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

by George Bird Grinnell

"They were frightened by what they saw, and fearing that these animals might discover them and hurt them, they finally started away and went back to their own country without being seen. When they reached home they told their story and the people who heard it could not understand it, for they were told of something that was wholly outside of their own experiences. Here were people who were naked, who had red bodies, or again were dark colored everywhere, except for a red stripe around the body and a red tail.

"The story was so strange that pretty much all the men in the camp wanted to know more about it—to see this wonderful sight for themselves; and so quite a party started back to the place. When they reached the open part of the timber, these mysterious animals were still at work there. The head man of the Blackfeet must have been a pretty plucky fellow, for he ordered all his party to stay where they were, and said that he would go out and meet these animals and try to find out something about them. But he told his men that if these strange creatures attacked him, they must come out and help him.

"That Indian sure had plenty of sand. He walked down toward these people; and when they saw him, one of them walked up to him and stuck out his hand and took the Indian's hand and moved it up and down. The Indian looked at the white man and at the white man's hand, but he had no idea what this meant, and did nothing. Presently other white men came up to him, and the Indian discovered that they were people like himself, except that they had different voices and different colored skin and hair.

"After a while, when the Indians in the timber saw no harm had come to their chief, they came out a few at a time and went down toward the white people. The white people talked to them and made signs to them, but the Indians could not understand what they meant. At last, however, the whites managed to make some of the Indians understand that they wanted them to go into the house with them, and a number of them went in; and as some time went by without anything terrible happening, all the Indians began to take courage.

"In this house there were a great many wonderful things. The white people carried knives in their belts and showed the Indians how these would cut. The Indians were nearly tickled to death with the knives. Then a great big white man showed them an ax, and while they stood by he cut a big log in two in a very short time; and when the Indians saw the chips fly they began to understand the strange beaver work that they had seen.

"One of the white men took down from the wall something that the Indians thought was a long, straight stick but when the man showed it to them they could see that while part of it was made of wood a part was made of a hard black stone. The white man kept making signs about this stick, but they didn't know what he meant. Pretty soon the man took a white cow's horn, and out of it poured some black sand into his hand and poured this into a hole at the end of the stick. Then he made a little ball of grass and pushed this into the hole with another stick; then out of a bag he took something that was round and heavy and put that into the hole, and pushed down some more grass; then he poured some of the black sand into the side of the stick. The Indians watched him do all these things, and of course had no idea as to what it all meant. After he had finished doing these things, the white man made signs to the Indians and made a great noise with his mouth, and pointed to the stick. He put the stick to his shoulder, holding it out in front of him, and made motions of many kinds. Presently he gave the stick to one of the Indians, and put his finger on a little piece of stone sticking out from beneath it. When the Indian touched this under part, the stick made a terrible noise and a big smoke, and flew out of the Indian's hands, and he nearly fell down.

"All the Indians were very much scared, and some of them fell down, but all the white men laughed and nodded, and made signs, but of course the Indians did not understand them.

"Now the white man picked up the stick from the ground where it had fallen and again took the horn of black sand and did the same things to the stick as before, but this time the Indians all stood away from him. They didn't know what was going to happen. After the white man had finished doing these things, he persuaded them to come out of doors with him. Then he sat down on the ground and put the stick to his shoulder, pointing it toward a log that was lying on the ground. Again the terrible noise was heard, but the white man didn't let go the stick. He held it in his hand. Then he got up and walked over to the log and showed the bullet hole, and pushed a little stick into it. Then he loaded the gun again.

"By this time the Indians were beginning to understand the power of this stick; and at last, after the white man had loaded the gun again and encouraged the Indians, he took one of them close to the log and showed him how to point the gun and how to pull the trigger. The Indian fired and hit the log. I reckon when he found that he had hit it he thought that he was one of the biggest men in the country.