JAN. 13, 1906. ] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 


INDIAN SNOWSHOE MAKING, 
eral hours later his wife came running in and 
said that Took-a-gun-under-the-water (It-su’-yi- 
na-mak-an) was coming to kill me. The woman 
was terribly frightened and begged me to pity her 
and not kill her husband, whom she dearly loved 
and who, when sober, would be terribly ashamed 
of himself for attempting to hurt me. I went to 
the door and saw my quondam friend coming. 
He had on no wearing apparel whatever except 
his moccasins, and had painted his face, body 
and limbs with fantastic stripes of green, yellow 
and red; he was brandishing a .44 Winchester 
and calling upon the sun to witness how he 
would kill me, his worst enemy. Of course I 
didn’t want to kill him any more than his wife 
wished to see him killed. Terror-stricken, she 
ran and hid in a pile of robes, and I took my 
stand behind the open door with a Winchester. 
On came he of the long name, singing, shouting 
the war song, and saying repeatedly, “Where is 
that bad white man? Show him to me that I 
may give him one bullet, just this one little 
bullet?” 
With carbine full cocked he strode in, looking 
eagerly ahead for a sight of me, and just as he 
passed I gave him a smart blow on top of the 
head with the barrel of my rifle; down he 
dropped senseless to the floor, his carbine going 
off and sending the missile intended for me 
through a case of tinned tomatoes on a shelf. 
The woman ran out from her hiding place at the 
sound of the shot, thinking that I had surely 
killed him; but her joy was great when she 
learned her mistake. Together we bound him 
tightly and got him home to his lodge. 
Now, one often reads that an Indian never 
forgives a blow nor an injury of any kind, no 
matter how much at fault he may have been. 
That is all wrong. The next morning Takes-a- 
gun-under-the-water sent me a fine buffalo robe. 
At dusk he came in and begged me to forgive 
him. Ever after we were the best of friends. 
Whenever I had time for a short hunt back in 
the breaks, or out on the plains, I chose him for 
my companion, and a more faithful and consid- 
erate one I never had. 
I cannot say that all traders got along so well 
with the Indians as did Berry and I. There 
were some bad men among them, men who de- 
lighted in inflicting pain, in seeing blood flow. I 
have known such to kill Indians just for fun, 
but never in a fair, open fight. They were great 
cowards, and utterly unprincipled. These men 
sold “whisky” which contained tobacco juice, 
cayenne pepper and various other vile things. 
Berry and I sold weak liquor, it is true, but the 
weakness consisted of nothing but pure water— 
which was all the better for the consumer. I 
make no excuse for the whisky trade. It was 
wrong, all wrong, and none realized it better than 
we when we were dispensing the stuff. It caused 
untold suffering, many deaths, great demoraliza- 
tion among those people of the plains. There 
was but one redeeming feature about it: The 
trade was at a time when it did not deprive them 
of the necessities of life; there was always more 
meat, more fur to be had for the killing of it. In _ 
comparison to various Government officials and 
rings, who robbed and starved the Indians to 
death on their reservations after the buffalo dis- 
appeared, we were saints. 
All in all, that was a pleasant winter we passed 
on the Marias. Hunting with the Indians, loung- 
ing around a lodge fire, or before our own or 
Sorrel Horse’s fire-place of an evening, the days 
fairly flew. Sometimes I would go with Sorrel 
Horse to visit his “baits,” and it was a great 
sight to see the huge wolves lying stiff and stark 
about, and even on them. To make a good bait 
a buffalo was killed and cut open on the back, 
and into the meat, blood and entrails three vials 
of strychnine—three-eighths of an ounce-—were 
stirred. It seemed as if the merest bite of this 
deadly mixture was enough to kill, a victim sel- 
dom getting more than 200 yards away before 
the terrible convulsions seized him, Of course, 
great numbers of coyotes and kit foxes were also 
poisoned, but they didn’t count. The large, 
heavy-furred wolf skins were in great demand in 
the East for sleigh and carriage robes, and sold 
right at Fort Benton for from $3 to $5 each. I 
had a fancy to take some of these stiffly-frozen 
i 

animals home, and stand them up around Sorrel 
Horse’s house. They were an odd and interest- 
ing sight, standing there, heads and tails up, as 
if guarding the place;-but one day there came a 
chinook wind and they soon toppled over and 
were skinned. 
So the days went, and then came spring. The 
river cleared itself of ice in one grand grinding 
rush of massive cakes; green grass darkened the 
valley slopes; geese and ducks honked and 
quacked in every slough. We all, Indians and 
whites, wished to do nothing but lie out on the 
ground in the warm sunshine, and smoke and 
dream in quiet contentment. 
WALTER B. ANDERSON, 
[TO BE CONTINUED. ] 
_ “In the Lodges of the Blackfeet’? was begun in the 
issue of November 21. Back numbers can be supplied. 
Indian Snowshoe Making. 
THE illustration shows how snowshoes are 
finished off. Four Iroquois Indians are seen 
completing the net of gut. 
One of the best manufacturers of snowshoes, 
either of Canada or the United States, is Chief 
Noah La France (Teronyadase), of the St. 
Regis Indian Reservation, New York. He is 
seated second from the left in the photo. At 
the extreme left and right are two of his ex- 
pert assistants. Directly in front and center is 
his own brother and secretary, Alexander, who 
is fairly educated. He is a great help to Chief 
Noah, who is without education. 
The uppermost snowshoes shown in the illus- 
tration are a pair of fancy, but substantial, 
ladies’ snowshoes, the nose of which is deco- 
rated with bright-colored wool. The ones lower 
down are the kind worn by the snowshoe racers, 
who require long, narrow ones. The pair that 
the men are working on are the substantial, 
every-day shoes, which are very popular, and 
are sent all over the country from Hogans- 
burg, N. Y. 
The Iroquois have always been celebrated as 
snowshoe makers, and the product of their 
handiwork has always been sought after. 
The majority of people consider the art of 
snowshoe making only a very ordinary and 
commonplace sort of work; yet the present-day 
method of making these articles by hand is 
altered only by a few additions of handier im- 
plements. The material used, with the exception 
of gut, is practically the same as in the old 
Indian methods. 
The wood is the choicest of the black ash, 
selected, even grained and unspiraled, and with- 
out knots. A log ten feet long and about ten 
inches in diameter, will make only a dozen 
frames. It is split into small narrow pieces and 
whittled into the correct thickness preparatory 
to “shape-framing.” When all the pieces are 
prepared, they are put into a box, which is filled 
with steam, then closed tightly for thirty min- 
utes. They are then quickly taken out, one at a 
time, bent into the proper shape, tied firmly 
and hung up to dry for several days. All 
draughts are excluded from the room where 
these are bent. When preparing half a gross 
of these, a man is covered with perspiration, and 
must be careful not to get a chill. 
In the meantime the hide is prepared, from 
which the gut strings are made for stringing the 
netting part of the shoes. In old times the net- 
ting was made from the hides of the deer, or 
buffalo. But since the buckskin has been so 
scarce and high-priced, cow hide has taken the 
place of the others. It is considered stronger 
and does not sag as the deer skin did. 
The cow hide is firstly soaked in water for the 
best part of a day. When it is taken out, it Is 
put on a so-called “horse,” which is a smooth, 
long log, with two legs to raise one end. The 
flesh side is first scraped off very clean, and the 
hide is then turned over, the fur side up, and 
the fur is shaved off, as shown in the figure on 
the right. In place of the old style usage of a 
long cow rib for the purpose a long and curved 
