Trails through Western woods

1

m

THE GENTLE SELISH

I AKE Angus McDonald

TRAILS THROUGH
WESTERN WOODS

By

Helen Fitzgerald Sanders

Illustrations from Photographs
by the Author

LONDON '. ^

EVERETT & CO., Ltd. ^

42 Essex Street, Strand, W, C.

COPYRIGHT IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BY

THE ALICE HARRIMAN COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES BY

THE PREMIER PRESS

NEW YORK

U.S.A.

DEDICATION

To the West that is passing; to the days

that are no more and to the brave ^

free life of the Wilderness that

lives only in the memory 0/

those who mourn its loss

PREFACE

The writing of this book has been pri-
marily a labour of love, undertaken in the
hope that through the harmonious ming-
ling of Indian tradition and descriptions
of the region — too little known — where
the lessening tribes still dwell, there may
be a fuller understanding both of the In-
dians and of the poetical West.

A wealth of folk-lore will pass with
the passing of the Flathead Reservation,
therefore it is well to stop and listen be-
fore the light is quite vanished from the
hill-tops, while still the streams sing the
songs of old and the trees murmur re-
gretfully of things lost forever and a time
that will come no more. We of the
workaday world are too prone to believe
that our own country is lacking in myth
and tradition, in hero-tale and romance;
yet here in our midst is a legended region
where every landmark is a symbol in the
VII

PREFACE

great, natural record book of a folk
whose day is done and whose song is but
an echo.

It would not be fitting to close these
few introductory words without grateful
acknowledgment to those who have aided
me toward the accomplishment of my
purpose. Indeed, every page brings a
pleasant recollection of a friendly spirit
and a helping hand. Mr. Duncan Mc-
Donald, son of Angus, and Mr. Henri
Matt, my Indian friends, have told me
by word of mouth, many of the myths and
chronicles set forth in the following
chapters. Mr. Edward Morgan, the
faithful and just agent at the Flathead
Reservation, has given me priceless in-
formation which I could never have ob-
tained save through his kindly interest.
He secured for me the legend of the
Flint, the last tale told by Chariot and
rendered into English by Michel Rivais,
the blind interpreter who has served in
that capacity for thirty years. Chief
VIII

PREFACE

Chariot died after this book was finished
and he lies in the land of his exile, out of
the home of his fathers where he had
hoped to rest. From Mr. Morgan also
I received the account of Chariot's meet-
ing with Joseph at the LoLo Pass, the
facts of which were given him by the lit-
tle white boy since grown to manhood,
Mr. David Whaley, who rode with Char-
lot and his band to the hostile camp.

The late Charles Aubrey, pioneer and
plainsman, furnished me valuable data
concerning the buffalo.

Madame Leonie De Mers and her
hospitable relatives, the De Mers of Ar-
lee, were instrumental in winning for me
the confidence of the Selish people.

Mrs. L. Mabel Hight, the artist, who
has caught the spirit of the mountains
with her brush, has added to this book
by making the peaks live again in their
colours.

In conclusion I would express my
everlasting gratitude to Mr. Thomas H.
IX

PREFACE

Scott, of Lake McDonald, soldier,
mountain-lover and woodsman, who,
with unfailing courage and patience, has
guided me safely over many and difficult
trails.

For the benefit of students I must add
that the authorities I have followed in
my historical references are: Long's
(James') "Expedition to the Rocky
Mountains, l8ig-20," Maximilian's
"Travels in North America" Father De
Smet's "Oregon Missions" Major Ro-
nan's "History of the Flathead Indians"
Bradbury's "Travels," Father L. B. Pal-
ladino's "Indian and White in the North-
west," and the Reports of the Bureau of
Ethnology.

Helen Fitzgerald Sanders.

Butte, Montana,
April 5, igio.

CONTENTS

I. The Gentle Selish .... 15

II. Enchanted Waters . . . .77

III. Lake Angus McDonald ... 89

IV. Some Indian Missions of the Northwest 97
V. The People of the Leaves

VI. The Passing Buffalo

VII. Lake McDonald and Its Trails .

VIII. Above the Clouds .

IX. The Little St. Mary's

X. The Track of the Avalanche

XI. Indian Summer

155

169.

229

245

271

281

297

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Lake Angus McDonald . . Frontispiece

Facing Pagre

Joe La Mousse 50

Abraham Isaac and Michel Kaiser . . 66

Lake McDonald from McDonald Creek . 90

Francois ....... 154

Glacier Camp ...... 234

Gem Lake ...... 266

On the Trail to Mt. Lincoln . . . 290

TRAILS THROUGH
WESTERN WOODS

TRAILS THROUGH
WESTERN WOODS

CHAPTER I

THE GENTLE SELISH
I

WHEN Lewis and Clark took their
way through the Western wil-
derness in 1805, they came upon
a fair valley, watered by pleasant
streams, bounded by snowy mountain
crests, and starred, in the Springtime, by
a strangely beautiful flower with silvery-
rose fringed petals called the Bitter Root,
whence the valley took its name. In the
mild enclosure of this land lived a gentle
folk differing as much from the hostile
people around them as the place of their
nativity differed from the stern, moun-
tainous country of long winters and lofty

15

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

altitudes surrounding it. These early
adventurers, confusing this tribe with the
nations dwelling about the mouth of the
Columbia River, spoke of them as the
Flatheads. It is one of those curious his-
torical anomalies that the Chinooks who
flattened the heads of their children,
should never have been designated as
Flatheads, while the Selish, among whom
the practice was unknown, have borne
the undeserved title until their own
proper and euphonious name is unused
and all but forgotten.

The Selish proper, living in the Bitter
Root Valley, were one branch of a group
composed of several nations collectively
known as the Selish family. These kin-
dred tribes were the Selish, or Flatheads,
the Pend d'Oreilles, the Cceur d'Alenes,
the Colvilles, the Spokanes and the Pis-
quouse. The Nez Perces of the Clear- •
water were also counted as tribal kin
through inter-marriage.

Lewis and Clark were received with
i6

The gentle selish

great kindness and much wonder by the
Selish. There was current among them
a story of a hunting party that came back
after a long absence East of the Rocky
Mountains, bearing strange tidings of
a pale-faced race whom they had met,
— probably the adventurous Sieur de La
Verendrye and his cavaliers who set out
from Montreal to find a highway to the
Pacific Sea. But it was only a memory
with a few, a curious legend to the many,
and these men of white skin and blue eyes
came to them as a revelation.

The traders who followed in the foot-
steps of the first trail-blazers found the
natives at their pursuits of hunting, rov-
ing over the Bitter Root Valley and into
the contested region east of the Main
Range of the Rocky Mountains, where
both they, and their enemies, the Black-
feet, claimed hereditary right to hunt the
buflFalo. They were at all times friendly
to the white men who came among them,
and these visitors described them as sim-

17

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

pie, Straight-forward people, the women
distinguished for their virtue, and the
men for their bravery in the battle and
the chase. They were cleanly in their
habits and honorable in their dealings
with each other. If a man lost his horse,
his bow or other valuable, the one who
found it delivered it to the Chief, or
Great Father, and he caused it to be hung
in a place where it might be seen by all.
Then when the owner came seeking his
goods, the Chief restored it to him. They
were also charitable. If a man were
hungry no one said him nay and he was
welcome even at the board of the head
men to share the best of their fare. This
spirit of kindliness they extended to all
save their foes and the prisoners taken in
war whom they tortured after the man-
ner of more hostile tribes. In appear-
ance they were "comparatively very fair
and their complexions a shade lighter
than the palest new copper after being
freshly rubbed." They were well formed,
i8

THE GENTLE SELISH

lithe and tall, a characteristic that still
prevails with the pure bloods, as does
something of the detail of their ancient
dress. They preserve the custom of
handing down by word of mouth, from
generation to generation, their myths,
traditions and history. Some of these
chronicles celebrate events which are
estimated to have happened two hundred
years or more ago.

Of the origin of the Selish nothing is
known save the legend of their coming
out of the mountains; and perhaps we
are none the poorer, for no bald histori-
cal record of dates and migrations could
be as suggestively charming as this story
of the people, themselves, colored by
their own fancy and reflecting their inner
life. Indeed, a nation's history and tradi-
tion bear much the same relation to each
other as the conventional public existence
of a man compared with that intangible
part of him which we call imagination,
but which is in reality the sum-total of

19

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

his mental inheritance: the hidden treas-
ure of his spiritual wealth. Let us look
then, through the medium of the Indian's
poetic imagery, into a past rose-hued with
the sunrise of the new day.

Coyote, the hero of this legend, figures
in many of the myths of the Selish; but
they do not profess to know if he were a
great brave bearing that name or if he
were the animal itself, living in the leg-
endary age when beasts and birds spoke
the tongue of man. Likely he was a dual
personality such as the white buffalo of
numerous fables, who was at will a beau-
tiful maiden or one among the vast herds
of the plains. Possibly there was, indeed,
such a mighty warrior in ages gone by
about whose glorified memory has gath-
ered the half-chimerical hero-tales which
are the first step toward the ancestor-
worship of primitive peoples. In all of
the myths given here in which his name is
mentioned, except that one of Coyote and
the Flint, we shall consider him as an
20

THE GENTLE SELISH

Ideal embodying the Indians' highest
conception of valor and achievement.

Long, long ago the Jocko was inhab-
ited by a man-eating monster who lured
the tribes from the hills into his domain
and then sucked their blood. Coyote de-
termined to deliver the people, so he
challenged the monster to a mortal com-
bat. The monster accepted the challenge,
and Coyote went into the mountains and
got the poison spider from the rocks and
bade him sting his enemy, but even the
venom of the spider could not penetrate
the monster's hide.

Coyote took counsel of the Fox, his
friend, and prepared himself for the
fray. He got a stout leather thong and
bound it around his body, then tied it
fast to a huge pine tree. The monster
appeared with dripping fangs and gap-
ing jaws, approached Coyote, who re-
treated farther and farther away, until
the thong stretched taut and the pine
curved like a bow. Suddenly, the tree,

21

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WCMDDS

Strained to its utmost limit, sprang back,
felling the monster with a mortal stroke.
Coyote was triumphant and the Wood-
pecker of the forest cut the pine and
sharpened its trunk to a point which
Coyote drove through the dead monster's
breast, impaling it to the earth. Thus,
the Jocko was rid of the man-eater, and
the Selish, fearing him no more, came
down from the hills into the valley where
they lived in plenty and content.

The following story of Coyote and the
Flint is of exceptional interest because it
is from the lips of the dying Chariot —
Chariot the unbending, the silent Chief-
tain. No word of English ever profaned
his tongue, so this myth, told in the im-
pressive Selish language, was translated
word for word by Michel Rivais, the
blind interpreter at the Flathead Agency,
who has served faithfully and well for a
period of thirty years.

"In the old times the animals had tribes
just like the Indians. The Coyote had

22

THE GENTLE SELISH

his tipi. He was hungry and had noth-
ing to eat. He had bark to shoot his ar-
row with and the arrow did not go
through the deer. He was that way a
long time when he heard there was Flint
coming on the road that gave a piece of
flint to the Fox and he could shoot a deer
and kill it, but the Coyote did not know
that and used the bark. They did not give
the Coyote anything. They only gave
some to the Fox. Next day the Fox put
a piece of meat on the end of a stick and
took it to the fire. The Fox had the piece
of meat cooking there and the Coyote was
looking at the meat and when it was
cooked the Coyote jumped and got the
piece of meat and took a bite and in it
was the flint, and he bit the flint and asked
why they did not tell him how to kill a
deer with flint.

" Why didn't you tell me?' the Coyote
asked his friend, the Fox. 'When did the
Flint go by here?'

23

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

"The Fox said three days it went by
here.

"The Coyote took his blanket and his
things and started after the Flint and kept
on his track all day and evening and said,
'Here is where the Flint camped,' and he
stayed there all night himself, and next
day he travelled to where the Flint
camped, and he said, 'Here is where the
Flint camped last night,' and he stayed
there, and the next day he went farther
and found where the Flint camped and
he said, 'The Flint started from here this
morning.' He followed the track next
morning and went not very far, and he
saw the Flint going on the road, and he
went 'way out that way and went ahead
of the Flint and stayed there for the
Flint to come. When the Flint met him
there the Coyote told him:

" 'Come here. Now, I want to have a
fight with you today.'

"And the Flint said:

" 'Come on. We will fight'

H

THE GENTLE SELISH

"The Flint went to him and the Coyote
took the thing he had in his hand and
struck him three or four times and the
Flint broke all to pieces and the Coyote
had his blanket there and put the pieces
in the blanket and after they were
through fighting and he had the pieces
of flint in his blanket he packed the flint
on his back and went to all the tribes and
gave them some flint and said:

" 'Here is some flint for you to kill deer
and things with.'

"And he went to another tribe and did
the same thing and to other tribes and did
the same until he came to Flint Creek
and then from that time they used the
flint to put in their arrows and kill deer
and elk.

"That is the story of the Flint."

Coyote was the chosen one to whom
the Great Spirit revealed the disaster
which reduced the Selish from goodly
piultitudes of warriors to a handful of

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

wretched, plague-stricken invalids. Old
women are still fond of relating the story
which they received from their mothers
and their mothers' mothers even to the
third and fourth generation.

Coyote laid down to rest and dreamed
that the Voice of the Great Spirit
sounded in his ears, saying that unless
the daughter of the Chief became his
bride a scourge would fall upon the peo-
ple. When morning broke he sought out
the Chief and told him of the words of
the Voice, but the Chief, who was a
haughty man, would not heed Coyote and
coldly denied him the hand of his daugh-
ter in marriage.

Coyote returned to his lodge and soon
there resounded through the forests the
piercing cry of one in distress. Coyote
rushed forth and beheld a man covered
with sores across the river. This man re-
lated to Coyote how he was the last sur-
vivor of a war party that had come upon
a village once occupied by the enemy
26

THE GENTLE SELISH

whom they sought, but as they ap-
proached they saw no smoke arising from
the tipis and no sign of life. They came
forward very cautiously, but all was si-
lent and deserted. From lodge to lodge
they passed, and finally they came upon
an old woman, pitted and scabbed, lying
alone and dying. With her last breath
she told them of a scourge which had fal-
len upon the village, consuming brave
and child alike, until she, of all the
lodges, was left to mourn the rest. Then
one by one the war party which had rid-
den so gallantly to conquest and glory,
felt an awful heat as of fire run through
their veins. Burning and distraught they
leaped into the cold waters of a river and
died.

Such was the story of the man whom
Coyote met in the woods. He alone re-
mained, disfigured, diseased, doomed. So
Coyote brought him into the village and
quenched his thirst that he might pass
more easily to the Happy Hunting

27

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

Ground. But as the Great Spirit had re-
vealed to Coyote while he slept, the
scourge fell upon the people and laid
them low, scarcely enough grief-stricken
survivors remaining to weep for their lost
dead.

Besides this legendary narrative of the
visitation of smallpox there are other au-
thenticated instances of the plague
wreaking its vengeance upon the Selish
and depleting their villages to desolation.
In this wise the tribe was thinned again
and again and as early as 1813, Mr. Cox
of the Northwest Fur Company, told in
his "Adventures" that once the Selish
were more powerful by far in number
than in the day of his coming amongst
them.

