It was not long before mother came. She grabbed me in her arms and said, “Yagaki, Yagaki, where have you been? I was afraid a bear had eaten you.” She talked and cried for almost an hour. She blamed Washakie for leaving me alone and said that I should never go off with him again; she would keep me close to her.
The next morning I went with mother and another squaw to get the elk. Washakie asked me if I thought I could find it. I told him that I knew I could, so we started and I led them right to it. As we were skinning the elk, mother said that I had spoiled the skin by shooting it so full of holes. But the meat was fat and tender.
About ten days after this our band of young warriors came back. They had captured thirty-two head of horses, but one of our Indians had been killed in the skirmish they had with the Crows. One of the band told me all about their raid. He said that they went over to the headwaters of the Missouri River—Sogwobipa, the Indians called it. There they found a small band of Crow Indians, but the Crows had seen them first, and were ready for them. Just after dark our Indians tried to run off a band of Crow horses they had seen, but they were met with a shower of arrows and a few bullets which killed one of their party and wounded five or six of their horses. One horse was so badly crippled that he could not travel, so the rider jumped on to the horse belonging to the dead Indian and they all broke back as fast as their horses could carry them. They were chased by the Crows all night, but they finally made their escape.
Albert Schlechten, Bozeman, Mont.
Headwaters of Missouri River, Montana. The Gallatin, Jefferson, and Madison rivers join here to make the Missouri River. The country around these rivers was a great hunting ground in the early days for Shoshones, Crows, Nez Percé, Selish, and other Indian tribes.
A few days after this as they were going through a range of mountains, they came suddenly upon a small band of Crows, killed two of them and took all their horses. They thought the whole tribe of Crows was following them, so they made a bee line for home. I thought it was pretty rough for about fifty to jump on a few like that, kill some and rob the rest of their horses. I think that Washakie did not like it either. When I told him that it was not fair, he said it was too bad, but that the Crows would have treated us just the same.
The Indians were uneasy. They felt sure that the Crows would follow and attack us any minute, so we kept a strong guard out all the time. Washakie thought it best to get a little farther from the border line and in a more open country where they could watch the horses better. The Indians did not appear to value their own lives so much as they did their horses.
I asked Washakie why it would not be better for the chiefs to get together, talk the matter over, and stop this stealing and fighting. He laughed and said that when I got older I might fix things to suit myself, but as things were going there, he had to be a little careful. Some of his men would rather be fighting than at peace; and Pocatello was poisoning the minds of as many of the tribe as he could with the spirit of war, to draw them away with him. For his part, Washakie said, he would rather live at peace.
The camp packed up and made a start from the open country. We made a long string of Indians, horses, and dogs trailing through the hills. For about a week we kept traveling southward along the river that came out of the beautiful lake until we reached another large stream. When these two streams came together, they made a very large river. It was the Piupa, or Snake River, which we had crossed before. We pitched our tepees by a stream that flowed into the north fork of this big river. It was not very wide, but it was deep and full of fish. We papooses had heaps of fun catching them.