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

by James Willard Schultz

I was tremendously interested. "What became of the man figure?" I asked.

"The finder kept it for some time, and then sacrificed it to the sun; hung it to the roof of a medicine lodge," he answered, and it seemed strange to think that an image of Jesus had been presented to a pagan god.

"How long ago do you think it was that white men put up this pile?" I asked.

"Fifty, maybe sixty, maybe seventy winters. In my father's time white men came to the camp of the Earth House People. It was in winter time. They rode horses; wore iron shirts; carried guns with big, flaring muzzles, and long knives. From the camp of the Earth House People they went west, returned soon, and went back north, whence they had come. None of our tribes saw them."

I said to myself: "The Sieur de la Vérendrie's party must have put up this monument, and yonder Belt Mountains must be those that they named the Shining Mountains!"

Well I knew the story of the brave and unfortunate Sieur. My grandfather, who had had some interest in his ventures, had related it many times. Because of enemies who had the favor of the Court, in France, he had failed in his undertakings to establish a great fur trade in the West, and he had died of a broken heart! I must confess that I felt some disappointment upon learning that I was not, as I had thought, the first of my race to see this part of the country. However, the knowledge that I had been the first white person to traverse the great Saskatchewan-Missouri River country comforted me.

As we rode homeward I learned from Lone Walker that a man named Sees Far had discovered the monument and taken the cross. He was long since dead. I was afraid to ask where the medicine lodge was built at which the cross had been sacrificed to the sun. The penalty for robbing the sun was death. The Blackfeet tribes had too much reverence for their gods to do that, and war parties of other tribes, traveling through the country and coming upon a deserted medicine lodge, gave it a wide berth; they feared the power of the shining god for whom it had been built. I remember that the Kai-na tribe of the Blackfeet once came upon three free trappers (or were they the American Company's engagés—I forget) robbing a medicine lodge, and killed them all!

I come now to a part of my story that is not so very happy. On the morning that we broke the Arrow River camp, the chiefs, and the guard that generally rode ahead of the column, remained on the camp ground, gathered here and there in little groups smoking and telling stories, until long after the people had packed up and were traveling up the long coulee through which the trail led to the plain on the south side of the valley. I went on with Red Crow and Mink Woman, and a young man named Eagle Plume, Lone Walker's nephew, helping them herd along the chief's big band of horses in which, of course, were those that he had given me. As soon as we got out of the narrow confine of the coulee we drove the herd at one side of the beaten travois and pack trail, keeping about even with Lone Walker's outfit of women and children riders, and their loaded horses. Their place was at the head of the Little Robes Band, and that had its place in the long line about a half mile from the lead band, which was that of the Lone Eaters.

We had traveled three or four miles from the river, and were wending our way among a wide, long setting of rough hills, keeping ever in the low places between them, when, without the slightest warning, a large body of riders dashed out from behind a steep hill and made for the head of our column. Far off as they were, we could hear them raise their war song, and could see that they were all decked out in their war finery.

"Crows! Crows! They attack us!" I heard men crying as they urged their horses forward.