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The summer which had just passed had witnessed one of the deadliest attacks of this disease. It had swept from the Missouri through the Blackfeet tribes, and had run the whole length of the North Saskatchewan, attacking indiscriminately Crees, half-breeds, and Hudson Bay employees. The latest news received from the Saskatchewan was one long record of death.
He was the son of an Iroquois hunter, who had been cruelly murdered by the Blackfeet at a small stream below the mountains, which still bears his name. In company with Antoine rode forth a Flathead Indian, whose once powerful tribe had been completely broken down in their wars with the Blackfeet.
He said: "This will be a benefit to us while we are a people now, and afterward it will be handed down to our children, and if we follow the words of the beaver we will be lucky. This seed the beaver gave me, and told me to plant it every year. When we ask help from the beaver, we will smoke this plant." This plant was the Indian tobacco, and it is from the beaver that the Blackfeet got it.
No freer life ever was lived by any savages than by the Horse Indians of the Plains in the buffalo days; and never has the world known a physically higher type of savage. On the buffalo-range that is to say, on the cattle-range which was to be Lewis and Clark met several bands of the Sioux the Mandans and the Assiniboines, the Blackfeet, the Shoshones.
In the winter of 1883-84 more than a quarter of the Piegan tribe of the Blackfeet, which then numbered about twenty-five or twenty-six hundred, died from starvation. It had been reported to the Indian Bureau that the Blackfeet were practically self-supporting and needed few supplies. As a consequence of this report, appropriations for them were small.
They hewed an opening into the forest, dug up the roots, cleared the ground, and cut, shaped, and planted palisades. This practice was common to many tribes, and is not yet extinct. The writer has seen similar records, made by recent war-parties of Crows or Blackfeet, in the remote West.
He is wanted on a serious charge. "'Kindly step this way, Mr. Raven, said the Superintendent, 'and you, Inspector. I have something of importance to say to you. "And, by Jove, it was important. Little Thunder had broken his pledge to Raven to quit the rebellion business and had perfected a plan for a simultaneous rising of Blackfeet, Bloods, Piegans, and Sarcees next month.
But those who expected the Blackfeet to flee in panic when they observed the doubling of the assailing forces, were much mistaken. The feeling among the Indians could not be described as in the least "panicky." They quietly surveyed the new arrivals and prepared with the coolness of veterans for the conflict that was sure to come, within the next few minutes.
He chose as his companion an Indian of the Flathead tribe, once a powerful nation, but almost exterminated by wars with the Blackfeet. From the massed ranks of his warriors the chief rode out for the parley, a pipe of peace in his hand.
With his usual promptness, Carson took the trail which was followed without trouble over the snow. The Blackfeet had reason to fear some such demonstration, and they hurried off with such speed that they were not overtaken until fifty miles from camp. The situation was a novel one.
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