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

by James Willard Schultz

We camped on Arrow River all of a week, the women busily gathering choke-cherries for winter use. Upon bringing them into camp they pounded them, pits and all, on flat rocks, and set the mass on clean rawhides to dry, and then stored it in rawhide pouches. There was never enough of it for daily use. In its raw state, or stewed, or mixed with finely pounded dry meat and marrow grease—pemmican—it was passed around as a side dish to a feast. I liked it, and always ate my share, although never without some misgivings as to the effect of the sharp and indigestible particles of pounded pits in my stomach.

During our stay at this place an old, old man named Kip-i-tai-su-yi-kak-i (Old-Woman-Stretching-Her-Legs) came into our lodge one night, took his bow and quiver case from his back, passed it to me and said: "There, my son Rising Wolf! I heard that you wanted bow and arrows, so I give you this set, one that I took long ago in battle with the Snake People. It is a good bow. The arrows are well feathered and fly straight. I hope that you will have good success with my present, and sometimes remember that I am fond of broiled tongue!"

And at that he laughed, and we all laughed with him, and I said that he should not lack for tongues, and kept my word. I was very glad to get the bow. At first it was a little too stiff for the strength of my arms, but with daily use of it my muscles grew up to its requirement of strength, and I soon became a fair shot with the feathered shafts. I did not carry the bow all the time, but always used it for running buffaloes. On my first chase with it I killed three cows, and once, several years later, shot down thirteen cows with it in one run. But that was nothing. I once saw a man, named Little Otter, shoot twenty-seven buffaloes in one run! He was a big, powerfully built man, he rode a big, swift, well-trained, buffalo horse, and every time he let an arrow fly it slipped into an animal just back of the ribs and ranged forward into the heart and lungs.

You ask how a man happened to be named Old-Woman-Stretching-Her-Legs. When a child was born, a medicine man was called in to name it, and invariably the name he gave was of something he had seen, or of some incident, in one of his dreams, or, as he believed them to be, visions. Thus, in a dream, the medicine man had seen an old woman at rest, or sleeping, and she had stretched down her legs to get more ease. Hence the name. A woman generally retained through life the name given her at birth. A man, as I have explained, was entitled to take a new name every time he counted a big coup. Some odd names that I remember are Chewing-Black-Bones; Back-Coming-in-Sight; Tail-Feathers-Coming-in-Sight-over-the-Hill; Falling Bear; and He-Talked-with-the-Buffalo.

During the time of our encampment on Arrow River, Red Crow and I killed a number of fine bighorn rams along the cliffs, and the skins of these, tanned into soft leather and smoked by the women, were made into a shirt and leggings for me. It was time that I had them, for my one suit of company clothes was falling to pieces. Also, my shoes had given out. Attired now in leather clothes, breechclout, moccasins, and with a toga, or wrap of buffalo cow leather, I was all Indian except in color. Lone Walker himself made the suit for me. Men were their own tailors; the women made only their moccasins. In time I learned to cut out and sew my clothing.

Red Crow had become the owner of one of the two huge Spanish bits that we had found in the cave with the rest of the Crow belongings. It was beautifully fashioned of hand-forged steel, its long shanks inlaid with silver, and he took good care of it, polishing and cleaning it frequently. As he was thus occupied one evening, Lone Walker pointed to the bit and asked me if I knew whence it had come. I didn't, of course, and said so, whereupon he told Mink Woman to take down a long, well-wrapped roll of buckskin that was invariably fastened to the lodge poles above his couch. I had often wondered what it might contain. He undid the fastenings, unrolled wrap after wrap of leather, and held up to my astonished gaze a shirt of mail, very fine meshed and light, and an exquisitely fashioned rapier. He passed them to me for examination, and I found etched on the rapier blade the legend: "Francisco Alvarez. Barcelona. 1693." It was an old Spanish blade.

"The people who made the bit," he told me in signs and words, very slowly and carefully so that I would understand, "made these. They live in the Far Southland; the always-summer land. I went there once with a party of our people, traveling ever south all summer. We started from our country when the grass first started in the spring, and, counting the moons, arrived in that far Southland in the first moon of winter here. We found there white men different from those who had come to the Assiniboine River and built a fort. They were dark-skinned and black-haired, most of them. They had many horses. We went south to take their horses, and captured many of them. But not without a fight, several fights. In one of the fights I killed the man who wore this iron shirt and carried this big knife. We did not get back to our country until the middle of the next summer. That is a strong shirt. Arrows cannot pierce it. It has saved my life three different times in battle with the enemy."

Well, that was news to me, that these people went so very far, all the way to Mexico, on their raids. Afterward I heard many interesting tales of raids into the Far South, many parties going there in my time, and generally returning with great bands of horses and plunder taken from the Spanish, and from different Indian tribes. I learned that the Crows had the first horses that the Blackfeet tribes ever saw, and that they were almost paralyzed with astonishment when they saw men mount the strange, big animals and guide them in whatever direction they wished to go. But fear soon gave place to burning desire to own the useful animals, and they began raiding the herds of the Crows, the Snakes, and other Southern tribes, and the Spanish, and in time became owners of thousands of them through capture, and by natural increase. Lone Walker told me that his people first obtained horses when his father's father was a small boy, and as near as I could figure it, that was about 1680 to 1700. The acquisition of the horse caused a vast change in the life of the Blackfeet tribes. Before that time, with only their wolf-like dogs for beasts of burden, their wanderings had been limited to the forests of the Slave Lakes region, and the edge of the plains of the Saskatchewan. With horses for riding and packing, and, later, a few guns obtained from the Sieur de la Vérendrie's company, they swept southward and conquered a vast domain and became the terror of all surrounding tribes. The Blackfeet named the horse, po-no-ka-mi-ta (elk-dog), because, like the dog, it carried burdens, and was of large size, like the elk.

One evening, there at Arrow River, Lone Walker told me that we would ride out early the next morning, and he would show me a "white men's leavings,"—nap-i-kwaks o-kit-stuks-in, in his language. I asked him what it was, and was told to be patient; that I should see it. Accordingly, we rode out on the plain on the trail by which we had come down to the river, then turned sharply to the right, following the general course of the big, walled valley, and after several hours' travel came to a pile of rocks set on top of a low ridge on the plain, and at the head of a very long coulee, heading there and running down to the river, several miles away. "There! That is white men's leavings!" the chief exclaimed. "We know not how long ago they piled those rocks. It was in my father's time that our people found the pile, just as you see it, except that at that time a white metal figure of a man against black, crossed sticks, his arms outstretched, was stuck in the top of it, so that it faced yonder Belt Mountains."