May 6, 1899.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. ' 
S45 
Some Indian Natural History 
Comments* 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Some months ago in 3"Our columns I made mention of 
statements made to me by Blackfeet Indians that the shore 
lark {Eremophila) had been found nesting in the thick 
hair between the horns of a living buffalo bull, and" subse- 
quently (Forest and Stream, Vol. LI., p. 424) Mr. E. B. 
G. Haymond stated that the same thing had been told him 
by other Indians living in a buffalo country far to the 
cast of the Blackfeet. 
It has been suggested that this story is inherently im- 
probable, b ecause the birds having their nests in such a 
position would lose it, as the animal which carried it 
moved from place to place. This has not appeared to me 
a goo.d objection, for I believe that each buffalo bull has 
its own individuality, and may be readily recognized, just 
as in a herd of red cows the farmer knows each one by 
sight, or the shepherd his individual sheep, if the bunch 
is not too large. So I think the birds, before their nest 
was built, would learn to know their. own bull. Besides, 
there are, I think, some cases on record where birds 
have built their nests in vehicles moving from place to 
place. I have not until recently been able to put my hand 
on any such reference nor to find any ornithologist who 
could point one out to me. 
Not long since, however, I found in Land and Water 
of 1877 mention of a sparrow's nest inside the cavity of 
an iron buft'er of a railroad wagon, and in a communica- 
tion dated St. John, N. B., Nov. 30, 1877, a correspondent 
signing himself Tantramar wrote to Forest and Stream 
as follows: "In the spring of 1859 a pair of robins took 
possession of one of the 
pigeon holes {i. e., a re- 
ceptacle for papers, way 
bills, etc.) of the guard's 
brake van on the Essen- 
dine & Stamford Rail- 
road, Rutland, England. 
Industriously the happy 
pair worked during the 
time that the van was 
at Essendine (for this 
van ran through and re- 
turned from Stamford 
three times a day, a dis- 
tance of twenty-eight 
miles), until the nest 
was completed.. The fe- 
male laid five eggs and 
incubation commenced. 
She was carried to and 
from .Stamford some 
ten or twelve times. 
But tliis happy state of 
things was suddenly 
brought to an end by an 
ignorant Nottingham 
drummer trying to se- 
cure the little bird by 
putting his hat over the 
nest. Mrs. Robin could 
not brook this intrusion. 
The nest was forsaken." 
I have heard of a pair 
of sparrows building 
their nest in a ferrj^boat 
which plied between two 
banks of a river, but 
cannot locate the place. 
I have also a vague rec- 
ollection, but cannot lo- 
cate the statement, of a 
pair of wrens having 
built their nest in a 
wagon which passed daily back and forth between two 
neighboring towns. 
On the whole, I think there is no force in the objec- 
tion that the parent birds would lose the buflfalo which 
carried their nest. 
night" ? Or have you not heard a person say after night, 
as the fire burns low and the peopls begin to make up 
their beds about the lodge, "Well, let us go to bed and 
see what news the butterfly will bring" ?' 
"I called attention also to the sign for the butterfly-' — 
a design roughly in the shape of a maltese cross, one arm 
horizontal and the other vertical, which is painted on 
most of the more elaborately ornamented Piegan lodges, 
just below the smoke-hole and between the wings at the 
back of the lodge. This sign painted on a lodge indicates 
that^ the style and method of painting the lodge were 
taught the lodge owner in a dream. More recent inquiry 
leads me to suspect that the influence of the butterfly is 
not confined to dreams, but covers sleep as well. 
"It is still a custom for the Blackfeet woman to em- 
broider the sign of the butterfly in beads or quills on a 
small piece of buckskin, and to tie this in her baby's hair 
when she wishes it to go to sleep. At the same time she 
sings to the child a lullaby, in which the butterfly is asked 
to come flying about and to put the baby to sleep. 
"The word ap ii'itin appears to have some relation to apa 
Te/rt'w?", which means 'talking around,' __or 'talking in difTerent 
places,' 'to go about telling news.' 'waiii, 'he says'; ap a. 
wa -ivd kd, 'he walks about.' The prefix ap seems to denote 
presence or existence in different places. 
"I have not been able to learn why or how the butter- 
fly brings dreams or sleep. It is stated merely that it is 
soft and pretty and moves gently, and that if you look at 
it for a long time you will go to sleep. 
