FOREST AND STREAM. 
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[JAN. 13, 1906. 




























In the Lodges of the Blackfeet. 
A Winter on the Marias. 

THERE was a little town in northern Montana, 
where upon certain days things would run along 
as smoothly and monotonously as in a village of 
this effete East. But at certain other times you 
would enter the place to find everyone on a high 
old tear. It seemed to be epidemic; if one man 
started to get gloriously full everyone promptly 
joined in—doctor, lawyer, merchant, cattleman, 
sheepman and all. Well do I remember the last 
affair of that kind I witnessed there. By about 
2 P. M. they got to the champagne stage—twas 
really sparkling cider or something of that kind 
—$5 a bottle, and about fifty men were going 
from saloon to store and from store to hotel 
treating in turn—$60 a round. I mention this as 
a prelude to what I have to say about drinking 
among the Indians in the old days. They were 
no worse than the whites in that way, and with 
them it seemed to be also epidemic. 
Quietly and orderly:a camp would be for days 
and days, and then suddenly all the men would 
start in on a drinking bout. Really, I believe 
that the Indians at such times, free as they were 
from any restraint, to whom law was an un- 
known term, were better behaved than would 
be a like number of our workingmen in the same 
condition. True, they frequently quarreled with 
each other when in liquor, and a quarrel was 
something to be settled only by blood. But let 
a thousand white men get drunk together, would’ 
there not ensue some fearful scenes? One reads 
of the ferocity of Indians when drinking, but 
my own experience was that on the whole they 
were exceedingly good-natured and jovial at 
such times, and often infinitely amusing. One 
night that winter on the Marias I was wending 
my way homeward from a visit at Sorrel Horse’s 
place, where a man and woman came out of the 
trade room and staggered along the trail toward 
me. I slipped behind a cottonwood tree. The 
man was very unsteady on his feet and the 
woman, trying to help him along, at the same 
time was giving him a thorough scolding. I 
heard her say: “ , and you didn’t look out 
for me a bit; there you were in that crowd, just 
drinking with one and then another, and never 
looking to see how I was getting along. You 
don’t protect me at all; you don’t care for me, 
or you would not have let me stay in there to be 
insulted.” 
The man stopped short, and swaying this way 
and that gave a roar like a wounded grizzly: 
“Don’t care for you; don’t protect you; let you 
get insulted,” he spluttered and foamed. ‘‘Who 
insulted you? Who? I say. Let me at him! Let 
me at him! T’ll fix him with this.” 
Right there by the trail was lying a large. 

log which would have 
weighed at least a ton. He bent over it and tried 
again and again to lift it, shouting: “Protect 
you! Insulted! Who did it? Where is he? 
Wait until I pick up this club and let me at him.” 
But the club wouldn’t be picked up, and he 
became perfectly frantic in his efforts to grasp 
it up and place it on his shoulder. He danced 
from one end to the other of it with increasing 
ardor and anger, until he finally fell over it ex- 
hausted, and then the patient woman picked him 
up—he was a little light fellow—and carried him 
home. 
I knew a young man who always became very 
mischievous when he drank. He had three wives 
and at such times he would steal their little 
stores of fine pemmican, fancy bead-work, their 
needles and awls, and give them to other women. 
He was up to his pranks one morning as I hap- 
pened along, and the women determined to catch 
and thoroughly bind him until he became sober. 
But he would not be caught; they chased him 
through the camp, out toward the hills, by the 
river, back to camp, when, by means of a travoi 
leaning against it, he climbed to the top of his 
lodge, seated himself in the V-shaped embrasure 
of the lodge poles, and jibed the women for their 
poor running qualities, enumerated the articles he 
had stolen from them, and so on. He was ex- 
ceedingly hilarious. The wives held a whispered 
consultation, and one of them went inside. Their 
tormentor ceased jibing and began a drinking 
song: 
green, cottonwood 
“Bear Chief, he gave me a drink, 
Bear Chief, he gave me a ——”’ 
That was as far as he got. The wife had 
thrown a huge armful of rye grass from her 
couch upon the smouldering fire, it blazed up 
with a sudden roar and burst of flame which 
reached the tenderest part of his anatomy; he 
gave a loud yell of surprise and pain and leaped 
from his perch. When he struck the ground the 
women were upon him and I know not how 
many lariats they coiled about him before they 
bore him inside, amid the jeers and jests of a 
throng of laughing spectators and laid him upon 
his couch. 
But there was another side, and by no means 
a pleasant one to this drinking business. One 
night, when there were few Indians about Berry, 
one of his traders named T. and I were lingering 
by the fire-place in the trade room. There had 
been a crowd there earlier in the evening, and 
two remained, both sleeping off the effects of 
their carouse in a corner opposite us. Suddenly 
Berry shouted: “Look out T.!” at the same time 
giving him a fierce shove against me which sent 
us both to the floor. And he was none too soon, 
for even as it was, an arrow grazed the skin of 
T.’s right side. One of the drunken Indians had 
awakened, deliberately fitted an arrow to his bow, 
and was just about to let fly at T., when Berry 
saw him. Before he could draw another arrow 
from his quiver we pounced on him and threw 
him outside. Why he did it, if for some fancied 
wrong, or if he was still dreaming, we never 
knew. He was a Blood, and they were a very 
treacherous tribe. 
Another evening Berry unbarred the door to 
go out when it suddenly flew open and a tall 
Indian, frozen stiff, with an arrow sticking in 
his bosom, fell inside. Some one with a grim 
humor had leaned the frozen body against the 
door with a view of giving us a surprise. The 
dead man was also a Blood, and it was never 
known who killed him. ° 
Out on a hunt one day down on the Missouri, 
I killed a buffalo which had what the traders 
called a “beaver robe,” because the hair was so 
exceedingly fine, thick and of a glossy, silky na- 
ture. Beaver robes were rare, and I had skinned 
this with horns and hoofs intact. I wished ,to 
have it especially well tanned, as I intended it for 
a present to an Eastern friend. The Crow 
Woman, good old soul, declared that she would 
do the work herself, and promptly stretched the 
hide on a frame. The next morning it was 
frozen stiff as a board, and she was standing on 
it busily chipping it, when a half-drunk Cree 
came along. I happened in sight just as he was 
about to pull her off of the hide, and hurrying 
over there I struck him with all my power square 
in the forehead with my fist. The blow didn’t 
even phaze him. It has often been said that it is 
nearly impossible to knock an Indian down, and 
I believe it. Well, the Cree picked up a broken 
lodge pole, the longest and heaviest end of it, 
and came for me, and as I was unarmed I had to 
turn and ignominiously run; I was not so swift 
aS my pursuer, either. It is hard to say what 
would have happened—probably I would have 
been killed had Berry not seen the performance 
and hurried to my assistance. The Cree was just 
on the point of giving me a blow on the head 
when Berry fired, and the Indian fell with a bul- 
let through his shoulder. -Some of his people 
came along and packed him home. Then the 
Cree chief and his council came over and we had 
a fine pow-wow about the matter. It ended by 
our paying damages. We did our best always 
to get along with as little friction as possible, but 
I did hate to pay that Cree for a wound he 
richly deserved. 
We traded several seasons with the Crees and 
North Blackfeet down on the Missouri, they hav- 
ing followed the last of the Saskatchewan buffalo. 
herds south into Montana. There was a certain 
young Blackfoot with whom I was especially 
friendly, but one day he came in very drunk and 
I refused to give him any liquor. He became 
very angry and walked out making dire threats. 
I had forgotten all about the incident when, sev- 