There was also another cause for the
nation's decline quite as destructive as the
plague; — the unequal hostility continu-
ing generation after generation, without
capitulation or truce, with the Blackfeet.
28

THE GENTLE SELISH

The country of the Selish abounded in
game but it was a part of the tribal code
of honour to hunt the buffalo in the fields
where their ancestors had hunted. All
of the deadly animosity between the two
peoples, all of the bloodshed of their cruel
wars, was for no other purpose than to
maintain the right to seek the beloved
herds in the favoured fields which they
believed their forefathers had won. The
jealousy with which this privilege of the
chase was guarded and preserved even to
the death explains many national pecu-
liarities, forms, indeed, the keynote to
their life of freedom on the plains.

It is possible that the Selish would have
been annihilated had not the establish-
ment of new trading-posts enabled them
to get fire-arms which the Blackfeet had
long possessed. This means of defence
gave them fresh strength and thereafter
the odds against them were not as great.

The annals of the tribe, so full of trag-
edy and joy, of fact and fancy, of folk-

29

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

lore and wood-lore, contain many stories
of war glory reminiscent of the days of
struggle. Even now there stands, near
Ravalli in the Jocko, a rock resembling
a man, called by the Indians the Stone
Sentinel, which touchingly attests the
fidelity and bravery of a nameless hero.
The story is that one of the runners who
had gone in advance of a war-party after
the Indian custom, was surprised while
keeping watch and killed by the Black-
feet. The body remained erect and was
turned to stone, a monument of devotion
to duty so strong that not even death could
break his everlasting vigil.

Notwithstanding their love of glory
on the war-path and hunting-field, they
were a peaceable people. The most beau-
tiful of their traditions are based upon
religious themes out of which grew a
poetical symbolism, half devotional, half
fantastic. And even to-day, in spite of
their profession of Christianity, there
lives in the heart of the Indian the old

30

THE GENTLE SELISH

paganism, not unlike that of the Greeks,
which spiritualizes every object of the
woods and waters.

They thought that in the Beginning
the good Spirit came up out of the East
and the Evil Spirit out of the West, and
then began the struggle, typified by light
and darkness, which has gone on ever
since. From this central idea they have
drawn the rainbow Spirit-fancy which
arches their dream-sky from horizon to
horizon. They consider some trees and
rocks sacred; again they hold a lake or
stream in superstitious dread and shun
it as a habitation of the evil one.

Thus, a cave in the neighbouring hills
where rattlesnakes sleep in Winter, they
avoided in the past, not on account of the
common snakes, but because within the
damp, dark recesses of that subterranean
den, the King of Snakes, a huge, horned
reptile dwelt, appearing occasionally in
all his venomous, scaled beauty, striking
terror wherever he was seen. A clear

31

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

spring bubbled near the cave but not even
the cold purity of the water could tempt
the Indians to that accursed vicinity until
by some revelation they learned that the
King Snake had migrated to other fast-
nesses. He is still seen, so they say, glid-
ing stealthily amongst deserted wastes, his
crest reared evily^ and death in his poison
tail.

In contrast to this cave of darkness
is the spiritual legend of the Sacred Pine.
Upon those same gentle hills of the Jocko
it grows, lifting its lessening cone of green
toward heaven. It has been there past
the memory of the great-grand-fathers of
the present generation and from time im-
memorial it has been held sacred by the
Selish tribe. High upon its venerable
branches hangs the horn of a Bighorn
Sheep, fixed there so firmly by an un-
known hand, before even the tradition of
the Selish had shaped its ghostly form out
of the mists of the past, that the blizzard
has not been strong enough to wrench it

32

THE GENTLE SELISH

from its place, nor the frost to gnaw it
away. No one knows whence the ram's
horn came nor what it signifies, but the
tree is considered holy and the Indians
believe that it possesses supernatural
powers. Hence, offerings are made to it
of moccasins, beads, weasel skins, and
such little treasures of wearing apparel
or handiwork as they most esteem, and
at certain seasons, beneath the cool, sweet
shadow of its generous boughs the de-
voted worshippers, going back through
the little superficialities of recent civili-
zation to the magnetic pole of their own
true blood and beliefs, assemble to dance
with religious fervor around its base
upon the green. The missionary fathers
discourage such idolatrous practices; but
the poor children of the woods play
truant, nevertheless, and wander back
through the cycle of the centuries to do
honour to the old, sweet object of their
devotion in the primitive, pagan way.
And surely the Great Spirit who

33

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

watches over white and red man impar-
tially, can scarcely be jealous of this trib-
ute of love to a tree, — the instinctive, race-
old festival of a woodland tribe.

There is another pine near Ravalli re-
vered because it recalls the days of the
chase. It stands upon the face of a moun-
tain somewhat apart from its brethren of
the forest, and there the Bighorn Sheep
used to take refuge when pursued. If
driven to bay, the leader, followed by his
band, leaped to death from this eminence.
It is known as the Pine of the Bighorn
Sheep.

Thus, it will be seen there lives among
the Selish a symbolism, making objects
which they love chapters in the great un-
written book, wherein is celebrated the
heroic past. He who has the key to that
volume of tribe-lore, may learn lessons of
valour and achievement, of patience and
sacrifice. And colouring the whole story,
making beautiful its least phase, is the

34

THE GENTLE SELISH

sentiment of the people, even as the haze
is the poetry of the hills.

II

As heroic or disastrous events are cele-
brated in verbal chronicles it follows that
the home of the Selish is storied ground.
Before the pressure of civilization, en-
croaching in ever-narrowing circles upon
the hunting-ground of the Indians,
cramping and crowding them within a
smaller space, driving them inch by
inch to the confinement which is their
death, the Selish wandered at will over a
stretch of country beautiful alike in the
reality of its landscape and in the richness
of myth and legend which hang over
every peak and transfigure every lake and
stream. To know this country and the
people it has sheltered through past cen-
turies one must first glean something of
that ephemeral story-charm which re-
cords in crag, in mist, in singing stream

35

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

and spreading tree the dreams made al-
most real by the thousands of souls who
have treasured them, and given them, lip
to lip, from old to young, since the forests
were first green upon the hills.

The land of the Selish extended east-
ward to that portion of the Main Range
of the Rocky Mountains known to them
as Sin-yal-min, or the "Mountains of the
Surrounded," from the fact that once a
hunting party surrounded and killed a
herd of elk by a stream upon those
heights; another time a war-party sur-
rounded and slew a company of Black-
feet within the woods upon the mountain
side. Though this range marked the
eastern boundary of their territory, they
hunted bufifalo, as we have seen, still east
of its mighty peaks, — a region made
bloody by battles between the Selish and
the Blackfeet tribes. Westward, they
wandered over the fertile valley of Sin-
yal-min, where they, in common with the
Pend d'Oreilles, Kootanais and Nez

36

THE GENTLE SELISH

Perces enjoyed its fruits and fields of
grain. This valley is bounded to the north
by the great Flathead Lake, a body of
water vast in its sweep, winding through
narrow channels among wooded shores
ever unfolding new and unexposed vistas
as one traverses it. On a calm summer
day, when the sun's rays are softened by
gossamer veils of haze, the water, the
mountain-peaks and sky are faintly traced
in shades of grey and faded rose as in
mother-of-pearl. And on such days as
this, at rare intervals, a strange phenome-
non occurs, — the reflection of a reflection.
Looking over the rail of a steamer within
the semi-circular curve of the swell at its
stern, one may see, first the reflection of
the shore line, the mountains and trees ap-
pearing upside down, then a second shore
line perfectly wrought in the mirroring
waters right side up, pine-crest touching
pine-crest, peak poised against peak. This
lake was the Selish's conception of the
greatest of waters, for their wandering

37

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

never took them to the Atlantic or Pacific
Seas, and in such small craft as they used
to travel over the forty miles of w^ater
among serpentining shores, the distance
must have seemed immense. Many is-
lands rise from the lake^ the largest of
them, Wild Horse Island, is timbered
and mountainous, and so big as to appear
like an arm of the main land. This Wild
Horse Island, where in olden days bands
of wild horses were found, possesses a pe-
culiar interest. Upon its steep cliffs are
hieroglyphics traced in pigments un-
known to-day, telling the forgotten story
of a lost race. The same strange figures
appear upon the sheer escarpments of the
mainland shore. These rock-walls are
moss-grown and colored by the lichen,
chrome yellow, burnt orange, russet-
brown and varying shades of bronze-
green like Autumn leaves, and upon them
broods a shadow as darkly impenetrable
as the mystery which they hold. Still, it
is easy to distinguish upon the heroic tab-

38

THE GENTLE SELISH

lets of Stone, crude figures of horses and
some incomprehensible marks. These
writings have been variously interpreted
or guessed at. Some declare them to be
ancient war signals of the Selish, others
suggest that they were records of hunting
parties left behind for the guidance and
information of the tribe; but they, them-
selves, deny all knowledge of them, say-
ing that to them as to us, the pictured
rocks are a wonder and a riddle, the silent
evidence of foot-falls so remote that not
even an echo has come down to us through
the centuries.

Such are the valley of Sin-yal-min and
the Lake of the Flathead where the
Selish hunted. But their real home, the
seat of their fathers, was the Bitter Root
Valley, where one branch of the tribe,
headed by Chariot, the son of Victor,
lived until the recent exodus. Therefore,
the Bitter Root Valley was particularly
dear to the hearts of these Indians. It
was there the bond between the kindred

39

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

tribes, the Nez Perces and the Selish, was
broken; there the pioneer Fathers came
to build the first Mission and plant the
first Cross among these docile children
of the wood. It was there they clung to-
gether like frightened sheep until they
were driven forth to seek new homes in
the Valley of the Jocko, which was to be
merely a station in their enforced retreat.
Eastward and southward from the Bit-
ter Root, the Jocko and the range of
Sin-yal-min in the contested country, is
a canon called the Hell Gate, because
within its narrow limits, the Blackfeet
wreaked vengeance upon their less war-
like foes. Flowing through the canon is
a river, In-mis-sou-let-ka, corrupted into
Missoula, which bears one of the most
beautiful of the Selish legends.

Coyote was taking his way through a

pass in the mountains during the ancient

days, when there came to him, out of the

closed lip of silence, the echo of a sound.

40

THE GENTLE SELISH

He Stopped to listen, in doubt if it were
the singing of waters or human voices
that he heard, and as he listened the echo
grew into a reality and the strains of won-
drous, weirdly sweet music greeted his
ear. He followed the illusive melody,
attracted as by magic, and at last he saw
upon the flower-sown green a circle of
young women, dancing around and
around, hand clasped in hand, forming a
chain and singing as they danced. They
beckoned to Coyote and called unto him,
saying:

"Thou art beautiful, O Warrior! and
strong as is the sun. Come dance with us
and we will sing to thee."

Coyote, like one who walks in his sleep,
obeyed them and joined the enchanted
circle. Then he perceived that as they
danced and sang they drew him closer
and closer to a great river that lashed it-
self into a blind, white fury of foam upon
the rocks. Coyote became afraid like a
woman. He noted with dread the water-

41

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

weed in the maidens' hair and the evil
beauty of their eyes. He strove to break
away but he was powerless to resist them
and he felt himself drawn nearer and
nearer the roaring torrent, until at last
the waters closed over him in whirlpools
and he knew no more.

The Fox, who was wise and crafty,
passed along the shore and there he
found, among the water-weeds and
grasses the lifeless body of Coyote which
had been cast up by the waters, even as
they had engulfed him. The Fox was
grieved for he loved Coyote, so he bent
over the corpse and brought it back to
life. Coyote opened his eyes and saw his
friend, but the chill of the water was in
his blood and he was numb. Then above
the roar of the river, echoed the magical
measure of a weird-sweet song and
through a green glade came the dancers
who had lured Coyote to his death. He
rose at the sound of the bewitching

42

THE GENTLE SELISH

melody and strained forward to listen.

"It was they who led me to the river,"
he cried. ,

"Aye, truly. They are the water Sirens
and thou must destroy them," replied the
Fox.

At those words Coyote's heart became
inflamed with ire; he grew strong with
purpose and crept forward, noiseless as
a snake, unobserved by the water-
maidens.

They were dancing like a flock of
white butterflies upon a stretch of grass
yellowed and seared by the heat of the
sun. Swiftly and silently Coyote set fire
to the grass, imprisoning them in a ring
of flame. They saw the wall of fire leap
up around them and their singing was
changed to cries. They turned hither and
thither and sought to fly to the water but
the way was barred by the hot red-gold
embrace of the fire.

When the flames had passed, Coyote
went to the spot where the Sirens had

43

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WCXDDS

danced, and there upon the blackened
ground he found a heap of great, white
shells. He took these, the remains of the
water-maidens, and cast them into the
river, saying as he did so :

"I call thee In-mis-sou-let-ka and thou
shalt forever bear that name!"

Thus it was that the river flowing
through the Hell Gate came by the title
of In-mis-sou-let-ka, which men render
into English by the inadequate words of
^^The River of Awe."

Through the length and breadth of the
country are story-bearing land-marks.
There is a rock in the Jocko, small of size
but of weight so mighty that no Indian,
however strong, can move it; there is a
mountain which roars and growls like
an angry monster; there is a clifif where a
brave of the legendary age of heroes
battled hand to hand with a grizzly bear,
and a thousand other spots, each hal-
lowed by a memory. So, through peak

44

THE GENTLE SELISH

and lowland^ rivers and forests one can
find the faery-spell of romance, lending
the commonest stone individuality and in-
terest. And the most prosaic pilgrim
wandering along haunted streams, cool-
ing in the shadow of storied woods and
upon the shores of enchanted lakes, must
feel the spell of poesy upon him; must
look with altered vision upon the whis-
pering trees, listen with quickened hear-
ing to the articulate murmur of the
rivers, knowing for a time at least, the
subtle fellowship with the woodland
which is in the heart of the Indian.

Such is the legended land of the Selish,
a land fit for gentle, poetic folk to dwell
in, a land worthy for brave and devoted
men to lay down their lives to save.

Ill

Within the Bitter Root Valley dwelt
Chariot, Slem-Hak-Kah, "Little Claw
of a Grizzly Bear," son of the great

45

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

chief Victor, "The Lodge Pole," and
therefore by hereditary right Head
Chief of the Selish tribe. That val-
ley is perhaps the most favoured land
of the region. The snow melts earlier
within its mountain-bound heart, the
blizzard drives less fiercely over its slopes
and the Spring comes there sooner, sprink-
ling the grass with the rose stars of the
Bitter Root. Under the guidance of the
missionary fathers the Indians learned to
till the soil and the bounty of their toil
was sufficient, for the rich earth yielded
fine crops of grain and fruit. The
Indians who sowed and plowed their
small garden-spots, and the kindly fa-
thers who watched over their prosperity,
little dreamed that in the free gift of the
earth and the mild beauty of the land lay
the cause which should wreak the red
man's ruin. This land was dear to the
hearts of the people. Victor, their brave
guardian, had saved it for them at the
treaty of the Hell Gate when they were

46

THE GENTLE SELISH

called upon to give up part of their terri-
tory to the increasing demands of the
whites. Those of the dominant race kept
coming into the Bitter Root and they
were welcomed by the Indians. Thus,
bit by bit the valley was taken up, its
fame spread and it became a region so de-
sirable that the government determined
to move the Selish tribe out of the land
of their fathers.

