Marcu ‘to, 1906. | 
BOREBSITTAND STREAM. 


Berry and Sorrel Horse did all they could to en- 
courage the trapping of the animals, as a large 
demand had sprung up for their skins in the 
States, where they were converted into sleigh 
robes. Prime skins were selling in Fort Benton 
at from $4 to $5 each. 
The storm did not amount to much, and in a 
few days a-warm chinook again set in. Nor did 
the expected war party appear. My friends, the 
traders, were doing such a good business that 
they were obliged to go after more goods every 
two or three weeks, or whenever they could join 
a party bound on a visit to Fort Benton. I had 
heard much of a certain white man named Hugh 
Monroe, or, in Blackfoot, Rising Wolf—Mah- 
kwo-i-pwo-ahts. One afternoon I was told that 
he had arrived in camp with his numerous fam- 
ily, and a little later met him at a feast given by 
Big Lake. In the evening I invited him over to 
my lodge and had a long talk with him while we 
ate bread and meat and beans and smoked nu- 
merous pipefuls of tobacco. We eventually be- 
came firm friends, Even in his old age, Rising 
Wolf was about the quickest, most active man I 
ever saw. He was about five feet six in height, 
fair haired, blue eyed, and his firm, square chin 
and rather prominent nose betokened what he 
was, a man of courage and determination. His 
father, Hugh Monroe, was a colonel in the Brit- 
ish army, his mother a member of the La Roches, 
a noble family of French emigrés, bankers of 
Montreal, and large land owners in that vicinity. 
Hugh, Jr., was born on the family estate at Three 
Rivers, and attended the parish school just long 
enough to learn to read and write. All of his 
vacations, and many truant days from the class 
room, were spent in the great forest surrounding 
his home. The love of nature, of adventure and 
. wild life was born in him. He first saw the light 
in July, 1798. In 1813, when but fifteen years 
of age, he persuaded his parents to allow him to 
enter the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company 
and started westward with a flotilla of their 
canoes that spring. His father gave him a fine 
English smooth-bore, his mother a pair of the 
famous La Roche duelling pistols and a prayer- 
book. The family priest gave him a rosary and 
cross, and enjoined him to pray frequently. 
Traveling all summer they arrived at Lake Win- 
nipeg in the autumn and wintered there. As soon 
as the ice went out in the spring the journey was 
continued, and one afternoon in July, Monroe 
beheld Mountain Fort, a new post of the com- 
pany, built on the south bank of the Saskatche- 
wan River, not far from the foot of the Rockies. 
Around about it were encamped thousands of the 
Blackfeet waiting to trade for the goods the flo- 
tilla had brought up, and to obtain on credit am- 
munition, fukes, traps and tobacco sufficient to 
last them through the coming season. As yet the 
company had no Blackfeet interpreter, their 
speech having first to be translated into Cree, and 
then into English. Many of the Blackfeet proper, 
the North Blackfeet, spoke good Cree, but the 
more southern tribes of the confederacy, the 
Bloods and Piegans. did not understand it. The 
factor, no doubt perceiving that Monroe was a 
youth of more than ordinary intelligence, at once 
detailed him to live and travel with the Piegans 
and learn the language, also to see that they re- 
- turned to Mountain Fort with their furs the suc- 
ceeding summer. Word had been received that, 
following the course of Lewis and Clark, Ameri- 
can traders were yearly pushing farther and far- 
ther westward, and had even reached the mouth 
of the Yellowstone, about the eastern line of the 
vast territory claimed by the Blackfeet as their 
hunting ground. The company feared their com- 
petition; Monroe was to do his best to prevent it. 
“At last the day came for our departure,” Mon- 
roe told me, “and I set out with the chiefs and 
medicine men at the head of the long procession. 
There were 800 lodges of the Piegans there, 
about 8,000 souls. They owned thousands of 
horses.. Oh, but it was a grand sight to see that 
long column of riders, and travoi, and pack ani- 
mals, and loose horses trooping over the plains. 
Yes, twas a erand, an inspiring sight. We trav- 
eled on and on southward all the long day, and 
about an hour or two before sundown came to 
the rim of a valley through which flowed a fine 
cottonwood bordered stream. We dismounted at 
the top of the hill, spread our robes. intending to 
sit there until the procession passed by into the 
bottom and put up the lodges. A medicine man 
produced a large stone pipe, filled it and at- 
tempted to light it with flint and steel and a bit 
of punk, but somehow he could get no spark. 
