
FOREST AND STREAM. 








[APRIL 14, 1906. 










In the Lodges of the Blackfeet. 
The Attack on the Hunters. 

After a couple of days camp was moved out 
to the Marias, in the bottom opposite the mouth 
of Black Coulée. Sarvis berries were very 
plentiful all along the river, and the women 
gathered large quantities of them to dry for 
winter use. Ashton had not yet fired a shot 
from his new rifle, so one afternoon I prevailed 
upon him to go for a hunt. I had some diff- 
culty, however, in getting him out. He seemed 
to have no interest in anything, passing most 
of the time on his couch, smoking, smoking, and 
abstractedly refilling hs pipe and smoking again. 
The women were Never-Laugh was 
sorely grieving about something. I wished that 
I could find a way to make him forget it. what- 
ever the trouble was. 
We climbed on to our horses, crossed the river 
and rode northward, near enough to the Black 
Coulée to look down into it occasionally. Game 
was not very plentiful, for the hunters had 
driven the most of the herds back toward the 
Sweet Grass Hills. However, we saw some 
antelope here and there, several small bands of 
buffalo, with occasionally a lone old bull. We 
rode out five or six miles, and then down into 
the coulée to water our horses at a pool we 
saw in the bottom. It was a shallow, narrow 
stretch of water, about fifty yards in length, and 
I was surprised to see that the willows border- 
ing its eastern side had been cut in considerable 
quantity by beavers. On the western side, there 
was a clay slope of twenty or thirty feet, up to 
a high cut bank, and in the base of this bank 
was a deep, dark, low cavern, in which the 
beavers lived. Judging by the various sized 
footprints about, a whole family of them lived 
there. I never before, nor since, found these 
animals in such a place. There was no water 
between this pool and the river, some miles 
distant; the pool was not deep enough to wholly 
cover them. But most unusual of all was the 
fact that they lived in a cave, the entrance to 
which was some distance from and above the 
pool. There were three or four old lodge poles 
lying nearby, and I tried to ascertain the depth 
of the cave with one of them, but failed. I 
found, however, that the roof of it sloped down 
so near the floor, that nothing larger than a 
fox could get into the uttermost recesses. <A 
fox, even a red one, would go hungry a long 
time before trying to 
beaver. 
Before descending into the coulée we had 
seen a few head of buffalo feeding on the op- 
posite side of it, and while we loitered at the 
pool they came in sight at the top of the slope, 
breaking into a trot and finally on a ’lope, hurry- 
ing down for water. “Now, then,’ I said to 
right. 
make a meal of a 
Ashton, “try your rifle; shoot that young cow, 
the third from the leader.” 
The band turned, when about a hundred yards 
away, in order to come into the bottom of the 
coulée above the cut bank, and where this par- 
ticular animal swung broadside to us, he threw 
his gun up and, without a noticeable pause to 
sight the arm, sent a bullet into the right place, 
just back of the shoulder. Blood streamed from 
its nostrils almost at the crack of the gun, and 
after “loping on a short distance, it suddenly 
stopped and then sank to the ground. “That 
was a fine shot,’ I remarked. “You have evi- 
dently handled the rifle before.” 
“Yes,” he said, “I used to shoot a good deal in 
the Adirondacks, and in Maine and Nova 
Scotia: 
We led our horses over to the fallen buffalo, 
and I bled it, then set it up to cut out the boss 
ribs, Ashton standing by watching the way I did 
it. “Ill not kill another one,” he said, more to 
himself than to me. “It doesn’t seem right to 
take the life of such a magnificent animal.” 
“Well,” I remarked, “there isn’t a bit of fresh 
meat in the lodge. I don’t know what the 
women would say were we to return without 
some.” 
“Oh! we must eat, of course,” he agreed; “but 
I don’t care to kill any more of these noble 
animals. Somehow I’ve lost all pleasure in hunt- 
ing. Hereafter I'll loan some Indian my rifle, 
and he can furnish my share of the meat. That 
