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FEB. 3, 1906.] 
FORES PeAND STREAM. 
169 



Blackfoot, having learned it when captives, or 
upon the occasion of a long sojourn in the tribe, 
Indeed, there was no surrounding tribe which 
had not one or two Blackfoot-speaking members. 
None of the Blackfeet, however, spoke any lan- 
guage other than their own, and the sign lan- 
guage; they held all other people as inferiors and 
regarded it as beneath their dignity to learn any 
other tongue. One Blackfoot-speaking Kutenai, 
a very aged but still fairly active man, was.a fre- 
quent visitor to my lodge. He must have felt that 
he was welcome there, that a bowl of food and 
plenty to smoke were always ready for him. In 
return for my hospitality and frequent gifts of a 
cut of tobacco, he told me stories of his travels 
and adventures. He had been a great wanderer 
in his time, an ethnologist in a way, for he had 
been among many tribes in various parts of the 
country, from the Blackfoot land to the coast, 
and south as far as the Great Salt Lake, and had 
made a study of their language and customs. One 
evening he told us what he called his’ “Story of 
the Fish-eaters,’ which Nat-ah’-ki and I thought 
interesting. 
“This happened long ago in my youthful days,” 
he said. “We were four, all single, close friends 
to one another. We had been on several raids 
which were successful, and we were acquiring 
each a nice band of horses and things for the time 
when we should take women and have lodges of 
our own. There were many who wished to join 
us On our expeditions, but we did not care to 
have them, for we thought four the lucky num- 
ber, one for each direction of the world. Indeed, 
among ourselves we did not call each other by 
our proper names, but by the different directions; 
thus one was named North, another South, an- 
other East; I was West. Twice we had been 
out raiding on the plains; once we went south; 
this time we started westward, having heard that 
away down on a big river lived a people rich in 
horses. It was early in the summer when we 
started, and we had made up our minds to travel 
on and on until we found these fine herds of 
horses, even if they were two or three moons’ 
journey away. We carried besides our weapons 
and lariats and extra moccasins some awls and 
sinew thread so that we could make for ourselves 
new clothing, new footwear, if that we had should 
wear out. We went down by the lake of the 
Flatheads, camping and resting two days with 
them, and thence we traveled on to the lake of 
the Pend d’Oreilles, through a great forest where 
often there were no trails except those made by 
the game. At the lake, near the north end of it, 
we saw the smoke of the Pend d’Oreilles’ fires, and 
several of their boats away out on the water. But 
we did not go near their camp. They had good 
herds, from which we might have taken our pick 
if we had wished to, but we pressed on; we were 
bent on discovery; we wanted to see the far land 
and its people. The forest grew denser, darker, as 
we went on; the trees were larger than any we 
had seen before. There was little game; the ani- 
mals and birds seemed never to have lived in it; 
it was too dark and cheerless in there. Animals 
and birds, as well as men, love the sun. The deer 
and the moose may seek thick cover when they 
wish to rest, but they never go far from some 
open place where they can stand in the warm sun- 
shine and see the blue above them. And it is the 
same with men. Those poor and horseless tribes, 
whose stingy gods gave them only a forest for 
their hunting ground, do not stay in its dark and 
silent belly, but pitch their mean lodges on some 
opening by the shore of a lake or river, or where 
a fire has cleared a small space. We did not like 
that great wood we traveled through. Our food 
gave out, and were it not for a few fish we shot 
with our arrows we must have starved. We grew 
poor in flesh and in spirits, sitting about our _ 
evening fires in silence, except to question if 
there were any end to the timber, and if it were 
not better to turn and take our back trail. Even 
East, who was always talking and joking, now 
kept silent. We would have turned back, I think, 
except that we hated to give up what we had 
set out to do, for fear it would bring us bad luck 
in the future. Little did we think that worse 
than bad luck lay in wait for us ahead. Yet, I 
believe we had the warning in a way, for I felt 
uneasy, afraid, but of what I could not say. The 
others felt as I did, but none of them would give 
in any more than I. Afterward I took heed of 
that feeling! three times I turned back after 
starting on a raid, and on one of the times I 
know I did what was wise, for my companions, 
who laughed at me and kept on, never again saw 
their lodges. 
“After many days we came at last to an open 
country. There were bunches of timber here and 
there, but for the most part the land was prairie, 
with many ledges and buttes and boulders of dark 
brown bare rock. The river had grown wider, 
deeper, and its current was strong. Here there 
were elk, plenty of them, and deer, many black 
bears, many grouse, and once more we heard the 
little birds singing. We killed a young bull elk 
.and feasted upon it, and felt good. There was 
no sign of people anywhere about; no horse 
trails, no smoke of camp fires. We thought it 
safe to build a fire even then in the middle of 
the day, and we lay about it until the next morn- 
ing, resting, eating, sleeping. With the sunrise 
we were off once more, traveling very cautiously, 
climbing every butte and ridge to see what was 
ahead. That day there was no sign of men, but 
on the next one we.saw smoke away down the 
river, and keeping within the fringe of timber 
which bordered the stream, we went on until we 
could see that it was rising on the opposite side. 
