to be cut in the ice for the purpose. And they forced their children to accompany them, little fellows from three years of age up, dragging the unwilling ones from their beds and carrying them under their arms to the icy plunge.
When on these short hunts there was no gambling nor dancing. Some medicine man always accompanied a party, and the evenings were passed in praying to the Sun for success in the hunt, and in singing what I may term songs of the hunt, especially the song of the wolf, the most successful of hunters. Everyone retired early, for there was little cheer in a fire of buffalo chips.
You have perhaps noticed on the northwestern plains, circles of stones or small boulders, varying in size from twelve to twenty and more feet in diameter. They were used to weight the lower edge of lodge skins, to prevent the structure being blown over by a hard wind, and when camp was moved they were simply rolled off the leather. Many of these circles are found miles and miles from any water, and you may have wondered how the people there encamped managed to assuage their thirst; they melted snow; their horses ate snow with the grass; buffalo chips were used for fuel. The stone circles mark the place of an encampment of winter hunters in the long ago. Some of them are so ancient that the tops of the stones are barely visible above the turf, having gradually sunk into the ground of their own weight during successive wet seasons.
By the latter end of November the trade for robes was in full swing, thousands of buffalo had been killed, and the women were busily engaged in tanning the hides, a task of no little labour. I have often heard and read that Indian women received no consideration from their husbands, and led a life of exceedingly hard and thankless work. That is very wide of the truth so far as the natives of the northern plains were concerned. It is true, that the women gathered fuel for the lodge—bundles of dry willow, or limbs from a fallen cottonwood. They also did the cooking, and besides tanning robes, converted the skins of deer, elk, antelope, and mountain sheep into soft buckskin for family use. But never a one of them suffered from overwork; when they felt like it they rested; they realised that there were other days coming, and they took their time about anything they had to do. Their husbands never interfered with them, any more than they did with him in his task of providing the hides and skins and meat, the staff of life. The majority—nearly all of them—were naturally industrious and took pride in their work; they joyed in putting away parfleche after parfleche of choice dried meats and pemmican, in tanning soft robes and buck skins for home use or sale, in embroidering wonderful patterns of beads or coloured porcupine quills upon moccasin tops, dresses, leggings, and saddle trappings. When robes were to be traded they got their share of the proceeds; if the husband chose to buy liquor, well and good, they bought blankets and red and blue trade cloth, vermilion, beads, bright prints, and various other articles of use and adornment.
Berry and some of his men made several flying trips to Fort Benton during the winter, and on one of them brought out his mother, who had been living there with her companion, the Crow Woman. Mrs. Berry, Sr., was a full-blooded Mandan, but very light-coloured, and brown-haired. She was tall and slender, good-looking, very proud and dignified, but of great kindness of heart. She was very good to me, nursing me when ill and giving me strange and bitter medicines, always picking up and putting away with care the things I scattered about, washing and mending my clothes, making for me beautiful moccasins and warm gloves. She could not have done more had she been my own mother; I was under obligations to her which nothing could ever repay. When I contracted mountain fever, and one evening became delirious, it was she who tended me, and brought me safely out of it. Her companion, the Crow Woman, was equally kind to me. She was a woman with a romance, and one evening, after I became well acquainted with her, she told me the story of her life as we sat before the fire.
Chapter VI.
The Story of the Crow Woman
IS-SAP-AH'-KI—Crow Woman—as the Blackfeet named her, was an Arickaree, of a tribe which, in the days of Catlin, who visited the tribes in 1832, lived some distance below the Mandans, on the banks of the Missouri. Like the Mandans, they lived in a village of mound-like earth-covered lodges, surrounded by a strong and high palisade of cottonwood logs stuck endwise into the ground. They were members of the widely scattered Pawnee, or Caddoan family, but they had been long separated from the parent stock. They could converse with the Crows, who are related to the Gros Ventres of the village. Their own language— like the Mandan—was an extremely difficult one for an outlander to learn. The Crows and Arickarees were at times on terms of friendship, and again there were long periods when they were at war with each other.
The Crow Woman married early. She must have been a very handsome girl, for even in her old age, when I knew her, although wrinkled and gray-haired, she was still good-looking. She had lovely eyes, sparkling and mischievous, and her temperament was a most happy one. After many and bitter experiences she had at last found, with her good friend Mrs. Berry, a haven of peace and plenty which was assured to her so long as she lived. This is the story she told me as we sat be fore the fireplace, that winter night so many years ago:
"We were very happy, my young husband and I, for we truly loved each other. He was a good hunter, always keeping our lodge well supplied with meat and skins, and I, too, worked hard in the summer planting, and watering as they grew, a nice patch of beans and corn and pumpkins; in the winter I tanned many robes and many buckskins for our use. We had been married two winters; summer came, and for some reason the buffalo left the river, all except a few old bulls, and remained away out on the plains. My people did not like to hunt out there, for we were only a small tribe; our men were brave, but what could a few of them do against a great band of our many enemies? So some were content to remain safely at home and eat the tough meat of the straggling bulls; but others, more brave, made up a party to go out where the great herds were. My husband and I went with them; he did not want me to go, but I insisted upon it. Since we had been married we had not been separated even for one night; where he went I had sworn to go also. Our party travelled southward all day over the green-grassed plain; along toward evening we saw many bands of buffalo, so many that the country was dark with them; we rode down into a little valley, and made camp by a stream bordered by cottonwoods and willows.
"Our horses were not very strong, for always at night they were driven inside the stockade of our village, and, feeding daily over the same ground outside, they soon tramped and ate off the grass; they had no chance to become fat. Some enemy or other was always prowling around our village at night, and we could not let them remain outside and wander to where the feed was good.
From our camp by the creek we started out every morning, the women following the men, who carefully looked over the country and then went after that band of buffalo which could be most surely approached. Then, when they had made the run, we rode out to where the great animals lay and helped skin and cut up the meat. When we got back to camp we were busy until evening cutting the meat into thin sheets and hanging it up to dry in the wind and the sun. Thus for three mornings we went out, and our camp began to look red; you could see the red from afar, the red meat drying. We were very happy.
"I was proud of my husband. He was always in the lead; the first to reach the buffalo, the last one to quit the chase, and he killed more of them—always fine fat animals —than any other one of the party. And he was so generous; did anyone fail to make a kill he would call to him and give him one, sometimes two, of his own kill.
"On the fourth morning we went out soon after sun rise, and only a little way from camp the men made a run and killed many buffalo. My husband shot down nine. We were all hard at work skinning them and getting the meat in shape to pack home, when we saw those who were at the far end of the running ground hurriedly mount their horses and ride swiftly toward us with cries of 'The enemy! the enemy!' Then we also saw them, many men on swift horses riding down upon us, their long war bonnets fluttering in the wind; and they were singing the war song; it sounded terrible in