can be done, I presume?” 
I told. him that he could probably make some 
such arrangement. I didn’t tell him though, that 
I would see that he got out and rustled some 
himself. I wanted to wake him up; to get him 
out of the trance he was in. There is nothing 
so conducive to good mental health as plenty 
of fatiguing work or exercise. 
When we returned home with the boss ribs 
and the tongue, and several other parts of the 
animal which I had surreptitiously cut out and 
hurriedly placed in the sack I especially carried 
for them, I took pains to relate what a fine shot 
my friend had made. The women praised him 
highly, all of which I translated, and the Crow 
Woman told him that if she was not already his 
mother, so to speak, she would like to be his 
wife, for then she would be sure to have plenty 
of meat and skins. Ashton smiled, but made 
no answer. 
We had a dish for supper that evening at 
which my friend looked askance, as I had done 
when I first saw it, and then, after tasting it, he ate 
it all, and looked around for more, as I also had 
done. I had brought in the little sack, among 
other things, a few feet of a certain entrail which 
is always streaked or covered with soft, snowy- 
white fat. This Nat-ah’-ki washed thoroughly 
and then stuffed with finely-chopped tenderloin, 
and stuffed it in such a manner that the inside 
of the entrail became the outside, and conse- 
quently the rich fat was encased with the meat. 
Both ends of the case were then securely tied, 
and the long sausage-like thing placed on the 
coals to roast, the cook constantly turning and 
moving it around to prevent its burning. After 
about twenty minutes on the coals, it was 
dropped into a pot of boiling water for five or 
ten minutes more, and was then ready to serve. 
In my estimation, and in that of all who have 
tried it, this method of cooking meat is the 
best of all, for the securely tied case confines all 
the juices of the meat. The Blackfeet call this 
Crow entrail, as they learned from that tribe 
how to prepare and cook the dish. It remains 
for some enterprising city cook to give it an 
English name, and open a place where it will be 
the main feature of the food. Ill guarantee that 
all the lovers of good things in the town will 
flock to him. 
A day or two later, in pursuance of my plan 
to get Ashton out more frequently, I pretended 
to be ill, and then Nat-ah’-ki told him, I in- 
terpreting, that the meat was all gone, and un- 
less he went out and killed something, we would 
go hungry to bed. He appealed to me to find a 
substitute for him, offering to furnish rifle and 
cartridges, and also pay the hunter, and Nat- 
ah’-ki was sent out to find some one. But I 
had posted her, and she presently returned with 
a very sad expression in her face, and reported 
that no one could be found to go; that all who 
could were already gone to hunt. 
“Well, then,” said our friend, “if that is the 
case, there’s no need of my going out. I'll buy 
some meat of them when they return.” 
I thought that I had failed after all in my little 
plan, but Nat-ah’-ki came to the rescue, as soon 
as I told her what he had decided to do. 
“Tell him,” she said, “that I did not think he 
wished to bring shame upon this lodge. If he 
buys meat, the whole camp will laugh and jeer 
at me, and say, what a useless man she has got. 
He can’t kill enough meat to supply his lodge. 
His friend has to buy it to keep all from 
starving.” 
Ashton jumped up at once when he heard that. 
“Where’s my horse?” he asked. “If that is the 
way they look at it, why, I’ve got to hunt. Send 
for the horse.” 
I saw him off with Weasel Tail, whom I told 
to make a wide circle that would require the 
whole day. And a long day they certainly had, 
returning home after sunset. JI had also in- 
structed the Indian to lose his gun caps—where 
he could conveniently find them again. So 
Ashton had been obliged to do the shooting, 
and they brought in plenty of meat. He was 
very tired, and hungry and thirsty that evening, 
and instead of smoking innumerable times, he 
filled his pipe but once after eating, and then 
went to sleep. From that day on, for a time, he 
