Trails Through Western Woods

by Helen Fitzgerald Sanders

This, then, was once the scene of a brave chase when wind-swift Indians pursued mad, hurtling herds over mountain slope and plain. These empty fastnesses thrilled to the shock of thousands of beating hoofs, these hills flung back the echo to the brooding silence as the black tide flowed on, pressed by deadly huntsmen armed with barb and bow. And even then, far over the horizon, unseen by hunted and hunters, silent as the shadow of a cloud, inevitable as destiny, came the White Race, moving swifter than either one, driving them unawares toward the great abyss where they should vanish forever into the Happy Hunting Ground, lighted by perpetual Summer and peopled by immortal herds and tribes.

II

In such a remote and deserted place as this, no great effort of the imagination is needed to call up the shades of those who once inhabited it, to react their part in the tragedy of progress. Let us fancy that a riper, richer glow is upon the mountains, that the white light of the sun has deepened into an amber flood which quivers between the arch of lapis-lazuli sky and the warm, balsam-scented earth that sighs forth the life of the woods. Already the trees not of the evergreen kind are hung with bewilderingly gorgeous leaves of scarlet, russet-brown and yellowing green; the haze has grown denser and its ghostly presence insinuates itself among the very needles of the pines. It is Autumn. The gush of life has reached its climax and is ebbing. High on the steepled mountains is a wreath of filmy white that trails low in the ravines. It seems as fragile as a bridal veil, but it is the foreword of Winter which will soon descend with driving blast and piping gale, lancing sleet and enshrouding snow to chill the last red ember-glow of the brilliant autumnal days. It was at this time that the Indian's blood ran hot with longing for the hunt. Lodges were abandoned and only those too weak to stand the hardship of the march were left behind. Chiefs and braves, women and children struck out for the haunts of the buffalo where the fat herds grazed before the impending cold.

These children of the forest sought their prey with the woodcraft handed down from old to young through unnumbered generations. Indeed, it was necessary for them to outwit the game by strategy in the early days before the wealthy and progressive Nez Percé Kayuses, who were first to break the wild horses of the western plains, brought the domesticated pony among them. In passing, it is interesting to know that the term "cayuse" applied to all Indian horses, had its origin with this tribe, since the chief article of trade of the Kayuses was the horse, the horse of Indian commerce became known as a "cayuse." The Selish used the method of the stockade. After the march into the buffalo country, they camped in a spot where they could easily fashion an enclosed park by means of barricades built among the trees. A great council of the chiefs and warriors was held and this august body appointed a company of braves to guard the camp and prevent any person from leaving its boundaries lest in so doing the wily buffalo should become alarmed and quit the neighbouring hills. The council proclaimed anew the ancient laws of the chase, and then began the building of the pen. This was a kind of communal work in which the entire tribe engaged, and as all contributed labor so all should benefit alike from its fruits. There within the mock park, whose pleasant green fringe of trees was in reality a prison wall, would be trapped and killed the food for the sterile winter months, when, but for that bounty, starvation would stalk gaunt among them and lay the strongest warrior as low as a new born babe or the feebly old who totter on the threshold of death. The place chosen for the pen was a level glade and the enclosure was built with a single opening facing a cleft in the surrounding hills. From this opening, an avenue also cunningly fenced and gradually widening towards the hills, was constructed, so that the animals driven thither, could escape neither to the right nor the left, but must needs plunge into the imprisoning park.

Next came the election of the Master of Ceremonies, the Lord of the Pen. He was a man seasoned with experience, mighty with the knowledge of occult things—one of the Wah-Kon, Medicine Men or jugglers, who possessed the power of communicating with the Great Spirit. This high functionary determined the crucial moment when the hunt should begin, and when the buffalo, roused from the inertia of grazing, should be driven into the snare. In the center of the clearing he posted the "medicine-mast," made potent by three charms, "a streamer of scarlet cloth two or three yards long, a piece of tobacco and a buffalo horn," which were supposed to entice the animals to their doom. It was he who, in the early dawn, aroused the sleeping camp with the beating of his drum and the chanting of incantations; who conferred with the great Manitous of the buffalo to divine when the time for the chase had come.

Under the Grand Master were four swift runners who penetrated into the surrounding country to find where the buffalo were browsing and to assist by material observation the promptings of the spirits of the hunt. They were provided by the Grand Master with a Wah-Kon ball of skin stuffed with hair, and when the herds were found in a favourable spot and the wind blew from the direction of the animals to the pen, one of the runners, breathless with haste, bearing in his hand the magic ball, appeared before the Grand Master and proclaimed the joyful news. There was a mighty beating of the Grand Master's drum, and out of the lodges ran the excited people, all bent with concentrated energy upon the approaching sport. Every horseman mounted, and those less fortunate armed themselves and took their positions in two lines extending from the entrance to the enclosure toward the open, separating more widely as the distance from the pen increased, thus forming a V shape with but a narrow gateway where the lines converged.

Then through the silent, human barricade rode the bravest of the braves, astride the fleetest horse and he went unarmed, always against the wind, enveloped in a buffalo skin which hung down over his mount. All was quiet. Only the light Autumn wind flowing through the trees carried the curious, crisp, cropping noise of thousands of iron-strong jaws tearing the lush, green grass. And as the rider came upon the crest of the hill and looked at the panorama of waving verdure peopled by multitudes of bison stretching far away across the meadows and over the rolling ground beyond, it must have been a sight to quicken the pulses and stir the blood. Suddenly there sounded a prolonged and distressing cry—the cry of a buffalo calf which wailed shrilly for a moment, then ceased. It came from the brave alone in the open, shrouded in the buffalo hide.

There was a movement in the herd. Every heavily maned head rose, and quivering nostrils snuffed the running wind. At first the buffalo advanced slowly, as if in doubt; gradually their pace quickened to a trot, a gallop, then lo! the whole vast band came hurtling and lurching in its furious career like the swells of a tempestuous, black sea, breaking into angry waves at every shock. And from those deep throats came a mighty roar, ponderous and resonant as the thunder of the surf.

Still the cry of the calf reverberated and re-echoed, and the single horseman crouching beneath his masquerade, led the herd on and on, eluding their onslaught, luring them forward between the lines of his companions who stood silent, trembling with eagerness for the sport. Then pell-mell the mounted hunters rushed out from cover and the wide extremes of the V shaped line closed in so that the horsemen were behind the herd. This done, the wind blowing toward the corral, took the scent of the Indians to the buffalo. Pandemonium reigned. Men, women and children on foot, leaped out from their hiding places with demoniac yells, brandishing spears, hurling stones and shooting arrows from their bows. The stampeded animals, surrounded save for the one loophole ahead, plunged into the pen. The chase was over and the slaughter began. The tribe would live well that Winter-time!