Marcu 17, 1906.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
417 

very sad. And often the proud young Crows 
have made fun of me, and joked about me, 
calling me bad names. Oh! yes, we are very 
miserable at times. Long ago my mother be- 
gan to urge my father to talk with the chiefs 
and urge them to make peace with her people. 
I have also long been saying what I could to 
help the plan- But always the most of the people 
would object. One chief would arise and say, 
‘The Piegans killed my son; I want revenge, not 
peace. Others would speak, crying out that 
they had lost a brother, or father, or uncle, or 
nephew in war with the Piegans, and that they 
could not think of making peace. Not long ago 
my father again called a council to consider this 
question, and as ever, he was opposed by many 
of the leading men. The last speaker said this 
to him: ‘We are tired of being asked to talk 
about making peace with the Piegans. If you 
are so anxious to be friendly with them, why go 
and live with them; become a Piegan yourself.’ 
“So I will,’ cried my father in anger. ‘So I 
will. I will become a Piegan, and fight with 
them against all their enemies.’ And so saying, 
he arose and went home, I following him. 
“Now, my father is a chief himself; a fearless 
man in war, so kindly and generous that he is 
loved by all but a few who are jealous of his 
position. When it was learned what he had said 
in the council, the people came to him and 
begged him to take back his words; also they 
went to the other chiefs and insisted that peace 
should be declared, provided the Piegans would 
agree to it. ‘We have had enough of this war,’ 
' they said. ‘See the widows and orphans it has 
made. We have our own great country, covered 
with buffalo, the Piegans theirs; the two tribes 
can live without killing one another.’ So, after 
all, my father had his way, and we were sent to 
you. I hope that we will carry Piegan tobacco 
back with us.” 
Rock Eater was called to a feast, and soon 
after Rising Wolf came in to smoke a pipe 
with me. I asked him to tell me something 
about the wars between the two tribes. “Ha!” 
he said, grimly laughing; “I was in one of the 
fights, and a sad day it was to us. But to begin: 
The Blackfeet are a northern people. They once 
lived in the Slave Lake country... The Crees 
named those lakes after them, because they made 
slaves of the enemies they captured. Gradually 
they began to journey southward and came to 
these great plains abounding in game, where the 
winters are mild. There they found different 
tribes, Crows, Snakes, Assinnaboines, Sho- 
shones, various mountain tribes, the Kutenais, 
Pend d’Oreilles, Stonies, and drove all before 
them, taking possession of their country. There 
were times of peace between them and these 
tribes, but mostly they waged war upon them. 
In 1832 the Blackfeet made a treaty of peace 
with the Crows, at Fort Union, which lasted 
only two years. Again, in 1855, at the mouth of 
the Judith River, at what is known as the 
Stevens treaty between the United States and 
various tribes, the Blackfeet, Crows, Gros 
Ventres, Pend d’Oreilles, the Kutenais, Nez 
Percés and others agreed to cease warring 
against one another, and intruding upon an- 
other’s hunting ground. The Musselshell River 
was designated as the boundary separating 
Blackfeet from Crow territory. In the summer 
of 1857 the Crows broke this agreement by 
raiding a camp of the Bloods, killing two men 
and running off a large number of horses. That 
reopened the old feud, the three Blackfeet 
tribes, Bloods, Piegans and Blackfeet proper, 
making common cause against the enemy. In 
the fall of 1858 I joined the Piegans with my 
family at Fort Benton, and we went south of 
the Missouri to winter. We camped for a time 
on, the Judith River, and then determined to 
move over on the Musselshell, follow it down 
by easy stages, and return to the Missouri by 
way of the east slope of the Snowy Mountains. 
About noon of the second day we came to the 
divide separating the two streams. Our column 
was loosely scattered along four or five miles 
of the trail that day, and most of the hunters 
were behind, a way to the east and west, skin- 
ning buffalo and other game they had killed; 
ahead of us a mile or so rode our scouts, some 
thirty or forty men. It was a warm day; the 
horses felt lazy as well as their riders, and the 
big camp moved slowly along the trail, widely 
scattered as I have said. The scouts, far ahead, 
gave no sign that they had seen anything to 
make them suspicious. The old people dozed 
in their saddles; young men here and there 
were singing a war, or drinking song; mothers 
crooned to the babe at their breast; all were 
happy. The scouts passed out of view down 
the south slope of the gap, and the head of our 
column was nearing the summit, when out from 
a large pine grove on our right dashed at least 
two hundred mounted Crows, and fell upon us. 
