July 7, 1906.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
9 
of this grain, but the chickens needed it. And 
while the Agent fed it to them, his family dyed 
Government blankets to remove all trace of the 
U. S. I. D; (United States Indian Department) 
with which they were branded, and shipped 
bales of them to certain places, where they were 
sold. 
The news of all this did not reach 11s until 
February, when Wolf Head capie in one day 
riding the sorriest looking horse I ever saw. It 
had a little hair in places, the skin along the 
back was wrinkled, and here and there had 
been deeply frozen. “There are not many of 
them up there that look, better,” said Wolf 
Head, sadly. “Most of our herds are dead.” 
And then he went on to tell of the starving and 
dying people. Long before he had finished, 
Nat-ah'-ki began to cry, and so did the Crow 
Woman, who was the only one of the others 
present. But while they cried, they were quickly 
heating some food and coffee, which they placed 
on the table before Wolf Head and told him to 
eat. Never in my life did I see food disappear 
so quickly, in such huge portions. I arose after 
a little and took the different things away. “You 
shall have them later,” I said. The women 
protested until I convinced them that starving 
people sometimes die when given much food 
after their long fast. In the evening our place 
was well filled with the Indians from camp, and 
Wolf Head repeated what he had told us of the 
suffering and dying people. He named some of 
the dead, and one by one some of the listeners 
stole away to mourn for relatives they had lost. 
Here, there, sitting on the frozen ground or 
bank of the river they wailed, calling over and 
over the loved one’s name. The sound of it 
was so distressing, so nerve-racking, that I felt 
like going out and asking them to desist and 
go home. But I could not do it. It was their 
way, their ancient way, of expressing their sor¬ 
row. What right had I to interfere; of what 
account were my nerves beside their sorrows? 
When Wolf Head ended his harrowing tale, 
for a time all the men sat very still, not even 
smoking, and then they began, one by one, to 
heap such curses on their Agent and white 
men in general as their language permitted. 
Berry and I listened in silence; we knew they 
did not mean us—we knew that they regarded 
11s as members of their tribe, their very own 
people. But we were nevertheless ashamed 
before them, sore that the cupidity and careless¬ 
ness and lust for land of the white race had 
brought them and theirs to this pass. After the 
talk had somewhat drifted into half silences, 
Berry said what he could in the way of con¬ 
dolence, adding, “We told you months ago to 
kill that Agent of yours. Had you done that, 
there would have been a great excitement where 
the white people live, and men would have been 
sent here to look into the matter. They would 
have learned that you were without food, and a 
plenty would have been sent to you.” 
I said nothing. A thought had suddenly 
struck me which I at once put into execution. I 
sat down and wrote a letter to a New York 
gentlepian with whom I had had some corre¬ 
spondence, but had never met, explaining fully 
the sad plight the Blackfeet were in. I can’t 
say why I wrote .to him, but I believe that fate 
directed me, for my story in due time reached a 
sympathetic hand, and I was told to go on up 
to the Agency and write an account of what I 
saw there. Unknown to me this gentleman had 
ridden several trails in the West, and had formed 
a different opinion of Indians from what most 
white men have. In time he became what may 
be called an honorary member of the Blackfeet, 
the Pawnees, the Cheyennes, and other North¬ 
ern tribes. The Fisher Cap, as the Blackfeet 
call him, has done more for them than all the 
different “Indian Rights,” “Indian Aid” soci¬ 
eties put together. He has rid them of thiev¬ 
ing agents; helped them to get good ones; to 
get full value for the lands they have been 
obliged to sell; accompanied their delegations 
to Washington, and stood by them in their 
petitions to the Indian Office. 
Well, I saddled a horse and rode up to the 
Agency. Not exactly to it, for I did not wish 
to get my friends into trouble. The Indian 
Police had been ordered by the Agent to arrest 
every white man they found on the Reserva¬ 
tion. If I rode right into the stockade, the 
Police would have to arrest me or resign, and 1 
wished none of them to leave the service, for 
the Agent gave, them plenty of food for them¬ 
selves and families. Therefore, I rode from 
one camp to another for a day, and what I saw 
was heart-rending. I entered and sat down in 
the lodges of friends with whom I had feasted 
not so long since on broiled buffalo tongues 
and ribs, on rich pemmican and other good 
things of the plains. Their women were mostly 
sitting gazing hopelessly at the fire, and upon 
seeing me drew their old thin robes about them, 
more securely to hide their rent and worn-out 
dresses. And the men! There was no hearty, 
full-voiced "Ok'-yi!” from them. They spoke 
the word of welcome of course, but in a low 
key, and their eyes could not meet mine, foi- 
tliey were ashamed. There was nothing in tlie 
lodge to eat, and the greatest of humiliations 
to a Blackfoot is to be unable to set out a little 
feast for his visitors. But when I began to 
speak about their predicament, they roused up 
quickly enough and spoke, of their suffering 
children and wives, and of the deaths, and some¬ 
times as they talked a woman would begin to 
sob and go out; one who had, perhaps, lost a 
child of her own. It was all very sad. 
