Jmm 19, 1897.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
488 
lived in camp,some of the time with not even a tent, when 
the thermometer was known to be 27° and very possibly 
was 35° below zero. ^Ye climbed the white mountains 
on snowshoes, and we got to the sheep and the goat, and 
brought out the rarest trophies which can come to hunter 
in this country, doubly valuable to us in view of the season 
in which they were taken and the wild surroundings of 
the unique chase which gave them to us. I do not know 
of a rarer hunt than this, I do not know of any other 
country where it would have been possible, nor can I 
think of any hunt in which I would rather have been 
engaged. 
Al-so-pom-stan Active. 
On the first day of our arrival at Blackfoot station, the 
ears of the old cow moose must have been going at a great 
rate, for a fearful blizzard swept down from the north and 
shut in the little prairie town in a sheet of white. We 
could see only a few yards into the storm, and the cold 
was intense, as we learned when we sought to give the 
snowshoe a little breaking-in trial. Our team was all 
ready to start, and our supplies waiting over at Joe Kipp's 
store, but we dared not leave the town even to try getting 
over as far as the agency, which was but eight miles dis- 
tant, directly over our road into the Two Medicine 
Mountains, where we intended to make our hunt. All 
we could do was to sit in the house and busy ourgelves 
putting on finishing touches to our footgear and arranging 
the clothing we intended to wear. Not once all day long 
did the storm clear away enough for us to see the moun- 
tains, which are easily and plainly in view in decent 
weather, being only about twenty-five or thirty miles 
away and appearing, of course, very much closer. The 
blizzard was a very cold one, the thermometer going to 
15° below without any special effort at all. McChesney 
and I slept in a little board house kept by Salms, the 
hotelman who feeds the railroad men who live at Black- 
foot. In the room was a fine skin of a white-faced grizzly 
bear, which I am sure I should have stolen if I could by 
any possibility have gotten it into mv pack has. At the 
boarding house was still a larger and finer grizzly skin, for 
which I believe they wanted ?50. We also saw many 
heads of sheep, goats, elk and deer, and knew we were 
upon the edge of a good game country— what is indeed 
perhaps the best big game country of the West to- 
day. Especially is this a grand country for grizzlies, 
and I lamented that it was the wrong season ior these 
fellows, so that we should not have a chance to get the 
long lost grizzly on whose trail I have been for so many 
years. 
On the second morning of our stay at Blackfoot the sun 
made a feeble effort to peep out, and the snow lightened 
a trifle, though the wind still kept up and the air was very 
cold. We concluded we might venture to the agency, so 
hurriedly loaded into the big sled box our camp outfit and 
supplies, and piled on top the best we could ourselves. 
We numbered here four of the party: J. W. Schullz, whom 
many readers will remember meeting at the Exposition in 
New York city; Crosby Boak, the teamster, a Westerner 
of checkered career as we shall later see. Mr. C. S. Mc- 
Chesney, of Troy, N. Y.. was the Easternest man of the 
outfit. Years ago, when both were boys, McChesney and 
Schultz attended school together, and hunted together 
and had good times together back in the hills of the Adi- 
rondacks and other places. Then McChesney went to 
Yale, and Schultz went to the frontier, passing twenty-odd 
years among the Indians of the extreme West and getting 
acquainted with the good hunting countries, so that when 
it came time for him to invite McChesney out for a hunt, 
he knew what he was doing in regard to game matters. 
McChesney had never been West before. I had never 
been so far north in the Rockies myself before, so we both 
shared the sense of novelty. Dr. Martin, the Agency phy- 
sician, rode over from Blackfoot with us, but he was not of 
the hunting party. 
It was a bitter wind that swept over the flat country be- 
tween Blackfoot and the agency, and we had ample oppor- 
tunity to test the worth of our respective outfits of clothing. 
