BY JAMES WILLARD SCHULTZ With Illustrations BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1916 COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY JAMES WILLARD SCHULTZ ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published April 1916 The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A TO LOUIS WARREN HILL, ESQ. TRUE FRIEND TO MY BLACKFEET PEOPLE, AND THE ONE WHO HAS DONE MORE THAN ANY OTHER INDIVIDUAL, OR ANY ORGANIZATION, TO MAKE THE WONDERS OF GLACIER NATIONAL PARK ACCESSIBLE TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, THIS BOOK IS DED

A FTER an absence of many years, I have returned to visit for a time my Blackfeet relatives and friends, and we are camping along the mountain trails where, in the long ago, we hunted buffalo, and elk, and moose, and all the other game peculiar to this region. To-day we pitched our lodges under Rising Wolf Mountain, that massive, sky-piercing, snow-crested height of red-and-gray rock which slopes up so steeply from the north shore of Upper Two Medicine Lake. This afternoon we saw upon it, some t

We are a considerable camp of people: Yellow Wolf, my old uncle-in-law; Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill, another uncle-in-law; Big Spring; Two Guns; Black Bull; Stabs-by-Mistake; Eagle Child; Eli Guardipe, or Takes-Gun-Ahead. And with them they have their eleven women and fourteen children. All are my especial friends, and all the men have been to war—some of them many times—and have counted coup upon the enemy. Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill has many battle scars on different parts of hi

Again my people are filled with resentment against the whites. I told them this afternoon that the falls in the river between this and the lower lake had been given a foolish white men’s name. I could not tell them what it was, for there is no Blackfeet equivalent for the word “Trick.” But what a miserable, circus-suggesting name that is to give to one of the most beautiful of waterfalls, and the only one of its kind in America, and in all the world, for all I know! A short distance below the ou

D OWN came our lodges this morning, and to-night we are camped in Cutbank Canyon, just below the great beaver ponds some six or seven miles from the head of the stream. When I first saw these ponds, years and years ago, they were dotted with beaver houses, and at dusk one could see the busy woodcutters swimming from them in all directions to get their evening meal of willow or quaking aspen bark, preparatory to beginning their nightly work of storing food for winter use. I never killed a beaver,

Even in my day the many beaver dams in this wide canyon were in good repair, and the ponds were dotted with inhabited beaver lodges. There are few of the little woodcutters here now, but in time to come, under the sure protection of the supervisor of this Glacier National Park, they will become as numerous as they were before the white man came. Talk about beavers to-night brought out a most interesting story by Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill. Said he: “Beavers build a great dam, often worki

Yesterday Guardipe, or, as I prefer to call him, Aí-is-an-ah-mak-an (Takes-Gun-Ahead), climbed with me to the top of White Calf Mountain. There, on the extreme summit of the rough crested mountain, we came upon five bighorn, all ewes, and not one of them with a lamb beside her. During the lambing season here this year there was a continuous downpour of rain and sleet and snow, in which the newborn young undoubtedly perished. But how tame those five ewes were! We walked to within fifty yards of t

Last night, in Black Bull’s lodge, we had more tales of the long ago in this Cutbank Valley. Would that I had the time to collect all the Blackfeet legends of the various places in their once enormous domain. From the Saskatchewan to the Yellowstone, and from the Rockies between these two streams, eastward for about three hundred miles, there are tales of adventure, of camp-life, and wonderful legends, for every mountain, stream, butte, and spring within that great area. Said Black Bull last nig

We break camp and move northward to-morrow. For the past two days some of us have been riding about on this “Backbone-of-the-World,” as the Blackfeet call the Rocky Mountains, and we have ridden our horses where, in former times, nothing but a bird could go. The Park Supervisor and his engineers and miners and sappers have blasted out trails over the highest parts of the range, making it easy and safe for tenderfeet tourists to view the wonders of this sub-Arctic, greater than Alpine range of mo

W E moved over here on Little River—or, as the whites have named it, Milk River—day before yesterday, and made camp at the lower edge of the great body of timber in which the stream has its source. We are here on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, and several miles from the boundary line of the Glacier National Park. The state game laws do not apply to the reservation, hence we have the right to hunt upon it when and where we please. Yesterday Takes-Gun-Ahead and I oiled our rifles and started ou

