Blackfoot Lodge Tales. George Bird Grinnell
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INTRODUCTION
INDIANS AND THEIR STORIES
STORIES OF ADVENTURE
THE PEACE WITH THE SNAKES
THE LOST WOMAN
ADVENTURES OF BULL TURNS ROUND
K[)U]T-O'-YIS
THE BAD WIFE
THE LOST CHILDREN
MIK-A'PI—RED OLD MAN
HEAVY COLLAR AND THE GHOST WOMAN
THE WOLF-MAN
THE FAST RUNNERS
TWO WAR TRAILS
STORIES OF ANCIENT TIMES
SCARFACE
ORIGIN OF THE I-KUN-UH'-KAH-TSI
ORIGIN OF THE MEDICINE PIPE
THE BEAVER MEDICINE
THE BUFFALO ROCK
ORIGIN OF THE WORM PIPE
THE GHOSTS' BUFFALO
STORIES OF OLD MAN
THE BLACKFOOT GENESIS
THE DOG AND THE STICK
THE BEARS
THE WONDERFUL BIRD
THE RACE
THE BAD WEAPONS
THE ELK
OLD MAN DOCTORS
THE ROCK
THE THEFT FROM THE SUN
THE FOX
OLD MAN AND THE LYNX
THE STORY OF THE THREE TRIBES.
THE PAST AND THE PRESENT
DAILY LIFE AND CUSTOMS
HOW THE BLACKFOOT LIVED
SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
HUNTING
THE BLACKFOOT IN WAR
RELIGION
MEDICINE PIPES AND HEALING
THE BLACKFOOT OF TO-DAY
BLACKFOOT LODGE TALES
We were sitting about the fire in the lodge on Two Medicine. Double Runner, Small Leggings, Mad Wolf, and the Little Blackfoot were smoking and talking, and I was writing in my note-book. As I put aside the book, and reached out my hand for the pipe, Double Runner bent over and picked up a scrap of printed paper, which had fallen to the ground. He looked at it for a moment without speaking, and then, holding it up and calling me by name, said:—
"Pi-nut-ú-ye is-tsím-okan, this is education. Here is the difference between you and me, between the Indians and the white people. You know what this means. I do not. If I did know, I should be as smart as you. If all my people knew, the white people would not always get the best of us."
"Nísah (elder brother), your words are true. Therefore you ought to see that your children go to school, so that they may get the white man's knowledge. When they are men, they will have to trade with the white people; and if they know nothing, they can never get rich. The times have changed. It will never again be as it was when you and I were young."
"You say well, Pi-nut-ú-ye is-tsím-okan, I have seen the days; and I know it is so. The old things are passing away, and the children of my children will be like white people. None of them will know how it used to be in their father's days unless they read the things which we have told you, and which you are all the time writing down in your books."
"They are all written down, Nísah, the story of the three tribes, Sík-si-kau, Kaínah, and Pik[)u]ni."
INDIANS AND THEIR STORIES
The most shameful chapter of American history is that in which is recorded the account of our dealings with the Indians. The story of our government's intercourse with this race is an unbroken narrative of injustice, fraud, and robbery. Our people have disregarded honesty and truth whenever they have come in contact with the Indian, and he has had no rights because he has never had the power to enforce any.
Protests against governmental swindling of these savages have been made again and again, but such remonstrances attract no general attention. Almost every one is ready to acknowledge that in the past the Indians have been shamefully robbed, but it appears to be believed that this no longer takes place. This is a great mistake. We treat them now much as we have always treated them. Within two years, I have been present on a reservation where government commissioners, by means of threats, by bribes given to chiefs, and by casting fraudulently the votes of absentees, succeeded after months of effort in securing votes enough to warrant them in asserting that a tribe of Indians, entirely wild and totally ignorant of farming, had consented to sell their lands, and to settle down each upon 160 acres of the most utterly arid and barren land to be found on the North American continent. The fraud perpetrated on this tribe was as gross as could be practised by one set of men upon another. In a similar way the Southern Utes were recently induced to consent to give up their reservation for another.
Americans are a conscientious people, yet they take no interest in these frauds. They have the Anglo-Saxon spirit of fair play, which sympathizes with weakness, yet no protest is made against the oppression which the Indian suffers. They are generous; a famine in Ireland, Japan, or Russia arouses the sympathy and calls forth the bounty of the nation, yet they give no heed to the distress of the Indians, who are in the very midst of them. They do not realize that Indians are human beings like themselves.
For this state of things there must be a reason, and this reason is to be found, I believe, in the fact that practically no one has any personal knowledge of the Indian race. The few who are acquainted with them are neither writers nor public speakers, and for the most part would find it easier to break a horse than to write a letter. If the general public knows little of this race, those who legislate about them are equally ignorant. From the congressional page who distributes the copies of a pending bill, up through the representatives and senators who vote for it, to the president whose signature makes the measure a law, all are entirely unacquainted with this people or their needs.
Many stories about Indians have been written, some of which are interesting and some, perhaps, true. All, however, have been written by civilized people, and have