




FOREST AND STREAM. 







































PORE 





ase oF pe : ne 
Ca ——z FA 
In the Lodges of the Blackfeet. 
XIV.—The Snake Woman’s Quest. 
NatT-AH’-KI was the proud owner of a little 
band of horses, some of which had sprung from 
mares given her by relatives at various times. 
She loved to talk about them, to describe the 
color, age and peculiarities of each one. A 
Blackfoot who was horseless was an object of 
reproach and pity. Horses were the tribal 
wealth, and one who owned a large herd of 
them held a position only to be compared to 
that of our multi-millionaires. There were in- 
dividuals who owned from one hundred to three 
and four hundred. Were the owners sonless; they 
employed some orphan boy to herd them, to 
drive them twice and thrice daily to water. 
And they liked to sit out on the plain or hills 
for hours at a time to be among them and 
gloat over them as they cropped the rich 
grass. When a man died, the bulk of his prop- 
erty was divided among the male relatives, 
and they were so numerous that it was rare for 
one to inherit any number of animals. He who 
could count his horses by the hundred, had 
gained them by a strenuous life, by many a long 
raid against bordering tribes, by stealing into 
their camps at night, by hand to hand conflict 
with them on many a field. No wonder then, 
that he was proud of them, and of himself, and 
that the people honored him. 
Nat-ah’-ki’s band was herded by her uncle, 
Fish Robe, who himself had a large herd. 
When they were driven in the morning after 
our discovery of the Snake woman, she selected 
a fat, pot-bellied roan, begged an old woman’s 
saddle from an aunt, placea it in position and 
led the animal over to Weasel Tail’s lodge. 
She handed the end of the lariat to the Snake 
woman; at first the stranger did not compre- 
hend the meaning of the act; but when Nat- 
ah’-ki signed that the horse was to be hers, was 
a gift, her joy was pleasant to witness. The two 
women became great friends, and she lived a 
part of the time with us. “I am resting,” she 
said, “and questioning arriving visitors from 
other tribes. If I do not soon hear of my 
chief, I shall again set forth in quest of him.” 
But that was not to be. One day when she 
and Nat-ah’-ki were gathering wood, a party of 
Bloods passed by on their way to our camp, 
and she ran after them as fast as she could, 
Nat-ah’-ki following and wondering if the poor 
woman had lost her wits. The visitors dis- 
mounted and entered our chief’s lodge. The 
Snake woman, excited, trembling, pointed at 
one of the horses they rode, a black and white 
pinto, and signed: “I know it; my chief’s horse. 
Ask the man where he got it.” 
Nat-ah’-ki went inside and made known the 
request to one of the women of the lodge, and 
the latter, as soon as there was a break in the 
conversation, repeated it to Big Lake. All 
heard her, of course, and one of the visitors 
spoke up: “The pinto is mine,” he said, “my 
taking.” 
“Bring the woman in!” Big Lake ordered, and 
he told his guests about our finding her alone 
on the plain, about her dream and her quest. 
She came inside all eagerness, the inbred 
diffidence of a woman facing a number of 
chiefs and men of distinction forgotten. ‘Who, 
who,” she quickly signed, “is the rider of the 
pinto horse?” 
“T am,” the Blood signed. “What about it?” 
“Tt is my horse—my man’s horse, the one he 
rode away one morning three moons ago. And 
what of my man? Did you see him? How 
came you by his horse?” 
The Blood hesitated for a moment, and then 
replied: “We went to war. Away south of the 
Ground-of-many-gifts,* at daylight one morn- 
ing, a man riding the pinto horse surprised us, 
and I killed him. I took the animal for my 
own.” 
As he gestured his answer, the woman sud- 
denly noticed a bear’s claw necklace he wore, 
and pointing to it, she gave a fearful, heart- 
broken, gasping sob, and fled from the lodge. 
She went crying through the camp, and at the 
edge of the timber sat down, covered her head 
