i 4 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
governor and he is agaittst me." Then, extending his 
hand, he said, as I grasped it: "Good-by, come again; 
I love you much." Then all the Indians left us and I 
soon reached the government buildings, where there was 
nothing to do but to express my deep thanks to the 
governor, who would not allow me to pay for the mules 
or the sldiers. 
Before leaving that country I met a Sukia who had 
come to the government buildings, and to test what 1 
knew of the farewell chant to the dead, I sang it for him, 
and the surprised, angry look on his face as he demanded 
where I had learned it, gave me assurance that I had not 
been misled, and that I had in truth learned the death 
chant of the Tolamancas. 
Francis C. Nicholas. 
[In the musical notation as here given the endeavor has 
been made in the arrangement to render the death chant 
as it sounds when, the Indians are singing together in dis- 
order and in irregular time according to their custom. 
The air is the monotone accented chant as it sounds when 
sung by one Indian as a solo.] 
A Walk Down South.-XXII. 
Once more afloat below the Dickenson's Dam, I began 
to realize where I was. Friday, January io, 1902, was a 
bright, beautiful morning, with a faint haze overhead, 
diffused light beneath, warm, delightful; at 10 o'clock I 
crossed the line into Tennessee. There I was and no mis- 
take; fell back an hour to 9 o'clock when the line was 
crossed, and for once I had a chance to live an hour of 
my life over again! The five miles from Dickenson's to 
Kingsport, Tennessee, were dreamy ones. The dam just 
above the town was bad, but I hauled the boat down 
over the rocks on the east side, rather than try to run 
over the board apron. Progress down to the ferry was 
rapid. I landed — and there was the town — rather a part 
of it. 
There had been a "high tide" in December. The water 
had backed up over the floors of some of the dwellings, 
twenty feet above the surface on which my_ boat floated. 
Showalter's house was- where I could get dinner. There 
were several dark horizontal lines on the planed board 
walls. "Here's where the water came last December," 
Henry said, pointing to one as high as my knees. "That 
one was last May." It was a foot higher than my head. 
The door-step, a plank one, was tied to a peg with a 
stout string. 
Henry scraped the mud off his feet with a stick, and 
handed the stick to me to scrape. 
"At dark when the last May tide came," Henry said, 
"the water was like that you came in on. At nine o'clock 
we were wading round the house carrying the stuff up 
stairs. At 10 we had to use a boat and pole to get to the 
sewing machine." 
The December tide left a lot of mud-sills on the front 
yards of the town — several inches of it — a dark gray de- 
posit that clung to one's feet like nothing else one can 
think of; not a smooth, dripping mud, but mud in chunks, 
which breaks rather than flows from wheels and feet. 
I saw a pig drinking down by the hand cable ferry. It 
kept all four feet treading constantly lest it sink into 
the mire. Mules did likewise, but horses are usually less 
sagacious. 
Big Holston and Little Holston come together at the 
ferry. Kingsport postoffice is a mile up the Big Holston. 
I went there after mail when I had eaten dinner. The 
houses were built on stone foundations on the left side of 
the road against the side hill. I looked up at the floor 
levels, and was assured that the water overflowed the 
floors occasionally. Corn stocks hung limp in the 
branches of some of the trees, and there were some house 
and other beams and logs lying along the tide line, like 
match sticks and straws along a gutter after the sun 
comes out. Part of the side of a church, painted blue, 
had been propped up by some one beside the stone walk. 
I walked around one side of a big sow wallowing m the 
mud, my comrade walked round the other. 
At the office there were signs of confusion. It was also 
a doctor's office and drug store. Dr. Patton, the post- 
master, went to the house, some feet higher, to get 
stamps, explaining, "We have to keep that sort of stuff 
on a higher level." It wasn't the kind of stream that 
flows up north. I looked at the yellow flood with novel 
sensations. „, , ,. . ■ 
I remained all night with the Showalters, listening to 
the banjo during the evening. I awakened once in the 
night and reached down to the floor with my hand— one 
wonders if that is a common trick along rivers with such 
eccentric habits. 