Chariot was a courageous and honest
man, a leader worthy of his trust. It was
he who met the Nez Perces as they de-
scended into the Bitter Root, headed by
Chief Joseph, hot with the lust for the
white man's scalp. There are few more
dramatic incidents in western history than
Chariot's visit to Chief Joseph on the Lo-
Lo trail and the ultimatum which he de-
livered to the leader of the Nez Perce
hosts.

He rode forth accompanied by Joe La
Mousse and a small war-party, carrying
with him a little white boy. About his

47

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

arm he had tied a snowy handkerchief in
token of the peaceful character of his er-
rand. When the two Chiefs, Chariot and
Joseph faced each other, Chariot spoke
these wordSj slowly, defiantly as one who
has made a great decision :

"Joseph, I have something to say to
you. It will be in a few words.

"You know I am not afraid of you.

"You know I can whip you.

"If you are going through the valley
you must not hurt any of the whites. If
you do you will have me and my people
to fight.

"You may camp at my place to-night
but to-morrow you must pass on."

And it was as Chariot decreed. Joseph
the brave, intractable warrior who did
battle with the army of the United States
and kept the cleverest of our generals
guessing at his strategies, bent to the iron
will of Chariot. The Nez Perces passed
peacefully through the valley and never
a soul was harmed.

48

THE GENTLE SELISH

In the long, cruel struggle that fol-
lowed, when Chief Joseph and his braves
struck terror to the settlers, leaving death
and ruin in their path, Chariot remained
staunch and true. Indeed, the boast of
the Selish is that they^ as a nation, were
never guilty of taking a white man's life.

Meantime, while they lived in peace
and plenty, the fates had sealed their
doom. There is no use reiterating the
long, painful story of the treaty between
the Selish and the government, ceding to
the latter the land where the tribal ances-
tors lived and died. Chariot declared he
did not sign away the birth-right of his
people and he was an honourable man.
He and his friends went farther and said
that his mark was forged. On the other
hand some of those who were witnesses
for the United States maintain that the
name Chariot was written like that of Ar-
lee and others, with a blank space left for
the mark, or signature of each Chief.
They further state that Chariot never af-

49

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

fixed his mark to the document nor was it
forged as he asserted to the end. This
is at best mere evasion. One ^ of two
things happened: a fraudulent signature
was put upon the face of the treaty to de-
ceive the government, or Chariot, as
Head Chief, was overridden and ignored.
Whatever the means employed the out-
come was the same. It was an unhappy
day for the Indians. They had no re-
course but to submit, so most of them
headed by Arlee, the War Chief, struck
their tipis, abandoned the toil-won fields
where they had laboured so long and so
patiently, left the shadow of the Cross
where they were baptized, and went forth
into the Jocko to begin again the struggle
which should never be more than a begin-
ning.

But Chariot the royal-blooded, son of
a long line of fighting chiefs, was not to
be moved by the master-hand like a pawn
in a game of chess. He haughtily refused
to leave the Bitter Root Valley, telling his

50

J

OE La Mousse

THE GENTLE SELISH

people that those of them who wished to
go should follow Arlee, but he with a
few of the faithful, would lie down to his
repose in the land of his fathers beneath
peaks that mingle with the sky. With im-
passive dignity he and a party of his loyal
band went to Washington at the bidding
of the Great Father to listen to the justice
of the white man's claim. Chariot
proudly declined to accept pension and
authority bought at the price of his exile.
He wished only the "poor privilege" of
dwelling in the valley where his fathers
had dwelt; of resting at last, where they
had lain so long. He wanted neither
money nor land, — simply permission to
live in the home of his childhood, his
manhood and old age. He added that he
would never be taken alive to the Jocko
Reservation. The Powers saw no merit
in the sentiment of the old Chief. He had
dared to oppose their will and they de-
termined to break his spirit. He might
remain in the Bitter Root the All-Wise

51

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

decreed, but in remaining he relinquished
every right. More crushing to him than
poverty and exile was the final blow to
his pride. In a sense he was King of his
tribe. The title of Great Chief descended
from father to son^ even as the crowns of
empires are handed down. The War
Chiefs, on the other hand, were elected
to command the warriors for a year and
at the end of their service they became
simple braves again. The government,
ignoring the canons of the Selish, put
Chariot aside, and Arlee, the Red Night,
last of the War Chiefs, took precedence
over him and became Head Chief of his
nation. Chariot was stripped of his title,
his honours, his privileges of land grant
and pension; in other words, he was re-
duced from Great Chief to pauper.

Thus Chariot, who with his braves had
defied his kinsfolk, the Nez Perces, to
protect the weak colony of settlers in their
Bitter Root home was driven forth by
these same strangers within his gates,

52

THE GENTLE SELISH

and he, the bravest and best of his kind,
shorn of the dignities his forebears and he,
himself, had won ; — robbed, cast out, was
held up to contumely as an unruly savage
and spurned by the people his mercy had
spared.

From the Bitter Root, the poor wan-
derers took their way into the Jocko, a
region also fair, where some of their
tribe already dwelt, and made for them-
selves new homes. They accepted the
change uncomplainingly and set to work
to sow and reap in this adopted land.

Chariot and his band of nearly two
hundred lingered in the Bitter Root un-
til 1 89 1, when driven by hunger and suf-
fering they followed their tribesmen into
the Jocko. He had said he would never
be taken alive to the new reservation, nor
was he. Clad in his war dress, mounted
on his best horse, surrounded by his young
men in full war regalia, he rode into exile,
proud, unbending as a triumphant Chief
entering dominions won by conquest. No

53

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

expression of pain crossed his bronze-
stern face ; no hint of humility or subjec-
tion softened the majesty of his mien. He
and his braves were met by the Selish
who had gone before, with great ostenta-
tion and ceremony. Chariot never forgot
nor forgave. He had been cast out, be-
trayed, but not conquered.

The Selish have learned to love the
soft, yellow-green of the Jocko hills, the
free sweep of its prairies, where sun flow-
ers flow in a sea of gold beneath the rush-
ing tide of the summer wind, and the
prettily boisterous little Jocko River
laughs and plays over its rocky bed be-
tween a veritable jungle of trees and vines
and flowers. In these woods bordering
the stream, the most luscious wild goose-
berries, strawberries and bright scarlet
brew berries grow — this last, dear to the
Indian, is picked by the squaws and made
into a sparkling draught. There the trees
are hung with dense tapestries of blossom-
ing vines, thick moss deadens the foot-

54

THE GENTLE SELISH

Step and birds call shrilly from the twi-
light of the trees. But the Jocko and Sin-
yal-min are beautiful and fertile, and
wherever there is beauty and fertility
there comes the Master saying:

"This is mine by right of might! Go
forth again O Indian! There are lean
hills and deserts left for thee!"

And the Indian, grown used to such
things, folds his tipi and takes his way
into the charity of the lessening wilder-
ness.

Not long ago a strange thing came
to pass. One evening the sun set in a pas-
sion of red and gold. The tide of light
pulsed through the skies, the air throbbed
and shimmered with it, and every lake and
pool reflected its ruddy splendour until
they seemed to be filled with blood. The
Indians gazed at the spectacle in silent
awe. Groups of them on horseback, dark
figures silhouetted against the bright sky,
stared curiously at the awful glory of the
heavens and earth, whispered in low tones

55

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

together and were afraid. Was the Great
Spirit revealing something to his chil-
dren? Some there were who thought
that the crimson banners in the West fore-
told a disaster and verily it was true. The
end was near. The sun was setting for-
ever upon their freedom. Once more the
children of the old time would be driven
to another camping ground where they
might halt for a little space and rest their
weary heads before they take up the
march upon their endless retreat.

IV

During the Summer at the time when
the sun reached his greatest strength,
according to the ancient custom, the
Selish gathered together to dance. In
this celebration is embodied the spirit
of the people, their pride, their hates
and loves. But this dance had a peculiar
significance. It was, perhaps, the last
that the tribe will celebrate. Another

S6

THE GENTLE SELISH

year the white man will occupy the
land, and the free, roving life and its
habits will be gone. It was a scene never
to be forgotten. Overhead a sky deeply
azure at its zenith which mellowed
toward the West into a tide of ruddy gold
flowing between the blue heavens and the
green earth ; far, far away, dim, amethyst
mountains dreaming in the haze; and
through that rose-gold flood of light,
sharply outlined against the intense blue
above and the tender green below, silent
figures on horseback, gay with blankets,
beads and buckskins, rode out of the filmy
distance into the splendour of the setting
sun, and noiselessly took their places
around the musicians on the grass.

There were among them the most dis-
tinguished men of the tribe. Joe La
Mousse, once a warrior of fame, grown
to an honored old age, watched the young-
er generation with the simple dignity
which becomes one of his years and rank.
He possessed the richest war dress of all,

S7

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

Strung with elks' teeth and resplendent
with the feathers of the war-eagle. It
was he, who with Chariot, met the Nez
Perces and repudiated their bloody cam-
paign; he, whose valiant ancestor, Ignace
La Mousse, the Iroquois, helped to make
glorious the name of his adopted people.
Frangois and Kai-Kai-She, the judge,
both honoured patriarchs, and Chief An-
toine Moise, Callup-Squal-She, "Crane
with a ring around his neck," who fol-
lowed Chariot to Washington on his mis-
sion of protest, moved and mingled in the
bright patchwork of groups upon the
green. There was none more imbued
with the spirit of festivity than old Fran-
gois with white hair falling to his bowed
shoulders. These and many more there
were whose prime had known happier
days. Chief Moise's wife, a handsome
squaw, rode in with her lord, and con-
spicuous among the women was a slim
wisp of a girl with an oval face, buckskin-
colored complexion, and great, dusky,

S8

THE GENTLE SELISH

twilight eyes. A pale gray-green blanket
was wrapped about her head and body,
hanging to her moccasined feet. She was
the wife of Michel Kaiser, the young
leader of the braves. But towering above
the rest of the assembly, regal to the point
of austerity, was a man aged but still
erect, as though his strength of pride
would never let his shoulders stoop be-
neath the conquering years. He wore his
blanket folded closely around him and
fanned himself with an eagle's wing, the
emblem of the warrior. One eye was hid-
den beneath a white film which had shut
out its sight forever, but the other, coal-
black and piercing, met the stranger gaze
for gaze, never flinching, never turning
aside. It was Chariot. Though an exile,
his head was still unbent, his spirit un-
broken.

Sometimes we see in the aged, the
placid melancholy which comes with the
foreknowledge of death, so in the serene-
ly sad faces of the aged Indians, we rec-

59

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

ognize that greater melancholy which is
born of the foreshadowing of racial
death. They cherish, too, a more personal
grief in that they shall live to see the pass-
ing of the old life. Patiently they sub-
mitted to the expulsion from the Bitter
Root, but now in the darkness of gather-
ing years once more they must strike their
tipis to make room for the invading
hosts. The setting sun streamed through
the leaves and touched the venerable
faces with false youth. Wagon and pony
discharged their human loads who sat
passively, listening to the admonition of
the tom-tom and the chant:
"Come, 0/ ye people! Come and dance!"
After this preliminary measure had
lasted hours, not an Indian professed to
know whether the people would be
moved to dance or not. A race character-
istic is that impulse must quicken them
to action. It was strange how the tidings
had spread. The tipis and lodges are
scattered over many miles, but the In-
60

THE GENTLE SELISH

dians kept coming as though called up by
magic from their hiding places in the
hills.

Beneath a clump of cottonwood trees
around the tom-tom, a drum made of deer
hide stretched over a hollowed section of
green tree, sat the four musicians beating
the time of the chant with sticks bound in
strips of cloth. Of these players one was
blind, another aged, and the remaining
two, in holiday attire, with painted lips
and cheeks, were braves. One of these,
seated a trifle higher than his companions,
leaned indolently over the tom-tom ply-
ing his sticks with careless grace. He pos-
sessed a peculiar magnetism which
marked him a leader. Occasionally his
whole body thrilled with sudden anima-
tion, his voice rose into a strident cry,
then he relapsed into the languid posture
and the bee-like drone. Of all that gath-
ering he was the one perfect, full-blood
specimen of a brave in the height of his
prime. The dandy, Victor Vanderberg,
6i

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

was handsomer perhaps, and little Jerome
had the beauty of a head of Raphael, but
this Michel Kaiser was a type apart. His
face and slim, nimble hands were the
colour of bronze. His nose curved sharp-
ly as a hawk's beak, his mouth was com-
pressed in a hard, cold line over his white
teeth, his cheek bones were high and
prominent, his brows straight, sable
strokes above small, bright-black eyes
that gleamed keen as arrow darts. His
hair was made into two thick braids
wrapped around with brown fur, his
arms were decorated with bracelets and
from his neck hung string upon string of
beads falling to his waist. It was he who
with suppressed energy flung back his
head as he gave the shrill cry and quick-
ened the beat of the tom-tom until louder
and louder, faster and faster swelled the
chant:

"Come, O! ye people! Come and dance!"
Then out into the open on the green
stepped a girl-child scarcely three years
62

THE GENTLE SELISH

of age, who threw herself into rhythmic
motion, swaying her small body to the
time of the music and bearing in her
quavering treble the burden of the chant.
The impressive faces of the spectators
melted into smiles. She was the pet of
the tribe, the orphan granddaughter of
Joe La Mousse and his venerable wife.
Loving hands had made for her a war
dress which she wore with the grave
complaisance of one favoured above her
peers. She scorned the sedate dances of
the squaws and chose the quicker action
of the war dance, and she would not yield
her possession of the field without a strug-
gle which showed that the spirit of her
fighting fathers still lived in her.

Suddenly a brave painted grotesquely,
dressed in splendid colours with a curious
contrivance fastened about his waist and
standing out behind like a tail, bounded
into the ring, his hurrying feet beating to
the tintinnabulation of sleigh bells at-
tached to his legs. Michel Kaiser and the

63

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

young man who sat beside him at the
tom-tom gave up their places to others,
and after disappearing for a moment
came forth freed from encumbering blan-
kets, transformed with paint and orna-
ment. A fourth dancer joined them and
the awe-begetting war dance began. The
movement was one of restrained force.
With bent heads and bodies inclined for-
ward, one arm hanging limp and the other
resting easily at the back, they tripped
along until a war-whoop like an electric
shock, sent them springing into the air
with faces turned upward and clenched
fists uplifted toward the sky.

It was now that Michel stood revealed
in all his physical beauty. In colour and
form he was like a perfectly wrought
bronze statue. He was tall and slender.
His arms and legs, metal-hard, were fleet
and strong and his every motion expressed
agility and grace. He was clad in the full
war-dress of the Selish, somewhat the
same as that which his ancestors had worn

64

THE GENTLE SELISH

before the coming of the white man. Up-
on his head was a bonnet of skunk tails
that quivered with the slightest motion of
his sinewy body. He wore, besides, a
shirt, long, fringed buckskin leggins and
beaded moccasins. He was decorated
with broad anklets and little bells that
tinkled as he moved. Of the four dancers
Michel sprang highest, swung in most
perfect rhythm, spent in that wild carni-
val most energy and force. Supple and
lean as a panther he curvetted and
darted; light as the wind his moccasined
feet skimmed over the green, scarcely
seeming to crush a spear of grass. As he
went through that terrible pantomime
practiced by his fathers before they set
out to kill or die, the fire flashing in his
lynx-eyes, his slim arm poised over his
head, his whole willow-lithe body sway-
ing to the impulse of the war-lust, it was
easy to fancy how that play might be-
come a reality and he who danced to per-
petuate an ancient form might turn re-

65

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

lentless demon if the intoxication of the
war-path once kindled in his veins.

