WINTER 1862—63
Ä´pätsä´t Sai, "Treetop winter," or Tséñko Sápän Étpata Sai, "Winter when horses ate ashes." This winter the Kiowa camped on upper Walnut creek (Tsodal-héñte-de P'a, "No-arm's river"), which enters the Arkansas at the Great Bend, in Kansas. There was unusually deep snow upon the ground, so that the horses could not get at the grass, and in their hunger tried to eat the ashes thrown out from the camp fires.
In the early spring a large war party, accompanied by women, as was sometimes the custom among the Kiowa, started for Texas, along the trail which runs south through the Panhandle, crossing the North Canadian near Kiowa creek and passing on by Fort Elliott. While singing the "travel song" on a southern head stream of Wolf creek the tree tops returned the echo. The phenomenon was a mystery to the Indians, who ascribed it to spirits, but it may have been due to the fact that just south of the camp was a bluff, from which the sound may have been echoed back. The figure over the winter mark is intended to indicate the sound above the tree tops.
Fig. 132—Winter 1862—63—Treetop winter.
When a man wishes to gather a small war party he sends around to invite those who may desire to join him. On the night before he intends to start he sits alone in his tipi, having previously bent a long stick, like a hoop, around the fire hole; then he begins the Gua-dagya or travel song, beating time upon the hoop with another stick which he holds in his hand. When those who intend going with him hear the song, they come in one by one and join in it, beating time in the same way with sticks. The women also come in and sit behind the men, joining in the song with them, but without beating time; after some time the leader invites them to come outside, to a buffalo hide, which the men surround and each holds it up with one hand while they beat time upon it with the sticks. The women and those who can not reach the hide stand behind and all sing together. The song is sung at intervals during the march. It has words with meaning and is different from all their other songs; the first singing by the leader is the signal that he intends to start the next day; the pipe was sent around only for a very large war party.
A contributor to the Montana Historical Society gives a humorous account of a rawhide dance by a party of packers on Columbia river, in 1858, when the tribes of that region had combined against the whites. The account is of interest as showing that the dance was found from the Columbia to the Rio Grande:
About dark some seven or eight canoes loaded with Yakima warriors landed near our camp. They were painted and rigged up in first-class war style and just spoiling for a fight. Our few Indian packers and the interpreter took the situation in and suggested that we bluff them. So we built a large camp fire out of sage brush and greasewood, and all of us, the Major included, formed a circle, and with one hand holding a rawhide, with a stick in the other, batted that rawhide and yelled and danced until we were nearly exhausted. This act, the interpreter said, was intended to show these Yakimas that we were not afraid of them and were ready to give them "the best we had in the shop," and to my utter surprise when I turned out in the morning not a canoe was to be seen. It was a complete bluff. They had taken the hint and gone away during the night. I must confess I felt pleased, and so would anyone, from the fact that there is less danger in thumping the rawhide as a bluff than trying to dodge their bullets (Montana, 2).