In the morning the kind mistress of the house put up 
a "little snack" for me. Nearly two quarts of apple but- 
ter, a peck of cold biscuits, a glass of pear jelly and some 
slices of fried pork. I started, a vague alarm settling in 
me when I looked at the broad river ahead, a tumble ot 
rifts the first introduction. The rifts proved easy, how- 
ever, though swift and dancing. It was when I came 
around the bend below that the size of the river showed 
itself. A cold north wind was blowing up the still water, 
the waves rolled up and broke in white caps there. It was 
dismaying. After every paddle stroke the boat stopped 
dead. But the eddies were short, and the rifts frequent, 
I did manage to move on and on. I ate frequently, 11ns 
was reviving, but long before dark my arms drooped and 
my head bowed forward to shelter the face from the 
insistent drive of the teethed wind. I tried to find the 
lee bank; for a few rods there would be a dull sensation 
of relief, then, with a little buoyant lift, a keener thrust 
the wind would find me at some bend and once more I 
would go slinking onward, not proud of having had the 
shelter nor yet brave enough to take to the center of the 
stream regardless of the stings. . 
The buildings were all far back from the nverfon high 
knolls or distant ridges. Wide, water-worn, wind-swept 
cornfields laid between the river and the houses; or else 
there were bluffs of tree-grown, rocky slopes, behind 
which one could see no land of promise. Once I saw a 
gray squirrel ; frequently I saw flocks of greenheads, 
diedappers and other ducks, the names of which 1 do 
riot know, surprising them as I came down beside those 
curious islands called "towheads." 
Towheads ! Who gave that name to those flocks ot 
drift grown with brittle willow shrubs, all stained with 
the yellow clay in the last high tide? With a plow of 
gleaming white shells — mother of pearl — a nose of drift- — ^ 
trees, logs, mangled crops and brush — a hairy hull of 
leaning water willows, combed back by the drag of the 
waters, and a long, lean eddy astern, no feature of the 
turgid southern streams is so striking as these. The 
gaunt white sycamores, the caving banks, the broad- 
bosomed flow, not the vast, silent power of the rivers 
have the mystery which, one can see in the towhead as 
it comes silently, resistlessly up the stream at the way- 
farer upon the waters. 
When the "evening" had come, the mind was not less 
weary than the body. It had been a wonderful day; of 
course exhausting. I watched for some place to stay 
for the night. I wanted to see if the people were as 
distant as that awful stream. The bleak, blue day had 
been delightfully lonesome, and reared the ecstasy of 
homesickness to unusual proportions. 
It was not late when I saw a log house back in the 
woods, just after I had seen the wreck of a house boat 
among some towheads. I was close to the far bank and 
started straight across to the house. The bank still 
glided along. I turned the boat's head up stream and 
paddled harder than ever before. Even then I was borne 
on down the noiseless, rushing current; I was two hun- 
dred yards below, the landing before I managed to run 
into an eddy behind a water-surrounded tree. Not before 
had I realized how rapidly ran the water at the foot of 
a shoal. I went back to the log house. James Hick, an 
old Confederate soldier, welcomed me. 
A fine supper of fried plank salted pork, berry jams, 
coffee, sorghum, and peach sauce was served. After sup- 
per we sat around the fireplace. The fireplace was so full 
of wood that all sat ten or twelve feet from it. I was too 
exhausted, however, to enjoy the charming side of the 
occasion. It was satisfaction to sit drooping in the chair 
with the top of the head warmed by the blaze. 
At bedtime all retired. There were five beds in the 
room, one across the rear of it. the other two extending 
from the rear corners forward. Mine was the central 
one. The bed at my head was occupied by Mr. Hick 
and his wife; at my feet were two sons. Two daughters 
were in the one adjoining the sons, and a cousin in the 
remaining bed at the foot of that wherein the parents 
reposed. 
Sunday morning found a freezing wind blowing, and 
I waited for another day. The morning had not gone 
very far when the talk turned to Indians. I was in an 
Indian country where there had been trouble enough in 
the old days. Mr. Hick said that lots of relics were 
picked up on the bottoms thereabouts. He had seen 
"flints" longer than his hand. There were some kicking 
round up stairs. One of the boys went up and got a 
few. One of these was glossy black, with regular teeth 
along the edge. They gave me a handful of arrow heads, 
two tomahawks, a belt bead and an odd, egg-shaped 
stone worn half down. Across the river on the bottom, 
they said, was a lot of such stuff. 
