CHAPTER XXI
BEGINNING OF SPRING
The end of winter I was camped with my friends Onesta and Nitana, near the log cabin of Little Creek and his wife Strikes-on-Both-Sides, my Indian sister. The heavy snow had melted from the prairie, but drifts still lay under the summits of high ridges. The air was mild with mists over the valleys; streams overflowing their banks and with soft ice running. I saw the first flocks of white geese returning from the south, also ducks and whistling swans, all pressing northward on warm sunny days when the wind was in the south. And then the big storm, which Indians say comes every year, “when horses begin to shed their winter hair.” It began in the night, coming straight from the north. Then veered to all points of the compass.
During the worst days, we stayed in our lodges and slept. But I was strangely contented and happy. My mind seemed to have reverted to the state of a savage. I was alive to everything and alert. Things about me interested me—the life and simple pleasures of the Indians, the habits of birds and wild animals, the flowers and trees.
The cabin of Little Creek had one small room, where he lived with his wife and children, two dogs, a snowshoe rabbit, pet hawk, and a black ground squirrel. Strikes-on-Both-Sides found it on Sun River. She rescued it from a band of yellow ground squirrels, which were trying to kill it because it was black.
On stormy nights I liked to sit by my cosy inside fire, listening to the wind as it rose and fell, whistling through the lodge-poles and humming against the ropes, the hissing of whirling snow and beating of rain and sleet. Sometimes I felt uplifted by a good and controlling spirit. I wanted to do something to make people happy that they might have time to think and dream, and be able to enjoy the world of nature. And, as I lay on my couch of robes and blankets, looking into the flames of my small lodge-fire, I dreamed of Indian chiefs and medicine men before the white race came. There was something very lofty and noble about these aboriginal Americans; deep in their natures, they had qualities hidden, which white men in their literature have ever failed to reach.
After being storm-bound many days, I wakened one morning to the musical song of a lark sparrow seated overhead, on top of one of my lodge-poles. The clouds had rolled away and the sun shone in a sky of deepest blue. It was the beginning of spring.
Then we took down our lodges and traveled southward along the Rockies, until we came to the valley of Two Medicine River. How good it was to enter that warm and sunny valley after the bleak and wintry plains; we were protected from cold winds by high cutbanks, groves of big cottonwood trees and thickest of poplars and willows.
It was one of those rare days in spring, when all nature awakes and becomes radiant with beauty. Everything was new—grass, leaves, and the scent of wild flowers. Some of the thickets had small green leaves. Buds were bursting on the cottonwood trees; balsam poplars had young leaves in a lovely shade of yellow-green; through every opening in the trees I saw the deep blue sky. Blue violets grew along the river bank. In the meadows were daisies, yellow violets, and blue forget-me-nots. The sun was hot, bringing forth the fragrance of wild flowers, leaves and buds. Butterflies and bees were abroad. Birds sang in thickets of alder and willows, in sloughs and water-meadows. All nature was busy and alive to the joy of living.
In a suit of soft-tanned deerskin decorated with colored quills and bordered with strips of ermine
We made camp in a meadow; and then I went with Little Creek to explore the valley. On a rocky cliff, surrounded by sharp pinnacles, the place where an eagle would build its nest, we found the graves of two women, one a young wife who died in childbirth, the other killed by a jealous lover. Their graves were placed on the other side of the valley from their former home, in the belief that ghosts would not cross a river to bother the living.
We saw the grave of an aged medicine woman in a big cottonwood tree. The body rested on a rude scaffold of poles among the branches, surrounded with utensils and articles of clothing for use in the spirit world. In another tree were the bodies of two Blood women from Canada, who had died while on a visit to relatives. From the branches hung ornaments of beadwork—sacrifices by women who mourned.
On the north side of the valley was a high cliff, over which Indians of long ago drove herds of buffalo, in the days before they had horses or firearms. From the top of the precipice a level plain stretched away to the grass-land of open prairies, with two ancient and overgrown fences of stones, which had been used by the Indians as guides in buffalo drives. Near by were signs of an ancient camp—eight circles of large stones, deeply imbedded in the soil and overgrown with grass, where eight skin lodges once stood.
That night we sat by our tiny camp-fire and talked about those ancient hunters and how they chased the buffalo. Onesta said:
“In those days of long ago, summer was the time of plenty. Then our people used flint knives and arrow-points instead of guns. They had pots of stone, and bone-scrapers for tanning skins. Dogs were their beasts of burden instead of horses, and people carried things on their backs. They killed buffalo in great numbers by driving them over cliffs. When the herds moved in from the grass-land, they followed our stone fences; they ran over a cliff and were killed; the wounded were caught in a corral at the bottom.
“The chief picked a strong runner to lead the buffalo. On the day of the run, that man rose early and went forth before sunrise. He covered himself with a robe and wore horns on his head. He kept moving about until the buffalo herd saw him and stood looking. Then he led them between the stone piles; and Indians lying hidden rose up; they waved their robes and shouted; they stampeded the buffalo, which ran over the cliff and were killed.
“Then the women came to cut up the carcasses. They used the skins of old animals for lodges and those of young ones for robes. They carried the meat on dog travois back to their tepees, spreading it on poles to dry in the sun; making pemmican and mixing it with marrowfat and dried berries, which they kept in rawhide cases for use in winter.”
Thus Onesta talked that night.
We stayed in Two Medicine Valley, until our horses were through shedding their hair and became fat on the new grass. Then we broke camp and moved up towards the Rocky Mountains. It was an Indian custom to go every spring to the forests on the mountains, to cut new lodge-poles for their summer camps and to gather roots and wild vegetables for both eating and healing.
We followed the valley westward, riding through grassy meadows with gardens of wild flowers. Masses of loco weed were in bloom, growing in dense spikes of brilliant pink, purple and blue, clusters of gaillardia with radiant yellow blossoms, and fields of phacelia, a rich carpet of white and blue, flaming Indian paint-brush, drooping bluebells, and shooting stars.
Along the banks of the river were thickets of peach-leaf willows, fragrant balsam poplars, and cottonwood trees, with their cottony tufts of seeds. Lark sparrows were singing, and willow thrushes with mellow flutelike notes. A little bird called “black-breast” by the Indians (horned lark) ran along the ground ahead of our horses. It sang at all times, through the heat of midday and even at night. On the prairie he would spring from the grass and soar into the air. Then extending his wings he would sink slowly to the ground, always against the wind, hovering like a butterfly and singing his cheerful rippling song like that of the English linnet.
But the most wonderful of all the birds was the soaring song of the Missouri skylark. At first I could not see them. They sang so high in the air, they were like specks in the blue sky. Their sweet strains came from overhead like a song from heaven. When several skylarks were singing, the air was filled with the tender strains. Then, after hovering awhile, they closed their wings and pitched to the ground to hide themselves in the long grass.
