FOREST AND STREAM. 
34? 
Some Indian Natural History. 
It was a good many years ago that old Hugh Mon- 
oe, who for more than seventy-five years had traveled 
he prairies of the Northwest, told me that once he had 
ound a bird's nest in the thick hair between the horns 
>f a buffalo bull that he had killed. He had two In- 
lians with him, and had killed the young bull which the 
Indians were beginning to skin and cut up; and while 
hey were doing this he plucked some of the long 
lair from the forehead to use in wiping out his gun. 
\.s he reached down and grasped the hair a little bird — 
i little gray bird — flew out from under his hand and 
iway. Parting the hair to see whence it had come, he 
ound a round, smooth nest, containing four little young 
rirds. He could not tell me what kind of a bird it 
vas. 
Not many weeks ago, when I was sitting in the lodge 
vith my Indian father and elder brothers, principal chiefs 
>f the Blackfeet, I spoke of this tale that had been told 
ne, and learned that all who were present had heard of 
ust this thing. On-esta-pokau, the White Calf, had 
cnown of one case of this kind where the bird was a 
ilackbird; but this he had not seen himself. 
Once, however, he did see the nest of a "snow bird" 
containing four eggs between the horns of a bull. In- 
miry, followed by a careful and detailed description, 
ihowed that the bird which the Blackfeet call "snow 
:>ird" is the prairie shore lark. 
After we had talked about this for some time E-kus- 
dni, the Low Horn, said to me: "My friend, I will 
low tell you something. Do you know that Neo-po- 
nuki counts the months of the winter on his tongue?" 
"No," I said, "I know Neo-po-muki, but I do not 
•enow what you mean by counting the months of the 
vinter on his tongue." 
"This is it," said Low Horn. "In spring, if you kill 
Sne, and open his mouth and lift up his tongue, you 
yjll find under the tongue five other tongues, one tongue 
or each month of the winter. In the fall he does not 
lave these extra tongues. I do not know why he has 
;hem, nor what it means." 
Neo-po-muki is the chickadee, and he is so called from 
Sis' cry; for he says always "Summer is coming, summer 
is coming." 
"Father." I said to White Calf, "I know that the peo- 
ple are afraid of those water dogs (siredons) that live in 
the little alkali lakes, and I know that they are Under- 
water Animals, and as such are fearful; but what do 
they do to people? How do they harm them? They are 
not strong creatures; they have not sharp teeth and 
claws, and cannot bite nor scratch." 
"Still, my son, they have strong power," answered the 
old man. "When they crawl on to a person they suck 
his skin into them; into their toes and into their belly 
i and into their tail. Wherever a part of it touches a 
person, the person's skin goes into the animal. It is 
impossible to get back your skin from them, unless you 
cut them open and peel them off." 
"Saiyah, surely they have strong power," I replied. 
It was a few days later that I was talking wifAi my 
old father about the painting on the different lodges in 
the village. There was the buffalo painted lodge of the 
( Iniskim, the elk painted lodge, the one painted with the 
. raven, the one with the cow's head, and many others. 
And on nearly all of them I saw at the back of the lodge, 
high up behind the wings and close to the smoke hole, a 
I design roughly in the shape of a Maltese cross, one 
I arm horizontal, the other vertical. 
"You must know, my son," said the old father, "that 
all these fashions of painting the lodges are very old. 
Long before my time or my grandfather's time the 
I people painted their lodges in this way, and it has been 
1 handed down through the generations. Sometimes even 
the meaning of the painting has been forgotten, though 
almost always there is a medicine that goes with the 
lodge, and a ceremony, so that the people have not forgot- 
ten what the painting means. All these different ways 
of painting have come to people in their sleep. They 
have dreamed that they must paint their lodges in these 
ways, and they have done so, and now the fashion can- 
not be changed. Only one man in the camp may paint 
his lodge in the fashion of the Iniskim, and he is the 
man who owns the medicine of that lodge. Once there 
were two lodges of the Iniskim, one of these had a 
black, ground on which the buffalo were painted to 
i represent deep water; and one had a yellow ground to 
represent shallow water. Dreams telling them how 
they should paint their lodges came at different times to 
two men who owned buffalo stones, and so there were 
two lodges of the Iniskim. One of these is now up 
north among the Kainah — the Bloods." 