I announced my intention of looking over that bot- 
tom. Mr. Hick said he would go with me, and away we 
went. We crossed the river in a "canoe" — a long, low 
craft with a far overhang at each end, which "we" poled 
across standing. I wasn't used to handling a pole, and 
once or twice nearly got yanked out of the boat like a 
rabbit in a snare. We reached yon side safely, 
walked fifty yards over a slight whale-back elevation, 
and on the far side Mr. Hick began to scan the ground; 
so did I. Mr. Hick said: 
"Here's one," and handed me a yellow tip with the 
point broken. Then: "Here's another." My eyes 
weren't used to finding arrow heads. In fact, I'd never 
seen one on the ground. I grew eager. I began to look 
for flint of any sort, stooping low, and not looking for 
arrow shapes. A bit of flint was seen instantly, and then 
another and a third. They were mere chips, however. 
Then there was a black one— a pretty, shiny bit half 
buried in the frozen sand. A tip sure enough. Again 
and again I found tips, some "good" ones some "poor." 
Then Hick brought me a piece of bone — a man's 
radius or ulna, apparently, but much worn by the ele- 
ments. 
At intervals, scattered over the surface, were ovals and 
circles of red stone cobbles — "the kind we use to heat 
to boil our scalding water when we kill hogs," Mr. 
Hick said. The stones were larger than one's fist and 
smaller than would fit in a two-quart pail. They were 
red and "looked as if they'd been heated." These were 
laid in quite regular circles, or ovals, as I said, some 
three feet across, and packed in very hard. "One had 
to take his heel to knock them out." 
"I got the notion one time," Hick's said, "that maybe 
they buried money or something under them things, and 
I dug down under one of them — went down four or five 
feet, maybe more, but didn't find anything. I don't know 
what they're for." 
Unfortunately I couldn't tell than either. The man 
who owned the bottom came down; to see what neigh- 
bor Hick was doing there. Hick explained that I'd 
never seen a place like that before, and was kind of 
curious — curious in more respects than one. 
It was a freezing cold day; even I shivered in it, but 
I had both enthusiasm and a northern constiution. Mr. 
Hick waited, however, till I got a pocket full of flints, 
and then we went back across the river. The man who 
owned the bottom had gathered a pile of bones a foot 
high at one place last fall while plowing the land, but 
these were all scattered by the "tide" in December. 
The story of the wrecked house boat up in the shoal 
of which I had a glimpse was told me. A man named 
Howard built it up near. Kingsport. He was tired of the 
country thereabouts. The boat was a flat bottQmed scow 
some twenty-five feet long and eight feet wide. On this 
was a six by fourteen foot shanty. Into it Howard 
loaded his household— wife, children and goods. On the 
tail of the December tide he started south. But "luck" 
was against him. He ran into the chute of Hick's 
Shoals and the boat struck a sycamore snag. One side 
went down the other up. Somehow Howard got his 
wife and four little children to the island toward which 
the water swept, and then Howard left the river "for 
good and all." River travel, Howard believes, is worse 
than living in a country where men are arrested for theft, 
so he will stay in the mountains of Tennessee. 
Raymond S. Spears. 
Floating on the Missouri. — VL 
Soon after daylight the next morning we discovered 
eleven mule deer walking along under the cut bank on 
the poposite side of the river. One of them was a very 
large buck, and had an immense set of antlers. They 
picked their way down the shore, waving their great 
ears, occasionally stopping to look about, and at last dis- 
appeared up a deep coulee. 
After breakfast I brought the remainder of the deer I 
had killed down to camp, and then we loaded up and 
set sail, a good wind having started from the west. 
Here at Grand Island the really well-timbered bottoms 
of the Missouri begin; the stream flows from one side 
of the valley to the other like the course of a snake, and 
in every bend a growth of cottonwoods and willows ex- 
tends a part or all of the way back to the foot of the 
valley slope. Here also one first begins to see the "saw- 
yers," for which the river is famous, and which have 
sunk many a good boat. The current ever encroaching 
upon the soft soil of the bottoms, especially the upper, or 
western sides, is continually eating them away; a great 
piece of undermined ground falls into the stream, and 
with it one or more trees, roots and all. Down goes the 
tree to the bottom, its top rising several feet above the 
surface of the water and slanting with the current. Then 
the spring rush of ice cuts away its limbs, shaves and 
sharpens the trunk, and the sand and sediment deeply 
imbedding its roots hold it immovably in place like a great 
lance. If the tip is just beneath the surface, a swirl 
and rippling of the water reveals its presence. But the 
most observant of pilots cannot always detect one, and 
with a crash the boat is impaled, and a few moments later 
sinks beneath the muddy tide. 
