United States or Suriname ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Suddenly rising from his place he strode to the side of the Indians and cried, "Don't do it! Don't be such fools! This no good," he said, kicking the keg. "What would Mr. Macdougall say? Come! I go with you. Take back these furs." He stepped forward to seize the second pack. Swiftly Little Thunder leaped before him, knife in hand, and crouched to spring. The Stonies had no doubt as to his meaning.
On the. other hand, the Assineboines, or Stonies of the Plains, warned by the memory of the former epidemic, by which they were almost annihilated, fled at the first approach of the disease, and, keeping far out in the south-eastern prairies, escaped the infection altogether.
There were no road-agents to speak of, for sums of money large enough to tempt gentry of that ilk seldom passed over those isolated trails; but here and there stray parties of Stonies and Blackfeet, young bucks in war-paint and breech-clout, hot on the trail of their first medicine, skulked warily among the coulée-scarred ridges, keeping in touch with the drifting buffalo-herds and alert for a chance to ambush a straggling white man and lift his hair.
The majority of the tribes in Manitoba and the Northwest the Crees and Blackfeet belong to the Algonquin race, and the Assiniboines or Stonies, to the Dacotahs or Sioux, now only found on the other side of the frontier. The Tinneh or Athabaskan family occupy the Yukon and Mackenzie valleys, while in the Arctic region are the Eskimo or Innuits.
Cameron's heart sank within him, for now it seemed as if his chance of escape had slipped from him. Raven spoke a few rapid words to Little Thunder, who entered into conversation with the Stonies. At length White Cloud drew from his coat a black fox skin. In spite of himself Raven uttered a slight exclamation. It was indeed a superb pelt.
Immediately after supper Little Thunder vanished into the mist. "We may as well make ourselves comfortable," said Raven, pulling a couple of buffalo skins from a pack and giving one to Cameron. "Little Thunder is gone to reconnoiter." He threw some sticks upon the fire. "Better go to sleep," he suggested. "We shall probably visit the camp in the morning if they should prove to be Stonies."
At Banff, eastward of Cascade mountain, on the sheltered plain where Kootenays and Stonies used to camp, one can still find the circular mounds that mark a trading-station of this era.
I'd put in the winter with a band of Stonies." "The Northern Stonies? Did you find them easy to get on with?" "They knew some interesting things," Clarke answered dryly. "I went there to study." "Ah!" said the agent. "What plain folk, for want of a better name, call the occult. But it's fortunate that there's a barred door between white men and the Indian's mysticism."
"I don't know what this fellow's doing in this neighborhood, but he belongs to a tribe the Stonies have a grudge against. On the whole, I think you have been somewhat rash." "I guess you're clever enough to see that since I've taken a lot of chances in coming I'm not likely to be bluffed off now. But we'll let that go.
For reasons of your own, you sent us into a belt of country which you thought we couldn't get through. My notion is that you expected us to be held up there until our stores ran out and winter set in, when these Stonies would, no doubt, have moved on. Well, part of what you wished has happened, but the matter is taking a turn you couldn't have looked for.
Word Of The Day