Not for many years, I am sure, have my relatives and friends here been so happy as they are just now. Instead of beef or no meat of any kind, as is generally the case with them when at home,—some die every winter from want of food,—they have now in every lodge real meat; meat of moose and elk and bighorn, and so are living much as they did in the days before the white men overran their country and killed off their game. A happy heart sharpens one’s wits. All day yesterday, as I knew, my two old

W E left Little River on the 5th, crossed the big ridge dividing the Arctic and the Atlantic waters, and made camp here on the big prairie at the foot of the Upper St. Mary’s Lake. In the old days this great valley, hemmed in by gigantic mountains, was my favorite hunting ground after the buffalo were exterminated and there was no more sport to be had upon the plains. Hugh Monroe, or Rising Wolf, was, of course, the first white man to see these most beautiful of all our Northern Rockies lakes; w

We have more real meat in camp. Yesterday Black Bull went up under the north point of Flat Top Mountain, which is on the Indian Reservation, and killed two fat young rams. I went fishing, and in the first pool of the river below the upper lake, caught several two- and three-pound cutthroat trout. We had a great feast in the evening—roast bighorn ribs, broiled trout, a quantity of blueberries, and so on. After the feast was over came story-telling time, and we heard this man’s and that man’s expe

Last night we all gathered in Stabs-by-Mistake’s lodge, and, while the pipe was filled and refilled, and passed from hand to hand on many rounds, we had more tales, strange and weird, of the people of the ancient days. One that our host told especially interested me, and here it is, literally translated for your perusal. It was the story, he said, of “It was in the long ago time, when all three of our tribes, the Blackfeet proper, the Bloods, and we, the Pikun′i, whom the whites mistakenly call

Not in many, many years have I been so affected as I was this morning. For some days I have had a high fever, and have slept but little at night. In-si-mak′-i (Growth Woman), Yellow Wolf’s wife, had been doctoring me with the good old remedy for fevers, sweet sage tea, but it seemed to have no effect. So Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill announced that he would have his Elk Medicine ceremony for my benefit, and that he was sure that it would cure me of my illness. We had it this morning, and to

Because we were to-day to embark upon the deep, dark waters of this lake, we yesterday had a little ceremony on the shore, beseeching the dread Under-Water People to have pity upon us and allow us to pass in safety over their domain. We had a little fire close to the water’s edge, and having filled and lighted his pipe with a coal taken from it with his sacred red tongs, old Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill smoked and made his prayers, at the same time casting into the water a little sack of h

W E moved up here the other day and made camp beside one of the most lovely lakes in all this Rocky Mountain country. In my time we called it Beaver Woman’s Lake. It is now McDermott Lake. And what a name that is for one of Nature’s gems! There are names for other lakes and peaks here just as bad as that, but we shall have nothing to say about them here. Only by an act of Congress can we get what we want done, and we have faith that within a reasonable time all these mountains and lakes and stre

W E came up here the other day to the foot of this great landmark of the country, and made camp beside a running spring in the edge of the timber. The mountain is most appropriately named. It is the outer one of an eastward projecting spur of the range, and is higher than any of the peaks behind it. A chief, a leader, should always be taller, more conspicuous in every way than his followers. This mountain gradually slopes up eastward from the one behind it to an altitude of 9056 feet, then drops

Last night, after our feast of ni-tap′-i-wak-sin (real meat) we gathered in Yellow Wolf’s lodge for a smoke and a talk, and our host gave us a little story that I must here set down, the story of “Here, under this mountain, the people were encamped and two of them were Wise Man [13] and his woman. He was so named because he was always finding out how to do useful things. [13] Mo-kûk′-i In-ah. Back “Up to the time of this encampment the people had had nothing to wear but the plainest kind of garm

Although nothing has been said, we have not been so cheerful as usual for the past few days, for all have known that we must soon part and go our several ways. Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill is a sick man, and Yellow Wolf but little better, so to-night we decided to break camp in the morning. To-morrow night each family will be at home on Cutbank, Willow Creek, Two Medicine, and Badger, all streams of the Reservation, and I shall be upon my way to the Always-Summer-Land. Well, we have had a