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

by James Willard Schultz

The timber along these streams was alive with deer and elk, and from the plains countless herds of buffaloes and antelopes came swarming to them morning and evening to drink. The chiefs decreed that we should camp there for some days for hunting and drying meat, and with Red Crow for my companion I had great sport, killing several of each kind of game. We would ride out in the morning, followed by Red Crow's sister, Su-yi-kai-yi-ah-ki, or Mink Woman, riding a gentle horse and leading a couple of pack horses for bringing in the meat. Of course hundreds of hunters went out each day, but by picketing each evening the horses we were to use next day, and starting very early in the morning, we got a long start of most of them and generally had all the meat we could pack before noon.

We killed buffaloes mostly, for that was the staple meat, meat that one never tired of eating. Antelope, deer, and elk meat was good fresh, for a change, but it did not dry well. As fast as we got the buffalo meat home, Sis-tsi-ah-ki divided it equally in quality and amount among the wives, and they cut it into very thin sheets, and hung it in the sun, and in about two days' time it dried out, and was then packed for transportation in parflèches, large rawhide receptacles shaped like an envelope, the flaps laced together.

Su-yi-kai-yi-ah-ki was of great help to us in our hunting. We often sent her into the timber, or around behind a ridge, or up a coulee to drive game to us, and she seldom failed to do it. She was also an expert wielder of the knife, able to skin an animal as quickly as either of us. She was about my age, and tall and slender, quick in all her actions, and very beautiful. Her especial pride was her hair, which she always kept neatly done into two long braids. The ends of them almost touched the ground when she stood up straight. Best of all, she had the same kind heart and happy disposition as her mother, Sis-tsi-ah-ki.

Let me say here that a woman's or girl's name always terminated in "ah-ki," the term for woman. For instance, if a man was named after a bear, he would be called Kyai-yo. If a woman was so named, she would be Kyai-yo-ah-ki (Bear Woman).

From the junction of Belly River and Old Man's River, we trailed southwest across the plain to a large stream that I was told was named Ahk-ai-nus-kwo-na-e-tuk-tai (Gathering-of-Many-Chiefs River), for the reason that in years gone by the chiefs of the Blackfeet tribes had there met the chiefs of tribes living on the west side of the mountains, and concluded a peace treaty with them, which, however, lasted only two summers. We camped beside the river that evening, and the next day, following it up in its deep, wide valley, came to the shore of a large lake from which it ran, and there made camp. Never had I seen so beautiful a lake, or water so clear, and I said so as well as I could in signs and my small knowledge of the language I was trying so hard to learn.

"It is beautiful," Red Crow told me, "but wait until to-morrow; I will then show you a lake far larger and more beautiful.

"We call these the Lakes Inside," he went on. "See, this lake lies partly within the mountains. The one above is wholly within them. But you shall see it all to-morrow."

Over and over I repeated the name for them: Puhkt-o-muk-si-kim-iks (Lakes Inside), until sure that I would not forget it. Now they are known as St. Mary's Lakes.

The morning after we camped at the foot of the lake, Red Crow, his sister, Mink Woman, and I were riding up the east side of the lake soon after daylight, and before any of the hunters were ready to start out. We followed a heavy game trail through quaking aspen groves and across little open, grassy parks, the still water of the lake always in view on our right, and across it the dark, timbered slope running up to a flat-topped mountain ending in an abrupt cliff hundreds of feet in height. We passed a beautiful island close in to our shore, and saw a small band of elk crossing a grassy opening in its heavy timber. Elk and deer, and now and then a few buffaloes, were continually getting out of our way, and once I got a glimpse of a big bull moose as it trotted into a willow thicket, and learned its name from Red Crow's exclamation, "Siks-tsi-so!" But I did not know for some time that the word means "black-going-out-of-sight." A most appropriate name for the shy animal, for generally that is about all that the hunter sees of it, its dark hind quarters disappearing in the thick cover it inhabits.