



FOREST AND STREAM. 






























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In the Lodges of the Blackfeet. 

XI.—The Kutenai’s Story. 
Ir was after breakfast. Nat-ah’;ki recombed 
and rebraided her hair, binding it with a bright 
blue ribbon, donned her best dress, put on her 
prettiest pair of moccasins. 
“What now?” I asked. “Why all this finery?” 
“This morning Lone Elk takes out his sacred 
pipe, carrying it about through the camp. We 
follow him. Will you not come?” 
Of course I would go, and I also put on my 
finery, a pair of fringed buckskin trousers, with 
bright beaded vine-work running along the outer 
seams; a fringed and beaded buckskin shirt, a 
pair of gorgeous moccasins. I fancy that I must 
have been rather picturesque in that costume, 
with my hair so long that it rippled down over 
my shoulders. The Indians hated to see hair 
worn cropped short. Many a time, in speaking 
of the old days, the various factors and other 
prominent men of the American Fur Company, 
I have heard them say: “Yes, so and so was a 
chief; he wore long hair. There are no more 
white chiefs; all those we now meet are sheared.” 
We were late. There was such a crowd in and 
around the lodge of the medicine man that we 
could not get near it, but the lodge skin was 
raised all around and we could see what was 
going on. With hands purified by the smoke of 
burning sweet grass, Lone Elk was removing the 
wrappings of the pipe, or, to be exact, the pipe- 
stem; singing, he and those seated in the lodge, 
the appropriate song for each wrap. There was 
the song of the an‘elcpe, of the wolf, the bear, 
the buffalo, the last very slow, deep, solemn. At 
last the long stem, eagle-plumed, fur-wrapped, 
gorgeous with tufts of brilliant feathers, lay ex- 
posed, and reverently lifting it he held it up to- 
ward the sun, down toward the earth, pointed it 
to the north, south, east and west as he prayed 
for health, happiness, long life for all of us. Then, 
rising, and holding the stem extended in front of 
him, he danced slowly, deliberately out of the 
lodge, the men, I too, falling in one by one be- 
hind him. So did the women and the children, 
until there were several hundred of us in the 
long, snake-like procession, dancing along, weav- 
ing in and out around the lodges of the camp, 
singing the various songs of the medicine pipe. 
A song finished, we rested a little before another 
one was started, and in the interval the people 
talked and laughed. They were happy; not one 
there but believed in the efficacy of their prayers 
and devotion; that the Sun was pleased to see 
them there, dressed in their very best, dancing 
in his honor. Thus we went on and on, and 
around and around, until the whole circuit of the 
camp had been made and our leader came to the 
doorway of his lodge; there he dismissed us and 
we wended our several ways homeward to re- 
sume our every-day clothing and occupations. 
“Kyi!” said Nat-ah’-ki. ‘‘Wasn’t it a happy 
dance? And how fine the people looked dressed 
in their good clothes.” 
“Ai,” I replied, “it was-a joy dance, and the 
people looked fine. There was one girl I noticed, 
prettiest and best dressed of all.” 
“Who was it? Tell me quick!” 
“Why,-the white woman who 
lodge, of course.”’ 
Nat-ah’-ki said nothing, turning away from me 
in fact, but I caught the expression of her eyes; 
she was pleased but too shy to let me know it. 
The June days were long, but to me _ they 
seemed to fly. To hunt, to sit in the shade of the 
lodges and idly watch the people at their various 
work, to listen to the old men’s stories was all 
very interesting. One day there came to our 
camp three Kut-te-nai Indians, bringing to Big 
Lake some tobacco from their chief and the pro- 
posal of a visit of his tribe to the Piegans. They 
had come straight to us from their country across 
the Rockies, up through the dense forests of the 
western slope, over the glacier-capped heights of 
the great mountains, down the deep cafion of 
Cutbank Stream, and then straight to our camp, 
a hundred miles out in the vast plain. How knew 
they whence to shape their course with such cer- 
tainty, to go straight to the only camp in all that 
immense stretch of mountain and butte-sentineled 
rolling plain? Perhaps it was partly instinct. 
They may have struck the trail of some homing 