This war dance explained many things.
It was a portrayal of the glorious deeds of
the warriors, a recitation of victorious
achievement, a picture of battle, of strik-
ing the body of the fallen enemy — one of
the great tests of valor. The act of strik-
ing was considered a far more gallant feat
than the taking of a scalp. After a foe
was shot and had fallen, a brave seeking
distinction, dashed forth from his own
band into the open field and under the
deadly rain of the enemy's arrows, struck
with his hand the body of the dead or
wounded warrior. In doing this he not
only courted the desperate danger of that
present moment, but brought upon his
head the relentless vengeance of the fam-
ily, the followers and the tribe of the
fallen foe, — vengeance of a kind that can
wait for years without growing cold. By
such inspiring examples the young men
were stirred to emulation. The dance
66

A

BRAHAM Isaac and Michel Kaiser

THE GENTLE SELISH

showed, too^ how in the past the storm-
clouds of war gathered slowly until, with
lightning flash and thunder-blast, the
warriors lashed themselves to the white-
heat of frenzy at which they mocked
death. The whole thing seemed to be a
marshalling of the passions, a blood-fire
as irresistible and sweeping as those floods
of flame which lay the forests low.

The warriors ceased their mad career.
The sweat streamed from their brows and
down their cheeks as they sat beneath the
shade trees in repose. Still the tom-tom
beat and the chant continued:
"Come, O! ye people! Come and dance!"

They needed no urging now. What
did they care for vespers and sermons
when the ghostly voices of warrior-an-
cestors, of forest dwellers and hunstmen
came echoing from the lips of the past?
Their spirit was aroused and the festival
would last until the passion was quenched
and their veins were cooled.

The next dance was started by a squaw.

67

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

It was called the "choosing dance," from
the fact that either a man or a woman
chose a partner for the figure. The cere-
mony of invitation was simple. The one
who desired to invite another, grasped
the individual's arm and said briefly:

"Dance!"

The couples formed two circles around
the tom-tom, one within the other, then
slowly the two rings moved 'round and
'round, with a kind of short, springing
step, droning the never-varying chant.
At the end of the dance the one who had
chosen his partner presented him with a
gift. In some cases a horse or a cow was
bestowed and not infrequently blankets
and the most cherished bead-work belts
and hat-bands. Custom makes the accep-
tance of these favours compulsory. Even
the alien visitors were asked to take
part and the Indians laughed like pleased
children to welcome them to the dance.
One very old squaw, Mrs. "Nine Pipes,"
took her blanket from her body and her
68

THE GENTLE SELISH

'kerchief from her head to give to her
white partner, and a brave, having chosen
a pale-faced lady for the figure, and being
depleted in fortune by his generosity at a
former festival, borrowed fifty cents from
a richer companion to bestow upon her.
It was all done in the best of faith and
friendliness, with child-like good will
and pleasure in the doing.

When the next number was called,
those who had been honoured with invita-
tions and gifts returned the compliment.
After this was done, the Master of the
Dance, Michel Kaiser, stepped into the
center of the circle, saying in the deep
gutturals of the Selish tongue, with all
the pomp of one who makes a proclama-
tion, something which may be broadly
rendered into these English words :

"This brave, Jerome, chose for his
partner, Mary, and gave to her a belt of
beads, and Mary chose for her partner,
Jerome, and gave to him a silken scarf."

Around the circumference of the great

69

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

ring he moved, crying aloud the names
of the braves and maids who had joined
together in the dance, and holding up to
view the presents they had exchanged.

The next in order was a dance of the
chase by the four young men who had
performed the war dance. In this the
hunter and the beast he pursued were
impersonated and the pantomime carried
out every detail of the fleeing prey and
the crafty huntsmen who relentlessly
drove him to earth.

The fourth measure was the scalp
dance given by the squaws, a rite ancient-
ly practiced by the female members of
families whose lords had returned vic-
torious from battle, bearing as trophies
the scalps of enemies they had slain. It
was considered an indignity and a matter
of just reproach to her husband or broth-
er, if a squaw were unable to take part in
this dance. The scalps captured in war
were first displayed outside the lodges of
the warriors whose spoil they were, and
70

THE GENTLE SELISH

after a time, when they began to mortify
or "break down," as the Indians say, the
triumphant squaws gathered them togeth-
er, threw them into the dust and stamped
on them, heaping upon them every insult
and in the weird ceremony of that ghoul-
ish dance, consigning them to eternal
darkness, for no brave without his scalp
could enter the Happy Hunting Ground.
The chant changed in this figure. The
voices of the women rose in a piercing
falsetto, broken by a rapid utterance of
the single syllable "la, la" repeated an
incredible length of time. The effect was
singularly savage and strange, emphasiz-
ing the barbarous joy of the vengeful
women. As the war dance was the call
to battle, this was the aftermath.

In pleasing contrast to this cruel rite
was the marriage dance, celebrated by
both belles and braves. The young
squaws, in their gayest attire, ornamented
with the best samples of their bead work
and painted bright vermillion about the

71

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

: I fill

lips and cheeks, formed a chain around
the tom-tom, singing shrilly. Then a
brave with a party of his friends stepped
within the circle, bearing in his hand a
stick, generally a small branch of pine or
other native tree. He approached the
object of his love and laid the branch on
her shoulder. If she rejected his suit she
pushed the branch aside and he, with his
followers, retired in humiliation and
chagrin. It often happened that more
than one youth desired the hand of the
same maiden, and the place of the reject-
ed lover was taken immediately by a rival
who made his prayer. If the maid looked
with favor upon him she inclined her
head, laying her cheek upon the branch.
This was at once the betrothal and the
marriage. At the close of the festivities
the lover bore her to his lodge and they
were considered man and wife. .

The sun set mellow rose behind the
hills which swam in seas of deepening
72

THE GENTLE SELISH

blue. Twilight unfolded shadows that
climbed from the valleys to the peaks and
touched them with deadening gray chill,
until the warm glow died in the bosom
of the night. Still the tom-tom beat, the
chant rose and fell, the dancers wheeled
on madly, singing as they danced. The
darkness thickened. The stars wrote mid-
night in the sky. Papooses had fallen
asleep and women sat mute and tired
with watching. By the flare of a camp
fire, running in uneven lights over the
hurrying figures, one might see four
braves leaping and swaying in the war
dance. The night wore on. A heavy si-
lence was upon the hills which echoed
back the war cry, the tom-tom's throb and
the chant. One, then another, then a third
dropped out. Still the quivering, sweat-
burnished bronze body of Michel
writhed and twisted, bent and sprang.
The lines of his face had hardened, the
Vermillion ran down his cheeks in rivu-
lets, as of blood, and the corners of his

73

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

mouth were drawn like the curves of a
bow. The camp fire glowed low. The
gray of the dawn came up out of the East
with a little shuddering wind and the
faint stars burned out. The tom-tom
pulsed slower, the chant was broken. Sud-
denly a wild cry thrilled through the pal-
lid morn. The figure of Michel darted
upward like a rocket in a final brilliant
gush of life, then fell senseless upon the
ground.

The embers grayed to ashes. The last
spark was dead. The dance was done.
The mists of morning rolled up from the
valleys and unfurled their pale shrouds
along the peaks, and the Indians, mere
shadow-shapes, like phantoms in a dream,
stole silently away and vanished with the
night.

74

ENCHANTED WATERS

CHAPTER II

ENCHANTED WATERS

THERE is a lake in the cloistered
fastnesses of Sin-yal-min, named
by the Jesuit priests St. Mary's,
but called by the Indians the Waters of
the Forgiven. It is a small body of wa-
ter overshadowed by abrupt mountains,
fed by a beautiful fall and for some rea-
son, impossible to explain, it is haunted
by an atmosphere at once ghostly and sad.
So potent is this intangible dread, this
fear of something unseen, this melan-
choly begotten of a cause unknown, that
every visitor is conscious of it. Most of
all, the Indians, impressionable and fan-
ciful as children, feel the weird spell and
cherish a legend of it as nebulous as the

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

mists that flutter in pale wraith-shapes
across its enchanted depths.

The story goes that once, long ago,
someone was killed upon the lake and the
troubled spirit returns to haunt the scene
of its mortal passing, but the murderer,
smitten with remorse and repenting of
his crime was finally forgiven by the
Great Spirit, and the lake became known
as the Waters of the Forgiven. The
shadow of that crime has never lifted and
it broods forever over the lake's dark face
and upon the mountains that hold it in
their cup of stone. There the echo is
multiplied. If one calls aloud, a chorus
of fantastic, mocking voices takes up the
sound and it goes crying through the soli-
tude like lost souls in Purgatory. The
Waters of the Forgiven exhale their eter-
nal sigh, their pensive gloom, even when
the sun rides high in the blue, but to feel
the fullness of its spectral melancholy, one
must seek it out in the secrecy of night.
Then, as the mellow moon rises over the

78

ENCHANTED WATERS

mountain tops laying the pale fingers of
its rays suggestively on rock and tree,
touching them with magical illusion and
transforming them to goblin shapes, one
palpitates with strange fear, is impressed
with impending disaster. As the moon-
light flows in misty streams, sealing ravine
and lake-deep in shadow the more in-
tense for the contrast of white, discrimin-
ating light that runs quicksilver-like up-
on the ripples of the water and the quiv-
ering needles of the pine, the silence is
broken by dismal howls. It is the lean,
gray timber wolves. Their mournful cry
is flung back again by the ghostly pack
that no eye sees and no foot can track.
Mountain lions yell shrilly and are an-
swered by distant ones of their kind and
inevitably that other lesser cry comes
back again and again as though the phan-
tom chorus could never forget nor leave
ofif the burden of that lament. Out of the
pregnant darkness into the spectral moon-
light shadowy creatures come to the shore

79

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

to drink. The deer, the bear, sometimes
the mountain lion and the elk stalk forth
and quench their thirst. These things
are strange enough, savage enough to in^
spire fear, but it is not they, nor the grisly
mountains that create the terror which is
a phantasm, the dread which is not of
flesh nor earth.

No Indian, however brave, pitches his
tipi by this lake nor crosses its waters, for
among the tangle of weeds in its black,
mysterious bosom, water sirens are be-
lieved to dwell. Ever watchful of human
prey they gaze upward from their mossy
couches and if a boatman venture out in
his frail canoe, they rise, entwining their
strangling, white arms about him, press-
ing him with kisses poisonous as the ser-
pent's sting, breathing upon him their
blighting, deadly-sweet breath that dulls
his senses into the oblivion of eternal
sleep.

80

Enchanted waters
II

The Jocko or Spotted Lakes are en-
chanted waters also. They lie high up
in the crown of the continent — the main
range of the Rocky Mountains. To reach
them the traveller needs patience and
strength of body and soul, for the trail is
long and tortuous, winding along the rim
of sickening-steep ravines, across treach-
erous swamps, amid mighty forests to
great altitudes. There are three lakes in
this group, one above the other, the last
being sometimes called the Clearwater
Lake because it is within the borders of
that terrible wilderness whose savage
fastnesses have claimed their prey of lost
wanderers.

The first lake is inexpressibly ghostly.
The flanks of the mountains rise sheer and
frown down on murky waters, leaving
scarcely any shore, and around their mar-
gin, gray-white drift-wood lies scattered
like unburied bones. It is a spectral spot,
8i

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

unearthly, colourless as a moth, preyed
upon by a lamentable sadness which
broods unbroken in the solitude. There
the fox-fire kindles in the darkness, the
owl wheels in his midnight flight and pale
shades of mist unwind their shroud-like
scarfs. It is a pool of the dead, a region
of lost hopes and throttling despair.

From this lake the trail bears upward
through dense jungles and morasses, veno-
mously beautiful with huge, brilliantly
coloured flowers growing to the height of
a man. Their scarlet and yellow disks
exhale an overpowering fragrance, insid-
ious, almost narcotic in its strength. Be-
neath rank stalk and leaf, rearing blos-
som and entangling vine, creeping things
with mortal sting dwell in the dank, sul-
try-sweet shadow. One is dazzled with
the colour and the scent; charmed and re-
pelled ; tempted on into treacherous sink-
holes by a wild extravagance of beauty
too wanton to be good.

At length the second lake unfolds it-
82

ENCHANTED WATERS

self from the living screen of tree and
wooded steep. A point of land, stained
blood-red, juts out into the water and over
it tumbles and cascades a foam-whitened
fall. This stain of crimson is a thick-
spun carpet of Indian Paint Brush inter-
woven with lush grass. The mountains
show traces of orange and green, appar-
ently a mineral wash hinting of undis-
covered treasure.

Looking into the depths of the lake one
is impressed with its freckled appearance.
A blotch of milky white, then one of dull
yellow mottles the water and even as one
watches, a shadow darkens the surface,
concentrating, scattering in kaleidoscopic
variety, then disappearing as mysteriously
as it came. There is no cloud in the sky,
nor overhanging tree, nor passing bird
to cause that shade without substance. At
first it seems inexplicable and the Indians,
finding no natural reason for its being,
believe it to be the forms of water sirens
gliding to and fro. On this account, here

83

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

as at the Waters of the Forgiven no In-
dian dares to cpme alone and even with
human company he fears the sirens' spell.
For as the victim sleeps they come, draw-
ing closer and breathing his breath until
he dies. If one watches patiently he may
see that the dark shadows are made by
shoals of fish, gathering and dispersing,
and in so doing, accentuating and lessen-
ing the sable spots. The lake is as un-
even in temperature as it is in colour. It
has hot pools and icy shallows, so it is
probably fed by springs as well as by the
torrent which falls from the peaks. A
strong, sulphurous odour taints the air;
the water is unpleasant to the taste and
the sedgy weeds which grow about the
shores are stained. And as the waters re-
cede during the summer heat, along the
banks, in uneven streaks a mineral de-
posit traces their retreat. Towards the
end of July or August a curious thing
may be seen in this Lake of the Jocko. A
current eddies around and around in a

84

ENCHANTED WATERS

gigantic whirlpool, transforming it into a
mighty funnel with an underground vent.
At a considerable distance below a stream
bursts forth from the mountain side with
terrific energy of pressure and plunges
downward in a foaming torrent. It is the
Jocko River, — the gentle, merry-voiced
Jocko of the prairie which winds its
course among lines of friendly trees and
blossoms. Who would guess that it drew
its nurture from the Lake of the Jocko,
siren-haunted, poison-breathed, which
careful Indians avoid as a region of the
accursed? Still it is so and the menace of
that mysterious lake becomes the blessing
of the plains.

Such are the Waters of the Forgiven
and the Jocko, secure in their solitude,
guarded more potently by their spell of
evil than by wall of stone or armed hosts,
holding within their deep, dark bosoms
the charm of the water sirens whose sad,
sweet song quavers in the music of

85

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

fall and stream, whose pallid, white faces
flash lily-like from the depths, whose en-
tangling tresses spread in flowing masses
of sedgy green.

