CHAPTER XVII
THE BLIZZARD
That fall the good weather lasted until late on the plains. The days passed clear and calm, as if waiting for a wind to bring the change.
One morning in November, I left my lodge at Mad Wolf’s home in the valley, to ride after stray horses and cattle. The day was mild for so late in the year. As I rode northward along the foot of the mountains, a warm wind came from the east and clouds gathered over the Rocky Mountain range from north to south. But overhead the sky was still clear.
At midday I stopped to eat beside a small stream about twenty miles from the ranch, letting my horse, Kutenai, graze in a meadow. While stretched on the grass, I saw a great halo unusually bright, of orange tinged with blue, appear around the sun; with large sun dogs showing on both sides; and dull gray clouds, like a leaden roof, spread over the entire sky. These were bad weather signs. So I saddled my horse and started for home at a gallop.
The sky in the north became as black as ink, with bands of mist hanging low. I felt a blast of cold air and drops of rain, and saw dark clouds coming down from the north. They had a strange and ominous look, rolling over and over, spreading out and trailing along the plain and reaching upwards toward the zenith.
Then the blizzard came, straight from the north, with wind and cold and snow. In the blinding storm I lost all sense of direction. In vain I looked for landmarks—ridges, coulees, buttes, or streams—something familiar to mark my course. My heart sank and I felt in a panic. In the thickness of the storm, everything looked strange. I lost my way, going eastward toward the open plains instead of south. Then I recognized a familiar rock pile on a butte; and came finally to a broad table-land, an exposed plateau, which I knew was ten miles north of the ranch. It stretched from the foot of the mountains to the open plains, and south to Mad Wolf’s home in the valley. Across its level surface the wind had an unbroken sweep from the north.
Through deep snow my horse climbed to the summit of the plateau. And all the time the wind was blowing a gale from the north with squalls of hurricane force, bearing stinging sleet and snow in blinding clouds.
By this time Kutenai looked like a snow horse. He was covered with white hoar-frost from head to foot, having holes for his eyes and nose. Long icicles hung from his muzzle and from his sides and matted his tail. He struggled through the deepening snow, losing courage and going more and more slowly. He belonged to a mild country across the mountains, and was a stranger to the plains and blizzards.
Then to save his strength and to warm my chilled hands and feet, I dismounted and tried leading him. But he acted strangely, as if blind. He reared and plunged and lay down in the snow. So I mounted again; with whip and spurs I forced him to move forward.
Night came on, with the snow above the knees of my horse. The sky was banked in darkness and the pitiless snow pelted me fiercely with every blast. People who have not felt a winter blizzard on the northern plains can never know what that struggle was.
I had strange sensations, as though I could not breathe; I felt suffocated, as if smothered by the snow. It blew down my neck and sifted through my clothes; it filled my eyes and mouth. A dense white pall was about me. There was nothing to see—not a patch of grass, nor a stone, only a dense whiteness. I thought I was going blind; my head swam. So I began to shout, just to hear the sound of my own voice. Suddenly I felt tired and lost hope. I thought how good it would be to lie down in the snow; it was useless to fight that blizzard.
I was roused by my horse floundering deep in a snowdrift. He struggled a moment; then lay still and began to groan. I struck him with my whip and tried to drag him out by the reins; I seized him by the neck and pushed him to and fro, trying to work him loose; I shouted and prodded him with my spurs.
Roused by my rough treatment, he no longer groaned. He grunted and tried hard to free himself. And with my help, he finally struggled from the drift, shook himself, whinnied, sneezed several times to recover his composure, and was ready to move on. From that moment he was a different horse.
At last came a lull in the storm. The wind went down and the snow ceased. Overhead the moon shone through lowflying clouds and gave me the right course. During that lull I crossed the plateau—just in time; the blizzard came from the northeast with greater force. But we were safe in the river valley, protected from the wind by high cutbanks, groves of big trees and thickets of willows. I knew my way and came safely back to Mad Wolf’s ranch.
Throughout that night the blizzard raged. But my lodge with its inside fire was a safe refuge. In my warm blankets I felt a delicious surrender to fatigue; I fell asleep listening to the roar of the wind, the beating of snow and sleet.
Next day, when I looked out, drifts were piled around the lodge, with the ground swept clear in spots. Dense clouds of snow were being driven by the gale and whirled high into the air; sky and plain were merged in a vast expanse of whiteness.
During those long days of storm, my Indian father and his friends passed their time by the lodge-fire, telling legends and stories of adventure. They gossiped about friends and neighbors; talked of their daily life—horses and cattle, hunting, and religious ceremonies.
