Sooner or later, inevitably as the tide marches from neap to flood, the waves of American settlement must lap the upper plains, and pioneers find their way into the hunting grounds of the Blackfeet. "Kill one," said Rising Wolf to the Council, "and a thousand will come to the funeral."
The first American to secure a foothold among the Blackfeet was the Crow, a mulatto, and according to one version of the story an escaped slave. Other accounts allow for his being part negro, but for the rest a Mexican Indian. Certainly he had a touch of the Spaniard in his manner. He would make a statement, and finish it with a query—"Yes?" "No?" He would commence a sentence in words and end it with a gesture. The fellow passed himself off as an Indian, an authentic Absaroka warrior with three Crow wives and a litter of children; and he was known to the tribes as the Crow. Rising Wolf described him as a big, lusty, hearty, jovial ruffian, lavish with gifts, fond of display, hail-fellow-well-met with the chiefs, a braggart, a monstrous liar, without fear; and, under that surface of him, subtle, sinuous, fork-tongued, secret, deadly.
When Rain advised the chief medicine man of the Absaroka, had she been a little thoughtful of her own benefit, she might have foreseen the calling together of the Absaroka Council, the delivery of her message to the chiefs, and the conveyance of every word with embellishments to the Crow for his information and action. The Blackfoot priestess was not worldly-wise. The Crow was all that. He went to the chiefs in council and called them a pack of fools. "You wanted fire water," said he, "and I delivered the goods. You did not engage me to ruin your enemies the Blackfeet. It would have paid me just as well to ruin them."
They asked him what he meant.
"I am the Devil's merchant," he explained. "The Devil pays me pretty good money for bringing destruction to silly Indian tribes. How much will you pay me to go and ruin the Blackfeet, as I ruined you?"
"If the white man's Devil pays you," asked the chief, "why should we hire you?"
"All right," said the Crow. "I guess I can put up the same goods for your allies, the Snakes. I don't run half the risk there that I would with the Blackfeet."
The head chief lost his temper. "We'll burn this trader's wagons, share his ponies, and put a price on his scalp. Then he can go to the Devil."
"Of course," observed the Crow, "all traders will know how you kept faith with me, and what to expect if they come with trade goods to your camps. May the Blackfeet," he added piously, "drive off the rest of your ponies, scalp the rest of your braves, enslave your women, butcher your children, and blot out your camp fires. They will too. My medicine says they're coming, and your rotten tribes are in poor shape to meet them."
In the end the Absaroka Council hired the Crow to ruin the Blackfeet. Afterwards, he said, he would marry that Blackfoot priestess. Rain should be his squaw.