We “let them go!” and, indeed, that was the wiser way: they could have made a stand at the summit and shot us down as fast as we came on.
The old war road! How many of my people have traveled over it, some of them never to return. It was along this road that Pi′tamakan, virgin woman warrior, led her warriors in what was to be her last raid! But how many, many times our people have come rushing homeward over it, singing their songs of victory, waving the scalps they have taken, and driving before them great bands of the horses of the Pend d’Oreilles, the Snakes, the Nez Percés, and other tribes of the Columbia River watershed.
The names the Blackfeet have given to the four world directions are most significant of their entry into this Missouri River country. North is ap-ut′-o-sohts: back, or behind direction. South, ahm-ska′-pohts, is ahead direction. East is pi-na′-pohts: down-river direction; and west is ah-me′-tohts: up-river direction. I have told why the Two Medicine was so named, when the Blackfeet came into the country from the Far North, and drove the Crows before them. This river they named Pu-nak′-ik-si (Cutbank), because its narrow valley for a long way up from its junction with the Two Medicine is walled in by straight-cut cliffs.
OUR CAMP ON CUTBANK RIVER
On left is O-nis-tai′-mak-an (Wonderful Runner), and on right, Ki-nuk′-sa-po-pi (Little Plume Mountain)
The Cutbank River Valley, like those of all the other streams of the country, has been the scene of many a fight between the Blackfeet and their enemies, in which the Blackfeet were generally the victors. A remarkable instance of an old woman’s bravery occurred just below here some forty years ago.
A few lodges of the Kut′-ai-im-iks, or Never Laughs band of the Blackfeet, in need of the skins of elk and bighorn for making “buckskin” for light clothing and moccasin tops, were here hunting, and one evening all the men gathered in old Running Crane’s lodge for prayers with his beaver medicine. An old woman, named Muk-sin-ah′-ki (Angry Woman), was sitting in her lodge by herself because there had not been room for her in the crowded beaver medicine lodge. But she was listening to the distant singing, and saying over the prayers at the proper time, her heart full of peace and love for the gods.
As she sat there at the back of the lodge, she suddenly noticed that the doorway curtain in the upper part was being slowly pulled aside to the width of a hand, and in that small space an eye glared at her for a time, and then the curtain dropped back to place.
“That was the eye of an enemy,” she said to herself. Her heart throbbed painfully; and for the time her thoughts were confused. Then, suddenly, some one, perhaps the sun himself, told her to take courage. She took courage: she stole out of the lodge to see what that enemy was doing. There was a moon; bright starlight; the night was almost as light as day; and she had no more than left the lodge than she saw the man walking here, there, examining the buffalo runners, the best and swiftest horses of the people, all picketed close to the lodges of their owners. Whenever the man’s back was toward her, she hurried her steps; got closer and closer to him; and then, suddenly, she sprang and seized him from behind and shouted: “Help! Help! I have seized an enemy!”