United States or Liberia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


So they took down to the piskun pemmican and nice back fat and placed it there, and many of them hid close by. After dark the wolves came, as was their custom, and when the man-wolf saw the good food, he ran to it and began to eat.

Early in the morning, as soon as the sun had risen, they took down their lodge and packed their dogs and started for the camp of the stranger. When they had come to where they could see it, they found it a wonderful place. There around the piskun, and stretching far up and down the valley, were pitched the lodges of the meat eaters.

He is the chief of this place." Early in the morning Kut-o-yis´ said to the old women, "Harness up your dogs to the travois now and go over to the piskun, and I will kill some fat meat for you." When they got there, he killed a fat cow and helped the old women to cut it up, and they took it to the lodge. One of those old women said, "Ah me, the bears will be sure to come."

When the leaders reached the brink of the cliff, they could not stop. They were pushed over by those behind, and most of the buffalo jumped over the cliff. Many were crippled or injured by the fall, and all were kept within the fence of the piskun below. About this fence the people were collected.

This made him angry, and he said to himself, "If these two women will lie there again, I will get both of them." In this way women found out that there were men. One day Old Man stood on a hill and looked over toward the piskun at Woman's Falls, where the women had driven a band of buffalo over the cliff, and afterward were cutting up the meat.

Then the people went into the pen and skinned the buffalo and cut them up and carried the meat away to their camp. This pen they called piskun. In those days the people had built a great piskun with high, strong walls. No buffalo could jump over it; not even if a great crowd of them ran against it, could they push it down.

She did not mean this, but said it just in fun, and as soon as she had said it, she wondered greatly when she saw the buffalo come jumping over the edge, falling down the cliff. A moment later a big bull jumped high over the wall of the piskun and came toward her, and now truly she was frightened. "Come," he said, taking hold of her arm. "No, no," she answered, trying to pull herself away.

It was theirs. To the old women Kut-o-yis´ then said, "Now, grandmothers, where are there any more people? I want to travel about and see them." The old women said, "At the Point of Rocks on Sun River there is a camp. There is a piskun there." So Kut-o-yis´ set off for that place, and when he came to the camp he went into an old woman's lodge.

The young men kept going out, as they always did, to try to bring the buffalo to the edge of the cliff, but somehow they would not jump over into the piskun. When they had come almost to the edge, they would turn off to one side or the other and run down the sloping hills and away over the prairie. So the people could get no food, and they began to be hungry, and at last to starve.

Now, after these two had gone to the river the son-in-law arose and went over to the old man's lodge, and knocked on the poles and called to the old man to get up and help him kill. The old woman called out to the son-in-law, saying, "Your father-in-law has already gone down to the piskun." This made the son-in-law angry, and he began to talk badly to the old woman and to threaten to harm her.