A DECREE OF COUNCIL
A DECREE OF COUNCIL
Big Nose was an inveterate gambler. Like all the plains tribes the Shi-an-nay are a social people. They love companionship and the interchange of jest and story. At evening, when the day’s hunt is over, they come together to tell stories and joke and discuss each other’s affairs precisely as the peasants of a French village do. And when amusement is desired they dance or play games.
It is this feeling on their part which makes it so difficult for the Government to carry out its theories of allotment. It is difficult to uproot a habit of life which has been thousands of years forming. It is next to impossible to get one of these people to leave the village group and go into his lonely little cabin a mile or two from a neighbor. And the need of amusement is intensified by the sad changes in the life of these people. Games of chance appeal to them precisely as they do to the negro and to large classes of white people. They play with the same abandon with which the negro enters into a game of craps.
One evening Big Nose was in company with three or four others in the midst of Charcoal’s camp playing The Hand game. He had been doing some work for the Post and had brought with him to the camp a little heap of silver dollars. He was therefore in excellent temper for a brisk game. But luck was against him. His little store of money melted away and then he began taking his ponies, his gun, and finally his blankets and his tepee; all went into the yawning gulf of his bad luck. Before midnight came he had staked everything but the clothing on his back and had reached a condition of mind bordering on frenzy.
Nothing was too small for his opponents to accept and nothing was too valuable for him to stake. He began putting his moccasins up on the chance and ended by tearing off his Gee string which represented his absolute impoverishment. A reasonable being would have ended the game here but with a desperation hitherto unknown to the gamblers of his tribe, he sat naked on the ground and gambled both his wives away.
When he realized what had happened to him, that he was absolutely without home or substance in the world, naked to the cold and having no claim upon a human being, his frenzy left him and he sank into pitiful dejection. Walking naked through the camp, he began to cry his need, “Take pity on me, my friends. I have nothing. The wind is cold. I have no blanket. I am hungry. I have no tepee.”
For a long time no one paid any heed to him, for they were disgusted with his foolishness and they would not allow his wives to clothe him or give him shelter. However, at last, his brother came out and gave him a blanket and took him into his tepee. “Let this be a lesson to you,” he said. “You are a fool. Yet I pity you.”
Next day a council was called to consider his case, which was the most remarkable that had ever happened in the tribe. There were many who were in favor of letting him take care of himself, but in the end it was decreed that he should be clothed and that he should have a tepee and the absolute necessities of life.