The next morning Washakie found her lying on the snow beside the bodies of her children. He took them up tenderly and carried them back to the village. The poor old mother was very sick after that. During this sickness and delirium of grief, she dreamed that her youngest boy came back to her, and he was white. This dream put into her mind the strange notion that she wanted a white papoose.
She was just getting well when the band of Indians she was with came into the settlement where I lived and found me. When they found that I could talk the Indian tongue, they decided that I was just the boy for the chief’s mother. They asked Washakie about it. He would not let them steal me, but he said that if they could lure me away from home, it was all right with him. So they set to work, as I have told, and succeeded in tempting me to go away with them.
My old mother also told me many things that happened when she was a little girl. She said that her father was a Shoshone, and her mother a Bannock. She said she was sixty-two “snows” (years) old when I came. She had had four children, three boys and a girl. When the girl was seven years old, she was dragged to death by a horse. Her two sons were killed by the snowslide, so Washakie and I were the only ones she had left.
J. E. Stimson
Death’s Canyon, Teton Range, Jackson’s Hole, Wyoming; snow slide in ravine at left.
Her life, she said, had been filled with sorrow, but she was having better times now than she had ever had before. If I would stay with her, she would be happy once more. She said she had fifteen head of horses of her own. When she died she wanted Washakie and me to divide them between us. She also wanted me, when she died, to bury her as the white folks bury their dead, as she thought that way was the best.
She certainly was good to me, watching me night and day and doing everything she could for my comfort, and I tried to be good and kind to her in return, but sometimes, boylike, I forgot. One night I was playing with the Indian boys. Our game was killing white men. With our bows and arrows, we would slip up to the bunches of brush and shoot at them. If we clipped off a twig with the arrow, that was a scalp. We would stick it in our belts and strut about like big Injuns.
While our fun was on, I heard mother call, “Yagaki, come in and go to bed.” I paid no attention so she came out and said, “Why didn’t you come when I called you?” “I didn’t want to go to bed,” I answered sulkily. With that she grabbed me by the collar and jerked me toward the tepee. I begged and promised, but she kept me going till she got me inside; then she flung me down on a pile of blankets.
“Washakie,” she said, “you must do something with this boy. He won’t mind me.” With that she left the tent and I heard her crying outside.