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FORESTRAND STREAM: 


[APRIL 21, 1906. 















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In the Lodges of the Blackfeet. 

The, War Trip of Queer Person. 
It was about time for us to be doing some- 
thing besides loafing at the fort. Berry saddled 
a horse one morning and rode out to the camp 
on the Marias to interview the chiefs. When 
he returned, a day or two later, he was more 
than satisfied with the result of the council, for 
it was agreed that the winter should be passed 
on the Marias. We could use the post that had 
been built two years previously. It needed some 
repairs, but by the middle of September we 
were well established there, with a good stock 
of goods. The chief difficulty in moving out 
was our inability to keep the bullwhackers sober. 
One of them, Whiskey Lyons, was the worst 
I ever saw. He never was on hand to help load 
the wagons, and when we were ready to pull out 
we had to hunt him up, tie a rope under his 
arms and souse him in the river until he came 
to his senses. There was another, ‘‘Captain” 
George, whose specialty was a singing spree. 
He had a large store of quaint songs, which he 
would sing unendingly when drunk. 
I have often wondered whatever become of 
the old-time bullwhackers, they who spent their 
money so freely and joyously whenever they had 
the opportunity. I never heard of them dying. 
I never saw them-after the advent of the rail- 
roads and the close of transportation on the 
upper Missouri. They simply vanished. 
There was little for us to do until the prime 
winter robes began to come in. The Piegans 
had moved out on Milk River back of the 
Sweet Grass Hills, and would not return to 
stay until cold weather drove them in. A few 
were coming and going all the time, bringing in 
beaver skins to exchange for ammunition, to- 
bacco and liquor, or to obtain the same from us 
on credit. We missed Sorrel Horse, who had 
gone down on the Missouri somewhere below the 
mouth of the Judith, to run a woodyard, and to 
trade with the Gros Ventres. He was always 
good company. During the time of slack trade. 
Berry was as uneasy as the proverbial fish. AI- 
Ways a very nervous, active man, he could not 
be happy unless he was doing something. I 
have seen him throw and shoe a bull that did 
not need shoeing; repair an old wagon wheel 
that could never be of any service. But his 
most dangerous hobby was medicine. An army 
surgeon had given him a. fine, large medicine 
chest, which contained dozens of bottles of 
drugs, drawers full of knives, saws, probes and 
various other instruments of torture, lint, 
plasters, splints—an exceedingly large variety of 
things. When any of us felt sick, we concealed 
the fact from him if possible, lest he should dose 
us into our graves. 
One day our friend, Four Bears, the camp 
crier, a man of great dignity, came in complain- 
ing that he felt very ill. Berry was interested at 
once. 
lh think, eehie Msaides (Ome walter ae emmnad 
diagnosed the case, “‘that I have exactly the 
remedy he needs. A Seidlitz powder will fix him 
all right. Yes, that’s what he needs for sure. 
ll give him a double dose.” Whereupon he 
emptied two of the white paper powders into a 
glass of water and had the patient gulp it down. 
He then discovered that he had forgotten to 
put in the powder contained in the green papers. 
“Oh, well,” he said, “’tisn’t too late, I'll just 
dissolve them in more water. I guess they'll 
mix all right in his stomach.” 
They did. Four Bears swallowed them and 
instantly an expression of surprise, of terror, 
spread over his face. He began to gasp; he bent 
nearly double and pressed the pit of his stomach; 
then he dropped to the floor and rolled and 
rolled, while the foaming mixture spouted from 
his mouth and nostrils, as does the contents of 
a seltzer siphon when the lever is pressed. 
Fortunately, the agony didn’t last long, and as 
soon as he could the orator sprang to his feet, 
and fled across the bottom to his lodge. We 
didn’t see him again for a month or more. After 
that the Indians seldom applied to Berry for 
relief. When they did, they required him to 
take a dose of his prescription before they would 
touch it, and they would first stand around for 
a while and watch to see how it affected him. 
But if Berry was at his wits’ end for some- 
thing to do, ’twas different with me; no day was 
too long. Nat-ah’-ki and I went hunting, either 
in the river bottoms for deer, or out on the 
plains for antelope. Buffalo, of course, were 
everywhere; and down below the post some ten 
or twelve miles there were quite a number of 
bighorn. And then the evenings were as full 
of interest as the days. What more pleasant 
than to be with the women where the flames and 
glowing coals in the rude fire-place, lighting up 
the grim log walls of the room, seemed a fit 
accompaniment to the quaint tales they so 
earnestly and reverently told. My dingy old 
note-books contained the outlines of those 
happy days, and as I look over them it all 
comes back to me as vividly as if it all had 
happened yesterday, or last week. Here, for 
instance, is a story the Crow Woman related 
one evening which may interest you as much as 
it did me. She called it the “Story of Three 
Stabs”: 
“In all the village there were none poorer than 
White Flying and her young grandson. Her man 
was long since dead; her son-in-law had been 
killed by the Sioux, and her daughter, while 
working in their little plantation one day, had 
suddenly dropped to the ground and ceased 
breathing. The boy was still too young to go 
on the hunt, so they lived on what small store 
of corn they could raise, and what portions of 
meat was given them by the kind hearted. There 
were days when they went to bed hungry, for 
their best friends sometimes forgot to provide 
for them, and White Flying was too proud to 
go out and beg. When this happened, the boy 
would say, ‘Never mind, grandmother, wait until 
I grow up and I’ll kill more meat than you can 
take care of.’ 
“The boy’s name was Sees Black, a name an 
old medicine man had given him when he was 
born. No one but his grandmother so called 
him; he was nick-named Queer Person, for he 
had ways different from those of any other boy 
ever heard of. He never played with other 
children, never laughed nor cried, and scarcely 
spoke to any one except his grandmother. He 
seemed to be dreaming of something all the 
time; and would sit on the bank of the river, 
or on the hill near the village, often for half 
a day, looking straight away into the far distance 
as if he saw things there of great interest—so 
great that he never noticed people who passed 
near him. He brought strange and forbidden 
things to his lodge; once, a human skull, which 
he placed under the end of his couch. When 
making up his bed one day, the old woman 
found it, and it frightened her so that she fell 
right down and was dead for a while. When 
she came to life, she begged him to take it back 
to the place where he had found it, and he did 
so at once, for he was a good boy and always 
obeyed her. When she asked him why he had 
taken it, he replied, ‘I am seeking a great 
medicine. I thought that if I slept by it I might 
have a powerful dream.’ 
“Sometimes he would leave the village and 
stay away all night; and when his grandmother 
asked him where he had been, he would tell her 
that he had gone upon the plain, or down in the 
timber, or out on a sandbar, to sleep, hoping 
that some of the spirits or animals who wander 
about in the darkness, would have pity and give 
him the medicine he sought. 
“While other boys of his age still played, he 
made bows and arrows. He watched the flint 
workers, and became as skillful as they in 
chipping out sharp, thin arrow points. He 
hunted, too; at first, rabbits in the rosebush 
thickets; and then, one day, he brought home 
a fine deer—a part of the meat at a time—which 
he had shot on a trail they used in going to 
and from their watering place. After that he 
seldom hunted the rabbits, but often brought in 
deer, and once in a while the hide and meat of 
a buffalo which he crept up on and killed in a 
coulée, or at the river where they went to drink. 
Still, they were very poor; all the family horses 
had long since been given the doctors who had 