The women amused themselves by gambling with four bones, which they threw upon the ground and called by name. Men used four hiding-sticks of bone, one marked with a black ring. They had two sides, each with a leader who was an expert in handling the bones. The side with the bones drummed with sticks on the lodge-poles; they sang songs while they played, and made jibes and tried to rattle the guessers. These gambling songs were sung with spirit and a marked rhythm, beginning in a low tone and increasing in volume, until it reached a high pitch; then sank again to a low pass, alternately rising and falling and gradually died away. In this way the play went on until one side lost all the counting-sticks. The players wagered weapons, horses, saddles, sometimes their tepees and everything they possessed.
Children liked to coast on snowdrifts down the steep slopes of the valley, on a sort of toboggan made of animal ribs lashed to cross-sticks; or they sat on pieces of rawhide and held up the front with their hands.
Boys spun wooden tops in the soft snow, driving them over the surface with whips having lashes of buckskin or bark. They also played a game on the ice, using smooth stones like tops. They played in pairs, spinning the stones by whipping and driving them together. The top which spun the longest was the winner. They used pebble tops on hard snow, making them jump while spinning across the holes, by striking them with their whips.
On a stormy night, I sat with the Mad Wolf family around a comfortable lodge-fire, listening to the beating of snow and sleet. It was just the night for ghosts. In the roar of the storm, everything sounded strange and mysterious. The singing of burning wood in our fire was like far-off voices. The bawling of the frightened cattle and barking of our dogs seemed faint and far away.
Suddenly a violent squall shook the tepee and the door blew open. The old woman Gives-to-the-Sun cried out:
“A ghost came in! I felt its cold touch! See the smoke whirl! And the dogs gave the ghost-bark.”
Said Strikes-on-Both-Sides, my Indian sister:
“Of late many ghosts have been around. They do not like the Sand Hills. They are restless and come back to visit their old haunts. The night we camped on Two Medicine, the ghost of our old friend Running Rabbit came from a clump of trees and frightened our horses. His ghost was so near we feared he might touch us.”
“And why were you afraid of that?” I asked.
“It is sure death to be touched by a ghost,” said my Indian sister. “I remember after Running Rabbit died, his ghost came back and took his wife to the Spirit World. She and her daughter were on their way to the home of Bull Calf. The mother felt a cold touch and turned to look. Suddenly she fell to the ground and lay as if dead. When her spirit came back, she said to her daughter: ‘Your father came and touched me. He wants me to go back with him.’
“Soon after that the old woman died; and her relatives believe that Running Rabbit took her. The ghost of that old man has been bothering many people who live on Two Medicine. Strange he should become so mean. He was so good and kind when alive.”
“There are many ghosts in Two Medicine Valley,” said Gives-to-the-Sun. “People talk all the time of seeing them. Not long ago, Old Person was riding down the river to the home of Little Plume. The night was dark. When he came to the grove of cottonwoods, where the body of White Quiver lies in the branches of a tree, his horse jumped and snorted. As he rode away, he heard a queer voice from the tree say:
“ ‘Old Person, why are you so long in coming to the Spirit World? I am still waiting for you.’
“Soon after that Old Person became ill and died. I heard of another ghost that bothered the families of Big Wolf and Buffalo Hide. It kept them awake all night. It came from the trees and roused the dogs. They gave the ghost-bark; they growled and sniffed the air. That ghost cried like an owl and pulled their door open. Next morning they found the reason. They saw a dead body in a tree close to their camp. It was the unhappy spirit of a man who was murdered by his jealous brother.”
Then Mad Wolf told of an experience he once had with a ghost:
“When I was a young man, I went off to sleep alone. I walked all day and fasted. I wanted to have a dream and to get power. At night I came to a forest on the mountains and made a shelter of branches. As I lay alone in the dark, I thought of many things—of wild animals and of ghosts, the evil kind, which twist the mouths of people and make them crooked; they pull their tongues back into their throats and kill them, and shoot with their finger nails. I lay awake and heard strange noises—coughing and laughing and whistling by ghosts. Finally a ghost came near. I begged it to pity me and offered it my pipe to smoke. Then I fell asleep; and in my dream that ghost gave me power to doctor the sick.”
Another stormy evening a lively crowd of Indians came into my lodge and sat around the fire. Two Guns, son of the head-chief White Calf, with his wife and family were there, also the family of Mad Wolf. Two Guns and his wife were great talkers and fond of repartee. He was in a good humor that night and said, to make the others laugh:
“I see your lodge has a black top like a stormy sky. It must be a bad-weather-lodge and the cause of this big storm.”
