SHEEP EATERS PASS TO THE HOLY SHRINE
CHAPTER V
A TALK WITH LITTLE BEAR
The term Paint Rocks will convey various meanings to the average reader. A description seems in order to make more plain what these rocks are like.
Just imagine a stream of clear, pure water running through a canyon, small and narrow, with a smooth-surfaced rock face, cut by the water when the earth and stone were young and tender, on which one could write as on a black-board in a school room. Here the Sheep Eaters came to record their history. Here father and son came to write the traditions of their tribe; and here came that old squaw, whose name in her own tribe, as translated by the Crow chief, Pretty Eagle, was, "Under-The-Ground." Emblems, original with their tribe, were cut with the obsidian arrowhead in irregular semicircles. The outlines of men and women were about three feet in height. In some places the storms, the wind and the water, had erased parts of the engraving. In other places hunters had built their smoking camp-fires against the face of the rock and blurred the markings, or had wantonly fired bullets into the faces and destroyed the work of the Indians.
As I was getting my camera arranged to get a picture of one group, an old Indian came riding up the creek on a pinto pony. Soon came dogs, and squaws dragging their tepee poles, and without so much as a "How," they began tearing off their packs and setting up their lodges. The packs consisted of old kettles, stale meat, old elk skins made into robes, parflesakes filled to the brim with pemmican, made of elk fat, choke cherries, and jerked elk half dried and half horsehair. Several young puppies, too young to walk, were tied with soft thongs just under the fore legs of the ponies.
Within half an hour the whole Little Basin was filled with the smell of spoiled meat and musty old blankets, spread in the sun to dry, and the whole camp looked like the dump ground of a small town.
The old chief turned the entire care of the horses, dogs, provisions and camp over to the squaws, and while they were busy, he came slowly toward the camera, watching every move I made in trying to get a picture of the Paint Rocks. He was about five feet tall, heavy set and rather dark. His good, round head well set on fine shoulders, was covered with long, heavy hair, carefully braided in small braids, which hung below his waist. At intervals these braids were cemented with some wax and painted red and green, which gave them the appearance of being bound with straps. The sternness of his large mouth, square chin, and heavy jaw was relieved by the large, brown eyes. Three scars on his face told of a battle fought many years ago, as also did the knife scar on his breast and the old gun-shot wound. On his wrist were brass wristlets, and three missing finger joints told of mournings for his dead. A medicine bag and a half dozen elk teeth swung at his throat; these and beaded moccasins and leggings showed him to be a chief. An Indian he was all through.