Rising Wolf, the White Blackfoot / Hugh Monroe's Story of His First Year on the Plains

by James Willard Schultz

"My woman, she will teach it to you; I will help," Antoine volunteered.

We began lessons with her that very evening, and before I left I had pretty well learned it. The signs are invariably so significant of the thought to be expressed, that, once seen and understood, they are not easily forgotten. I know not where the sign language originated, but I think that it came to the people of the plains from Mexico, spreading from one tribe to another until it finally reached the Blackfeet. The tribes of the forests, and of the two coasts, and the Great Lakes, knew it not.

At last the morning came upon which the Pi-kun-i were to break camp. On the evening before Lone Walker had sent my outfit of things over to his lodge, ready to be put upon one of his pack horses, and now, leading a horse for me, he came to the fort with his under-chiefs for a farewell meal and smoke with the factor.

I hastily ate my morning meat and, while the smoking was going on, saddled and bridled the horse. The factor had given me his own light, English, hunting-saddle, and I thought it a very comfortable one to ride upon. Later, when I got from a warrior a Spanish saddle that he had taken in a raid far to the south, I learned what comfort in riding really was!

The horse saddled, I said good-bye to the men. The voyageurs with whom I had come to the fort were soon to load the boats with furs and return to York Factory, and eventually Montreal, and I handed the head man a letter for my mother, telling her of my safe arrival at the fort, of the thousands of wild Indians that I had seen, and the expedition upon which I was about to embark. If all went well, she would receive it in about a year's time.

The round of smoking ended, the chiefs came out with the factor, and I said a last good-bye to him, and we mounted and set forth.

There were just twenty-four of the chiefs, one for each band, or gens, of the Pi-kun-i—Lone Walker, as I afterward learned, being chief of the I-nuk-siks, or Small Robes Band, as well as head chief of the tribe. With them were five other men, each wearing his hair done into a huge, furbound knot on the foretop of his head, the insignia of the sun priest, or so-called medicine man. None of the party wore war bonnets, or war costumes, and that rather surprised me. I soon learned that they were never worn except when the men were going into battle—if there was time to put them on, and when dancing, or observing some great religious ceremony. No! The decked-out Indian, hunting, or traveling, or sitting about in camp, and the Indian wearing nothing but a breech clout and a pair of moccasins, is just the Indian of the artists' dreams! My Indians wore plain leather shirts, and wide-flapped leggings, and quill-embroidered moccasins, and their wraps were also of leather, some of them painted with pictographs of the wearer's adventures in war and hunting.

But for all that they were picturesque enough. Each one carried a shield slung from the left arm, and bow and arrows in a case and quiver at the back, and a gun across the saddle front. Beautifully dyed quill embroidery on the fringed leather pipe and tobacco sacks dangling from their belts, and the bright, painted symbols on the covering of their shields gave the needed color to their otherwise somewhat soberly plain, everyday wear.

And what splendidly built men they were! What fine features they had, and the small, perfectly formed hands and feet of real gentlemen. And I learned that they had the manners of gentlemen. That in their daily intercourse they were ever courteous to one another. That their jesting and joking was never rude or coarse, and how they did love a good joke and laugh! And proud they were, of their lineage, and their war records, and their women and children, of their great herds of horses, and their vast domain. But it was a just and natural pride, in no way different from the pride of our own best people. And with it was great kindliness of heart and ready proffers of help for all the unfortunate, for widows and orphans, the old and the sick. Such were the old-time Blackfoot chiefs.