“That cannot be,” I replied. “We have often used it when there were no clouds and the country was dry.”
Said Two Guns: “Is it because you come from the smoky-city that your tepee smokes so badly?” At this joke the crowd all laughed, and he said: “White Weasel, tell us what the medicine of your tepee forbids your doing.”
I replied: “There are so many things I could not begin to tell.”
At this every one was pleased. They all liked the repartee. The young wife of Two Guns was preparing her pipe for a smoke, so I offered her my tobacco bag. Her husband said:
“Lookout! White Weasel! If you mix any love-medicine with that tobacco, I may lose my wife.”
I told him it was already too late. He laughed and said:
“If your love-medicine acts that quickly, I shall probably lose her before we get home.”
That night by the lodge-fire, Mad Wolf told us about the origin of his Winter, or Snow Tepee. He said:
LEGEND OF THE SNOW TEPEE
“There was once an Indian who hunted in winter, far out on the open plains. He saw a person running on foot from the north, shooting his arrows, and after him came the blizzard. After that the Indians knew that Bad-Old-Man brings the winter; also that Good-Old-Man brings the warm wind. When the chinook blows in winter, we say: ‘Good-Old-Man is running down from the mountains with the warm wind.’
“Good-Old-Man and Bad-Old-Man keep chasing each other backwards and forwards throughout the winter. But in spring Good-Old-Man has the victory.
“The Supernatural Person who makes the winter storms and blizzards gave us the Snow Tepee. It is not often seen in our summer camps, because it is a bad-weather-lodge and has power to bring storms. It came to our people many years ago during a big storm; in this same moon—the beginning of winter.
“The ducks and geese had gone south; the last of their flocks had disappeared many days before. It was time for winter, but the air was still warm. A band of hunters went on the open plains to hunt buffalo. An Indian named Sacred Otter and his young son had good luck. After they had killed many buffalo they started to skin them. They were hard at work on the carcass of a big bull and had taken off the hide, when Sacred Otter saw black clouds coming towards them, spreading out and rolling over and over. He knew it was a Charge Storm—a terrible blizzard—and there was no time to get away. So he made a rude shelter with the green hide and carcass of the bull. They both got inside; the snow quickly covered them; and in spite of the bitter cold, they were warm and comfortable under a huge drift.
“Then Sacred Otter fell asleep and dreamed he was traveling on the plains. He came to a large tepee decorated with strange pictures. The top was yellow, for the color of the sky at sunset; a cluster of seven green discs was on the north side to represent the constellation of the Great Bear—the direction the blizzards come from; at the back a red disc for the Sun, from the center of which hung a buffalo tail; around the bottom was a yellow band with green discs, the color of holes in ice and snowdrifts, and the peaks of the Rocky Mountains. At the tips of the ear poles were bunches of crow feathers with small bells, which tinkled in the wind; and over the door a buffalo head in red, with green eyes—the ice color.
“While Sacred Otter was looking at these pictures, he heard a voice say:
“ ‘Who is it that stands outside my tepee? Why don’t you come in?’
“He opened the door and saw a large fine-looking man seated at the back, smoking a pipe of black stone. His hair was white and he wore a long white robe. The stranger directed Sacred Otter to a seat near the door and continued smoking in silence. His face was painted yellow, with a red line across the mouth and another across the eyes. He had a black feather in his hair; round his waist an otter-skin with small bells attached, and on his breast a minkskin. Finally the stranger spoke, saying:
“ ‘I am the Maker-of-Cold-Weather and this is my Snow Tepee. It is I who send the blizzards, the snow and cold from the north. For the sake of your young son who was caught with you in the blizzard, I am going to pity you and spare your life. I give you my Snow Tepee with its pictures; also this black stone pipe, and my supernatural power goes with it. When you get safely back to your camp, make a new lodge and paint it with pictures like those you see on mine.’
“The Cold Maker taught Sacred Otter the songs and prayers that went with the ceremony of the Snow Tepee, which should be used for the healing of the sick. He also instructed him to place horse tails on both sides of the door for good luck—to keep his own horses and to get more from his enemies; and to wear a minkskin as a charm when he went to war, to keep him from being injured.
“Then Sacred Otter awoke. He saw that the blizzard was going down and knew the Cold Maker would keep his promise. As soon as he got back to his camp, he made a model of the Snow Tepee with its pictures and decorations—just as he saw it in his dream. And, when spring came, the time the Indians make their new lodges, Sacred Otter made and painted the first Snow Tepee. Since that time we have always believed in its power—to heal those who are ill and to protect its inmates from sickness and danger.”