Away down there somewhere near the place of 
encampment, we could hear a roaring sound as 
of a big rapid, and even where we were the cur- 
rent was strong. Now here was something to 
talk over, and right there we considered it. If 
we crossed over and took some horses, was there 
a trail on that side by which we could hurry them 
in a homeward direction; and if none, how were 
we to get them across the wide, swift river and 
on to the trail over which we had come. At last 
he whom we had named South said: 
“We are wasting time talking about this now, 
when we have not yet seen the far side, nor the 
horses, nor even the people and their camp. Let 
us cross over, see what is to be seen, and then 
decide what is best to do.’ 
“His words were wise, and we took them. 
There was plenty of drift wood, and near sun- 
down we rolled a piece of it, a short, dry log, 
down into the water, lashine another, a very 
small one, to it so that it would not turn over 
and over. We decided not to wait until night 
to cross, for the river was wide and swift, and 
we wanted to see our course. In one way it was 
not wise to start then, for some of the people of 
the camp might see us and give the alarm. Still, 
we had to take some chances; no one had yet 
appeared from the camp below, and we hoped to 
get across into the brush unobserved. Heaping 
our clothes and weapons on top of our raft, we 
pushed out into the stream, and all went well 
until we were part way across; there we struck 
very swift water, a low place into which the 
water from the sides of the river seemed to be 
running and sinking. Try as we would we could 
not get out of it, for it was like going up hill to 
push for the far shore, or the one from which we 
had started, and all the time we were drifting 
faster and faster down toward the roar of the 
rapids, down toward the camp of strange people. 
“Let us leave the raft,’ said North, ‘and 
swim back to our shore.’ 
“We tried to do so, but we could no more leave 
that swift, sucking, down-pulling middle current 
than we had been so many helpless dead leaves 
adrift. One by one we turned back and hung on 
to our raft. 
“This is our only chance,’ said South. ‘We 
can hang on to this and perhaps pass the rapid 
and the camp without being seen.’ 
“We now turned a bend in the river, and before 
us saw a fearful thing that we were rushing into; 
the stream narrowed between two high walls of 
rock, and the green water leaped foaming along 
in great waves and whirls over and around huge 
black rocks. 
“Hold hard; hold on with all your strength,’ 
cried South. 
“I grabbed the smaller log harder than ever, 
but my strength was nothing in that place, noth- 
ing. Suddenly we went down, raft and all, down 
under the crazy, green, bubbling water; our logs 
struck a rock and I was pulled away from them 
and went whirling and rolling on. I was pushed 
up to the surface, went over the top of a big 
wave, and then was again drawn under, down, 
down, I knew not how far; my left foot caught 
in between two rocks, the water pushed me, and 
my leg broke just here above the ankle. For a 
little I hung there, then the water heaved back 
the other way, pulled me loose, pushed me up, 
and again I got a few breaths of air. Once more 
I went down, this time for so long that I was 
sure I would never rise. I had been praying, but 
now I stopped; ‘it is no use,’ I said to myself, ‘I 
now die.” But I did roll up on top again; I was 
in smooth but swift water, a boat was above me, 
a short, stout, dark man was leaning over the 
side. I noticed that his hair looked as if it had 
never been cared for, that his face was very wide, 
his mouth very large. I felt him grasp my hair, 
and then I died (fainted). 
“When I came to life I found that I was in a 
small, old and torn elkskin lodge. I was lying 
on a couch, a robe of beaver skins thrown over 
me. An old gray-haired man was putting sticks 
on my broken leg and binding them, all the time 
singing a strange song. I knew he was a doctor. 
The man I had seen leaning over the side of the 
boat sat nearby. There were three women there 
also, one quite young and good looking. When I 
looked at her she turned her head away, but the 
others just sat and stared at me. Other men 
came in; they were all short and broad, with big 
muscles; they were also very dark colored, very 
homely, and, worst of all, there was hair growing 
on their lip and chin. They looked much at me 
as they talked, and their talk was very strange; 
it seemed to come from down in their belly, and 
break out of their throat with the sound of bark 
being torn from a tree by jerks, I thought that 
I could never learn to speak such a language as 
that. The old doctor hurt me considerably as he 
bandaged my leg, but I kept very still. I was 
