"I CALL HIM SINOPAH!"
"I CALL HIM SINOPAH!"
This is the Story of Sinopah, a Blackfoot Indian boy; he who afterward became the great chief Pitamakan, or, as we say, the Running Eagle. I knew Pitamakan well; also his white friend and partner in many adventures, Thomas Fox. Both were my friends; they talked to me much about their boyhood days, so you may know that this is a true story.
It was a great many years ago, in the time of the buffalo, that Sinopah was born, and it was on a warm, sunny day in June that he first saw the light of the sun, to which he was afterward to make many a prayer. The great camp of the Blackfeet was pitched on the Two Medicine River, one of the prettiest streams in all Montana. Only a few miles to the west of the camp the sharp peaks of the Rocky Mountains rose for thousands of feet into the clear blue air. To the north, and south, and east the great plains stretched away to the very edge of the horizon, and they were now green with the fresh grasses of spring. The mile-wide valley of the Two Medicine lay like a great gash in the plain, and several hundred feet below it. Along the shores of the stream there was a belt of timber: big cottonwood trees, with bunches of willow, service berry, and rose-brush growing under them. Elsewhere the wide, level bottoms were splotched with the green of lowland grass and the pale silver-green of sweet sage. Thousands of horses grazed on these bottoms and out on the near plains; the Blackfeet had so many of the animals that they could not count them all in a week's time. There were more than five hundred lodges, or wigwams, in the camp, and they were strung along the bottom, just outside of the timber belt, for several miles. Each lodge was the home of one or two families, the average being eight persons to the lodge, so there were about four thousand people in this one camp of the three tribes of the Blackfeet Nation.
Those were wild days in which Sinopah was born. Fort Benton, owned by the American Fur Company, was the only white settlement in all Montana. The Blackfeet owned all of the country from the Saskatchewan River, in Canada, south to the Yellowstone River, and from the Rocky Mountains eastward for more than three hundred miles. The plains were covered with buffalo and antelope; in the mountains and along the rivers were countless numbers of elk, deer, bighorn, moose, black and grizzly bears, wolves, and many smaller animals. So it was that the Blackfeet were very rich. They had always plenty of meat and berries, soft robes and furs, and with their many horses they roamed about on their great plains and hunted, and were happy.
Usually the birth of a child in the great camp was hardly mentioned. But on this June morning the news spread quickly from one end to the other of it that in the lodge of White Wolf there was a baby boy. There was much talk about it because White Wolf was a great chief, and it was well known that he had long wanted a son. Everybody now said that the gods had been good, and had given him his wish. All that day the medicine men and warriors kept going to his lodge to say how pleased they were that this had come to him.
The chief's lodge was a very large one. It was made of twenty cow buffalo skins that had been tanned into soft leather, cut to the right shape, and sewed together with sinew thread. This, the lodge skin, as it was called, was stretched over twenty-four long, tough, and slender pine poles set in the shape of a cone. The lower edge or skirt of the skin did not touch the ground by a space of something like four inches. But inside there was a lining of leather, weighted to the ground by the couches and sacks of household property, and extending upward for five or six feet. Thus, between this lining and the outer lodge skin there was a space of the thickness of the lodge poles, and this was the draught flue. The cold air rushed up through it and out of the open top of the lodge, carrying with it the smoke from the fire. There were two large wings, or "ears," at the top of the skin, held stretched out by two long poles. These were shifted one way or another to protect the opening from the wind, and so the lodge was always free from smoke. The skin was waterproof; the lining kept the wind out; and so, even in the coldest winter weather, a very small fire in the centre of the lodge made the people very comfortable. At night, when the fire died out, they lay in their warm beds of buffalo robes and slept just as well as you do ill your warm home.
It was in the afternoon that Wesley Fox, a great man of the American Fur Company, and uncle of Thomas Fox, came to White Wolf's lodge. A number of warriors coming out of it greeted him pleasantly. He waited until they had passed, then raised the curtain of the little, oblong doorway, and stepped inside. "Ok-yi!" (Welcome) said White Wolf, and motioned him to a place on his right, which was the seat for honored guests. The chief's face was all smiles. He rubbed his hands together, then spatted them, and said, in his own language, of course, "White brother mine, this is the happiest day of my life. I have a son. Look, now, what a fine one he is, how big for one born this day as the sun was coming up. We are going to name him right away, and I ask you to stay and take part in the naming feast."
Wesley Fox was already looking at the child, or, rather, at its head, which was all of it that could be seen. It was wrapped around and around, arms and all, in several bandages of soft cloth, and then laced into a cradle, the back of which was a piece of rough-hewn board. The lacings held the roll of him flat against it: he could not move hand or foot, or his head either, except for an inch or two to the right or left. Altogether, in his odd wrappings and lacings, he looked like a little mummy from the tombs of the Egyptian kings. The cradle was propped up at the foot of his mother's couch, so that he rested in an almost upright position. The mother, half sitting up against a willow slat back-rest, gazed across the length of the couch at the round little face, and there was a world of love shining in her big dark eyes.