And of the strange things which have
happened on those shores, of the braves
lured to the death-sleep on couches of
moss and pillows of lily pad, scarcely an
echo shrills down from the white-shroud-
ed peaks to give warning to the adventur-
ers who would seek out the awful beauty
of those Enchanted Waters.

86

LAKE ANGUS McDONALD

CHAPTER III

LAKE ANGUS MCDONALD AND THE MAN
FOR WHOM IT WAS NAMED

WITHIN the range of Sin-yal-
min, which rises abruptly from
the valley of the Flathead to al-
titudes of perpetual snow, in a ravine
sunk deep into the heart of the mountains,
is Lake Angus McDonald. Though but
a few miles distant the bells of Saint Ig-
natius Mission gather the children of the
soil to prayer, no hand has marred the un-
tamed beauty of this lake and its sur-
rounding mountain steeps where the
eagle builds his nest in security and the
mountain goat and bighorn sheep play
unmolested and unafraid.

The prospect is a magnificent one as
the roadway uncoils its irregular, tawny
length from rolling hills into the level sea
of green where only a year or two ago

89

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

the buffalo grazed in peace. Beyond, the
jagged summits of Sin-yal-min toss their
crests against the sky, their own impal-
pable blue a shade more intense than the
summer heavens, their silvered pinnacles
one with the drifting cloud. A delicate,
shimmering thread like the gossamer tis-
sue of a spider's web spins its length from
the ethereal brow of the mountains to the
lifted arms of the foothills below. The
yellow road runs through the valley, pass-
es the emerald patch around the Mission
and thence onward to blue shadows of
peaks where gorges flow like purple seas
and distant trees are points of azure. The
swelling foothills bear one up, the valley
melts away far beneath and sweet-
breathed woods sigh their balsam on the
breeze. The pass becomes more difficult,
the growth thickens. Among the trees
broad-leafed thimble berry, brew berry
and goose berry blossom and bear; wild
clematis builds pyramids of green and
white over the bushes ; syringa bursts into
90

LAKE ANGUS MCDONALD

pale-Starred flower, and a shrub, feathery,
delicate, sends forth long, tender stems
which break into an intangible mist of
bloom.

Suddenly out of the tangled forests, a
sheet of water, smooth and clear, appears,
spreading its quicksilver depths among
peaks that still bear their burden of the
glacial age. And in the polished mirror
of those waters is reflected the perfect
image of its mountain crown. First, the
purplish green of timbered slopes, then
the naked, beetling crags and deep cre-
vasse with its heart of ice. A heavy silence
broods here, broken only by the wildly
lonesome cry of the raven quavering in
lessening undulations of tone through the
recesses of the crags. Two Indians near
the shore flit away among the leaves,
timid as deer in their native haunts. Such
is Lake Angus McDonald, and yonder,
presiding over all, shouldering its per-
petual burden of ice, is McDonald's
Peak. Strangely beautiful are these liv-

91

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

ing monuments to the name and fame of
a man, and one naturally asks who was
this Angus McDonald that his memory
should endure in the eternal mountains
within the crystal cup of this snow-fed
lake?

The question is worth the answering.
Angus McDonald was a Highland
Scotchman, sent out into the western wil-
derness by the Hudson Bay Company.
There must have lurked in his robust
blood the mastering love of freedom and
adventure which led the scions of the
House of McDonald to such strange and
varied destinies; which made such char-
acters in the Scottish hills as Rob Roy
and clothed the kilted clans with a ro-
mantic colour totally wanting in their
stolid brethren of the Lowlands. In any
event, it is certain that Angus McDon-
ald, once within the magic of the wild,
flung aside the ties that bound him to the
, outer world and became in dress, in man-
ner of life and in heart, an Indian. He
92

LAKE ANGUS MCDONALD

took unto himself an Indian wife, begot
sons who were Indians in colour and form
and like his adopted people, he hunted
upon the heights, moved his tipi from
valley to mountain as capricious notion
prompted, and finally made for himself
and his family a home in the valley of
Sin-yal-min not far below that lake and
peak which do honor to his memory.
Physically he was a man of towering sta-
ture, standing over six feet in his mocca-
sins; his shoulders were broad and he was
very erect. His leonine head was clad
with a heavy shock of hair, and his beard,
during his later years, snow white, hung
to his waist. His complexion was ruddy,
his eyes, clear, blue and penetrating. A
picturesque figure he must have been, clad
in full buckskin leggins and shirt with a
blanket wrapped around him. He was
known among the Indians and whites
through the length and breadth of the
country about, and no more strange or
striking character quickened the adven-

93

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

ture-bearing epoch which we call the
Early Days.

As he was free to the point of light-
ness in his nature, trampling down and
discarding every shackle of convention-
ality, he was likewise bound but nomi-
nally by the Christian creed. He believed
in reincarnation and his one desire was
that in the hereafter, when his soul should
be sent to tenant the new body, he might
be re-born in the form of a wild, white
horse, with proud, arched neck and earth-
scorning hoofs, dashing wind-swift over
the broad prairies into the sheltering hills.

So it seems fitting that McDonald's
Peak and Lake should remain untamed
even as their namesake; that the eddying
whirlpool of life should pass them by and
that in their embrace the native creatures
should live and range as of yore. And
may it be that within those shadowy
gorges, remote from the sight and hear-
ing of man, a wild, white horse goes
bounding through the night?

94

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

CHAPTER IV

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS OF THE
NORTHWEST

MORE than a century after the
Spanish Francescans planted
the Cross upon the Pacific
shores, the French, Belgian and Italian
Jesuits or robes noires, took their way in-
to the Northwestern wilderness in re-
sponse to a cry from the people who lived
within its solitudes. Civilization follows
the highways of intercourse with the out-
er world, so the Western coast had passed
through the struggle of its beginnings
and entered into a period of prosperity
and peace, while that territory with the
Rocky Mountains as its general center,
was still as primeval as when the galle-
ons of Juan de Fuca sailed into Puget
Sound.
The mellowness of old romance, the

97

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

warmth of Latin colour, hang over the
Missions of California. The pilgrim lin-
gers reverently in their cloistered recess-
es, breathing the scent of orange blos-
soms, reposing in the shade of palm and
pepper trees. With the song of the sea
in his ears and its sapphire glint in his eye
he re-lives the olden days, weaves for
himself out of imagination's threads, a
picture as harmonious in its tones of faded
rose and gray as an ancient tapestry. How
much the architectural beauty of these
Missions has brought them within the af-
fectionate regard of the people it is hard
to say, but undoubtedly it has had an in-
fluence. The graceful lines of arch and
pillar, the low, broad sweep of roof and
corridor, the delicate, yellowish-white of
the adobe outlined against a sky of royal
blue, stir the sleeping sense of beauty in
our hearts and make us pause to worship
at such favoured shrines.

It is for precisely the opposite reason
that we are drawn to the Missions of the

98

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

Northwest. Austere, ascetic in form,
they make their appeal because of their
unadorned simplicity. They were orig-
inally the plainest structures of logs, add-
ed to as occasion demanded and always
constructed of such homely materials as
the surrounding country could yield.
Hands unaccustomed to other labours than
telling the rosary or making the sign of
the Cross, hewed forest trees and wrought
in wood the symbol of their teaching. No
wonder, then, that the buildings were
small and crude, but their lack of gran-
deur was the best testimony to the sacrifice
and noble purpose of which they were
the emblems. Overlooked, isolated they
stand, passed by and all but unknown. Yet
they are monuments of heroic achieve-
ment and devotion; brave men risked
their lives willingly to lay these founda-
tion stones of the faith; bitter struggles
were fought and won in their consecrated
shadows and upon them is the glamour of
thrilling episode.

99

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

During the seventeenth century a little
band of French missionaries of the order
of St. Ignatius journeyed from their na-
tive France to Canadian territory with
the purpose of spreading the v^^ord of God
amongst the savages of that benighted
land. One of them, Father Ignace Jogues,
became the apostle of the Iroquois and
died at their hands, a martyr. Strangely
enough, his teachings lived after him and
were preserved in a measure, at least, by
those who had murdered him because of
the message he brought.

Years afterwards, about 1815, a small
party of Iroquois took their way from
the Mission of Caughnawaga, in the
neighbourhood of Sault St. Louis, on the
banks of the Saint Lawrence River, and
proceeded, probably in quest of furs, into
the little known and perilous ascents of
the Rocky Mountains. This party was
headed by one Ignace La Mousse, his
given name being by a curious coinci-
dence, the same as that of the martyred
100

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

disciple of the Gospel. He was a man of
lordly stature and puissance indomitable.
Upon their wanderings they came to
Spetlemen, "the place of the Bitter Root,"
a mild, fair valley where dwelt a folk
kindly in their natures, who called them-
selves the Selish. These people wel-
comed the Iroquois, made them at home
in their lodges and shared with them the
sports of the chase until the visiting In-
dians were visitors no more and claimed
no other land than this.

From the lips of Old Ignace, as he
was known, the Selish heard of a mys-
terious faith symbolized by a Cross, a
greater medicine than that of any of the
tribes, and of pale-faced, sable-robed
priests, who, in the olden time, taught that
faith and died happily in the teaching.

The Selish practiced a simple, spon-
taneous kind of paganism. They be-
lieved in a Good and Evil Spirit who
were constantly at war. These two pow-
ers were symbolized by light and dark-

lOI

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

ness and their heroic battle was pictured
in the alternate triumph of day and night.
If bufifalo came in plenty, if elk and
moose were slain and the season's yield
were rich, then, according to their notion,
the Good Spirit was in the ascendency;
but if, on the other hand, Winter rode
down from the mountains while their lar-
der was low, if fish would not bite and
game could not be caught, the influence
of the Evil Spirit prevailed. They be-
lieved also, in a future existence, happy
or miserable according to the merit or
demerit of the soul during its mortal life.
The worthy shade passed into eternal
Summer time, to a land watered by fair
streams and green with meadows ; in these
streams were countless fishes and in the
meadows bands of wild horses and end-
less herds of the beloved buffalo. There
the spirit, united with its family, would
ride through all eternity, hunting
amongst the ghostly flocks in the Summer
sun of happy souls. But those who had
1 02

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

violated the tenets of the tribe, who had
been liars, cowards or otherwise dishon-
ourable, and those negative offenders who
had been lacking in love for their wives,
husbands and children, had sealed for
themselves a bitter fate. These outcasts
went to an arctic region of everlasting
snow where false fires were kindled to tor-
ment their frozen limbs with the mocking
promise of warmth. Phantom streams of-
fered their parched lips drink, but as
they hastened to the banks to quench their
thirst, the elusive waters were ever far-
ther and farther away. So ever and anon,
through the years that never seemed to
die, the shades were doomed to hurry on-
ward through the night and cold of Win-
ter that knows no Spring, in misery as
dark as the shadow engulfing them. The
Lands of Good and Evil were separated
by savage woods, inhabited by hungry
wolves, lithe wild cats and serpents coiled
to strike. The wretched sinner in his
prison of ice, might after a period of pen-
103

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

ance, short or long, according to the
measure of his offense, expiate his sins
and join his brethren in the Happy
Hunting Ground.

Besides this general belief held in com-
mon by the tribe, they cherished count-
less myths such as those of the creation
and many lesser fanciful legends which
formed a part of their religion.

Although these Indians were sincere
in this simple, half-poetical mythology,
they listened very willingly, like eager
children, to Old Ignace, and from him
learned to make the sacred sign and re-
peat the white man's prayer. After
knowing something of their mysticism it
is not surprising that the greater mysti-
cism of the Catholic Church should ap-
peal to them ; that once having heard the
story of a faith much in accord with many
of their elementary, pre-conceived ideas,
they should pursue it tirelessly until they
gained that which they most desired.

Time upon time at the councils, the
104

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

chiefs discussed a means of getting a
Black Robe to come to them. At last, in
a mighty assembly, Old Ignace arose and
proposed that a delegation be sent to St.
Louis to pray that an apostle of the church
might come to shed the light of the new
faith upon the darkness of the Western
Woods. A stir of approval ran through
the attentive people, for it was a great
and daring thing to think of. But who
would go? The journey of about two
thousand miles lay over barriers of moun-
tains, rushing torrents, virgin forests
where the sun never shone, and worst of
all, penetrated the country of their hered-
itary enemies, the Sioux. In spite of
these perils, in the breathless quiet of
expectation that had hushed the tribe,
four braves came forward and volun-
teered to undertake the quest.

The knights of the olden days, who

went forth sheathed in armour, in goodly

cavalcades, to the land of the Saracen in

search of the Holy Grail, have gathered

105

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

about their memory the white light of
heroism, but if their daring and that of
these four were weighed impartially, the
Indians would rise higher in the scale of
glory. Alone, afoot, armed only with
such weapons as their skill could con-
trive, they started out in the Spring. of
1 83 1, and in spite of the death that lurked
around them, reached their journey's end
with the Autumn. The tragical after-
math of that heroic adventure followed
quickly. The dangers overcome, the goal
won, they failed. Not one among them
could speak a word of French or Eng-
lish. They sought out General Clark
who had penetrated into their lands, but
what brought them from across the
Rocky Mountains, through the teeth of
perdition to St. Louis, not even he could
guess. Picture the tragedy of being with-
in reach of the treasure and unable to point
it out! Through General Clark the four
emissaries were conducted to the Catholic
Church. Monseigneur, the Bishop, was
106

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

absent — he whom they had travelled six
moons to see. Very soon thereafter, two
of the number fell ill as a result of ex-
posure. In their sickness, doomed to die
in a strange land far, far from the pleas-
ant glades of their native valley, they
made the sign of the Cross and other fee-
ble gestures which some priests who vis-
ited them interpreted rightly to be an ap-
peal for baptism and the last rites of the
church. The priests accordingly gave
them the consolation they prayed for and
placed in the hands of each a little cruci-
fix. So rigidly did they press these sym-
bols to their breasts, that they retained
them even in death. Still in their final
agonies not one word could they tell of
that mission for which they were even
then yielding up their lives. They died
christened Narcisse and Paul and were
buried in a Catholic cemetery in the City
of St. Louis.

The two survivors, nameless shadows,
flitted back into the wild and were lost
107

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

forever in the darkness. No tidings of
them ever reached the v^aiting tribe, so
they, too, sacrificed themselves to a fruit-
less cause.

After these things had happened a Ca-
nadian, familiar with the Indians, in-
formed the good fathers who these chil-
dren of the forest were and of their
devotion to a Faith, the merest glimmer-
ing of which had penetrated to their
remote and isolated valley. Then a priest
of the Cathedral offered to go with one
companion to these zealous Indians when
the Spring should make possible the des-
perate trip.

Meantime, the Selish waited long and
anxiously for word from their delegation.
Michel Insula, or Red Feather, "Little
Chief and Great Warrior," small of stat-
ure but mighty of spirit, always distin-
guished by the red feather he wore, hear-
ing that some missionaries were travel-
ling westward, fought his way through
the hostile country and arrived at the
io8

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

Green River Rendezvous where Indians,
trappers and some Protestant ministers
were assembled. Insula was dissatisfied
with the ministers because they had
wives, wore no black gowns such as Old
Ignace described, and carried no crucifix.
The symbolism of the Catholic Church
had impressed him deeply and he would
have no other faith, so he and his band re-
turned to their people to tell them that
the robes noires were not yet come and
their brave messengers had perished with
their mission unfulfilled.