"Father," said I, "on many of the lodges, close to the 
smoke hole I see a mark like that," crossing my two 
forefingers. "What does that mean?" 
"That, my boy, is the sign of the. butterfly. You know 
that it is the butterfly who brings us our dreams — who 
brings the news to us when we are asleep. Have you 
never heard a man say, when he sees a butterfly flut- 
tering over the prairie, 'There is a little fellow flying 
about who is going to bring the news to some one to- 
night'? Or have you not heard a person say after 
night, as the fire burns low, and the people begin to 
make up their beds about the lodge, 'Well, let us go to 
bed, and see- what news the butterfly will bring. All 
Indians think that the butterfly brings dreams to us." 
"Do you know why the butterfly brings dreams, or 
how it brings them?" I asked. 
"I do not know," he said, "but we all of us believe 
that it is true. Maybe it is because the butterfly is soft 
and pretty and moves gently, and if you look at him a 
long time he will put you to sleep, but I do not know 
why it is nor how it is that he brings dreams to us." 
Geo. Bird Grinnell. 
More about Instinct. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Certain of your correspondents have been arguing 
learnedly and entertainingly upon the subjects of in- 
stinct, evolution, heredity, etc.; and since this seems to 
be a free-for-all shooting match, I will claim your for- 
bearance while I take a shot with my own -little Faber 
No. 2, though not in a polemical vein, and give some 
reflections that have been revolving in my own mind on 
these topics. 
What is instinct? The most concise definition is 
given by Paley, as quoted by Webster: "An instinct is a 
propensity prior to experience, and independent of in- 
struction." 
This means, of course, prior to the experience of the 
individual; and the philosophers of Paley's time sup- 
posed that the instinctive impulse originated spontane- 
ously in the mind in human beings, and its equivalent 
in animals, in a purely subjective way, without connec- 
tion with extraneous influences. 
With later research and increased knowledge, we have 
learned in our day that all mental impulses are the more 
or less complex outgrowth of experience; and that class 
called instinct are the result of mental attitudes that sub- 
sisted during many generations, and became crystallized 
into persistent modes of consciousness that are trans- 
mitted by heredity, surviving in full force long after the 
impulses which gave them birth have been lost in the 
obscurity of past ages. 
Man's brain organism has by long and slow develop- 
ment raised him to a plane above the instinct-producing 
stage. But, down in the cellars of his mental edifice 
there is a store of crude and antiquated furniture which 
still exists in a good state of preservation and all its 
pristine strength; constituting a substratum of brain 
activity which occasionally asserts itself, and proclaims 
man's near kinship to his brother animals, and his own 
derivation from quadrupedal ancestors. I will endeavor 
to draw a parallel between man and the lower animals 
on the common plane of instinct by citing a few familiar 
facts. 
We see that man and dog enter with equal ardor and 
mutual enjoyment into the spirit of the chase. Whence 
was this spirit derived? In both cases it is a survival 
from a stage of existence wherein the pursuit and capture 
of game was for innumerable generations their sole or 
principal means of sustaining life. Hence the impulse 
survives long after the conditions out of which it grew 
have ceased. Indeed, the more independent both man 
and dog may be of the material results of their exertions 
in the chase, the better and more enthusiastic sportsmen 
are they. 
It is said that the well-fed cat is a better mouser than 
the neglected and poorly-fed one. 
Referring to the horse, we are all familiar with his 
disposition to "shy" at stumps and bushes, or any sight 
or sound not common to his experience. And the 
stronger and better condition the horse may be in, the 
stronger is his propensity to "shy" at bugaboos. This 
habit »8 due to an impulse growing out of an environ- 
ment which made his own survival dependent upon con- 
stant vigilance to elude the deadly spring of predacious 
beasts of the cat family. The necessity for being so con- 
stantly on the qui vive to avoid such attacks planted the 
instinct indelibly in the horse nature, so that it still per- 
sists with unabated strength long after such necessity 
has passed away. 