I motioned him to hand it to me, and, drawing 
my sunglass from my pocket I got the proper 
focus and set the tobacco afire, drawing several 
mouthfuls of smoke through the long stem. As 
one man all those sitting round about sprang to 
their feet and rushed toward me, shouting and 
gesticulating as if they had gone crazy. I also 
jumped up, terribly frightened, for I thought they 
were going to do me harm, perhaps kill me; but 
for what I could not imagine. The pipe was 
wrenched out of my grasp by the chief himself, 
who eagerly began to smoke and pray. He had 
drawn but a whiff or two, however, when an- 
other seized it. and from him it was taken by still 
another. Others turned and harangued the pass- 
ing column; men and women sprang from their 
herses and joined the group, mothers pressing 
close and rubbing their babes against me, praying 
earnestly meanwhile. I recognized a word that 
I had already learned—natos—Sun; and suddenly 
the meaning of the commotion became clear; they 
thought that I was great medicine; that I had 
called upon the Sun to himself light the pipe, and 
that he had done so. The mere act of holding 
my hand up above the pipe was a supplication to 
their God.. They had perhaps not noticed the 
glass, or if they did, had thought it*some secret 
charm or amulet. At all events, I had suddenly 
-become a great personage, and from then on the 
utmost consideration and kindness was accorded 
me. 
“When I entered Lone Walker’s lodge that 
evening—he was the chief, and my host—I was 
greeted by deep growls from either side of the 
doorway, and was horrified to see two nearly 
grown grizzly bears acting as if about to spring 
upon me. I stopped and stood quite still, but I 
believe that my hair was raising; I know that 
my flesh felt to be shrinking. I was not kept in 
suspense. Lone Walker spoke to his pets and 
they immediately laid down, nose between their 
paws, and I passed on to the place pointed out 
to me, the first couch at the chief’s left hand. It 
was some time before I became accustomed to the 
bears, but we finally came to a sort of under- 
standing with one another. They ceased growl- 
ing at me as I passed in and out of the lodge, but 
would never allow me to touch them, bristling up 
and preparing to fight if I attempted to do so. 
In the following spring they disappeared one 
night and were never seen again. Lone Walker 
was disconsolate; he went about for days hunting 
“vw 
and calling them, but in vain. It has been said 
that a grizzly cannot be tamed; those two at least 
appeared to be tame enough, seemed to have a 
real liking for their master, who alone fed them, 
they were never tied up and followed the travois 
of his family along with the dogs when we moved 
camp, always sleeping where I first saw them on 
either side of the doorway.” 
Is there one of us latter-day hunters, amateur 
explorers, who does not rejoice when he finds, 
far hidden in some deep forest a lakelet, or in 
the remote fastnesses of the mountains a glacier, 
which he is certain no white man has ever seen 
before, or who climbs some hitherto unclimbed 
and unnamed peak, and himself names it as his 
fancy wills, a name which is afterward accepted 
and printed on the maps of the Government sur- 
vey? Think then how the youth Rising Wolf 
must have felt as he journeyed southward over 
the vast plains, and under the shadow of the 
giant mountains_which lie between the Saskatche- 
wan and the Missouri, for he knew that he was 
the first of his race to behold them. And to en- 
hance his pleasure, he was traveling with an ab- 
solutely primitive people; a people many of whom 
still used flint arrow and spear points, and flint 
knives; a people whose language and customs no 
white man understood, but which he was to learn 
in due time. Would that we could have had that 
privilege, brother. We were born a little too late! 
Monroe often referred to that first trip with 
the Piegans as the happiest time of his life. Jour- 
neying by easy stages, sometimes skirting the foot 
of the mountains, and again traversing the broad 
plains forty or fifty miles to the eastward of them, 
they came, at the season of falling leaves, to the 
Pile of Rocks River (Sun River, as the whites 
named it), and there they remained for three 
months, passing the remainder of the winter on 
the Yellow River (the Judith). They had crossed 
Lewis and Clark’s trail, and here again was a vast 
region which no white man had ever traversed. 
When spring came, they went still further south 
to the Musselshell, down that to its confluence 
with the Missouri, and crossing the great river, 
they wandered westward along the foot of the 
Little Rockies, and thence by the Bear’s Paw 
Mountains to the Marias and its tributaries. It 
has been long since decided that they would not 
return to Mountain Fort until the following sum- 
mer. Rifle and pistol were now useless, as the 
last rounds of powder and ball had been fired. 
But what mattered that? Had they not their bows 
and great sheafs of arrows? After all, what had 
the white trader in his stores absolutely necessary 
to their welfare and happiness? Nothing; not 
even tobacco, for in the spring they had planted 
on the banks of the Judith a large patch of their 
own Nah-wak’-o-sis*, which they would harvest 
in due time. 
One by one young Rising Wolf's garments 
were worn out and cast aside. The women of the 
lodge tanned skins of deer and bighorn, and from 
them Lone Walker himself cut and sewed shirts 
and leggins, which he wore in their place. It was 
not permitted for women to make men’s cloth- 
ing. So ere long he was dressed in full Indian 
costume, even to the belt and breech clout, and 
his hair grew so that it fell in rippling waves 
down over his shoulders. He began to think of 
braiding it. Ap’-ah-ki, the shy young daughter 
of the chief, made his footwear—thin, parfleche- 

*See “Blackfoot Lodge Tales” for an account of this 
narcotic weed, and the quaint ceremonies attending the 
planting of it. 
