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

by George Bird Grinnell

"Now of course I'm just telling you what John Monroe told me. I don't know anything about it myself."

"Well," said Hugh, "I guess that's gospel; and it always seemed to me that the names that the Blackfeet have for the different points of the compass were very good evidence that the Blackfeet did come from the north. The Blackfeet word for north means back, or behind, direction; while the word for south means ahead, or before, direction. It seems to me mighty natural that if people were traveling they should call the direction that they had come from, behind direction, and the one that they were going to, ahead direction. Of course the two words for east and west they called down direction and up direction. That doesn't mean anything more than that the streams that they crossed were flowing down hill toward the lower land; while they were flowing from the higher land which lay to the west."

"I never heard that before," said Mason. "That's mighty funny; and it certainly seems to back up John Monroe's story about their having come from the north."

"Did John tell you," asked Hugh, "about the story of the people getting separated?"

"Yes," Mason answered. "He told me that all the Piegans believe that somewhere off in the southern country, there's a tribe of Piegans—at least a tribe of people who speak the same language that the Piegans talk—and they believe that those people are a part of the Piegan tribe. I don't just remember how they got separated, but I do recall that it was when they were crossing a big water that the separation took place. Do you remember it, Hugh?"

"Yes," said Hugh. "This was the story, as I heard it. A long time ago a big camp of people, the whole Piegan tribe, were traveling south and they came to a big river and started to cross it on the ice. Of course, in those days the tribe was a big one, and when they marched they were strung out over a long distance. Some of the people had already crossed the river; some were yet on the ice; but most of them had not yet come to the stream. As they were going along, a child saw frozen in the ice a buffalo horn that was shiny and pretty and cried for it. Some old woman began to knock it loose, and while she was doing that, suddenly the ice in the river broke up. Pretty much all the Indians on the ice were drowned; and now there was a big wide swollen stream full of running ice separating the two portions of the tribe. Of course the people could not sit down on the bank and wait for the stream to go down, and starve to death. Each party had to start out and look for food, and the two parties never met again. So it is that the north Indians still believe that somewhere off to the south there are a lot of Blackfeet living as a tribe. Men say that in their travels, either on the war-path or visiting other tribes, they have met people who speak a language so much like their own that they could understand them. Nobody really knows anything about it."

"Well," said Jack, "that's a great story. Wouldn't it be fun to go around among the Indian tribes and try to hunt up those Blackfeet and tell them about their relations up North?"

"Yes," added Mason, "that's a good story. I remember now that that's just about what John Monroe told me; but I couldn't have told it the way Hugh did."

"It's a good story," said Hugh, "but it's a story that a good many tribes of Indians tell. I've heard the Cheyennes tell the same story; and the Sarcees, and the Crows. Now I wonder if it isn't just some old legend founded on something that maybe really did happen once, but that has been adopted by half a dozen tribes that don't seem to be any kin to each other, as far as we know?