Incidentally it may be mentioned that flight is still 
the horse's only weapon of defense against his enemies 
beyond his own tribe. 
Turning again to man. What individual whose habits 
carry him into the woods and fields has failed to experi- 
ence that thrill of instinctive terror and impulse to make 
a great jump when he has suddenly come upon a snake 
of any kind, or even the semblance of one in vine or 
crooked stick lying in his path? 
The writer has striven manfully, but in vain, to over- 
come this instinctive repugnance to all forms of snake 
life by freely handling the harmless kinds, and even 
with caution the venomous sort; but reason will suc- 
cumb to its parent, animal instinct; and the repulsiveness 
of, snakes is as strong as ever. But whence this natural 
repugnance to serpents, which is stronger in man than 
in other animals? At a time when man had to do battle 
with his numerous rivals in the struggle for existence 
on much more equal terms than at present, during the 
period of transition from physical inferiority to mental 
superiority, it is probable that the serpent tribe was the 
enemy most difficult to guard against, from its abundance 
in his surroundings and his frequent experience of com- 
ing unawares within reach of its poisonous fangs or 
deadly coils. Hence the dread of snakes was deeply 
implanted in his nature, and still persists with all 
its original force. When we ask why these instinctive 
impressions should so long survive the conditions that 
produced them, the answer is, that the period during 
which they were slowly developed was immensely longer 
than the time which has since elapsed. 
Another parallel example, showing the dominance 
of instinct over reason in man, and placing him on the 
same level with the "beasts of the field," is shown in the 
contagion of fear, resulting in a state of panic, in which 
reason is as completely dethroned in large bodies of 
men as in herds of cattle and sheep. A very pertinent 
example in the concrete of the potency of fear contagion 
is now being exhibited throughout the State of Missis- 
sippi, where the name "yellow fever" possesses the same 
panic-producing power as the yelping of a small dog 
behind a flock of fleeing sheep. 
The contagion of rage and passion among large 
bodies of men, in which reason is cast aside, as exempli- 
fied in the ancient cry "Great is Diana of the Ephesians," 
is still very much alive among mobs and political gather- 
erings of the present time, and has its parallel in the 
lower animals in the rage excited among a herd of hogs 
when one of their comrades gives full effect to his vocal 
powers in calling for help against the ' attack of a com- 
mon enemy — a survival from a time when such a social 
regulation was necessary for the Survival of the porcine 
family. 
It may be mentioned in this connection that the grunt- 
ing of the hog originated under conditions where, feed- 
ing in thick cover, it was necessary for the different 
individuals in a herd by this means to keep in touch with 
one another. 
The whole category of the common superstitious fears 
in man, the dread which children (and grown persons) 
have of being alone in the dark, where no possible 
danger threatens, comes down to us by heredity from 
a time when man's surroundings were peopled by his im- 
agination with innumerable evil spirits and baneful in- 
fluences, and the darkness was full of hidden dangers. 
Instinct is a strong and lasting chain that binds to- 
gether man and the whole ensemble of animated life 
in a common heritage of evolutionary development. 
Since writing the above I have read Mr. E. P. Alex- 
ander's last contribution — a very interesting one — on 
the subject of blue prints. 
In pursuing my own professional labors it is necessary 
to have stumps, buried logs, etc., unearthed and re- 
moved from the base of earthen structures. It occa- 
sionally happens in this alluvial region that an insignifi- 
cant looking root end, protruding from the ground, leads 
to an enormous stump buried underneath. So Mr. 
Alexander's blue print theory opens up the whole ques- 
tion now agitating the minds of religionists and philos- 
ophers, whether or not a Supreme Ruler of the universe 
manages all the minute details in the development of 
organized life by His own intelligent direction on this 
globe of ours, and planetary system of our own sun, as 
well as those of some hundreds of millions of other 
suns which modern telescopes disclose to our view. 