"How widespi'ead the faith in the butterfly as the 
American sleep-producer may be — and this cross as its 
sign — I do not know. My direct testimony comes only 
from the Blackfeet, but the belief may well have . been 
shared by their old-time allies, the Atsena or Gros- 
ventres-of-the-prairie, and the Sarsi, who with three tribes 
of the Blackfeet nation — Sl'kslkau, Kainab, and Pikti'nni 
— made up the five tribes of the 'Prairie people.' It is 
suggestive, too, that on the head of a Kutenai baby-board 
in my possession, there are embroidered three conven- 
women pray briefly to the spider and ask help from its in- 
telligence. 
"It is unnecessary to refer to the position which the 
spider holds in the beliefs of many other tribes. The sub- 
ject is a famihar one. I may call attention, however, to 
the fact that among both the Cheyenne and the Arapaho 
the same word is used to denote 'spider' and 'white man/ 
and that in both languages this word appears to convey 
the idea of high intelligence, being almost the equivalent 
of 'wise or intelligent one.' " 
George Bird Grinnell. 
In the same contribution I called attention to a belief of 
the Blackfeet that the chickadee "counts the months of 
the winter on his tongue"; that if you kill a chickadee 
in the spring and open its bill and look at his tongue you 
will see under the tongue five others, the six representing 
the six months of the winter, or November to April, both 
inclusive. On this subject Mr. Frederick A. Lucas, -cura- 
tor of comparative anatomy in the United States National 
Museum, and well known as a student of the tongues of 
jirds, writes me: "This note is really very interesting, 
or while it is not quite exact as a matter of scientific fact, 
it is actually based on the structure of the chickadee's 
tongue. The tongue in Parns is a little four-tined pitch- 
fork, the tines growing out from the under side of the 
tip of the tongue. To anyone opening the bird's mouth 
and looking in, these tines would seem to lie just under 
the tongue. While the tines are four in number, they are 
often split, and one might imagine five." 
The structure of the mider part of the tongue is well 
shown in the figure given in Mr. Lucas' paper on bird.s' 
tongues, published in a report of the National Museum. 
As to the butterfly and its sign, I am permitted by the 
'"editors and publishers of the American Anthropolgist to 
quote here a brief article which I sent to the January 
(1899) issue of that periodical. 
"The Butterfly and the Spider among the Blackfeet." 
"Not very long ago, in Forest and Stream, I called 
attention to the belief held by the Blackfeet Indians that 
dreams are brought to us in sleep by the butterfly 
ii'nni). As my informant said: 
" '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 sa}'. when he sees a butterfly 
fluttering over the prairie, "There is a little fellow flying 
about that is going to bring the news to some one to- 
CAMP OF THE SOUTHERN CHEYENNES. 
Showing the crosses on the Medicine Lodge. 
tional Sprays of flowers, each flanked on either hand by 
a cross, which certainly would have signified the butter- 
fly as the sleep bringer, if the board had been ornamented 
by a Blackfoot woman. Crosses appear on two baby- 
boards figured in Prof. O. T. Mason's paper on Primitive 
Travel and Transportation. * 
"On a very large lodge shown in an old photograph of 
'Southern Cheyenne wigwams,' kindly loaned me by the 
Bureau of American Ethnologj^ appear four maltese 
crosses, quite like those shown on some Blackfeet lodges, 
except that they are much larger and are differently placed 
on the lodge, being in pairs one above the other. The 
upper series is well below the smoke-hole, and the lower 
is just above the ground painting, which seems to ex- 
tend 4 or 5ft. up the side of the lodge. It looks as if the 
complete upper series of crosses runs entirely about the 
lodge, and the lower series also, except where interrupted 
by the door. , j 
"Still more to the point is the fact that on some pre- 
historic Hopi or Moki pottery collected by Dr. J. Walter 
Fewkes, and now deposited in the National Museum, ap- 
pears a figure identical with the Blackfoot sign for the 
butterfly, and in close juxtaposition to it the unmistakable 
figure of a noctuid moth. It will be interesting to learn 
whether this belief in the butterfly as the god of sleep and 
this same sign for it have any general currency among the 
Western Indians. 
"The use among the Dakota of the Latin cross to de- 
note the dragonfly as a warner of the approach of danger 
is interesting in this connection. 
"The Piegan Blackfeet call the spider 'tmderground deer' 
{ksit a wa kfls), no doubt because of its rapid move- 
ments and the readiness with which it disappears from 
sight when disturbed. Its activity and supposed intelli- 
gence cause the Indians to hold it in high esteem. In 
ancient times there were religious beliefs and a ceremony 
about the spider, and though much of this has been for- 
gotten, tbe animal still possesses a more or less sacred 
character among these people, so that even to-day in the 
ceremony of the medicine-lodge, the medicine-lodge 
» Smithsonian Report, 1894, pp. 516, 517, Figs. 207, 208. . 
