My mothers dropped their loads before the lodge entrance. The dogs were unhitched; and, while old Turtle fed them, Strikes-Many Woman carried the wood into the lodge and piled it by the corral, where it was handy to the fire.
I was eager to have my dog broken to harness and begged my grandmother to make a travois for him. “I will,” she said, “but wait another moon. Your dog will then be fed fat, after the long winter. A dog should be two years old, and strong, when he is broken. To work a dog too young or when he is weak will hurt his back.”
A month after this, my mothers came home one afternoon from woodgathering, dragging each a cottonwood pole about eight feet long. They peeled these poles bare of bark, and laid them up on the corn stage to dry.
“What are the poles for?” I asked.
“They are for your travois,” said my grandmother. “Your dog Sheepeesha is now old enough to work; and my little granddaughter, too, must learn to be useful.”
I was ready to cry out and dance, when I heard these words of my grandmother; and I thought I could never, never wait until those poles dried. The heavy ladder we used for mounting the stage lay on the ground when not in use. I was too little to lift it, to climb up to the poles; but I went every day to stand below and gaze at them longingly.
One afternoon my grandmother fetched the poles into the lodge. “They are dry now,” she said. “I will make the travois frame.”
With her big knife she hacked the greater ends of the poles flat, so that they would run smooth on the ground. The small ends she crossed for the joint, cutting a notch in each to make them fit. She bound the joint with strips of the big tendon in a buffalo’s neck that we Indians call the eetsuta[18]. These strips drew taut as they dried, making the joint firm.
[18] ēēt sṳ´ tä
Turtle now drew a saddle, or cushion, over the poles just under the joint, sewing it down with buckskin thongs. This saddle was to keep the dog from fretting his shoulders against the poles.