The baby's face, as well as its short, thin hair, was of a red bronze color. It had a funny, tender little mouth, and its eyes were very bright. All at once it began to pucker its mouth and make a queer little cry.
"There! there! mother," the chief said anxiously, "it is crying; maybe it is sick. Oh, what if it should get real sick and die? Do something at once for it, woman. If you don't know what to do, I'll get some wise old women to come in."
"There is nothing wrong with it. All babies cry a little," said the mother. And raising herself, she caught hold of the bottom of the cradle and drew it to her. There was no more crying, and the chief was happy again.
Presently an old, old medicine man, or sun priest, came in, followed by a number of warriors and women, all of them relatives of White Wolf or of his wife. They were made welcome, and filling and lighting his great stone pipe the chief passed it to the man nearest him, and then it went clear around the circle, each one of the guests taking a few whiffs of smoke.
After the smoke several women of the lodge passed around the feast, giving to each guest a wooden dish containing broiled buffalo tongue, dried camas root, and fresh, puckery berries of the red willow. There was much talk and laughter. The women passed the baby from one to another, kissing it, saying how much it looked like its father, and talking foolish little words to it just as white women do to a baby of their kind.
The feast was soon over. No one was really hungry and only a very small portion of the food was eaten. The old medicine man, I-kus-kin-i, or Low Horn, by name, had brought his own pipe, and now filled and lighted it and passed it around. He knew why he had been invited to the lodge, but for all that it was White Wolf's duty to tell the reason for the gathering of relatives, and so the chief made a little speech.
"Relatives and friends," he said, "soon after the sun came in sight this morning, he looked down and saw my new-born boy. Before he goes out of sight to his lodge to-night, I think it right that he should know the new-born's name. So it is that I have asked you all to gather here. I call upon our old friend Low Horn to say what the name shall be, and I now make him a small present: Low Horn, in my band of horses grazing out yonder on the plain is a certain four-year-old black-and-white pinto. I give him to you. A white three-year-old, a roan four-year-old with a split ear, and a gray five-year-old, well broken and a swift buffalo runner, I also give you. Let us hear the name."
"Yes, yes!" every one exclaimed; "let us hear the name, O wise one."
There followed a long silence. The old medicine man sat bowed over in deep thought. In his hands was a small buckskin sack ornamented with bands of colored porcupine quill embroidery. Presently he laid the sack on the ground, straightened up, and said:—
"We all know that the naming of a new-born boy is an important matter. Some names bring good luck, some bring bad luck. I am going to try hard to give this little one a name that will please the gods, and cause them to favor him.
"Listen! It was long ago in my young days. One winter day I took my bow and arrows and walked up on the plain to hunt buffalo. I saw a large band of them on some far hills and started out that way toward them. The day was cloudy and before I left camp people were saying that more snow was about to fall. After sighting the buffalo I hoped that a storm would come, for in the thick of it the animals would be easily approached. I walked on and on as fast as I could, for the herd was a long way off. When I was out in the middle of the great plain, Cold-Maker suddenly came out of the north. As always, he hid himself in the thick snowfall, which he drove in all directions with fierce cold winds. No one has ever seen the shape of him because of that. The stinging snow beat against my face, then at my back, then swirled around and around me. I could not see the distance of twenty steps in any direction, and knew not which way was the river and camp. I was lost and beginning to freeze. I prayed the gods to have pity; in some way to show me the way to the river.
"Then out of the awful swirling and drifting snow came a little creature with head down and drooping tail. It was a Sinopah. [The "swift" or "kit" fox of the North-western plains.]
"It passed close to me, showing no fear, just looking up once at me, its black eyes shining strangely, deep down in its snow-caked hair: 'Oh, little brother,' I cried, 'you are going to the sheltering timber of the river. Do not haste; guide me thither, else I die.'
"Sinopah was almost out of sight then, although so near. But when I asked for his help, he stopped and looked back, as if waiting for me. I walked toward him as fast as I could, holding my robe close against my face so as to shield it from the stinging snow. Sinopah waited until I was within ten steps of him, then pushed sidling on against the drift until nearly out of sight again, when he stopped as before, as if waiting. And so we went on and on. Sometimes the wind was in my face, sometimes beating against my side or back, but I knew that that was a trick of Cold-Maker. He wanted to confuse me; to make me think that I was going now in one direction, and again turning another way. He wanted me to go around and around in a circle until he could kill me with his freezing winds.