Although Lone Bull and Sinopah were playing chiefs, they could not carry it out to the end. Long before everything was fixed, they went inside and got in the way of the busy women, but the mothers did not scold them. A small fire was soon made in the centre of the lodge, and when it had burned down to a bed of red coals some sheets of dried meat were quickly roasted on them. Never were there happier children than those three, sitting there in their own little lodge and eating the first meal in it. They at once began to plan their play for the next day, and at sundown were glad enough to go home with their mothers, leaving the big cottonwood trees to guard their treasures during the night.
CHAPTER IV SINOPAH'S ESCAPE FROM THE BUFFALO
That evening the chiefs of the tribe held a council and decided to move camp from the Marias River, where they then were, out to the Sweet-Grass Hills. These are three lone buttes about one hundred miles east of the main range of the Rocky Mountains, and right on the line separating Montana and the Canadian province of Alberta. There were then, however, no monuments to mark the boundary of the two countries. The line had not yet been surveyed. When the Blackfeet were told that the Americans—Long Knives—owned the country to the south of the Hills, and the English—the Red Coats—the land north of them, they only laughed, and said: "That is a mistake. Neither the Red Coats nor the Long Knives own any of this country. Away back in the beginning of things our god whom we call Old Man, made the world, and the animals, and us. When he made this part of the world he saw that it was the best of all, and so he gave it to us. It is our land; the white people cannot have it."
When they said that, the Blackfeet did not know how many the white people were and how strong. Since that time their game has all been killed, and their lands have been taken from them by the white race.
But I must go on with my story.
Very early the next morning, the camp crier went through the great camp shouting that it was to be moved to the Sweet-Grass Hills. Almost as fast as he went the lodges came down behind him. The men drove in and caught the horses, the women packed them, and in a very short time the long column of riders, loose and packed horses was strung out, heading north across the big plain. There were so many people, so many horses, that the column was all of three miles long. Most of the men and women were splendidly dressed in buckskin clothes, beaded and painted and fringed; and then the trappings of the horses, the queer pouches, sacks, and parfleches they carried, were also painted in bright colors, so that the whole procession was not unlike a rainbow snake moving out across the brown plain. It was a romantic and barbaric pageant of shifting color.
On this morning there was something new in the column. Along in the centre of it, behind the horses that carried White Wolf's lodge and packs, and his family, walked the three dogs, one behind another, loaded with the play lodge and the little packs. Most of the children of the tribe had not seen them working the day before, and now they came crowding close on their horses, very much excited, and wishing that they could have such an outfit. Right behind the dogs were Sinopah and Lone Bull and Otaki on their ponies, and they were very much pleased at all this attention.