Back turned the people, the women and old 
men madly urging their horses, scattering 
travois and lodge poles along the way, shriek- 
ing for help, calling on the gods to preserve 
them. Such fighting men as there were along 
this part of the line did their utmost to check 
the rush of the Crows, to cover the retreat of 
the weak and defenseless. Hearing shots and 
shouts, back came the scouts, and from the rear 
came charging more men to the front. But in 
spite of stubborn resistance the Crows swept 
all before them for a distance of at least two 
miles, strewing the trail with our dead and dying 
people—men, women, children, even babies. 
They took not one captive, but shot and struck, 
and lanced to kill, scalping many of their 
victims. But at last the Piegans bunched up in 
some sort of order, and the Crows drew off 
and rode away to the south, singing their songs 
of victory, taunting us by waiving in triumph the 
scalps they had taken. So badly had our people 
been stampeded, so stunned were they by the 
terrible calamity that had befallen them, that 
they simply stood and stared at the retreating 
enemy, instead of following them and seeking 
revenge. 
“Right there in the gap the lodges were pitched, 
and search ior the dead and missing begun. By 
night all the bodies had been recovered and 
buried. On every hand, in nearly every lodge, 
there were mourners cutting their hair, gashing 
their lower limbs, crying and wailing, calling 
over and over again by the hour the names 
of the loved ones they had lost. Yes, it was a 
camp of mourning. For weeks and months, 
when evening came, the wailing of the 
mourners, sitting out in the darkness just be- 
yond the circle of the lodges, was pitiful to hear. 
It was a very long time before singing and 
laughter, and the call of the feast giver were 
again heard. I happened to be with the scouts 
that day, and when we charged back did my best 
with them to check the Crows. But they so far 
outnumbered us, had so demoralized the people 
by their unexpected and fierce assault, that we 
were well-nigh powerless until our men in the 
rear came up. More than half of the scouts 
were killed. I got an arrow in the left thigh. 
In all, one hundred and thirteen Piegans were 
killed, while we shot down but seven of the 
enemy. 
“After this’ happened, you may be sure that 
most of the war parties leaving the Piegan camp 
headed for the Crow country, and from the 
north came parties of their brothers, the Black- 
feet and Bloods to harass the common enemy. 
In the course of two or three years they killed 
enough members of the Crow tribe, and drove 
off sufficient numbers of their horse herds, to 
more than offset their own losses in the massa- 
cre and in later fights—for, of course, our war 
parties were not always victorious, 
“In the spring of 1867 the Gros Ventres—then 
at war with the Blackfeet tribes—concluded a 
treaty with the Crows, and there was a great 
gathering of them all on lower Milk River, to 
celebrate the event. A party of young Gros 
Ventres returning from a raid against the Crees 
brovght word that they had seen the Piegan 
camp in the Divided—or, as the whites called 
them, Cypress—Hills. This was great news. 
The Crows had a long score to settle with 
their old-time enemy. So also felt the Gros 
Ventres. Although they had for a very long 
time been under the protection of the Black- 
feet, who fought their battles for them, and 
protected them from their bitter foes, the Assin- 
naboines and Yanktonais, they had no gratitude 
in their make up, and had quarreled with their 
benefactors over a trivial cause. And now for 
revenge! What could the Piegans do against 
their combined forces? Nothing. They would 
kill off the men, capture the women, seize the 
rich and varied property of the camp. So sure 
were they of success, that they had their women 
accompany them to sort out and care for the 
prospective plunder. 
“From a distant butte the war party had seen 
the Piegan camp, but had not discovered that 
just’ over a hill to the west of it, not half a 
mile further, the Bloods were encamped in 
force, some five thousand of them, or in all 
about one thousand fighting men. No, they 
hadn’t seen that, and so one morning the Crows 
and Gros Ventres came trailing leisurely over 
the plain toward the Piegan camp all decked out 
in their war costumes, the plumes of their war 
bonnets and the eagle feather fringe of their 
shields fluttering gaily in the wind. And with 
them came their women happily chattering, al- 
ready rejoicing over the vast store of plunder 
they were going to possess that day. An early 
hunter from the Piegan camp, going with his 
woman after some meat he had killed the pre- 
vious day, discovered the enemy while they were 
still a mile and more away, and hurried back to 
give the alarm, sending one of his women on to 
call out the Bloods. There was a great rush 
for horses, for weapons; some even managed 
to put on a war shirt or war bonnet. Luckily 
it was early in the morning and most of the 
horse herds, having been driven in to water, 
were feeding nearby. If a man did not at once 
see his own band, he roped and mounted the 
first good animal he came to. And thus it 
happened that when the attacking party came 
tearing over the little rise of ground just east 
of the camp they were met by such an over- 
whelming force of determined and well mounted 