We were well covered with a rime of frost when we got to 
\ the agency, but Major Steell, the Indian agent, soon had us 
thawed out, ordering us all to go over to his house and 
make it headquarters for the rest of the day and night, for 
it was now thought best not to go any further that day, as 
the weather was very bad. At the agency we met Billy 
Jackson, whom we were glad to see, of course, for the sake 
of auld lang syne. We were busy enough here at the 
agency for a day, as we had to get the snowshoes in order 
and pick up some odds and ends of the camp outfit which 
were lacking. We would gladly have remained here 
much longer, for Major Steell kept us absorbed listening 
to his tales of the old frontier. Major Steell id an old- 
timer of the real sort, having been trader for the American 
Fur Co. back in about the year 1 of the frontier days. We 
were now really in the West, the wildest of the West there 
is left to-day. We were upon the grounds where the buf- 
falo once swarmed, and where the Indians hunted and 
fought but a very few years ago. We were within seventy 
miles of the spot where in 1873 the "Baker massacre" took 
place, in which 283 Blackfeet were killed by Col. Baker's 
troops. On this same ground, in 1864 and 1865, 1,500 of 
the Blackfeet people died by the measles. In 1882-83, the 
season after the buffalo disappeared, 480 Blackfeet starved 
to death. These figures will show in a way where the 
Indians were going when their actual condition was first 
realized by those who have since come to understand the 
situation better. 
It was a land of tragedy, this over which we were cross- 
ing, but happily now of a tragedy passing away. We had 
seen at intervals as we came over the prairies the log 
houses of the people, and had seen then- cattle feeding in 
herds of hundreds. The Indians do not starve now, and 
they are warm. They swear by their agent, and petition 
that he be not changed. And Major Steell, who has lived 
among these people so long that he can understand them, 
looks about him in his home at the gifts of friendship 
they bring him, and about the country where the horses 
and cattle are, and recounts with pride that his Indians 
are the foremost tribe of the American Indians in adapting 
themselves to the new order of things. Both Indians and 
agent seem happy and contented together, and for once in 
a way the Indian problem seems one that has been solved. 
An Indian agency is perhaps a different affair from 
what would be supposed by Eastern people. It is no mere 
collection of rude huts or lodges, but has more the appear- 
ance of an army post. The new Blackfoot Agency is built 
up with comfortable, painted houses of modern appear- 
ance, and makes a pleasant though rather straggling little 
village. Not far away is a church, and not far beyond lies 
the Government school. There are Government store- 
houses and oflices and hospitals, and some good dwellings 
where the agency force live, to say nothing of .loe Kipp's 
main store, a hotel, and several shops of varied nature. 
The Indians do not wear blankets as general dress, but 
lean to the clothing of the white men, except the women, 
who come in on issue daj'^s wrapped up in blankets as of 
old, and of course riding astride their horses. And by this 
token a blanket is the warmest thing a man can get around 
him in a Montana windstorm — far warmer than an over- 
coat. 
The Last Night Under a Roof. 
By night time at the agency we had all our belongings 
arranged, snowshoes fixed up, rifles sighted, etc. Major 
Steell allowed us to leave all our superfluous clothing at 
his house till our return, so that we were able to leave the 
agency stripped for the work of the mountain trip, and 
carrying no superfluous weight along. After these busi- 
ness details, we settled down to an evening of solid com- 
fort, enjoying our last night under a roof. The thermome 
ter was at 6 below toward evening, but inside the house it 
was glowing warm and comfortable. 
Bull Shoe, one of the Indian judges, made us a call dur- 
ing the afternoon, tried a shot with our rifles, and told us 
something about the Indian laws in the times before he 
became a magistrate. Some of the Indians call on the 
Major nearly every day, and he holds quite a levee at 
times in his little reception room, adorned with Indim 
implements and works of art. He has a number of fine 
trophies and skins about the room, and over one armchair 
has a bear skin. It was noticed at different times that 
Brocky, and I think Bull Shoe, Eagle Ribs and one or two 
other Indians, would always decline to sit in this chair 
when it was offered them. They would sit down on the 
floor,_but would not sit on the bear skin. Major Steell 
mentioned this fact, and Schultz told him it was because 
these men all belonged to a society or cult or lodge, or 
Indian church of some kind, of which the Bear was the 
"medicine animal." They dared not sit on the skin of a 
bear, or speak disrespectfully of that animal. Sometimes 
this society forbids the mention of the name of the bear in 
the common form {M-yu), but they have some word or 
other by which they paraphrase it. 
Talking over these and other things, we passed a few 
hours of evening all too quickly. Major Steell is a good 
story teller, and he has stories to tell, right out of his own 
life, with no need of varnish or sandpaper. If only the 
New York papers would lay a pipe line to Major Steell's 
house, what bear stories they could get! True ones, tool 
For instance, once upon a time the Major was riding across 
country, and met up with a whole bunch of grizzlies, eleven 
of them in all, when he had no weapon along but his re- 
volver. He chased the bears for the fun of the thing, and 
shot away his revolver loads, his hor.se once being so close 
as to jump over one bear. This would be thought a lie in 
a Sunday paper, where a good many bear lies are thought 
true. 
