Indian Boyhood | Page 7

of
buffaloes almost upon us. We dug our way out, shot some of the
buffaloes, made a fire and enjoyed a good dinner.
I was now an exile as well as motherless; yet I was not unhappy. Our
wanderings from place to place afforded us many pleasant experiences
and quite as many hardships and misfortunes. There were times of
plenty and times of scarcity, and we had several narrow escapes from
death. In sav- age life, the early spring is the most trying time and
almost all the famines occurred at this period of the year.
The Indians are a patient and a clannish people; their love for one
another is stronger than that of any civilized people I know. If this were
not so, I believe there would have been tribes of cannibals among them.
White people have been known to kill and eat their companions in
preference to starving; but Indians--never!
In times of famine, the adults often denied themselves in order to make
the food last as long as possible for the children, who were not able to

bear hunger as well as the old. As a people, they can live without food
much longer than any other nation.
I once passed through one of these hard springs when we had nothing
to eat for several days. I well remember the six small birds which
consti- tuted the breakfast for six families one morning; and then we
had no dinner or supper to follow! What a relief that was to
me--although I had only a small wing of a small bird for my share!
Soon after this, we came into a region where buffaloes were plenty, and
hunger and scarcity were for- gotten.
Such was the Indian's wild life! When game was to be had and the sun
shone, they easily forgot the bitter experiences of the winter before.
Little preparation was made for the future. They are children of Nature,
and occasionally she whips them with the lashes of experience, yet they
are forgetful and careless. Much of their suffering might have been
prevented by a little calculation.
During the summer, when Nature is at her best, and provides
abundantly for the savage, it seems to me that no life is happier than his!
Food is free--lodging free--everything free! All were alike rich in the
summer, and, again, all were alike poor in the winter and early spring.
However, their diseases were fewer and not so destructive as now, and
the Indian's health was generally good. The Indian boy enjoyed such a
life as almost all boys dream of and would choose for themselves if
they were permitted to do so.
The raids made upon our people by other tribes were frequent, and we
had to be constantly on the watch. I remember at one time a night
attack was made upon our camp and all our ponies stam- peded. Only a
few of them were recovered, and our journeys after this misfortune
were effected mostly by means of the dog-travaux.
The second winter after the massacre, my father and my two older
brothers, with several others, were betrayed by a half-breed at
Winnipeg to the United States authorities. As I was then living with my
uncle in another part of the country, I be- came separated from them for
ten years. During all this time we believed that they had been killed by
the whites, and I was taught that I must avenge their deaths as soon as I
was able to go upon the war-path.
I must say a word in regard to the character of this uncle, my father's
brother, who was my ad- viser and teacher for many years. He was a

man about six feet two inches in height, very erect and
broad-shouldered. He was known at that time as one of the best hunters
and bravest warriors among the Sioux in British America, where he still
lives, for to this day we have failed to persuade him to return to the
United States.
He is a typical Indian--not handsome, but truthful and brave. He had a
few simple princi- ples from which he hardly ever departed. Some of
these I shall describe when I speak of my early training.
It is wonderful that any children grew up through all the exposures and
hardships that we suffered in those days! The frail teepee pitched
anywhere, in the winter as well as in the summer, was all the protection
that we had against cold and storms. I can recall times when we were
snowed in and it was very difficult to get fuel. We were once three days
without much fire and all of this time it stormed violently. There
seemed to be no special anxiety on the part of our people; they rather