Sinopah, the Indian Boy

by James Willard Schultz

Then, one morning after the early bath in a hole cut in the ice, old Red Crane took Sinopah out to hunt with the real arrows. It was a very cold morning; the trees were covered with thick, white frost, and all up and down the valley they were popping with a noise like rifle-shots, while the ice on the river heaved and cracked with a rumbling like that of far-off thunder.

Not far below the camp they heard prairie chickens (sharp-tailed grouse) clucking, and presently saw a number of them sitting in a small cottonwood tree. The birds felt so cold that they sat all crouched on the tree limbs, and paid no attention to the man and boy approaching them.

"Well, you are close enough to them now," Red Crane told Sinopah when they had got so near that they could see the shiny black eyes of the chickens.

Sinopah dropped his robe then and fitted an arrow to his bow, one of the arrows with iron point, and took aim at a bird at the top of the tree.

"No, no! You must not shoot that one," Red Crane said, "for it would drop fluttering down among the rest and scare them all away. Shoot at the very lowest bird in the tree."

Sinopah took quick aim and let the arrow fly; and as the bow-cord twanged the chicken fell down from the limb with the arrow in it, and after a few flutters of its wings lay still on the blood-stained snow. Sinopah never said a word, but his snapping eyes showed how excited and happy he was as he shot another arrow at the next lowest bird in the tree.

This time he missed, but a third arrow brought the chicken down, and three more arrows got two more birds. He was about to shoot at a fifth bird when Red Crane seized his arm: "That is enough," he said. "You have one for your mother, one for your father, one for yourself, and one for me. Remember this: the gods do not love wasters of life. They made the animals and birds for our use, but we may kill no more than we need."

Sinopah never forgot that. Afterwards, during all his life, he was careful never uselessly to take the life of beast or bird. Most of the white hunters of our country have not done that. They have killed the buffalo and deer, the pigeons and ducks and other birds, just for the fun of seeing them die. Had they shot only just enough for food, there would still be plenty of game from one end to the other of our great land.

Having picked up the four chickens, and the arrows that had been shot, the old man and the little hunter started back toward home. Had you been in Sinopah's place, without mittens on that cold morning, you would have had your fingers frozen stiff. But he never felt the cold, and his hands were almost as active as on a summer morning. That was because he had to bathe in the frozen river every day.