Major Steell's Story. 
Among other stories the Major told was one about things 
to eat. 
"I see you have a good grub outfit along, boys," said he, 
"and that reminds me of a hunt I had one time, not so 
very long ago and not so very far from here, although it 
was in the days of the buffalo. 
"There used to be a hunter about these parts by name of 
Cadntte, a very good hunter, too, and one day a party of 
us, with Cadotte in the lead, started out for a buffalo hunt 
not far below where we then were. The buffalo were all 
over the country, and we made no arrangement for taking 
any grub along. In those days a man never took anything 
to eat, for he could always kill a buffalo or some other sort 
of game. 
"We started out on Friday, and soon got to the river, 
where we expected to find some buffalo, but we found 
they had moved on out of that part of the country. We, 
therefore, crossed the river and followed on West, expect- 
ing at any hour to run into the herd. To our surprise, we 
did not find a buffalo, and did not see a head of any other 
kind of game, either. We rode all day Friday and had 
not a bite to eat. It was the same thing Saturday, too. 
We didn't see a bit of game of any kind, and we went to 
bed mighty hungry. At afternoon of the following day, 
Sunday, we pulled up — there were six or eight of us along 
— in a Cottonwood grove, without a sign of a bite to eat, 
and we were more than half-way starved, for we had 
ridden in the cold for nearly three days and had eaten 
nothing. We felt pretty blue, and didn't know what to 
do. 
"The problem was solved rather suddenly by Cadotte. 
We had an old, scabby, mangy dog along with us, which 
had followed along somewhat unnoticed. This dog passed 
by Cadotte as he sat on the ground curled up in a ball of 
despondency, and without saying a word Cadotte pulled 
out his revolver and shot the dog. Almost at the same 
time an old owl, startled by the shot, hopped and lit down 
again on a limb of the tree above Cadotte's head, and he 
shifted his aim to the owl and shot it also. We did not 
say much about it, but we went to work and cooked both 
the dog and the owl, and we ate 'em both up, too. I don't 
really feel competent to say which was the better to eat, 
but we were not confined to either one. If we didn't like 
owl, we had dog, and either dog or owl is a whole lot 
better than nothing, I will say that much." 
"I have every reason also to believe," continued Major 
Steell later, "that skunk is good to eat, and I know very 
well that wolf is not bad to eat. But it must be a poisoned 
wolf I called one time on a couple of trappers who were 
wolfing, and they were Uviug much of the time on 
poisoned wolf. It is a mistake to think that a poisoned 
animal will poison any other animal eating it. If you 
should eat of the stomach of a poisoned woLf you could be 
poisoned at once, of course, and would die; but the ffesh 
of animals is made tender by the action of the poison in 
the blood, and is not so bad to eat. TJiis may sound hke 
a fairy tale, but any old plainsman will tell you it is true. 
I can't say that I like owl or dog or wolf very well, now 
that I can get other things, but don't you turn up your nose 
at any one of them if you can't do any better. Of course, 
a good fat dog is good to eat— nice, fat dog, well cooked- 
clean dog, you know; everybody knows that. But what I 
mean to say is that even a scabby and mangy dog is good 
when you have nothing better. Yes, sir, it's mighty 
good." 
Billy Jackson's Story. 
"I saw a funny thing one time out on the plains," said 
Billy Jackson, when it came to him. "I was riding over 
to a station to do some little errand or other, and as I 
crossed a bit of prairie I saw a strange-looking thing going 
around and around, all the time in a circle, a little way off 
on the prairie. I rode up, and there I saw a band of 
skunks, thirteen of them there were in all, and they were 
running around in a circle, one right behind the other, 
galloping along as if one was tied to another. They looked 
up at me, but they never did stop a lick, but kept on gal- 
loping on around in the circle, as though they were hired 
to do it and dare not stop. It was too much for me, and I 
couldn't make it out, so I rode on away and left them a- 
galloping round and round. In about two hours or so I 
came back that way again, and blamed if there they weren't 
still on hand a-galloping round and round in the same 
circle yet. They looked up at me again, as though to say 
it was their busy day, but they didn't offer to stop. I went 
away and left them, and I never did know what they 
were up to. T never saw any such thing as that in all my 
life in the West, before or since. They were galloping 
around that circle all the afternoon, fully three hours." 
Schultz's Story. 
