bother me.
Thus equipped, I set forth.
I had a wonderful day, a day of a thousand surprises and intense interest. The trail to the next bottom above the fort ran over a point of the plain ending in a bank at the river, and looking out from it I saw that the plain for several miles was covered with the horses of the different tribes, actually thousands and thousands of them, all in bands of from sixty or seventy to two or three hundred head. I afterward found that each owner so herded his horses that they became attached to one another, and would not mix with other herds.
From the point I looked down upon the camp in the next bottom, the camp of the Pi-kun-i, or so-called Piegans, the largest tribe of the Blackfoot Nation, and tried to count the lodges. I actually counted fourteen hundred and thirty, and afterwards estimated that there were four hundred more pitched in the timber bordering the river. Well, say that there were eighteen hundred lodges, and five persons to the lodge; that made a tribe of nine thousand people!
I went down into the camp, keeping an eye upon the great wolf-like dogs lying around each lodge. Children were playing everywhere around, and the river was full of them, swimming. Women were busy with their daily tasks, cooking meat, tanning leather, or removing the hair from hides with oddly shaped elkhorn hoes tipped with steel or flint, or else sitting in the shade of the lodges gossiping, and sewing garments with awl and sinew thread, or embroidering them with colored porcupine quills. Men were also gathered in little groups, chatting and passing great stone-bowled, long-stemmed pipes from hand to hand. It was all a peaceful and interesting scene.
I did not go through the whole camp; I somehow felt bashful before so many people; but as far as I went all smiled at me pleasantly as I passed, and spoke to me in kindly tones. How I wished that I could know what they said! How I wanted to know the meaning of the strange symbols with which some of the lodges were painted! On some were paintings of animals; buffalo, otter, beaver, deer, all with a red line running from the mouth back to a triangular figure in red in the center of the body. No two lodges, with one exception, were painted alike. On many of them, perhaps most, was painted, close up to the smoke-hole and at the rear, a symbol shaped much like a Maltese cross. I determined to ask Antoine what all the paintings signified.
From this camp I went on up the river to the others, those of the Sik-si-kah, or Blackfeet proper, and the Kai-na, or Bloods; these two and the Pi-kun-i comprising the three tribes of the Blackfoot Nation. And beyond them I looked down from the edge of the plain at the big camp of the Ut-se-na, or Gros Ventres, and last, that of the Sak-sis, or Heavy Talkers, a small Athabaskan tribe which had long been under the protection of the Blackfeet, as I learned later.
That evening I asked Antoine many questions about what I had seen, only to find that he could not answer them. Nor could any of the employees. Through the open doorway between the cook-room and his quarters the factor heard my futile questioning and called to me. I went in. He had me close the door, and then asked me a question that made me gasp.
Chapter II.
The Sun-Glass
"How would you like to travel about with the Pi-kun-i for a time, and learn their language?"
I could only stare at him, hardly believing my ears, and he added: "I am sure that you would be in no more danger than you are here in the fort, or I would not propose this."
"I would rather do it than anything else! It is just what I want to do!" I told him.
"Let me explain the situation to you fully," he went on. "But, first, did you ever hear of Lewis and Clark?
"No? Well, they are two American Army officers who, a few years ago, led an expedition from the Mississippi River up the Missouri River to its head in the Rocky Mountains, and thence down the waters of the Oregon to its confluence with the Pacific Ocean. They were the first white men ever to see the country at the headwaters of the Missouri, and between it and the ocean. Now, in the dispatches that came to me with the goods, yesterday, I received most disturbing news: Following the trail of Lewis and Clark, our rival, the American Fur Company, is pushing westward and establishing posts on the Missouri, the upper part of which is in our own territory. I am ordered to learn if it has entered our territory, and if so, to take steps to block its trade with our Blackfoot tribes. The Pi-kun-i are going south to the Missouri plains for the summer as soon as they finish their trade with us, and I want you to go with them, and, while learning their language, keep an eye out for our rivals. I can't trust Antoine to do this, and anyhow he will never become a good interpreter. I believe that you will soon master the language."
Of course the factor was mistaken. The Missouri River country was not in our territory. We were to learn that later. Nor did we then have any idea of the vast extent of the hunting-ground of the Blackfeet. It was for me to discover that it extended from the Saskatchewan, yes, even from the Slave Lakes, south to their Elk River of the South, which is the Yellowstone River of the whites, and from the Rocky Mountains eastward for an average width of more than three hundred miles. A part of it, from the tributaries of the Missouri south, had been Crow country, but the Blackfeet had driven them from it. The Pi-kun-i, with their allies, the Ut-se-na, or Gros Ventres, lived for the greater part of the time in the southern part of it, along the Missouri and its northern and southern tributaries, and the other two tribes, with their Athabaskans, the Sak-sis, liked best the plains of the Saskatchewan and its tributaries.
Before the advent of the horse the Blackfeet tribes had all lived in the Slave Lake country. The Crees had so named these great bodies of water, for the reason that in that far-away time the Blackfeet made slaves of the enemies they captured. As nearly as I could learn, it was between 1680 and 1700 when the Blackfeet began to obtain horses by raids far to the south, even to Old Mexico, and in 1741 or 1742 obtained a few guns from the post on the Assiniboine River founded by the Sieur de la Vérendrie, that unfortunate explorer who was the first white man to see the Rocky, or as he named them, the Shining, Mountains. With both guns and horses, the Blackfeet were not long in taking possession of the rich game country to the south of the Slave Lakes, and driving from it not only the Crows, but other tribes as well.
On the day after my talk with the factor, he had an interview with Lone Walker, head chief of the Pi-kun-i, to which I was an interested listener. It was agreed, as well as Antoine could explain the matter, that I was to travel south in his care, living in his lodge, and riding his horses, and that upon bringing me safe back to the fort when he and his tribes returned to trade, he should be given a gun, two blankets, and two lengths of twist tobacco. Rich presents, indeed! More than enough, as the factor said, to insure his taking the greatest care of me. And anyhow my heart went out to the chief. Tall, dignified in bearing, his handsome face and eyes expressive of a kind and honest nature, I felt from the start that he would be a good friend to me, and I was not mistaken. I little realized at that time, however, what a really great man he was with his people.
Owing to their desire to start south at once, the Pi-kun-i were the first to trade in their take of furs. They were a matter of ten or twelve days doing it, and in the meantime I kept pretty close in the trade-room listening to Antoine's interpretations of their needs, and memorizing the words. In that way I learned their names for the different trade articles, and a few helpful sentences as well, such as the equivalent in their language for "What is it?" "Where is it?" "What is it named?" and so on. And then, one day, I saw Antoine's wife sitting with a Sak-si woman, the two apparently conversing with one another by means of signs. I asked Antoine about it and learned that it was the sign language, used by all the tribes of the plains; that almost anything could be told by it, even stories, and that his wife understood it very well.
"Then why don't you
