FOOTNOTE:
[1] The Wolf's Road, Mah-kwi Ok-so-kwi, is the constellation of stars we commonly call the Milky Way.
CHAPTER VII THE BUFFALO TRAP
The leaves of the cottonwoods along the stream were falling; high up in the blue sky geese and swans and ducks were honking and trumpeting and whistling and quacking as they winged their way southward toward the land of Us-kus-sai Ne-po-yi: always summer. Milk River was not a good place to winter, because there was nowhere along its upper stretches much fuel; so the chiefs held a big council one day to decide where the cold season should be passed. After a whole afternoon's talk it was found that most of them preferred the upper Two Medicine River, and there the camp was moved after a couple of days' travel. The lodges were set up in a very heavily timbered bottom that was sheltered on the north by a high sandstone cliff several miles long.
This place the Blackfeet called the Pis-kan, or, as we would say, "The Trap": for here they were wont to decoy and kill—when everything was right—a whole herd of buffalo at one time. The last time the tribe had been there, Sinopah was so young that he did not know what was being done, but since then he had heard of the wonderful way in which the animals were there lured to their death, and he was very anxious to see it all.
After the camp was well settled, preparations were made for decoying or trapping a herd of buffalo. Only a few men in the whole tribe were able to do this, and so they were believed to have great "medicine": that is, mysterious power given them by the gods. One of these men was White Wolf, the father of Sinopah.
White Wolf came into his lodge one evening after a visit to the other chiefs, and said to old Red Crane: "There is not much meat left in the lodges: we have decided that it is best to try to make a big killing to-morrow; you are asked to decoy a herd."
"Hah! That all depends on many things," the old man answered. "There must be a herd in the right place out there on the plain; the wind must not be in the south; and my medicine has to be right, else I will fail to do the work. I will begin now, however, and try my best to bring meat. Send the camp crier around at once to notify the hunters to sing the coyote song before they sleep."