Jack the Young Cowboy: An Eastern Boy's Experiance on a Western Round-up

by George Bird Grinnell

Jack had not forgotten Mason's promise to tell him John Monroe's story of the movements of the Blackfeet tribes in early days; and not long after supper he spoke to him about this. Mason was slow to respond, declaring that Hugh Johnson probably knew the story better than he, and could tell it if he would. But after some persuasion Mason began.

"Well, according to old John Monroe, the way I remember what he told me, it was like this:

"The old men say that a long time ago, in the time of our grandfathers, or great-grandfathers, or even back before that, the Blackfeet people used to live out in the timber country away east of the Rocky Mountains. In that land they were at war with people, who fought with them and troubled them. Game was hard to get, for their only weapons were arrows pointed with bits of stone and with these weapons it was hard for them to kill food. They had never been a people that ate fish, but believed that all animals and all birds were fit for food and could be eaten.

"John said that the attacks of their enemies and the difficulty of getting food were the things that made them move from that lower country up closer to the mountains. He says that when he was a little boy, and afterward when he was larger, he used to hear in the lodge the talks between his mother and an old Blood Indian named Su' ta ne. This old man may have been some sort of relation to John, but about that I don't know. At all events, Su' ta ne was then very old, and the time he used to talk about was when he was a little boy. Su' ta ne had heard his father speak of the trouble that they used to have down in the timber country, and said that it was in his father's boyhood that they began to move westward, traveling up the Saskatchewan or some of the rivers that flow into it. Su' ta ne said that it was when he was a little boy that they first saw the Rocky Mountains; this, according to John, must have been a long time ago. John must be now sixty or sixty-five years old, and he said that Su' ta ne was very old when he used to hear him talk about this. If we say that John heard it fifty years ago and that Su' ta ne was born when his father was thirty, it carries the beginning of the movement back a hundred and thirty or a hundred and forty years, which, according to my guess, would be about 1745 or 50, and I reckon that was a long time before any white man got into the country where those people used to live. Maybe, though, it was a good deal longer ago than that. I guess all John meant was that it was long, long ago, and when Su' ta ne said that it was in his father's time that they began to move toward the mountains, he may have meant only that this move was before he knew anything."

"I guess you're right there, Jack," said Hugh. "Indians are mighty weak on dates, after they get back farther than they themselves can remember."

"Yes," went on Mason, "I don't believe it's any use to try to fix a date. It's bound to be guesswork. Anyhow, old John said that Su' ta ne, when he described the country that they lived in, said it was mostly timbered, with stretches of prairie among the timber—something like big parks, I reckon.

"It was in Su' ta ne's time, in his young days, as I understood, that the Blackfeet, who had been slowly drifting westward, at last reached the mountains. When they got to the rough country they found there lots of game of all kinds, and found it very much easier to get close to than it ever had been before. So they thought that the change they had made was a mighty good one; and that's the way they changed from a timber living people to a mountain people. It was a good while after this that they got horses and began to travel around out on the prairie. The old men used to tell John that the time they first ventured out on the prairie was when they began to travel along the old trail which still runs north and south along the mountains. Of course, you know the old Red River cart trail, Hugh, and very likely you too, Jack."

"Yes," replied Hugh, "I know it; but I don't believe son here has ever been on it."

"Old John Monroe believes thoroughly in this story, and he naturally would, because it comes from his mother, and his relations, but he says that all the old Indians in that northern country believe in it just the same as he does. He believes that the Crees and the Blackfeet are relations, though he doesn't pretend that they are very close relations.

"Well, according to old John, a while after the Indians got up close to the mountains there, up North, the white man came into the country; and when the white men came, the Indians began to get guns. Before that they had begun to get horses, maybe through the Kutenais on the other side of the mountains; and when they got guns and horses they began to take courage and to venture out on the prairie. They began to find out that they could fight their enemies and take care of themselves. Besides this, they had learned that while there were no horses north of them, the tribes to the south had horses; and of course that led to their going more and more to war, because everybody wanted horses. They were about the most valuable things that a man could get hold of. These journeys to war and their fightings led to the Indians moving south along the foot of the mountains, and out on the prairie.