Sinopah, the Indian Boy

by James Willard Schultz

Now, while old Red Crane was teaching Sinopah to hunt and kill game with bow and arrow, Otaki's mother was teaching her to do woman's work. The little lodge had been set up for the children in the shelter of thick willow brush where the wind could not blow, and they now had many happy days in it. Lone Bull, Otaki's brother, was with them, and the two boys hunted, while Otaki gathered small pieces of deadwood for the fire, brought water from the river in a small pot, and did all the other work of the lodge, such as sweeping the hard, smooth earth floor with a broom made of a bunch of willow brush, and straightening out the soft robe couches.

Some days the boys would hunt a long time and come home to the little lodge without anything. Other times they would bring in a couple of prairie chickens, or one or two rabbits. Arriving at the door of the lodge they would cry out: "Otaki, we have arrived. Come get the meat we have killed."

The little girl would then come out and say: "Kyai-yo! What a fine killing my hunters have made. Go inside now, and I will soon have meat on the fire."

Then, while the two boys sat on their couches before the fire and dried their wet moccasins, she took her little knife from the sheath dangling from her belt, and skinned and cleaned the rabbits or birds, then brought them inside and roasted them on the hot, bright-red coals. It is true that the meat did not taste so good as that of the buffalo and deer and elk and antelope that their fathers brought to camp, but they pretended that it was even better because they had killed it. They were very proud of being able to get their own food from the timber along the river. White children would not have liked the chicken and rabbit meat that Otaki cooked, because she did not put any salt on it. The Indians never used salt before the white people taught them to put it in their food, and even to this day many of them do not care for it.

One day the two boys went away down the river, farther than they had yet gone on their hunts, and found three bullberry bushes still full of fruit. When first ripe, these berries are so sour that no one can eat them; but the freezing weather of winter turns certain of the acids into sugar, and then the berries taste something like currants, only very much better. They have both a tart and a sweet taste, and not only the Indians but birds are very fond of them, the prairie chickens especially.

When the boys found the three bushes, or rather small trees full of the fruit, the first thing they did was to strip off bunches of the ripe, red berries and eat them. They wondered how it was that the birds and the women of the camp had not long since found and taken them all.

They soon ate all they could hold, and then said Lone Bull: "We should have all these berries for our lodge; there is a great quantity of them; enough to last us all winter."

"You talk wisely," Sinopah answered. "But of course gathering berries is not men's work. It is best that we bring Otaki up here to gather them."

"But she isn't strong enough for that," Lone Bull objected. "Of course she should come and help, but I think that we ought to get our mothers to do the work."

"Well, then, you go after them and I will stay here and keep any one who may come along from taking the berries," said Sinopah. "No one shall have them: they are our find."