A RED INDIAN'S OWN STORY

Evening Star, Issue 20428, 8 March 1930, Page 9

A RED INDIAN'S OWN STORY

A GOOD-NIGHT TALE At last we know what a Ilefl Indian is really like. Long Lance, a Blacktoot chid, has written his autobiography, and it is ns oxciting as the wildest Wild West romance. The first thing ho can remember is a fight. Tho camp was full ot confusion, and women wept as they ran to the*i 1 ponies, lie saw blood running from his mother’s hand. Ho was a baby then. Years afterwards he heard that Crow Indians had attacked the camp, and his uncle was among the slain. , , in his childhood the men moved about the prairies from camp to camp, and lived by hunting alone. Only in tho winter, when tho snows made travelling impossible, did they remain in ono place tor long. Then they lived on dried meat; and when supplies ran out, and the snows lingered, they endured groat hunger. Long Lauco remembers how he and other boys stole their mothers’ rawhide bags to eat. Yet the young lied Indians were very happy. They had all sorts of games to play, and were always dreaming of becoming great braves. They practised with blunt arrows, they wrestled, they had competitions in stone-throwing, and thev ran races. Their elders ran foot races, too, and a favourite race for the -ii«n was from Blackloot Crossing to Medicine Hat and back, about 24U miles. They would start one mornin" and return the next day. It was part of the Indian’s religion to keep bis body fit and a greedy or lazy man was treated as a pariah. When Long Lanco wa s five ins big brother picked him up one morning early carried him to the river, kicked a hole in the ice, and threw him in. Then he fished the gasping baby out. Every Bed Indian boy had to bathe in the river every morning, and he had to be whipped tor teach him to endure pain bravely. They were taught there were two great shames—-to lie and to be a coward. During tho long days in winter camp the lads would ask their fathers to erect a whipping bar in tho council lodge, a bar stretched across two poles at an average boy’s height. One by one the hoys would walk to the bur and hold it while someone flogged tneir bare backs with a bunch of stout branches. If a boy let go tho bar it was a sign for the flogger to stop, and the boys vied in seeing bow long they could hold out. They would also sit round tho camp fire in the evening burning little piles of pine needles on the backs of their bands to inure themselves to pain. This courage was a real thing, t/liici Carry-the-Kettle, an . Assimbome, was once spying on a Piegan camp with his hair-brother, who lay some distance from him in a coulee filled with undergrowth. Tho brother was discovered, and Carry-the-Kettle saw him led away to a big tepee in the camp. Carry-the-Kettle could have returned safely to his own tribe. He had had no food for seven days. But he rose from his hiding place, and walking straight to the big tepee, asked: “ What are you going to do with my brother?” Ho was seized at once. Word was sent round that there were two Assiniboines to kill. Presently the prisoners were led out to a crowd of angry men brandishing knives. The brother? prepared to die together. But a tall man on a horse rode through the crowd and push-d them back. “ T'.ua man who cairn to die with his brother is too bravo to kill, he ’said. It was the chief, and the crowd obeyed. He gave Carry-the-Kettle a gnu and a pony, and sent the two brothers back to their homes. The Red Men kept a constant lookout in those days. Once, when Long Lance’s people were passing through tho Crow country, they paused to rest on the shores of the Upper Missouri River. Two braves were chaffing each other as to which was tho better shot, and ono said; “All right. Do you see that bit of log floating iu tho middle of tho stream ? ” Ho fired, and the log leaped forward, waving two arms frantically for a moment. Then it drifted again. The marksman jumped into tho river and after the struggle hauled the log ashore. It was not o log, but a cylinder of birch bark. A Crow_ spy had been swimming down tho river with his body under water and watching tho Black foot camp through holes in the cylinder. The buffalo was of tremendous importance to the Red men, who made tents and clothes of buffalo hide and prepared buffalo meat so that it could bo stored for the winter months. Long Lance took part in a buffalo hunt when ho was quite a lad The men raced their Imrses after the flying herd, while tho children and women followed as well as they could on ponies. One boy called Shakes-the-Other-Fellow was riding right on his father’s heels when a bull turned and faced the Red Indian’s horse. Two other buffaloes bumped into the ono which had turned, and buffaloes, pony, and boy all went down together. The next thing the hunters saw: .was Shakes-the-