Leaving the camps in the vicinity of the 
Agency, 1 rode over to Birch Creek, the south¬ 
ern boundary of the Reservation, where there 
was a small camp. I found the people there 
slightly better off. A few range cattle were 
wintering in the vicinity, and the hunters occa¬ 
sionally went out in the night and killed one, so 
thoroughly covering up or removing all trace 
of blood and offal that had one ridden by the 
next day he would ne^er have suspected what 
had been done there but a few hours before. It 
has always been a heinous offense to kill, re¬ 
brand, or maverick cattle in the range country, 
and the Indians knew it, hence their caution. 
The cattlemen knew of course that their herds 
were growing smaller, but they could prove 
nothing, so they merely damned the Indians and 
talked about “wiping them off the face of the 
earth.” Even that last remnant of the Black- 
feet’s once vast territory, their Reservation, was 
coveted by the great cattle kings for many 
years, and as you shall learn later, they eventu¬ 
ally got the run of it, after surreptitiously fat¬ 
tening, in connivance with various agents, 
thousands of beeves • upon it for the Chicago 
market. 
Walter B. Anderson. 
[to be continued.] 
The Water Witch Again. 
I would be the last one to claim that my in¬ 
vestigations have been sufficient to prove any¬ 
thing definite. They have only reached the 
point of inclining me to believe that there is 
something in it, and yet I am aware that self- 
deception is very easy in such things. I may 
add a little episode in further confirmation of 
the theory. About five weeks ago, I visited 
John Burroughs at Slabsides and told him my 
experiences. He declared that he did not be¬ 
lieve in the thing at all. “There is a peach tree,” 
he said, pointing to one in front of his cabin. 
“Cut a branch and see if you can find water 
here.” I did as he said, and began walking up 
and down in front of the house. Two points 
were clearly indicated, about twenty feet apart. 
I walked over the ground several times and al¬ 
ways in just those two places the rod turned 
oyer. “That’s very strange,” said Mr. Bur¬ 
roughs, referring to one of the two spots. “At 
just that point we came across a spring some 
years ago when digging a hole." “Was it near 
.there or exactly on that spot?” I asked. “Ex¬ 
actly on the spot,” he answered. “I am inclined 
to think that there may be something in it,” 
were his last words on the subject; “not that 
the branch indicates the water, but that there 
may be something’ in the operator’s subcon¬ 
scious self that responds to it.” I urged Mr. 
Burroughs to take the matter up and investigate 
it thoroughly with more practiced adepts than 
I may claim to be. As to your suggestion that 
I should do the same, I regret to say that I 
have now come to town for the season, but in 
the spring I will try to carry out your plan, or 
at least to test the powers of wizards in my own 
neighborhood. Meanwhile I will try to get the 
report of the committee of the Society of 
Psychical Research, which examined the ques¬ 
tion in Ireland.—Correspondence of the Coun¬ 
try Gentleman. 
A Matter of Science. 
Every little while some new manifestation of 
humanity strikes the world’s vision from an angle 
that casts on it a sidelight hitherto unknown, or, 
at least, unheeded. Instantly, plain everyday 
trifles become silvered over with a rime of scien¬ 
tific importance, and are cited by experts as 
discoveries of sorts. Old myths are rejuvenated 
and granted claims of verity unthought of by 
their most enthusiastic devotees in the long 
ago; and a careful sifting of such material has 
raised a claim to the consideration of water, 
just plain water, as a psychic force. 
Like other simple elements once unknown, 
one is led to wonder why its psychic signifi¬ 
cance was not noted long before. For cen¬ 
turies on centuries we have seen the whole 
financial world go semi-hydrophobic at the bare 
suspicion of an undue amount of aqua pura in 
its stocks; and that such could be the effect of 
a mere name reacting on—often—a mere noth¬ 
ing but serves to show its power. If such is a 
shadow’s power, what must the reality be! 
Or yet again, excited by the mere theory of a 
cold-water habit, consider the spectacle of thous¬ 
ands of blue-ribboners working enthusiastically 
hand in glove with the liquor interests to abol¬ 
ish the “Canteen” at arm posts. True, the re¬ 
sults, as might have been expected from such 
an alliance of vice and virtue, are simply devilish, 
since, of course, a whole line of harpies- in¬ 
stantly went to roost like vultures around each 
post just outside of Government control, and 
thrive exceedingly at their trade, making the 
prairie to bloom with toddy-blossoms. But that 
is a detail. The fact that it was done by water¬ 
power is what interests us now. 
But let us consider further. Take for ex¬ 
periment a man glorying in his strength. Star 
of the gridiron, victor of the ring, and of course 
of some fair woman, the real or potential lover. 
Subject him to that woman’s tears, and where 
then is his crown of glory? As resolute as! a 
circlet of dull lead, devitalized by the psychic 
force of—what? Let the victim say. He knows! 
“She cried a quart of water, and of course I 
had to give in.” Isn’t it a familiar plea, as old 
as Samson? 
Of late the weekly press has taken up ’one of 
