Then Onesta was glad and said: “We will take you to our friends and relatives among the Blood Indians, to the tribe of the North Piegans and camp of Brings-Down-the-Sun. He is my uncle and I shall ask him to help you. He lives with his children and grandchildren in a camp on Old Man’s River. He is the wisest of all our medicine men; and knows more than any one about our legends and worship of the Sun.”
“Let us go at once,” I replied. “I want to visit that uncle of yours.”
Then were all happy and like children they showed it. They wanted to start next morning at the rising of the sun. [[166]]
[1] Medicinal and Useful Plants of the Blackfoot Indians. See [Appendix]. [↑]
CHAPTER XXIII
OUR NORTH EXPEDITION
We brought in our horses at daybreak and were on our way to Canada soon after sunrise, following an old Indian trail northward over the prairie; winding along the benches of round-topped ridges and down their long slopes, through wide grassy valleys and across streams and blue-gray rivers, clear and icy cold, always following the best grade like an old buffalo trail.
The first day we traveled far; we did not stop until evening shadows were touching the rounded summits of the grass-covered hills, camping for the night at an old Indian ground thickly strewn with buffalo bones from former feasts. Broken tepee poles were scattered about, bare frames of old sweat-lodges and blackened stones of camp-fires.