Other-Fellow on & buffalo’s back being carried madly away. Ho had clutched at the woolly shoulders to save himself from being trampled underfoot. Braves galloped after him, but it was a long time before they could get close enough to shoot the buffalo without risk of shooting the rider. The Red men loved their dogs and their ponies It was a terrible thing for the Blackfoot camp when all the ponies were stolen one night and driven off; but a still more terrible thing was to come. , One winter a Blackfoot named Red Dog had pitched his tepees a little distance from the rest of the camp, and an old woman going to visit him one morning found five people there, murdered in their sleep. Red Dog’s two daughters, Ermine Tail and Bird’s Skin, had been carried off.

At onoe the Blackfeet_ set off to avenge the crime, following the trail of snowshoes for four weary, hungry days. In the end they caught up the two stolen girls, limping behind their captors, a party of seventy Cree Indians.

A Blackfoot crept up to the girls and whispered to them. The girls said the Croes made them stay up every night to dry and clean all the snowshoes. The Blackfoot told them to scorch the snowshoes and mix them up, so that each Cree should have a big and a small shoe. In the darkness the Blackfoot braves surrounded the Cree camp, and as dawn came they gave n war whoop and rushed down to avenge their kinsmen. The Crees tried to struggle into the odd pairs of snowshoes, but even when they succeeded the charred framework gave way and they floundered helplessly in the slushy snow. There could only bo victory for tho Blackfeet. In this battle a Blackfoot called Rock Thunder had a leg sinew cut. For several days two warriors helped him along, but at last ho demanded that all should hear him.

“Brothers,” he said, “we must travel to the mountains before we are safe from the Crees. It is many days’ march, and you are travelling slowly because of mo. Better one should die than many; make my funeral pyre.” The warriors refused at first, but Rock Thunder besought them so passionately that at last they yielded. Logs and brushwood were gathered, and Rock Thunder climbed tho pyre. With his own flints he lit it, and then he sang a chant of triumph, looking toward the mountains So he died. The other Blackfeet reached the mountains safely, and when spring cam© they set out to find a nerd of wild horses to replace their stolen ponies, _ . . Only the horse’s inquisitive nature enables a man to catch him. The red men, on finding a herd, came quietly up to it. Off galloped the horses; but they returned to watch tho strange new animals. For _ ten days tho red men travelled quietly beiiind the herd, till the horses were convinced that men were harmless creatures like birds and rabbits. Then one night the braves slipped away to build a corral of logs against tlm two sides of a rock-bound ravine. Then every man, woman, and child* comhineil to drive the herd into the corral. Five hundred wild horses stampeded into the trap. Next day 200 of the best had a rawhide lariat thrown about their necks, and the others were set free. Long Lance loves the ways of his people, and he must have sorrowed when tho white men made tho Red Indians live in reserves and send their children to school. But he can appreciate the things that are good in white civilisation; and for_ tho sake of those things he enlisted in 1914 and won a commission, together with a row of medals for gallantry. And which of us could not join with him in his Sun Dance prayer? “ Great Spirit, our Father, help us and tench us in the way of tho truth; and keep me and my family and my tribe on our true Father’s path, so that wo may bo in good condition in our minds and our bodies. “ Teach all our little ones in Your way. Make peace over all the world. We thank You for the sun and the good summer weather again; and we hope they will bring good crops of grass for the animals, and things to eat for all peoples,” With this prayer we take leave of Long Lance, who has written a true and beautiful book, showing the Red Indian in all his goodness and badness, as be lived in tho days that are gone.