Wonderful, almost unbelievable, is the amount of soil 
and sand annually carried away and shifted by this river. 
The finest of it is held in suspension and is finally de- 
posited in the Gulf of Mexico. The coarsest is cut away 
here, deposited there, picked up and shifted again, each 
time a little further down stream. In one day the ever 
shifting channel will remove all traces of a long, wide 
bar or island several feet in height. Often, as we rowed 
or sailed along, we' could see them melting away, yards 
and yards at a time, and great chunks of the bottom, ten, 
twenty, even thirty feet in height, were continually falling 
in with a resounding splash. The careful navigator will 
do well to keep out from the cut banks. Where a bottom 
wears away, the bottom on the opposite side fills out, and 
at a rate which can be accurately measured by the growth 
of the trees. Always at the outer edge are cottonwood 
and willow sprouts ; back of them belt after belt of tim- 
ber, each one larger than the other by a year's growth, 
until finally one comes to the full-grown trees, tall, rough- 
barked and wide of girth. The river once shifting and 
leaving an ever-widening bar, the wash from the hills 
raises it layer by layer. A moderate rainstorm will de- 
posit several inches of the bad land soil upon it, a big 
storm as much as a foot. In the rainy season, and when 
the winter snows are melting under the influence of the 
warm spring sun, the ^teep coulees are miniature torrents, 
carrying the soil and sticky clays down not only in solu- 
tion, but in balls from several inches up to three feet in 
diameter. Here and there at the mouths of these coulees 
one can often see several hundred of them stranded by 
the receding waters. 
The scenery this morning was not especially impressive, 
merely a succession of bars, broken ridges and deep 
coulees on the north side of the valley, and only a few 
pine groves on the southern slope. A run of five miles 
brought us to the Two Calf Islands, at the mouth of Two 
Calf Creek, which flows into the river from the north. 
These are old names, bestowed by some of the early 
voyageurs, but why, tradition does not say. The islands, 
separated only by a narrow strip of deep water, are 
small and covered with timber. There were several 
beaver slides on the lower, one, but no fresh sign; evi- 
dently the moccasined trapper had been here also. On 
a high bank near the mouth of the creek stands an old- 
time hunter's cabin in a fair state of preservation, even 
to the rawhide door. Its dimensions are about twelve by 
fourteen feet, and the great, rude, rough, stone fireplace 
and chimney at its rear take up a large share of the space. 
The breeze freshened and we ran the six miles from 
this point to the mouth of Armell's Creek in an hour. 
This is a fair-sized stream, heading near the Black Butte, 
thirty miles south. The latter part of its course is be- 
tween high, rough, pine-clad hills. It was named after 
Charles Armell, a trader for the American Fur Co., who 
once managed a branch post here for some time. Sah- 
ne-to said that her people called this creek It-tsis-ki-ot- 
sop — Crushed, or, more liberally, Trapped. Somewhere 
along its course, in the long ago, she said, the Piegans 
were camping and hunting, and some one discovered a 
seam of soft, red ochre, or burnt clay, in a high cut 
bank. The news quickly spread through camp and created 
great excitement, for the substance was not common, and 
in great demand for making a sacred paint for the face. 
In other words, 'twas great medicine. Early the next 
morning more women flocked to the place than could 
work at it at one time, for the seam was not long. They 
dug and gouged and scraped with such implements as 
they had. sharp-pointed sticks and shoulder blades of 
buffalo, and had mined in for a considerable distance 
when a large portion of the high bank fell, completely 
burying twenty-seven of them and seriously injuring 
several more. All of the twenty-seven were dead when 
the people finally uncovered them. 
We expected to find an old friend named King located 
at the mouth of this stream, but found his ranch on the 
next bottom below. We landed quietly and slipped along 
through a grove of trees to the house unobserved. Then 
Sah-ne-to sprang out and addressed Mrs. King in her 
own language, greatly to the latter's surprise and delight. 
They had not seen each other for more than a year, when 
King and his family had left the foot of the Rockies to 
locate here. I asked him what he thought of the country. 
"Say," he replied, "I find that I've just thrown away 
the twenty years and more I put in buffeting the cold 
winds up where you are. Here the wind doesn't blow; 
see how straight and tall these cottonwoods are? Those 
on your place are bent and dwarfed. Up there, you have 
to rustle hard all summer to get enough hay to winter 
your stock. Here we don't need any. Cattle find ample 
feed and shelter here in these bottoms and keep fat during 