war party, some marauding party of their own 
people may have given them the location of those 
they sought. Anyhow, straight to us they came 
from the headwaters of the Columbia, and our 
chiefs took the tobacco they brought, smoked it 
in council, and pronounced it good. Some there 
were who having lost relatives in war against 
the mountain tribe, objected to making peace 
with them, and talked earnestly against it. But 
the majority were against them, and the messen- 
gers departed with word to their chief that the 
Piegans would be glad to have a long visit from 
him and his people. 
In due time they came, not many of them, no 
more than seven hundred all told, which, I under- 
stood, was the larger part of the tribe. They were 
very different physically from the Piegans, no 
taller, perhaps, but much heavier built, with 
larger hands and feet. This was naturally the 
result of their mountain life; they were great 
big-horn and goat hunters, and constant climb- 
ing had developed their leg muscles almost ab- 
normally. The Blackfeet disdained that sort of 
life; they would not hunt that which they could 
not ride to or near, and the hardest work they 
ever did was to butcher the animals they killed 
and pack the meat on their horses. No wonder, 
then, that their hands and feet were small and 
delicately fashioned, the former as soft and 
smooth as those of a woman. 
lives in this 
Old Sah’-aw-ko-kin-ap-i, Back-in-sight, the 
Ku-te-nai chief, came on with a few of his head 
men some little time in advance of the main body, 
and ere our chief Big Lake was aware that the 
expected visitors were anywhere near, the door- 
flap of his lodge was raised and the Kutenais 
entered. Taken thus’ by surprise it was custom- 
arty for the host to make the visitor a present, 
and by the end of the first smoke the Kutenai 
chief was five horses richer than when he en- 
tered the camp. 
The Kutenais pitched their lodges close by our 
camp, and ere the women fairly got them up and 
fires burning, visiting and feasting and exchang- 
ing presents between the two tribes was in full 
swing. The Kutenais brought with them large 
quantities of arrowroot and dried camas, the lat- 
ter a yellow, sweet, sticky, roasted bulb which 
tasted good to one who had not seen a vegetable 
of any kind for months. The Piegans were ex- 
ceedingly pleased to get these, and in return gave 
the Kutenai wives much of their stores of 
choice pemmican and dried meats, and they bar- 
tered buffalo leather and parfleche for the tanned 
skins of sheep and moose, and other mountain 
animals. Of course the young men of both tribes 
went courting. In the Kutenai camp were the 
Piegan youths, and vice versa, standing around 
in silent stateliness, decked out in all their gor- 
geous finery, their faces strikingly painted, their 
long hair neatly braided. The more fortunate of 
them carried suspended by a thong from their 
left wrist a small mirror which kept turning and 
flashing in the bright sunlight; sometimes the 
mirror was set into a rude wooden frame carved 
by the owner and brightly painted. Of course 
these gallants of the plains never spoke to any 
of the maidens about, nor could one be sure, from 
observation, that they even looked at them. They 
stood here, there, by the hour, apparently gazing 
away off at some far distant object, but on the 
sly they were really watching the girls, and knew 
intimately every feature of each one’s face, every 
little trait of action and repose, and the maids, 
oh, they were, apparently, wholly unaware that 
there were any young men in the camp. You 
never caught one looking at them, but they did 
all the same, and then they would get together 
and discuss the looks of this one and that one, 
and his valor, and temper, just as do white girls. 
I am sure of this, for Nat-ah’-ki told me all about 
it, and how, in secret, they ridiculed and laughed 
at some vain-glorious swain who did not please 
them, but who himself thought that he was the 
only perfect and charming beau of the camp. 
There was much racing, much gambling and 
dancing by the younger men of the two camps. 
Their elders looked on at it all in quiet approval, 
and talked of their hunts, and battles, and the 
strange places and things they had seen. Most 
of this talk was in signs, but there were a few 
Kutenais, both men and women, who could speak 