with her robe, and began to wail for the one 
who was dead. 
Did you, reader, ever hear a woman of the 
plains mourn for a lost loved one, calling his 
or her name heart-brokenly, despairingly, over 
and over again for hours at a time? Nothing 
else in all this world is so mournful, so ex- 
pressive of the feelings of one whom death has 
bereaved of a dear child, relative, companion. 
I can liken but one thing to it, and that is the 
ery of the mourning dove. It embodies all the 
feelings, the thoughts, of one utterly desolate, 
forsaken. Somewhere I have read, or heard, 
that an Indian’s loss of to-day is forgotten on 
the morrow. That is certainly not true of the 
Blackfeet, nor of the Mandans. Often and 
often I have heard many of the Blackfeet mourn 
for one dead long years’ since. The Mandans 
used to care for the bones of their departed 
ones. Those of each family were placed in a 
little circle on the burying ground, and thither 
the survivors would repair frequently to de- 
*The country in the vicinity of Helena, Montana, 
which city, by the way, the Blackfeet have given the 
same name. It was a land rich in game and berries, 
hence the appellation: 
Ah-kwo’ to-kwitit-si sak-6m. 
Much giving ground. 
IST 
posit choice food, and to talk to the skulls of 
their dear ones, just as if they were alive and 
in the flesh. It is not for the Anglo-Saxon to 
boast of affection, of constancy, for he can take 
lessons from the despised red men. + Never, with 
the Indians—I speak only of the two tribes be- 
fore mentioned—was there a separation except 
for adultery, and that was rare indeed; nor did 
they ever abuse or desert their offspring. The 
affection of parents for their children, their 
pride in them, their sacrifices for them, were 
practically limitless. And such also was the re- 
gard in which the young held their elders. 
Family ties were something sacred. 
I have often heard the Blackfeet speak of 
various white men as utterly heartless, because 
they had left their parents and their youthful 
home to wander and seek adventure in a strange 
land. They could not comprehend how one with 
right feeling might absent himself from father 
and mother, as we do, for months and years. 
“Hard hearts,” ‘‘stone hearts,” they call us, and 
with some reason. 
The Snake woman continued to mourn, 
passing the greater part of the time up on the 
hill, or at the edge of the timber, wailing. She 
cut off her hair, scarified her ankles, ate little, 
grew thin and listless; and finally a day came 
when she remained on her couch instead of 
arising with the others in Weasel Tail’s lodge. 
“T am to die,” she signed, “and I am glad. I 
did not understand my dream. I thought that 
I was told to seek my chief in the flesh. In- 
stead, it was meant that my shadow should look 
for his shadow. I see it plainly now, and in a 
few nights I start. I know that I shall find 
him.” 
And start she did. She died on the fourth 
day of her illness, and the women buried her 
decently, respectfully in a not far distant tree. 
WALTER B. ANDERSON. 
[TO BE CONTINUED. | 
The Linnaean Society of New York. 
A MEETING of the Society will be held in East- 
ern Assembly Room on the ground floor of the 
American Museum of Natural History, Seventy- 
seventh street and Eighth avenue, on ‘Tuesday 
evening, Feb. 27, at 8:15 o’clock. A paper will be 
read by Dr. William C. Braislin, entitled “The 
Birds of Prospect Park, Brooklyn.” 
In addition to its regular meetings, the Linnzan 
Society has arranged to hold the following course 
of public lectures on general natural history, illus- 
trated by stereopticon views, to be given in the 
large lecture hall of the American Museum of 
Natural History on Wednesday evenings at 8:15 
o’clock: March 7, “New Zealand Bird Life,” by 
Edgar T. Stead, of Christchurch, New Zealand; 
March 14, “A Naturalist’s Camping Trip to Hud- 
son Bay,” by Robert T. Morris, M.D., of New 
York city; March 21, “Bird Hunting with a 
Camera,” by Clinton G. Abbott, of New York city. 