Western or Yellow-Haired Porcupine 
The western or yellow-haired porcupine {Erethison 
dorsatus epixanthus) is one of the few mammals that is 
not confined to any particular life zone. In the high 
rnountains of tlie West, even to timber line, and some- 
times making excursions above it, they are found, as well 
as in the sage and grease brush flats in the valleys, thou- 
sands of feet below. It is also the only animal of any 
size and abundance that can be killed without firearms, 
and for that reason the Canadian Government has passed 
a law protecting it. Many a hunter, trapper, or prospec- 
tor, who has had the hard luck to lose his w;ay, burn his 
outfit, or swamp his raft while far from home, has found 
the porcupine a Godsend, On the other hand, they are 
a great nuisance about camp, and during the absence of 
the hunter they are apt to gnaw into his cabin and do 
considerable damage. They enjoy gnawing into caches 
improperly made by a tenderfoot and going through his 
grub. 
In the valleys, they may be found during the day, rest- 
ing in clumps of bushes, or asleep on the low limb of a 
Cottonwood tree along a stream, while in the high moun- 
tains they make good use of the large tracts of slide rock 
that occurs so abundantly at and above timber line, in the 
Rockies, Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges. These ani- 
mals do not hibernate, 
but during the winter 
live on tlie bark of alder, 
willow, Cottonwood and 
pine trees, together witii 
what roots and grasses 
they are able to find on 
places blown free from 
snow. While traveling 
in the Wind River and 
other mountains of 
Wyoming several years 
ago, I saw large num- 
bers of trees that had 
been gnawed, and in 
some instances com- 
pletely girdled by them. 
In this one section the 
damage was very exten- 
sive. Not far from the 
same place I saw four 
feeding in one small 
grassy park. Dur- 
ing summer they sub- 
sist on tender shoots, 
roots, fruitSj buds and 
grasses. A ranchman in 
Washington once com- 
plaiiied that one was 
' making raids on his 
garden, and ate his veg- 
etables, among which 
he mentioned apples 
that had fallen from the 
trees. A few days later 
he caught the animal. 
During the day they 
usually remain quiet, ap- 
pearing about sundown, 
• - - or earlier during the 
dark days of the winter 
months, and it is by no 
r , . means uncorrmion to 
hnd them prowlmg about at midday, although properly 
speakmg they are nocturnal. They are usuallv found 
smgly, but on one occasion I met two together. (The 
four I have mentioned as seeing in a single park were 
far from each otlier.) They move slowly, the zigzag im- 
prmt of their tail left in the snow or dust being caused 
by the roHing motion of their body. Their sight, as well 
as scent, seems to be very imperfect, and I have repeat- 
edly ridden up within soft, of them on horseback. 
During the summers of 1895 and 'g6 I spent several 
months of each year collecting specimens of natural his- 
tory m the Rocky Mountains of northern Alberta, Can- 
ada, during which several amusing incidents with these 
animals occurred. At the time, my camp was pitched at 
Jasper House, in the pass bearing the same name. I had 
a line of traps set in a rocky bluff on the other side of a 
swift-running stream, and when fording it, for fear of fall- 
ing and wetting my gun, I would leave it at camp. It was 
while out looking at this line of traps one day that I 
chanced to run across a porcupine, huddled up on a low 
limb of a large cotton wood tree. His back rested against 
the back of the tree. As I ascended the tree he did like- 
wise, until we were both as far as we could go, and yet 
he was out of my reach. Here was a problem that took 
me several minutes to solve. If I shook him out, the 
probabilities were he would fail on me. Finally, with my 
hunting knife, I cut the limb, so that I could push i't over 
and break it oft', which I did. Down went the bunch of 
quills through the branches, and I followed via the trunk 
He struck with a heavy thud, 'and after Iving there a few 
seconds (he had fallen fully 65ft) he gained his legs, and 
when I reached the ground was making off toward some 
rocks. I overtook and secured in him a good specimen. 
At another time, while returning from a hunting trip 
one moonlight night, I saw several. There was about ift 
of snow, which helped to make it all the lighter. Durino- 
the five-mile ride, most of the way of which led through 
the edge of the timber close to timber line, I encountered 
several of these animals. They were all in the open tim- 
ber, or small parks, feeding on the bare spots which the 
Avind had swept clear of snow. At my approach thev 
shuffled off for some place of retreat, but if closely pnr- 