They were resolute men, these Indians,
and never faltering, they determined to
send another party upon the same sacred
quest. This time Old Ignace, he who
had first broached the adventure to the
council, arose among the chiefs and war-
riors and offered to go. He took with
him his two young sons. The Summer
was already well spent, but he and the
lads started out undaunted, and after a
terrible period of ceaseless travelling,
109

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

smitten with cold and hunger, they
reached St. Louis, and Ignace more fa-
voured than the preceding delegation,
made known the wants of his adopted
tribe to the Bishop, who listened to him
kindly and promised to send a priest
among his people.

Ignace and his sons returned safely to
the Bitter Root Valley and brought the
glad tidings to the Selish. But eighteen
moons waxed and waned and though the
watchful eyes of the Indians scanned the
East, never a pale-faced father in robes
of black came out of the land of the sun-
rise.

The chiefs took counsel again. A third
time they determined to make their ap-
peal. Once more Ignace La Mousse led the
way and in his charge were three Selish
and one Nez Perce brave. They fell in
with a little party of white people near
Fort Laramie, and uniting forces for
greater safety, took up the march to-
gether. They journeyed onward unmo-
IIO

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

lested until they came to Ash Hollow in
the land of the warlike Sioux. In that
fateful place three hundred of the hostile
tribe surrounded them. The Sioux, wish-
ing only the scalps of the Selish and Nez
Perce, ordered the white men and Old
Ignace who was dressed in the garb of
civilization, to stand apart. The whites
obeyed, but Ignace La Mousse, scorning
favour or mercy at the enemy's hands,
joined his adopted tribal brethren and
fought with them until they all lay dead
upon the plains. So ended the third ex-
pedition.

Once more news of the bloody death of
their heroes reached the Selish. A fourth
and last party volunteered to undertake
that which now seemed a hopeless charge.
Two Iroquois, Young Ignace La Mousse,
so called to distinguish him from the
elder of the name, whose memory was
held honourable by the tribe, and Pierre
Gaucher, "Left Handed Peter," set out,
joining a party of the Hudson Bay Fur
III

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

Company's men and making the trip in
canoes. They finished the journey in
safety and obtained from Monseigneur,
the Bishop, the pledge that in the Spring
he would send a missionary to the Valley
of the Bitter Root. Young Ignace waited
at the mouth of Bear River through the
Winter in order to be ready to guide the
priest to the Selish with the coming of
the Spring. Pierre Gaucher returned
hot-footed, in triumph, conveying to the
tribe the glad tidings that their prayer
had been answered ; that the Great Black
Robe was sending them a disciple to
preach the Holy Word. At last, after
eight years of waiting, the Selish were to
have granted them their hearts' desire.
From out of the East the pale-faced,
black robed father would come bearing
with him the Cross illuminated by the
rising sun, casting the benediction of its
shadow upon the people and their land.

When the Selish learned from Pierre
Gaucher that the rohe noire was in reality

112

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

travelling towards their country even
then, the Great Chief assembled his
braves and it was decided that the tribe
should march forward to meet and wel-
come their missionary. Accordingly they
started in good season and on their way
met groups of Kalispehlms, Nez Perces
and Pend d'Oreilles, who joined them,
swelling their number to about sixteen
hundred souls. The ever increasing cav-
alcade moved on over pass and valley,
peak and ford, clad in rich furs, war-
eagle feathers and buckskins bright with
beads — a gaily coloured column filing
through the woods. Finally, in the Pierre
Hole Valley they came upon him who
was henceforth to be their teacher and
guide. Father de Smet, whose memory is
held in reverence by the Indians of the
present generation.

There was great rejoicing among the
Selish, the Nez Perces, the Pend d'Oreil-
les and the Kalispehlms. They burst into
wild shouts of delight, swarming around

"3

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

the pale priest, shaking his hand and
bowing down before him. They con-
ducted him to the lodge of the Great
Chief, called the "Big Face," whom
Father de Smet has described as one
"who had the appearance of a patriarch."
The Chief made Father de Smet wel-
come in these words:

" 'This day the Great Spirit has accom-
plished our wishes and our hearts are
swelled with joy. Our desire to be in-
structed was so great that four times had
we deputed our people to the Great
Black Robe in St. Louis to obtain priests.
Now, Father, speak and we will comply
with all that you will tell us. Show us
the way we have to take to go to the home
of the Great Spirit.' "

Thus spake the Big Face, Chief of all
the Selish, and there before the assembled
peoples of the kindred tribes, he offered
to the priest his hereditary honours as
ruler. His renunciation was sincere,
but Father de Smet replied that he had
114

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

come merely to teach, not to govern
them.

That night in the deepening shadow,
the children of the forest gathered to-
gether around their new leader and
chanted a song of praise. Strange music
swelling from untutored lips and awak-
ening hearts into the wild silence which
had echoed only the howl of native beasts
and the war cry of battle and death I Yet
even in that hymn of thanksgiving there
was an undertone of unconscious sadness.
It was the beginning of a new epoch. The
old, poetical wood-myth and paganism
were gone ; the free range over mountain
and plain in the exhilarating chase would
slowly give place to the pursuits of hus-
bandry. And this new, shapeless com-
pound of civilization and religion was
bringing with its blessings, a burden of
obligation and pain. The Indians did not
know, the priest himself could not under-
stand, that he was the channel through
which these simple, happy folk should

115

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS
embark upon dangerous, devouring seas.

Father De Smet was a Belgian and he
had spent some time with the Pottowa-
tamies, in Kansas. He understood the In-
dians well and what was most important,
he loved them. He remained among the
Selish long enough to be assured of their
docile nature and sincerity of purpose,
then returned to St. Louis to urge the es-
tablishment of a permament mission and
to ask for assistance to carry on his work.
Monseigneur, the Bishop, listened favour-
ably to his appeal and consequently, in
the Spring of 1841, Father De Smet, re-
inforced with two Italian priests, three
lay brothers and some other man, started
for the Rocky Mountains. The Selish
had promised to meet the party at a given
place at the base of the Wind River
Mountains, on the first day of July. The
Indians waited until they were driven by
hunger to hunt in more likely fields. The
Fathers, learning of this, sent a messen-
116

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

ger to recall them, and they hastened
back to greet their apostle and his fol-
lowers. And of that little band there
were Charles and Frangois, the sons of
Old Ignace, the Iroquois, Simon, the old-
est of the tribe, and Young Ignace of
great fame, who, we are told, journeyed
for four long days and nights having
neither food nor drink, in his haste to
make good his promise to meet the robes
n aires.

So far was the season advanced that
the Selish had started on their buffalo
hunt. Therefore, the priests whose sup-
plies were exhausted, with their Indian
friends, went on to Fort Hall, procured
provisions there, and then proceeded to
the Beaverhead River to join the tribe.
The priests stayed only a few days among
the Indians who were absorbed in the
chase, and again took up their journey
with the Bitter Root valley as the chosen
place of permanent rest. There they had
determined to build the Mission, "the
117

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

house of the Great Spirit," and there the
Selish promised to join them after the
hunt was over in the Fall. Along the
course of the Hell Gate River they took
their way and at last came safely within
the green refuge of the valley to lay down
their burden and build their church.
They selected a fair spot near the present
site of Stevensville and laboured long to
fashion the pioneer home of the Faith
which they called The Mission of St.
Mary's. The good priests went farther
still and re-named the valley, the river
watering it and the highest peak, St.
Mary's, so anxious were they in their zeal
to eradicate every trace of the old, pagan
beliefs of their converts, even to the names
of the valleys, lakes and hills !

The element of incongruity and pity in
this, the zealous fathers did not appreci-
ate. That a jagged, beetling crest, the
home of the thunder cloud, the womb
whence issues glacier and roaring stream,
fit to be Jove's dwelling, should bear the
ii8

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

mild title of St. Mary's, did not shock
their notions of the eternal fitness of
things. Happily, the valley with its rose-
starred brocade of flowers, is still the Bit-
ter Root and a re-awakening interest is
calling the old names from their long
oblivion to take their places once again,
vesting peak and stream and grassy vale
with a significance of meaning totally
wanting in the artificial foreign titles
forced on them by those who neither knew
nor cared for their tradition and senti-
ment. And even the ancient gods and
spirits are no longer despised as evils an-
tagonistic to the salvation of the soul.
Lafcadio Hearn expressed pity for the
cast-ofif Shinto gods whose places were
usurped by the deities of the Buddhist
creed. Likewise, the best Christian
amongst us, if he looks beneath the sur-
face into the heart of things, must be con-
scious of a vague regret for the quaint,
mythical lore which cast its glamour over
the wilderness; for the poor, vanished
119

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

phantoms of the wood and the gods who
have fallen from their thrones. Some-
times in the remotest mountain solitudes
we dare to acknowledge thoughts we
would not harbour elsewhere. Under the
pensive appeal of the still forests, the
heaven-reaching peaks and stream-songs,
we wonder if upon the heights, in deep-
bosomed caverns, those sad exiles dwell,
casting over the cloistered groves a subtle
melancholy, evasive as the shadow of a
cloud, fleeting as the sigh of the Summer
wind.

But the good fathers of St. Mary's had
no such thought for the ancient paganism
and its symbols. They were busy planting
the Cross, building a chapel, the best that
their strength and skill could erect, and
other structures necessary for their pro-
tection and comfort. It was a labour of
love, as much a religious rite as the saying
of the Mass, and verily, the ring of the
hammers must have seemed in the ears of
those devoted men, endless aves and pater
120

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

nosters. Finally the work was done. A
comfortable log cabin, large enough to
hold nearly the assembled tribe, stood in
the valley, and when the Indians returned
from the hunt, they were joyful in this,
their reward, for all those brave at-
tempts to bring the Light into the Wil-
derness.

The Mission completed, Father De
Smet travelled to Fort Colville in Wash-
ington, a journey of more than three hun-
dred miles, to procure seeds and roots,
and on his way he stopped among the
Kalispehlms, the Pend d'Oreilles and the
Cceur d'Alenes, all of whom welcomed
him and listened attentively to the mes-
sage he brought. He took back to his
Selish charges at St. Mary's "a few bu-
shels of oats, wheat and potatoes" which
he and his brethren sowed. The Indians,
like children, watched with wonder, the
planting, sprouting, ripening and reaping
of the crop, a thing hitherto unknown to
them, though husbandry on a small scale

121

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

had been practiced at an earlier date by
some of the Eastern tribes.

But however truly the Indians loved
their new teachers, the robes noires, and
however sincerely they accepted the tenets
of their faith, they still persisted in buf-
falo hunts, which twice a year took them
into the contested country, and upon these
expeditions, fired with excitement, alive
with all the heritage of passion inspired
by the chase, the war path and the intoxi-
cation of glory handed down to them
through an ancestry so ancient as to be
lost in the dimness of beginnings, they
forgot for a time, at least, the life of
order, industry and religion they had
pledged themselves to lead. Therefore,
one of the new priests. Father Point, ac-
companied them on the hunt, but in the
abandon of those days when every sense
was strained to find the prey, and every
nerve was as tense as the bow-string 'ere
it speeds the arrow to its mark, it was im-
possible to preach to them the gentle

122

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

word of Christianity, so the Fathers gave
up these attempts and remained at the
Mission awaiting the return of their
straying converts, a situation which was
to result sadly for St. Mary's. Meantime
the work was growing. The Pend
d'Oreilles and Coeur d'Alenes had asked
for missionary priests and Father De
Smet needed more helpers in the new
land.

From St. Mary's, the Mother Mission,
Father Point and Brother Huet went
forth to minister to the Coeur d'Alenes,
where they established the Mission of the
Sacred Heart. A third Mission, St. Igna-
tius, was founded amongst the Kalis-
pehlms on the Pend d'Oreille River.
With these two offshoots from the parent
stem of St. Mary's, it was necessary for
Father De Smet to seek re-inforcement
abroad, but before he sailed he started
westward three new recruits from St.
Louis.

It must have been an inspiring sight

123

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

when this humble priest, fresh from the
western woods, the scent of the pines ex-
haling from him, the breadth of vast dis-
tances in his vision, the simplicity of the
Indians' racial childhood reflected in his
own nature, stood before his August
Holiness, Pope Gregory XVI., in the
grandeur of the Vatican at Rome, and
there, amidst the pomp and ostentation,
the wealth and luxury of the headwaters
of that Church which sends its streams to
the utmost corners of the earth, pled the
cause of the lowly Indian. More impos-
ing still, it must have been, when His
Holiness arose from his throne and em-
braced this apostle from the great. New
World. The Pope sought to make the
priest a bishop, but Father De Smet chose
to remain as he was, and certainly in the
eyes of unprejudiced laymen, he gained
in simple dignity more than he foreswore
in ecclesiastical honors.

This trip of Father De Smet to Europe
has a peculiar interest in that it was the
124

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

means of bringing into the West, besides
numbers of pioneer Sisters, and clergy, a
man so beloved, so revered that his name
— Father Ravalli — is known by Catholic
and Protestant, Indian and White alike,
through the whole of the Rocky Moun-
tain region. Those who knew the gentle
old man loved him not only for his spir-
ituality, but for his human sweetness. He
possessed that breadth of sympathy which
sheds mercy on good and bad equally,
commiserating the fallen, pitying the
weak. He was a native of Ferrara, Italy,
and at a very early age decided to become
a missionary priest. That he might be
most useful materially as well as relig-
iously, he fitted himself for his work. He
graduated in belles lettres, philosophy,
the natural sciences, and became a teach-
er in these branches of learning, in sev-
eral cities of Italy. Under a skilled phy-
sician of Rome he studied medicine; in a
mechanic's shop he learned the use of
tools ; finally, in a studio, he practiced the
125

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

rudiments of art which he always loved.
So he came to the Indians bringing with
him great human kindliness, and the
knowledge of crafts and homely pursuits
that made their lives more easy and inde-
pendent. It was he who devised the first
crude mill, the means of giving the peo-
ple flour and bread, he who by a hundred
ingenious devices lightened the burden of
their toil. But most of all was his prac-
tice of medicine a mercy. To stricken in-
fancy or old age he was alike attentive;
to dying Christians he bent with ready
ear and alleviating touch, or as compas-
sionately eased the last throes of highway-
men, heretic or murderer. Over the bleak,
snowy passes of the mountains, heedless
of hardship or danger, he hurried in an-
swer to the appeal of the sick, no matter
who they were or where they dwelt. And
though often those whe went before or
came after him were robbed, he was never
molested. The most desperate of the
"road agents" respected him and suffered
126

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

him to pass in peace on his way. Gently
brave, lilce the good bishop in Les Miser-
ables, his very trustfulness was his safe-
guard. Perhaps as striking an example
of his forethought as we can find is the
fact that he trained a squaw to give intel-
ligent care to women in the throes of
childbirth. There is no record of the
mothers and babes spared thus, but there
were many, and even the letter of the
monkish law never stayed his helping
hand or curbed his humane devotion. The
more ascetic brethren who lived in colder
spiritual altitudes, looked doubtfully up-
on Father Ravalli's impartial ministry;
the more astute financiers who held the
keys to the Church's coffers, frowned up-
on his unrewarded toil, and there comes
a whisper through the years that there
were times when he was an object of
charity because he never asked reward for
the surcease of suffering his patient vigils
brought.

