He said that he had been doing all he could for me.
“I don’t want any more of your lies,” said Washakie. “If this boy had died, I would have had you tied to the tail of a wild horse and let him kick and drag you to death. Now, go, and don’t let me see you any more, for you are hated by every Indian, squaw, and papoose in this camp.”
We stayed in this place till my leg got nearly well, then we moved on down the river to stop for the winter. Here the fishing was good, and the white-tailed deer, ducks, and rabbits were very plentiful.
“I used to like to watch him make arrows.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN OLD MOROGONAI
During the time that I was disabled and had to stay in the tepee, my old friend, Morogonai, would come and talk to me for hours. He told me all about the first white men he ever saw. It was Lewis and Clark. When they made their trip across the continent, this old Indian had sold them some horses, and had traveled with them for about ten days, catching fish and trading them to the whites for shirts and other articles.
Old Morogonai was respected by all the tribe. He had once been a chief among the Shoshones, but now that he was too old to lead the Indians, he became an arrow maker for them.
I used to like to watch him make arrows. It takes skill to make a good one. Our Indians generally used the limbs of service-berry bushes for this purpose. They would cut a great many of these and leave them for a year to dry thoroughly. Old Morogonai would take a bundle of these seasoned limbs and draw each one through a hole in an antelope horn to make it perfectly straight. Then he would crease each shaft, and after this he would feather them and put on the steel spikes. In earlier times they used flint heads, which they had chipped into shape. If the arrow was for long-distance shooting, the feathers were made heavier than the spike; if for short distances, the spike was made heavier so that it would bring the arrow down more quickly.
The bows were sometimes made of mountain sheep horns, which were thrown into some hot spring and left there until they were pliable. Then they were shaped, and a strip of sinew was stuck on the back with some kind of balsam gum that was about as good as glue. This made a powerful bow. Not many Indians had this kind; most of our Indians used bows made from white cedar strung with sinew along the back.