At first everything was good. Animals and men lived in peace. Then a wicked serpent tried to drown the world. Only a few persons escaped to the back of a great turtle. Their great hero Nanabush helped them. The waters subsided. As the land where they now found themselves was cold, the people determined to move southward. The story of their quarrels and divisions on the journey is told, and also the way in which they seized their new home, destroying or driving out the original owners.
The song in which this story is told is long and full of old words difficult to understand. The Indians themselves must have had difficulty in remembering it. It was a great help to have these little sticks with the red pictures to remind them of its different parts.
Far to the west, close against the base of the Rocky Mountains, lived a famous Algonkin tribe—the Blackfeet. They were great buffalo hunters and warriors. We often think of Indians as being stern and morose, never smiling, never amused. Yet most tribes had sunny tempers like children. Mr. Grinnell, to show this side of Indian nature, describes a day in camp in the olden, happy time. Two parts of his description describe feasts and gambling. Feasts were in [pg 113] constant progress: sometimes one man would give three in a day; men who were favorites might go from feast to feast all day long. If a man wished to give a feast, he ordered the best food he had to be cooked. Then, going outside, he called out the list of invited guests: the name of each one was cried three times. At the close of his invitation he announced how many pipes would be smoked: usually three. When the guests came, each was given a dish, with his share of the food; no one might have a second help, but it was quite polite to carry away what was not eaten.
While the guests were feasting, the man of the house prepared a pipe and tobacco. After the eating was over, the pipe was lighted and passed from hand to hand, each person giving it to the one on his left. Meantime stories of hunting and war were narrated and jokes cracked. Only one man spoke at one time, the rest listening until he was through. Thus they whiled away the time until the last pipe was smoked out, when the host, knocking the ashes from the pipe, told them they might go.
All Indians are gamblers, and they have many gambling games. The Blackfeet played one which was something like the famous game of Chunkey, played among the Creeks. (See [XIX.]) A wheel about four inches in diameter with five spokes on which were beads of different colors, made of horn or bone, was used. It was rolled [pg 114] along upon a smooth piece of ground at the ends of which logs were laid to stop it. One player stood at each end of the course. After a player set the wheel to rolling, he hurled a dart after it. This was done just before the wheel reached the end of its journey. Points were counted according to the way in which the wheel and dart fell with reference to each other. Ten counts made the game. This game always attracted great crowds of spectators, who became greatly excited and bet heavily on the result.
Blackfoot Squaw Traveling.
At night about their camp-fires the Blackfeet delighted to tell their sacred stories, which they did not dare repeat in daylight. In telling a story of personal adventure, Indians, like white people, were often tempted to make it larger than it really was.
The Blackfeet and some other Indians had the following mode of getting at the truth. When a man told an improbable story some one handed a pipe to the medicine man, who painted the stem red and prayed over it, asking that the man's life might be long if his story were true, but cut short if the story were false. The pipe was then filled and lighted and given to the man. The medicine man said, as he handed it to him: “Accept this pipe, but remember that if you smoke, your story must be as sure as that there is a hole through this pipe and as straight as the hole through this stem. So your life shall be long and you shall survive; but if you have spoken falsely, your days are counted.” If he refused to smoke, as he surely would if he had not spoken true things, every one knew that he was a braggart and a liar.
Daniel Garrison Brinton.—Physician, anthropologist. Has written many books, mostly about American Indians. The Lenape and their Legends, in which the Walam olum is given in full, is a volume in his Library of Aboriginal American Literature.