Part 6 (2/2)
When the pipe had pa.s.sed slowly and in form the head-chief asked the trader if he saw beaver enough outside his window. This one replied that he did and sent for the man who had been dead.
The council sat in silence with its eyes upon the ground. From the commotion outside they felt an awe of the strange approach. Never before had the Chis-chis-chash been so near the great mystery. The door-flap was lifted and a fully painted, gorgeously arrayed warrior stepped into the centre of the circle and stood silently with raised chin.
There was a loud murmur on the outside but the lodge was like a grave. A loud grunt came from one man--followed by another until the hollow walls gave back like a hundred tom-toms. They recognized the Fire Eater, but no Indian calls another by his name.
Raising his hand with the dignity which Indians have in excess of all other men the Fire Eater said: ”Brothers, it makes my heart big to look at you again. I have been dead but I came to life again. I was sent back by the G.o.ds to complete another life on earth. The Thunder Bird made the Yellow-Eyes kill all my band when we went against the Absaroke. My medicine grew weak before the white man's medicine. Brothers, they are very strong. Always beware of the medicine of the traders and the beaver-men. They are fools and women themselves but the G.o.ds give them guns and other medicine things. He can make them see what is to happen long before he tells the Indians. They can see us before we come and know what we are thinking about. They have brought me back to my people, and my medicine says I must be a Chis-chis-chash until I die again.
Brothers, I have made my talk.”
VII. Among the Pony-Soldiers
The burial scaffold of the Fire Eater's father had rotted and fallen down with years. Time had even bent his own shoulders, filled his belly and shrunken his flanks. He now had two sons who were of sufficient age to have forgotten their first sun-dance medicine, so long had they been warriors of distinction. He also had boys and girls of less years, but a child of five snows was the only thing which could relax the old man's features, set hard with thought and time and toil.
Evil days had come to the Buffalo Indians. The Yellow-Eyes swarmed in the Indian country, and although the red warriors rode their ponies thin in war, they could not drive the invaders away. The little bands of traders and beaver-men who came to the camps of the Fire Eater's boyhood with open hands were succeeded by immense trains of wagons, drawn by the white man's buffalo. The trains wound endlessly toward the setting sun--paying no heed to the Indians. Yellow-Eyes came to the mountains where they dug and washed for the white man's great medicine, the yellow-iron. The fire boats came up the great river with a noise like the Thunder Bird--firing big medicine-guns which shot twice at one discharge.
The Fire Eater, with his brothers of the Chis-chis-chash, had run off with the horses and buffalo of these helpless Yellow-Eyes until they wanted no more. They had knocked them on the head with battle-axes in order to save powder. They had burned the gra.s.s in front of the slow-moving trains and sat on the hills laughing at the discomfiture caused by the playful fires. Notwithstanding, all their efforts did not check the ceaseless flow and a vague feeling of alarm began to pervade them.
Talking men came to them and spoke of their Great Father in Was.h.i.+ngton.
It made them laugh. These talking men gave them enough blankets and medicine goods to make the travvis poles squeak under the burden. When these men also told them that they must live like white men, the secret council lost its dignity entirely and roared long and loud at the quaint suggestion.
Steadily flowed the stream of wagons over the plains though the Indians plied them with ax and rifle and fire. Sober-minded old chiefs began to recall many prophecies of the poor trappers who told how their people swarmed behind them and would soon come on.
Then began to appear great lines of the Great Father's warriors--all dressed alike and marching steadily with their wagons drawn along by half-brothers to the horse. These men built log forts on the Indian lands and they had come to stay.
The time for action had come. Runners went through the tribes calling great councils which made a universal peace between the red brothers.
Many and fierce were the fights with these blue soldiers of the Great Father. The Indians slew them by hundreds at times and were slain in turn. In a grand a.s.sault on some of these which lay behind medicine-wagons and shot medicine-guns the Indian dead blackened the gra.s.s and the white soldiers gave them bad dreams for many days.
The talking-wives and the fire wagon found their way, and the white hunters slew the buffalo of the Indians by millions, for their hides.
Every year brought more soldiers who made more log forts from which they emerged with their wagons, dragging after the trace of the Chis-chis-chash camp, and disturbing the buffalo and the elk. To be sure, the soldiers never came up because the squaws could move the travvis more rapidly than the others could their wagons, but it took many young men to watch their movements and keep the gra.s.s burning before them. Since the Indians had made the wagon fight, they no longer tried to charge the soldiers, thinking it easier to avoid them. The young men were made to run their ponies around the Yellow-Eyes before it was light enough in the morning for them to shoot, and they always found the Yellow-Eyes heavy with sleep; but they did not grapple with the white soldiers because they found them too slow to run away and enemies who always fought wildly, like bears. Occasionally the Indians caught one of them alive, staked him out on a hill, and burned him in sight of his camp. These Yellow-Eyes were poor warriors, for they always whined and yelled under the torture. Half-breeds who came from the camp of the Yellow-Eyes said that this sight always made the white soldiers' blood turn to water. Still the invaders continued to crawl slowly along the dusty valleys. The buffalo did not come up from the south--from the caves of the Good G.o.ds where they were made--in such numbers as they once did, and the marching soldiers frightened those which did and kept them away. The young warriors never wearied of the excitement of these times, with its perpetual war-party, but old men remembered the prophecies of the beaver-men and that the times had changed.
The Fire Eater, as he talked to old Weasel Bear over their pipes and kettles, said:
”Brother, we used to think Yellow Horse had lost the Power of his Eyes when he came from his journey with the talking white man. We thought he had been made to dream by the Yellow-Eyes. We have seen the talking wives and we have seen the fire wagon. We have seen the white men come until there are as many as all the warriors in this camp. All the foolish half-breeds say it is as the talking men say. Brother, I have seen in my dreams that there are more of them than the buffalo. They have their caves to the east as the buffalo do to the south, and they come out of them in the time of the green-gra.s.s just as the buffalo do.
The Bad G.o.ds send the Yellow-Eyes and the Good G.o.ds send the buffalo.
The G.o.ds are fighting each other in the air.”
Weasel Bear smoked in silence until he had digested the thoughts of his friend, when he replied:
”Your talk is good. Two gra.s.ses ago I was with a war-party and we caught a white man between the bends of the Tois-ta-to-e-o. He had four eyes and also a medicine-box which we did not touch. All the hair on his head and face was white as the snow. While we were making the fire to burn him with, he talked much strong talk. Before we could burn him he sank down at our feet and died a medicine-death. We all ran away. Bad Arm, the half-breed who was with us, said the man had prophesied that before ten snows all our fires would be put out by his people. Brother, that man had the Power of the Eyes. I looked at him strong while he talked. I have seen him in my dreams--I am afraid.”
Weasel Bear continued:
”You hear our young scouts who come in tell us how the white soldiers are coming in droves this gra.s.s. There are walking-soldiers, pony-soldiers, big guns on wheels and more wagons than they can count.
Many of their scalps shall dry in our lodges, but, brother, we cannot kill them all.”
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