake of having 

 poisoned their tribesmen. For in the night of the cirouse 

 that followed the capture of Jake's wagon several Indians 

 ! had died. Probably they dropped stupefied by the ordin- 

 [ ary venom of the drink and died of the cold, but Last- 

 i coyote-but-one persuaded his fellows that "bad medicine" 

 ' bad been treacherously mixed in the barrel to kill them 

 \ all. 



i Under these incitements the tepees were hastily taken 

 | down, the poles tied to the ponies, the baggage of the 

 I party laden upon them, and a long, forced march was 

 | made in the direction of Merry's Crossing. 



The people at Jake's, few in number and without horses 

 enough to mount them, decided that it was safer to wait 

 than to run, and soon their expectation of attack was jus- 

 tified by seeing a column of ascending smoke which an- 

 nounced the burning of Fort Pitkin. Almost at the same 

 time the Blackfoot scouts had crept near enough to find 

 out that there was no chance of surprising Jake's cabin, 

 and vented their disappointment by a few shots, one of 

 which passed through a window and slightly wounded 

 old Pitkin, while another killed a loose pony on the prairie. 

 Then the invaders retired and fixed their camp in the 

 valley, in full sight but out of rifle range from the cabin. 



All night the besieged kept c ireful watch, but it was 

 not until early morning that any attack was made. The 

 first disorderly rush was checked by a sustained fire. 

 Then a wagon, captured at F>>rt Pitkin, was shoved ahead 

 as a movable breastwork; but the hum of the bullets 

 around the shins of the assailants and the splintering of 

 the wagon boards proved too much for the nerves of In- 

 dians unused to stand fire even for a short time without 

 a chance of fighting back. 



Finally all assaults were given up, and the Blackfoot 

 warriors seemed to have definitely accepted the idea of 

 starving out the traders, or, at all events, of waiting for 

 some better opportunity for surprise. Meantime within 

 doors the attack had excited determined animation. Old 

 Pitkin, crusty by nature and crustier by reason of his 

 fresh wound, growled a good deal, and young Pitkin kept 

 up a wail of consistent dispair, but Jake was everywhere. 

 Fierce, reckless, insistent, he flit ed to every window and 

 loophole, himself firing and directing the efforts of the 

 defenders with excited zeal. As the wagon was seen ad- 

 vancing, and young Pitkin tearfully prophesied the 

 approaching cremation of the cabin and its contents, 