This is not the proper place to go into such a contro- 
versy, but I think I can present in a clear light the issue 
between Mr. Alexander and the Darwin school by a 
simple illustration from nature. 
In the lowest swamps of the Mississippi bottoms there 
grows an oak called the overcup. It is so called be- 
cause the acorn is almost completely covered by a 
thick outer hull. The tree in other respects is verv sim- 
ilar to the post oak of the hill country. The thick 
envelope enables the acorn to float, and so survive. 
The overflow acorns that have not this covering, sink, 
and the germ is destroyed by long submergence. 
Darwin's theory is that, when these conditions were 
developing, those acorns that chanced to possess en- 
velopes thick enough to float them alone survived the 
overflow, and by the well established law of the "sur- 
vival of the fittest" the ultimate form was developed. 
Per contra: did the Almighty "in the beginning" fore- 
see these late developments in the quarternary period of 
the earth's history, and make a blue print in advance of 
the overcup acorn? 
It appears to me that Mr. Alexander's necessity for 
interposing his blue print theory arises from his failure 
to avail himself of the unlimited credit in the commodity 
of time, which all philosophers are permitted to draw 
upon in the great bank of eternity. In other words, 
granted time enough as a fulcrum', and Mr. Darwin's 
lever is fully capable of lifting the protozoan into man. 
Coahoma. 
Mississippi. 
Proprietors of fishing and hunting resorts will find it profitable 
to advertise them in Forest and Stream. 
Oregon Notes. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Well, my dear old friend, how are you? It's a full 
year since we exchanged greetings. A year!, only another 
wrinkle in the face of time, creased deep enough to in- 
case the panorama of a snap shot at the battle of life. 
But to us poor little mortals a year, with its own four 
seasons, to say nothing of the numerous close and open 
seasons added by our superserviceable Legislative As- 
semblies, seems like a long time. 
That reminds me that the Oregon Legislature is now 
in extra session. That word "extra" is good, for it in- 
volves a lot of extra work, extra pay, extra legislation, 
etc., hardly worth the candle. However, we have at last 
got a United States senator, a change in the fish and 
game protective laws and some needed modifications of 
the general game laws, which will doubtless be more 
fully referred to in next edition of "Game Laws in 
Brief." ■ 
Mr. F. H. Thurston (Kelpie), of Central Lake, Mich., 
paid me a nice visit the first of this month. If all the 
Kingfishers are like Kelpie, I can readily .understand 
why these grand old fellows all look forward with so 
much pleasure to a gathering of the clan. 
Corroborative of the statement so often made that 
the Mongolian pheasant cock is aggressive, bold and 
valiant, let me relate an incident that came under my 
own observation to-day. Billy Newman and I were 
strolling along near a meadow within the limits of the 
city of Portland, when we observed, not far away, a com- 
motion among a flock of turkeys. Upon investigation 
we found the big bronze gobbler doing battle with a 
Mongolian cock, and, of course, became very interested 
spectators. I think, from the published account of the 
Sullivan-Corbett fight, that the tactics of the contestants 
in the two battles were much the same, and the result 
was the same, eJccept (if my memory serves me) the 
big fellow didn't run away down at New Orleans. That 
ring-neck whipped the old gobbler in two rounds — or 
rather, they fought two rounds and the Mongolian 
licked the gobbler good and hard both rounds. It was a 
game fight, but science won. 
Much fine sport with the salmon trout is reported 
from all over the State. John Haggett and Billy New- 
man have just returned from the Siletz country, just 
north of Yaquina Bay, and report that they found more 
big salmon trout than they knew what to do with. 
As an indication of the vast numbers of salmon trout 
to be had at this season of the year, Grant Patton (now 
of Tillamook) was in my office last week and told me 
that in less than two hours he caught with hook and 
line in the Nehalem River forty-five salmon trout, rim- 
ing from i to 3lbs., and I might add that I will swear to 
anything Grant tells me for the truth. 
Portland, Oregon, Oct. 14, S. H. GREENE, ' 