He travelled from one to another of

127

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

the Northwestern missions and even to
Santa Clara, California, but he is known
best and loved most as the Apostle of the
Selish at St. Mary's. Indeed, looking
back through the perspective of time at
the plain, little Mission crowned as with
an aureole, one figure stands out clearly
among the pious priests, who, in turn,
presided at its altar, and this figure is
Father Ravalli.

His grave, marked by a shaft of stone,
is within the shadow of the church in the
valley of the Bitter Root, and it was fit-
ting he should lie down to rest where he
had laboured so long and lovingly. A
generation hence, when the hallowed
places of the West become shrines about
which pilgrims shall gather reverently,
this mountain-tomb of the gentle old
priest will be visited and written of.
Meantime, he sleeps as sweetly for the
solitude, and those whose lives he made
more beautiful by his presence think of
him at peace as they turn their eyes heav-
128

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

enward to the infinite rosary of the stars.
In spite of the progress of the ben-
eficent work and the fresh blood that had
infused new strength into the cause, dark
days were to cast their shadow upon the
little Mission of St. Mary's. No power
could restrain the Selish from the chase,
and during their absence twice a year, the
colony left behind, consisting only of the
priest and those too aged or sick to follow
the tribe, were menaced by the Blackfeet
and Bannock Indians. The old feud was
fanned red hot by the Selish killing two
Blackfeet warriors who invaded the very
boundaries of the Mission with hostile in-
tent. The threats from the Blackfeet be-
came more terrible. They lurked in the
thick timber and brush around the stock-
ade which enclosed the Mission, and, fi-
nally, while the tribe was absent on a buf-
falo hunt, a rumour reached the anxious
watchers that the hostiles would descend
in a great war party upon the defenseless
community. And indeed, they were
129

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

roused by war whoop and savage yell to
see swarming around their weak barri-
cade, the dreaded enemy. Father Ravalli
was in charge of the Mission at that time
and he and his companions prepared
themselves for the death which seemed
inevitable. But the Blackfeet, probably
seeing that only a man stricken with
years, two young boys and a few aged
women and little children were all of
their hated foe who remained at St.
Mary's, retreated to the brush. One of
the two boys ventured to the gate to make
sure the Blackfeet were gone and was shot
dead. This tragical incident and the more
awful menace it carried with it to those
who were left at the mercy of the invad-
ing tribes, and another reason we shall
now consider, led to the temporary aban-
donment of St. Mary's.

In those early days, the missions being
the only habitations within many hun-
dreds of miles, became the refuge and
abiding place during bitter weather, of

130

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

French-Canadian and mixed breed trap-
pers, who in milder seasons ranged over
the mountains and plains in pursuit of
furs. These half-savage men were un-
doubtedly a picturesque part of the old,
woodland life and their uncouth figures
lent animation and colour to the quiet
monotone of the religious communities.
In the first quarter of the last century we
find mention of French-Canadians em-
ployed by the Missouri Fur Company,
appearing on New Year's Eve, clad in
bison robes, painted like Indians, dancing
La Gignolee to the music of tinkling
bells fastened to their dress, for gifts of
meat and drink. These trappers were, in
the day of St. Mary's Mission, a licentious,
roistering band with easy morals, con-
sciences long since gone to sleep, who did
not hesitate to debauch the Indians, and
who feared neither man nor devil. They
went to St. Mary's as to other shrines, and
under the pretext of practicing their re-
ligion, lived on the missionaries' scanty

131

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

Stores and filled the idle hours with illicit
pastimes. It is said that they became re-
vengeful because of the coolness of their
reception by the priests, and maliciously
set about to poison the Selish against the
beloved robes noires. However this may
be, whether the wayward, capricious
children strayed or not, it is certain that
they would not sacrifice the buffalo hunt
for priest nor promise of salvation, so the
Mission was dismantled and leased; its
poor effects packed and the Apostles of
the Faith started out again to seek refuge
in new fields. At Hell's Gate, the inferno
of the Blackfeet, they parted; Father Ra-
valli to wend his way to the Mission of
the Sacred Heart among the Coeur
d'Alenes; the rest, under the escort and
protection of Victor, the Lodge Pole,
Great Chief of the Selish and father of
Chariot, followed the Coriacan defile to
the Jocko River and finally arrived at St.
Ignatius, the Mission of the Kalispehlms.
For a time we leave St. Mary's in the
132

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

sad oblivion of desertion, while those who
had tended its altar, poor pilgrims, toiled
over diverse trails toward different desti-
nations.

It is not necessary to follow the varying
fortunes of the few, small missions in the
Northwestern wilderness, included then
within the vast territory called Oregon.
Each has its pathetic story of privation
and danger, which may be found com-
plete and detailed in ecclesiastical his-
tories written by priests of the order.

We shall pass on to the Mission of St.
Ignatius, whither the party from St.
Mary's sought refuge, which, in the
course of time absorbed some of the les-
ser institutions and became, as we shall
see, the religious center of several tribes.
The Mission of St. Ignatius was the same
founded by Father Point on the banks of
the Pend d'Oreille River among the
Kalispehlms in the year 1844. The origi-
nal location proved undesirable, so ten
years later the Mission was moved to a

133

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

site chosen by the advice of Alexander,
Chief of the tribe. A wonderful revela-
tion it must have been when the Indian
guide, leading the priests through a pass
in the mountains, the secret of his people,
showed them the vast sea of flowing green
— the valley of Sin-yal-min — barred to
the East by the range of the same name.
There ever-changing shades of violet and
lights of gold altered the mien of these
mountains whose jagged peaks showed
white with snow, from whose deep
bosoms burst a water-fall plunging from
mighty altitudes into the emerald bowl
of the valley. This was veritably a king-
dom in itself, and no white man had trod-
den the thick embroidery of wild flowers
and grass. It had been a gathering place
for many tribes. Within its luxuriantly
fruitful limits, berries and roots grew in
plenty and game abounded in the neigh-
bouring hills.

In the very palm of Sin-yal-min the
new Mission of St. Ignatius was builded.

134

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

There could scarcely have been a more
ideal spot for church and school, forming
the nucleus of an agricultural community.
There gathered parties of the upper and
lower Kalisphelms, upper Kootenais,
Flat Bowes, Pend d'Oreilles and Selish,
to pitch their tipis in the shadow of the
Mission Cross. Many of these Indians
made for themselves little farms where
they laboured and lived. Entire families
of Selish moved from the Bitter Root val-
ley to be near the rohes noires they loved.
St. Ignatius possessed an advantage that
bound the Indians to it by perma-
nent ties and that was its schools. Four
pioneer Sisters travelling into the Rocky
Mountain region under the guidance of
two priests and two laymen, from their
home mission in Montreal, founded at
St. Ignatius the first girls' school among
the Indians of the territory. Not long
thereafter the priests established a simi-
lar school for boys, where they taught not
only the French and English languages

135

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

and the rudiments of a simple education,
but also such handicrafts as seemed most
necessary to the development of industry.
In saddle-making particularly, the boys
excelled, and wonderful specimens of
leather work have gone forth from the
Mission shops. Thus, largely through its
practical industry St. Ignatius grew into
a powerful institution. Building after
building was added to the group until a
beautiful village sprang up, half hidden
among clumps of trees and generous
vines. On the outskirts of this community
rows of tiny, low, thatch- roofed log
cabins were built by the Indians to shelter
them when they assembled to celebrate
such feasts as Christmas, Good Friday
and that of St. Ignatius, their patron
Saint.

The fates favoured St. Ignatius. In the
year of its removal the Hell's Gate treaty
was signed wherein the bounds of the res-
ervation were re-adjusted, making the
new mission the center of that rich do-
136

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

minion. The treaty of the Hell Gate,
participated in by the Selish, the Pend
d'Oreilles and some of the Kootenais, was
the same, it may be remembered, wherein
Victor, the father of Chariot, insisted up-
on retaining possession of the Bitter Root
Valley "above the LoLo Fork" for him-
self and his people, unless after a fair sur-
vey by the United States, the President
should deem it best to move the tribe to
the Jocko. This agreement was entered
into in 1855. Seventeen years went by.
The Indians declare that no survey was
ever made during that time nor were they
furnished with school teachers, skilled ar-
tisans and agriculturalists to instruct
them, as had been promised on the part of
the government. Summarily the Selish
were called upon to sign a second agree-
ment, the Garfield treaty, which deprived
them of their ancestral home and drove
them forth to share the Jocko Reservation
in common with the allied tribes. This
was at once an impetus to the fortunes of

137

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

St. Ignatius and a mortal blow to St.
Mary's.

That pioneer shrine, abandoned on ac-
count of the depredations of the Black-
feet, remained dark and silent for sixteen
years. The Selish mourned the loss of
their friends and teachers, the robes
noires. In spite of the absence of the
church's influence, save such intermittent
inspiration as the occasional visit of a
priest, the Selish prayed and waited. And
surely, poor, impulsive children that they
were, if they had been misled by tale-
bearing, mixed breed trappers, their di-
gression was dearly expiated. During
those sixteen years they remained faithful
to the cause which four delegations of
their number had braved danger, priva-
tion and death to win.

In the meantime the West was chang-
ing. The first stern, ascetic days were
passing when the best of men's characters
was called into active existence to cope
with immediate hardship; when every

138

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

nerve rang true, tuned to the highest bra-
very and that magnificent indifference to
death which makes heroes. The cry of
gold ran through the length and breadth
of the land and the headlong rush of ad-
venturers, good and bad, from the four
corners of the earth, all bent on wealth,
changed the spirit of the western world.
In that mad stampede, men, spurred by
the lust of gain, pushed and crowded each
other, and with such competition, who
thought of or cared for the Indian? His
day was done ; the accomplishment of his
ruin was merely a matter of years. More-
over, the lower element of the reckless,
pillaging crew of gold seekers brought
with it the vices of civilization — drink
and the game.

Change the ideal which inspires a deed
and the deed itself is changed. That
first, stern West which taught men not to
fear by surrounding them with danger,
made heroes of them because they had
braved the unknown for some noble pur-

139

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

pose, religion, the simple love of Nature
or another reason as good; but in these al-
tered conditions where debauching gain
was the one object of their quest, though
they spurned death as the pathfinders had
done, their bravery sank to bravado and
dare-deviltry because their purpose was
sordid.

With this invasion of the wilderness the
whole aspect of the mission work under-
went a change. The masked man on
horseback stalked the trails; the bizarre
glamour of the dance hall flaunted its
coarse gaiety in the mushroom camps'
thronged streets; the saloon and gaming
house brought temptation to the Indian,
and generally he fell. It was also true
that in more than one instance the prece-
dent of bloodshed was set by brigand
whites, sowing the seeds which were later
to bear a red harvest of war.

So, when St. Mary's opened her doors
in 1869, it was upon a period of transition.
If the placid image of Our Lady, looking
140

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

through half closed eyelids, could have
seen and understood the metamorphosis
what a shock would have smitten her
sainted soul! The painted, war-bent
Blackfeet were gone far back into their
fastnesses, but here and there, thick and
fast, came the white settler, peaceful,
cold, inevitable, overwhelming, bringing
ruin to the old life and its people — the be-
ginning of the end. And that calm, just
Mother of Mankind would have seen the
timid shadow-shapes of the Selish melt-
ing into the gathering twilight, at once
welcoming the stranger to the land and
relinquishing it to him, retiring step by
step before the great, white inundation.
It is useless to prolong the story. The cli-
max had to come^ and come it did, swift-
ly, cruelly, with a dark hint of treachery
that we, of the superior race are too will-
ing to excuse and condone. By the Gar-
field Treaty, which, by a curious anom-
aly, never very lucidly explained, bears
the sign of Chariot, son of Victor, heredi-
141

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

tary chief of the Selish, that he, a man in
his sane senses swears he never signed,
the tribe renounced all claim to the land
of their fathers and consented to betake
themselves to the Jocko reservation. Dur-
ing the twenty-tw^o years of the existence
of St. Mary's as an Indian Mission, after
its second opening, the fathers, among
them Father Ravalli, watched over and
tended their decreasing charge. The num-
bers of the red hosts dwindled ; the falling
off of the people through new and unnat-
ural conditions thinned their ranks, but
surer still, was the admixture of the white
strain, so corrupting in most cases to the
unfortunate in whom the two race strains
commingle. But in spite of the Garfield
Treaty, notwithstanding the exodus of the
main body of the Selish, St. Mary's faith-
ful to the end, drew to her little altar the
last, failing remnant of the tribe — the
splendidly defiant Chariot and his band.
At last, in 1891, they accepted the inevit-
able and rode away to the land of their
142

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

exile resigning to the conquering race
their blood-right to the Bitter Root. This
was the death of St. Mary's. It remained
standing, a church of the whites, but an
Indian mission no more. In looking back
through the years, their mercies and their
cruelties, it is a sorrowfully sweet thing
to remember that Father Ravalli, guar-
dian spirit of the Selish, lay down to rest
before the ultimate change, the final ex-
pulsion, while the first light of the wil-
derness from the altar of St. Mary's still
shone, however faintly, to show the way.

The sequel of St. Ignatius is, happily,
less pathetic in its unfolding. The life
that ebbed from St. Mary's flowed amply
into the newer Mission's growing
strength and to-day it stands, substantial
and prosperous in the valley of Sin-yal-
min. Though the same tragedy is about
to be enacted, the expulsion, less sum-
mary, leaving to the individual Indian his
garden patch, St. Ignatius remains a bea-
con to the dusky hosts, poor frightened

143

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

children who cling to this last hope,
promising as it does a happiness born of
suffering, an ultimate reward which not
even the white man can take away. A
handsome new church, frescoed by an
Italian brother, does service instead of
the old chapel, venerable with age that
hides behind the sheltering trees. In
front of the modern church stands the
great, wooden Cross erected by the early
fathers, which the Indians kneel to kiss
before they go to Mass. And to the right,
covered with wild grass, and that neglect
of which such vagrant growths are the
emblem, is the old cemetery where so
many weary pilgrims who travelled long
and painfully over difficult trails, have
sought peace past the power of dreams to
disturb.

Here, as we have seen, upon feast days
the Indians come, the scattered bands
gathering from mountain and valley, clad
in gala attire. Their ranks are thinning
fast. The once populous nation of the
144

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

Selish is shrunk to between three and four
hundred souls^ still the little village often
holds a thousand Indians all told, from
the different neighbouring tribes. And
sometimes, bands from far away, distin-
guished by diversified language, curious
basketry and articles of handicraft, come
as spectators to the feasts.