"I don't suppose there are more than two or three of the 
genuine old-time war shields left in all this tribe," said 
Schultz. "I have heard of one, and it is valued at about 
$100. There are very few of the old war shirts left, either, 
nowadays. Do you know how a war shield was made, in 
the old days? Most people suppose it was cut out of the 
neck of a bull skin, but it was better than that. The 
Indians would wet and heat and shrink a full-sized bull 
skin rawhide until they got the whole skin shrunk down 
to a size not much bigger than the shield. Of course, it 
was very thick and very tough. It was all right for an 
arrow or a knife, and in the time of the old Hudson Bay 
fuques it would stop a bullet, too. You don't see many 
shields made that way now. They fix them up for show, 
cutting them out round from a thick skin, but not putting 
the time and care on them they used to in the old times." 
Boak's Story. 
"I expect they ain't but one hunter in this whole coun- 
try," said Boak, the teamster, "an' that's my pardner, 
Scott." (Boak never got done about talking of his "pardner," 
for whom he had the old-time pardner's reverent confi- 
dence, such as Bret Harte never did and never could ex- 
aggerate.) "Me an* my pardner usually get about twenty 
bears or so each year. A good bear skin is good for about 
$25 to us, we allow. 
"This last season we played in mighty hard lu^ik. Scott, 
he's a good hunter, but he's always wan tin' to do somethin' 
fer someone else. He was out and killed two good bears, 
and was in camp stretching up the skins so they would be 
all right. Along comes a entire stranger to him, and flops 
down in camp and says he's sick an' can't go no further. 
He was some prospector, we allowed, though we never did 
know who he was. Well, this man is sick and hungry, 
and needs medicine; so Scott he stops work and makes 
him comfortable, and then he starts off, thirty miles, to the 
railroad, to get some medicine for the man, which he says 
he must have. The medicine cost a lot of money, too, to 
say nothing of the time it took to go git it. But, by gosh! 
when Scott he gits back to camp, blamed if the sick man 
ain't blowed his br'ins out, so they ain't no need of the ' 
medicine at all ! Of course, Scott has to trot back to the 
town after the coroner, fer it ain't best to have dead men 
found around your camp careless like, of course. By the 
time Scott gets the coroner in there them bear skins is 
spoiled entirely, to say nothing of a week's time lost right 
when bears is easiest to git. That was tough luck. 
"The feller? Oh, we never did know who he was. He 
like enough lost his grip an' got sick, wanderin' around 
prospectin'. We buried him all right, but we don't know 
who he was." 
McChesney's Wish. 
"I can hardly realize," said McChesney, "that we are 
really here, out in the Rocky Mountains, in the winter- 
time. If I write and tell my friends that it is 10 or 15" be- 
low zero they'll think I'm lying. I don't see how we'll 
ever get through the snow over to the mountains from 
here, for the horses could hardly get over this far across the 
prairie. Do you think there's anything in this doctrine of 
transmigration of souls? If there is, I hope with all my 
heart that after I die I won't get transmigrated into the 
form of a Montana horse." 
How to Use a Buffalo Robe. 
Suppose you have a buffalo robe, and you are caught out 
of a cold night; do you know how to use it? Would you 
wrap up in it with the hair side next to your body or next 
to the ground, if you were going to use it for bedding? 
Probably you would put the soft, curly hair next to you, so 
you would be warmer, wouldn't you? That is the wrong 
way to do. The Indian and the plainsman always put the 
hair side out, saying that surely the buffalo would know 
which side of his hide to wear outside. A robe with the 
hair side down keeps the moisture out far better, and is 
twice as warm as when the skin side is placed toward the 
ground. This is one of the things we learned in the sym- 
posium at Maj. Steell's house, at the edge of the Rockies, as 
well a^ many other things of which within patience we 
cannot now speak. E. Hough. 
1206 BoYOB Bdilding, Chicago. 
Illinois Bass Fishing. 
KajipsviI/LE, 111., Junes.— The fishing at this place has been 
unusually good during the past week. The high water, 
which flooded the bottom lands along the Illinois River filled 
all the lakes and sloughs with black ba.ss, and they are now 
making their way to the river through the various creeks 
and ditches. A party of five on June 6 caught 163 good- 
sized bass, and other parties have been equally successful. 
Not many fishermen aie at this place at present, but a fair 
es'imate of the number of black bass caught within the past 
four days would be about 570 among eleven rods. Below 
the dam, which is connected with the Government locks at 
this place, the water has heretofore been too muddy for 
much success in catching white bass aod jack salmon. 
Yesterday, however, a number of fine jack salmon were 
caught, and in a few days grand sport is expected. 
Eabces. 
