Jack Among the Indians; Or, A Boy's Summer on the Buffalo Plains

by George Bird Grinnell

"Yes," said Hugh, "there's quite a lot of 'em, and I expect, from the way the camp looks, that maybe there's more than just the Piegans. There must be some Bloods and Blackfeet with them. Now you can see what a camp really looks like. It's only once in a while that the people all get together like this. I expect maybe they're getting ready to hold the medicine lodge; that'll come right soon now; about the time that the berries are ripe. That's the biggest time these people have, and I expect if we're here when they hold it this year, you'll like it. There ain't many white people has ever seen a Blackfoot medicine lodge, and if you see one you'll be in big luck."

"I hope I will," said Jack. "I don't know what it is, but I want to find out everything about how these people live, and I want to try to remember everything that I see. Now, most of the lodges stand in a circle, but there are some of them inside the circle; what does that mean, Hugh? What are those for?"

"Well, you see that big lodge nearly in the middle of the circle?" said Hugh; "that's the head chief's lodge. He stops there. And then those two smaller ones on either side of it, pretty well over toward the other lodges, they belong to the secret societies, that they call, 'All Friends.'"

"Secret societies! You must be joking, Hugh; they don't have secret societies among the Indians, do they?"

"They surely do," answered Hugh. "There's about a dozen or fifteen societies of men. A man starts in when he's only a boy, not much bigger than you are, and he keeps going along from one society to another, until he gets to be a middle-aged man; until he begins to be old. The men that are warriors, going to war all the time—young fellows with lots of ambition—they mostly belong to what they call the brave society; Mŭt'siks, they call it. You'll hear all about them societies if you stop long in the camp; but the brave society is about the most important; and that, and two or three of the others, are what we call the 'soldier bands'; they're kind o' like constables. If the chiefs order anything done, and the people don't do it, they tell some of these bands of the 'All Friends' to make 'em do it, and they just have to. Sometimes, if a man's right stubborn, the soldiers'll quirt him, or they'll break his lodge poles, or cut his lodge to pieces, or even kill his horses. Most folks think that each Indian does what he likes; but you can bet it ain't so. And if you'll just think about it a little bit, you'll see it couldn't be so. These people have got to live together, and they couldn't live together comfortably if every man was doing just what he wanted to, and didn't pay no attention to what was good for other people. Now suppose there was a bunch of buffalo close to the camp, and a man found 'em, and started in to run 'em, and kill a lot of meat for himself; he might scare the buffalo, and run 'em all out of the country, so that the other people in the camp couldn't get any for themselves. That is just one way where one man might do a whole lot of harm to everybody in the camp. These people have laws, just like white folks do, and they have to obey the laws too, you bet. Well, let's go on down to the camp. You start them pack horses ahead, and we'll go down to the ford; it runs kind of slanting, and we've got to stick to the bar, without we want to swim."

"Hold on a minute, Hugh," said Jack; "what are those things there, that those horses are dragging?" Several riders had just appeared around a point of the bluffs, close to the river bank, and were entering the water to cross to the camp. Behind each horse followed a pile of wood, supported on two sticks which the animal was dragging. Almost every horse bore a rider. "Why," said Hugh, "that's a lot of women coming in with their wood. Don't you see each horse is dragging a travois, with a load of sticks and brush on it?"

"Oh, are those travois? I want to see how they're fixed on the horses. They are a good deal like our wagons, aren't they? Only they haven't any wheels," said Jack.

"Yes," said Hugh, "that's the Indians' cart. There, you see the way that first woman is pointing? You see, she doesn't go straight across the river; she goes slantways down the stream. There's a big bar runs across there, where the water isn't much more than up to a horse's belly; the bar's narrow, and on either side, it's swimming water; so when you cross here, you have to stick to that gravel bar."

By this time all the women had ridden into the water, and were crossing. Hugh started down the hill toward the point where they had entered the stream, and Jack drove the pack horses close after him. When they were part way down the hill, two more women made their appearance, and riding down the narrow ravine, along which the trail ran, entered the water. Hugh and Jack were not far behind them, and saw them stop a little way from the bank, to let their horses drink. They were near enough to see that the first one was a middle-aged woman, and the last, who was nearer to them, was a young girl.

Just before Jack and Hugh reached the water's edge, they heard behind them the thunder of many hoofs, and suddenly—driven by two Indian boys—there poured over the bank, almost on top of them, a great band of horses, rushing forward at top speed, the younger ones bounding and plunging, with heads and tails in the air, nipping at each other, and lashing out with their heels in play. The leading horses, when they saw the men and the pack train, tried to stop, but they were pushed forward by the throng behind, and obliged to keep on, but the herd separated, and rushed down to the ford on either side of Jack, whose pack horses, tired as they were, threw up their heads and seemed to want to join in the race. The band of horses came together again, just in front of Hugh, and streamed down the trail into the water, and along the bar. The leading ones galloped across, toward the older woman, who, Jack saw, was screaming and motioning with her hands. This stopped the horses in front, but not those behind, which continued to rush into the river, crowding and pushing, at first against each other, and soon against the horse ridden by the girl. She was striking at them with her quirt, but they could not get away from her, on account of those that followed, and in a moment Jack saw them crowd against the horse on which the girl sat, which was being pushed into deeper and deeper water.