Blackfoot Lodge Tales

Blackfoot Lodge Tales

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Blackfoot Lodge Tales, by George Bird
Grinnell
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Title: Blackfoot Lodge Tales
Author: George Bird Grinnell
Release Date: March 11, 2004 [eBook #11547]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
BLACKFOOT LODGE TALES***
Juliet Sutherland, Thomas Hutchinson and PG Distributed Proofreaders

Blackfoot Lodge Tales
The Story of a Prairie People GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
INDIANS AND THEIR STORIES

STORIES OF ADVENTURE
THE PEACE WITH THE SNAKES

THE LOST WOMAN
ADVENTURES OF BULL TURNS ROUND
K[)U]T-O'-YIS
THE BAD WIFE
THE LOST CHILDREN
MIK-A'PI--RED OLD MAN
HEAVY COLLAR AND THE GHOST WOMAN
THE WOLF-MAN
THE FAST RUNNERS
TWO WAR TRAILS

STORIES OF ANCIENT TIMES
SCARFACE
ORIGIN OF THE I-KUN-UH'-KAH-TSI
ORIGIN OF THE MEDICINE PIPE
THE BEAVER MEDICINE
THE BUFFALO ROCK
ORIGIN OF THE WORM PIPE
THE GHOSTS' BUFFALO

STORIES OF OLD MAN
THE BLACKFOOT GENESIS
THE DOG AND THE STICK
THE BEARS
THE WONDERFUL BIRD
THE RACE
THE BAD WEAPONS
THE ELK
OLD MAN DOCTORS
THE ROCK
THE THEFT FROM THE SUN
THE FOX
OLD MAN AND THE LYNX

THE STORY OF THE THREE TRIBES.
THE PAST AND THE PRESENT

DAILY LIFE AND CUSTOMS
HOW THE BLACKFOOT LIVED
SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
HUNTING
THE BLACKFOOT IN WAR
RELIGION
MEDICINE PIPES AND HEALING
THE BLACKFOOT OF TO-DAY

BLACKFOOT LODGE TALES

We were sitting about the fire in the lodge on Two Medicine. Double
Runner, Small Leggings, Mad Wolf, and the Little Blackfoot were
smoking and talking, and I was writing in my note-book. As I put aside
the book, and reached out my hand for the pipe, Double Runner bent
over and picked up a scrap of printed paper, which had fallen to the
ground. He looked at it for a moment without speaking, and then,
holding it up and calling me by name, said:--
"_Pi-nut-ú-ye is-tsím-okan,_ this is education. Here is the difference
between you and me, between the Indians and the white people. You
know what this means. I do not. If I did know, I should be as smart as
you. If all my people knew, the white people would not always get the
best of us."
"_Nísah_ (elder brother), your words are true. Therefore you ought to
see that your children go to school, so that they may get the white
man's knowledge. When they are men, they will have to trade with the
white people; and if they know nothing, they can never get rich. The
times have changed. It will never again be as it was when you and I
were young."
"You say well, _Pi-nut-ú-ye is-tsím-okan,_ I have seen the days; and I
know it is so. The old things are passing away, and the children of my
children will be like white people. None of them will know how it used
to be in their father's days unless they read the things which we have
told you, and which you are all the time writing down in your books."
"They are all written down, _Nísah_, the story of the three tribes,
Sík-si-kau, Kaínah, and Pik[)u]ni."

INDIANS AND THEIR STORIES
The most shameful chapter of American history is that in which is
recorded the account of our dealings with the Indians. The story of our
government's intercourse with this race is an unbroken narrative of
injustice, fraud, and robbery. Our people have disregarded honesty and
truth whenever they have come in contact with the Indian, and he has
had no rights because he has never had the power to enforce any.
Protests against governmental swindling of these savages have been
made again and again, but such remonstrances attract no general
attention. Almost every one is ready to acknowledge that in the past the
Indians have been shamefully robbed, but it appears to be believed that
this no longer takes place. This is a great mistake. We treat them now
much as we have always treated them. Within two years, I have been
present on a reservation where government commissioners, by means
of threats, by bribes given to chiefs, and by casting fraudulently the
votes of absentees, succeeded after months of effort in securing votes
enough to warrant them in asserting that a tribe of Indians, entirely wild
and totally ignorant of farming, had consented to sell their lands, and to
settle down each upon 160 acres of the most utterly arid and barren
land to be found on the North American continent. The fraud
perpetrated on this tribe was as gross as could be practised