118. A HERD OF BISON.
A large party of Blackfeet once made a successful foray in the territory of the Crees. But meanwhile the latter surprised the camp where the aggressors had left their wives and children; and thus, when the Blackfeet returned to their tents, they found desolation and death where they looked for a joyful welcome. In their despair they cast away their arms and their booty, and retired to the mountains, where for three days and nights they wailed and mourned.
119. DRIVING BISON OVER A PRECIPICE.
119. DRIVING BISON OVER A PRECIPICE.
In the year 1840 a bloody war broke out between the Crees and the Blackfeet, arising as in general from a very trifling cause. Peace was at length concluded, but while the two nations were celebrating this fortunate event with games and races, a Cree stole a ragged blanket, and a new fight immediately began. Returning home, the Blackfeet met a Cree chieftain, with two of his warriors, and killed them after a short altercation. Soon after the Crees surprised and murdered some of the Blackfeet, and thus the war raged more furiously than ever. Sir George Simpson, who was travelling through the country at the time, visited the hut of a Cree who had been wounded in the conflict at the peace meeting. As in his flight he bent over his horse’s neck, a ball had struck him on the right side, and remained sticking near the articulation of the left shoulder. In this condition he had already lain for three-and-thirty days, his left arm frightfully swollen, and the rest of his body emaciated to a skeleton. Near the dying savage, whose glassy eye and contracted features spoke of the dreadful pain of which he disdained to speak, lay his child, reduced to skin and bones, and expressing by a perpetual moaning the pangs of illness and hunger, while most to be pitied perhaps of this wretched family was the wife and mother, who seemed to be sinking under the double load of care and fatigue. During the night the “medicine-man” was busy beating his magic drum and driving away the evil spirits from the hut.
Although the Crees show great fortitude in enduring hunger and the other evils incident to a hunter’s life, yet any unusual accident dispirits them at once, and they seldom venture to meet their enemies in open warfare, or even to surprise them, unless they have a great advantage in point of numbers. Instances of personal bravery like that of the Esquimaux are rare indeed among them. Superior in personal appearance to the Tinné, they are less honest, and though perhaps not so much given to falsehood as the Tinné, are more turbulent and more prompt to invade the rights of their countrymen, as well as of neighboring nations.
Tattooing is almost universal among them. The women are in general content with having one or two lines drawn from the corners of the mouth towards the angles of the lower jaw, but some of the men have their bodies covered with lines and figures. It seems to be considered by most rather as a proof of courage than an ornament, as the operation is both painful and tedious. The lines on the face are formed by dexterously running an awl under the cuticle, and then drawing a cord, dipped in charcoal and water, through the canal thus formed. The punctures on the body are made by needles of various sizes, set in a frame. A number of hawk-bells attached to this frame serve, by their noise, to cover the groans of the sufferer, and probably for the same reason the process is accompanied with singing. An indelible stain is produced by rubbing a little finely-powdered willow-charcoal into the puncture. A half-breed, whose arm was amputated by Sir John Richardson, declared that tatooing was not only the more painful operation of the two, but rendered infinitely more difficult to bear by its tediousness, having lasted, in his case, three days.