LEGEND OF RED COULEE.
There lies in a “coulee” near the Marias River, on the road that leads from Macleod to Benton, a large “medicine stone,” venerated by the Indians belonging to the Blackfoot Confederacy. The “coulee” is named by the Indians the “Red Coulee.” When the Blackfeet came from the north, the Snake Indians, who at that time inhabited the country, told the Blackfeet that there was a large medicine stone on the top of a hill, close to a ravine.
Several years after they were told this, a Blackfoot chief with fifty men went southward on the war-path. They all went to this stone, and the chief, being sceptical about the mysterious powers possessed by it, laughed at his men for exhibiting such childishness as to believe in it. In derision he hurled the stone down the mountain-side into the ravine and then departed. They engaged in a battle with some Indians in the south, and all of them were killed, only one man returning to tell the fate of his comrades. Ever since that time the Indians have called the place the “Red Coulee,” and as they travel to and fro they never forget to go there and present their offerings, to insure safety in battle and protection by the way.