Until a few years ago these religious
festivals were preceded by solemn rites
of expiation. A kind of open air court
was held, the chiefs sitting in judgment
upon all offenders and acting in the ca-
pacity of judges. The whole tribe assem-
bled to watch with impassive gravity the
austere spectacle of the accusation, sen-
tence and chastisement of those who had
broken the law. All malefactors were ei-
ther brought before the chiefs, or spurred
by conscience^ they came forward volun-
tarily, confessed their guilt and prayed to
be expurgated of sin through the sting of
the lash. When the accusations and con-
fessions were finished, the multitude

145

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

dropped upon their knees and prayed.
Then those arraigned were examined and
such of them as the chiefs decreed guilty,
were sentenced and immediately suffered
the penalty. A blanket was spread upon
the earth and the offender lay on this, his
back exposed to the raw-hide lash which
marked in welt-raising strokes the degree
of his transgression. Even while he smart-
ed, never wincing under this ordeal, the
spectators at the bidding of the chiefs,
prayed once again for the culprit's re-
formation and forgiveness. Such was the
practice of the Selish handed down from
the earliest days. The time and place of
the chastisement were regulated in these
later years by the Catholic festivals, but
public punishment with the lash was a
custom of the tribe before the mission-
aries penetrated the West. The confession,
the judgment and the whipping they be-
lieved to be a complete expiation ; having
suffered, the sin-soiled were made clean,
and thus purified, they met and mingled
146

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

with the best of their brethren on equal
terms, without further reproach. This
was a simple and summary form of jus-
tice, suited to the people whom it con-
trolled,— was in fact the natural out-
growth of their moral and ethical code —
and it is a pity that the ancient law, to-
gether with much besides that was de-
sirable in the pristine life of the Indian,
has been stamped out beneath the master's
iron heel.

One cannot take leave of the missions
of the Northwest without looking back
upon Father De Smet, their founder, and
the work which he began. Through his
devotion missions were established
among many different nations, even the
unyielding Blackfeet falling under the
spell of gentleness. And he who lived
most of his life either in the wilderness
or labouring elsewhere for what he be-
lieved to be the salvation of its benighted
children, died at last at St. Louis in 1873,
after meditative and reminiscent years

147

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

spent in recording his travels and his
triumphs.

There are some subtle questions crying
out of the silence which are not to be
pushed back unspoken, even though we
can find no answer to their riddle. How
far have the missionaries succeeded? If
completely, why does the Christian
Indian still dance to the Sun? And did
those Fathers in their errand of mercy
blindly pass to the people they would
fain have saved from annihilation the fate
they strove to spare them from? Who can
say?

The Indians were probably in their
racial infancy when the maturer ranks
marched in and absorbed, or otherwise
destroyed them. It would seem that with
them it is a case of arrested development.
If left to themselves, through centuries
they might have brought forth a civiliza-
tion diametrically opposite to our own.
That they never could nor can assimilate
or profit by our social and educational
148

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

methods has been sufficiently proved.
Their race instincts are essentially as
foreign to ours as those of the Hindu, and
their evolution must have necessarily pro-
ceeded along totally different lines. The
Indians were decreed to work out their
own salvation or die, and the latter thing
has come to pass. One might go on paint-
ing mental pictures of what would have
been the result if the free, forest-born red
race had thrived and grown into maturity.
Certainly in their decadence, their spirit-
broken second childhood, we find the
germ of an original moral sense, of tra-
dition and poetry, even of religion, which
might have borne rich fruit.

The Oriental is to us an enigma, and
we recognize in his makeup psychic qual-
ities but slightly hinted of in ourselves.
So in the Indian we must acknowledge a
race of distinct and separate values that
we can never wholly know or understand.
The races are products of countless cen-
turies begotten of habit and environment;
149

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

we cannot put aside these growth-accu-
mulations builded like the rings of the
pine, nor can we take that which the
Creator made and re-create it to suit our
finite ends. Therefore, instead of help-
ing the Indian we are merely killing him,
kindly perhaps, with comforts, colleges
and sacraments, but none the less surely
striking at his life.

And though they are still amongst us,
picturesque figures which we value
chiefly as relics of a gaily-coloured past,
the Indians are the mystery of our conti-
nent. They speak to us, they smile at us,
they sit within our churches and use our
tongue, but for all that they remain for-
ever strangers. What pagan beliefs vi-
brating through the chain of unrecorded
ancestry, what hates, loves, aspirations
and bitter griefs, separate from our com-
prehension as the poles, thrill out of the
darkness of yesterday and die unspoken,
unformed, beneath those calm, bronze
brows? They are a problem to be studied,
150

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS

never solved; a riddle one with the
Sphinx, the Cliff Dwellers and the Aztec
ruins. For, after all is said, what do even
the good Fathers, with candle, crucifix
and creed, know of their primal souls, of
the unsounded depths of their hearts?

151

THE PEOPLE OF THE LEAVES

F

RANCOIS

CHAPTER V

THE PEOPLE OF THE LEAVES

AMONG the early Canadian French
the Sioux were known as the Gens
des Feuilles, or People of the
Leaves. This poetical title seems very
obscure in its meaning, at first, but it may
have originated in a legend of the Crea-
tion which is as follows :

In the ultimate Beginning, the Great
Spirit made the world. Under his potent,
life-giving heat the seeds within the soil
burst into bloom and the earth was peo-
pled with trees — trees of many kinds and
forms, the regal pine and cedar in ever-
green beauty and the other hosts whose
leaves bud with the Spring, change with
the Autumn and die with the Winter's
snow. These trees were all possessed of
souls and some of them yearned to be free.

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

The Great Spirit, from his throne in the
blue skies, penetrating the slightest
shadow of a leaf, divining the least un-
folding of a bud with his all-seeing,
omnipotently sensitive beams radiating
like nerves from his golden heart, per-
ceived the sorrow of the sighing forests
and mourned with tears of rain at their
discontent. Then he knew that a world
of trees, however beautiful, was not com-
plete and he loosed the souls from their
prisons of bark and limb and re-created
them in the form of Indians, who lived in
the shelter of the woods, knit to them by
the eternal kinship of primal soul-source
— verily the People of the Leaves.

It is not strange that among a nation
which adored the sun, the chief ceremony
should have been the Sun Dance, at
once a propitiatory offering to the Great
Spirit and a public test of metal before a
young man could become a brave. The
custom was an ancient one, as ancient,
IS6

THE PEOPLE OF THE LEAVES

perhaps, as the legend of the leaves, and
in the accounts of the earliest explorers
and missionaries we read of this dance to
the sun; of the physical heroism which
was the fruit of the torture and filled the
ranks of soldiery with men Spartan in fine
scorn of pain and contempt of death. It
is interesting to trace similar practices in
races widely separate in origin, habits
and beliefs, and it seems curious that this
rite of initiation into the honourable host
of the braves, however dissimilar in outer
form, was not totally unlike in spirit the
test of knighthood for the hallowed circle
of the Table Round.

The festival of the Sun Dance was cele-
brated every year in the month of July,
when the omnipotent orb reached his
greatest strength, is, indeed, still cele-
brated, but without the torture which was
its reason for being. A pole was driven
deep and solid in the ground and from
the top, somewhat after the manner of a
May-pole, long, stout thongs depended.

157

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

After incantations by the Medicine Men,
the youths desiring to distinguish them-
selves came forward in the presence of
the assembled multitude, to receive the
torture which should condemn them as
squaw men or entitle them to fold their
blankets as braves.

With a scalping knife the skin was slit
over each breast and raised so a thong
from the pole could pass beneath and be
fastened to the strip of flesh. When all
were bound thus, the dance began to the
time of a tom-tom and the chant. Goaded
by pride into a kind of frenzy the
novices danced faster, more wildly, leap-
ing higher, bending lower, until they
tore the cords loose from their bleeding
bosoms and were free. If, during the or-
deal, one fainted or yielded in any way to
the agony, he was disgraced before his
tribe, cast out as a white-hearted squaw
man until the next year's festival, when
he might try to wipe out the stain and
enter the band of the brave. If, on the

158

THE PEOPLE OF THE LEAVES

Other hand^ all the young men bore the
torture without flinching, their spirits ris-
ing superior to all bodily pain, they were
received as warriors and earned the right
to wear the medicine bag. Often one of
greater puissance than his fellows wished
further to distinguish himself by a test
extraordinary and submitted to a second
torture more heroic than the first. He
suffered the skin over his shoulder blades
to be slit as his breast had been and
through these gashes thongs were drawn
and fastened as before, but this time the
ends were attached to a sacred bison's
skull, kept for the purpose, which the
brave dragged over rough, rocky ground
and through underbrush, until his
strained flesh gave way and freed him of
his burden. This feat entitled him to ad-
ditional honors and he was respected and
held worthy by the great men of the
tribe.

After the torture, when a youth was
declared a brave he retired to the wilder-

159

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

ness, there in solitude to await the mes-
sage of the Great Spirit which would re-
veal to him his medicine, or charm.

This "making medicine" as it was
called, was a rite of most solemn sacred-
ness and secrecy and therefore shrouded
in mystery. From the lips of one who, in
days past, when the ancient customs were
rigidly preserved, followed and watched
a newly made brave, the ensuing narra-
tive was gleaned.

After dark the young Indian took his
way cautiously far ofif into silent, unpeo-
pled places where sharp escarpments cut
like cameos against the sky. There, poised
upon the cliflfs, his slim figure silhouetted
against the moonlit clouds, he remained
rigid as a statue through long hours, wait-
ing for the Voice from Above by whose
revelation he should learn wherein his
power lay. Then lifting his arms towards
the heavens he made strange signs to the
watchful stars. So he remained 'till
dawn paled from the East, when, having
1 60

THE PEOPLE OF THE LEAVES

received his message, he went forth to
seek the animal which should hereafter
be his manitou, or guardian spirit. Some-
times it was the bison, the elk, the beaver,
the weasel or other beast of his native
wild. Into his bag he put a tooth or claw
and some fur of the chosen creature, with
herbs which might be propitious. Such
was his charm, his medicine-bag, the
source of his valour and safety, to be
worn sleeping and waking, in peace and
in war; to be guarded with his life and to
go with him in death back to the Great
Spirit by whom it was ordained.

If a warrior lost his medicine-bag in
battle, he became an outcast among his
people and his disgrace was not to be
wiped out until he slew and took from an
enemy's body the medicine-bag which re-
placed his own and thus retrieved his
honour.

Of all the quaint ceremonies connected
with the old wood-worship and sun-
worship, combining the idea of Begin-
i6i

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

ning and End, of p re-existence and after-
existence, none are more interesting than
the rites attending the burial of the dead.
As the Indians sprang from the forest
trees, according to the myth of the leaves,
lived in the shadow of the pleasant v^oods,
so at last, they were received into the
strong, embracing branches that tossed
over them in wild gestures when the
Great Spirit spoke in anger from the sky;
that tempered the Summer's heat into
cooling shadow for their repose; that
shed their gift of crimson leaves upon the
Indians' devoted heads even as they,
themselves, must shed the garb of flesh
before the blast of death. Or, sometimes,
the dead were exalted upon a naked rock,
rising above earth's levels toward the sun.
Wherever his resting place might be, the
dead man sat upright, if a brave, dressed
in his full war regalia, surrounded by his
most prized possessions and if he owned
a horse, it was shot so its shade might bear
his spirit on the long, dark, devious way
162

THE PEOPLE OF THE LEAVES

to the Happy Hunting Ground. No
mournful ghost who met his death in
darkness could ever bask in the celestial
light of endless Summer-time; he was
doomed to become a phantom living in
perpetual night. That is the reason none
but forced battles were fought after
dark; the bravest of the braves feared the
curse of everlasting shadow. They be-
lieved, too, that no warrior who lost his
scalp could enter the fields of the glori-
ous ; hence the taking of an enemy's scalp
at once killed and damned him. The sui-
cide was likewise barred from Paradise.

Years ago, when the feuds of the hos-
tile tribes still broke into the red ven-.
geance of the war-path, the Sioux and
Cheyennes did battle with the Gros
Ventres at Squaw Butte, and by some mis-
chance a medicine man of the Sioux, not
engaged in the combat, whose general-
ship lay in marshalling the manitous to
the aid of his people, was killed. A trav-
163

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

eller, journeying alone in the mountains,
found him high upon a cliff with his
blanket and war dress tumbling about his
bleaching bones, his medicine-bag and all
the emblems of his magic preserved in-
tact. In the bag was a grizzly bear's claw,
an elk's tooth, and among other trinkets,
a smallj smooth brass button of the kind
worn by the rivermen trading up and
down the Missouri River between the
East and the savage West. It would be
interesting to trace the migrations and
transfiguration of that little button from
its existence as an humble article of dress
to the dignity of a charm in the medicine-
bag of the old magician on that isolated
cliff. And the Master of Magic him-
self; he of prophetic powers and know-
ledge born of intercourse with the gods;
there he sat^ an arrow through his skull,
his blind, eyeless sockets uplifted to the
sun, his necromancy unavailing, his wis-
dom but a dream 1 In that remote home
which his devoted tribesmen chose for
164

THE PEOPLE OF THE LEAVES

him, no irreverent hand had disturbed his
watch, and he is probably still sitting, sit-
ting with blind eyes toward the sun while
eagles circle overhead and gray wolves
howl to the moon. The years pass on un-
heeded, the face of the land has changed,
is changing, will change, and the rustling,
swirling leaves of Autumn fall thick and
fast. Mayhap, after all, the old Magic
Master, keeping his eternal vigil, may see
from beyond the flesh the thinning woods
and the dead leaves dropping from the
trees; hear their weary rustle — poor
ghosts, as they flutter before the wintry
wind. And among the lessening trees,
also driven by the Northern blast, does
he see also, a gaunt and silent troop of
phantoms — mere Autumn leaves — whirl-
ing away before the Storm?

165

THE PASSING BUFFALO

CHAPTER VI
THE PASSING BUFFALO

IT was summertime in the mountains
— that short, passionate burst of
warm life between the long seasons
of the snow. The world lay panting in
the white light of the sun, over gorge and
pine-clad hill floated streamers of haze,
and along the ground slanted thin, blue
shadows. The sky pulsed in ether waves
and the distant peaks, azure also, with
traceries of silver, were as dim as the
memory of a dream. In this untrodden
wilderness the passing years have left no
record save in the gradual growth of for-
est trees, and in its rugged beauty it is the
same as a century ago. Therefore time
itself seems arrested, and it is scarcely
strange to come upon a buffalo skull
169

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

naked and bleached by sun and rain, and
close by, half hidden in the loose rocks,
an arrow head of pure, black obsidian.

This, then, was once the scene of a
brave chase when wind-swift Indians pur-
sued mad, hurtling herds over mountain
slope and plain. These empty fastnesses
thrilled to the shock of thousands of beat-
ing hoofs, these hills flung back the echo
to the brooding silence as the black tide
flowed on, pressed by deadly huntsmen
armed with barb and bow. And even then,
far over the horizon, unseen by hunted
and hunters, silent as the shadow of a
cloud, inevitable as destiny, came the
White Race, moving swifter than either
one, driving them unawares toward the
great abyss where they should vanish for-
ever into the Happy Hunting Ground,
lighted by perpetual Summer and peo-
pled by immortal herds and tribes.

170

THE PASSING BUFFALO
II

In such a remote and deserted place as
this, no great effort of the imagination is
needed to call up the shades of those who
once inhabited it, to react their part in the
tragedy of progress. Let us fancy that
a riper, richer glow is upon the moun-
tains, that the white light of the sun has
deepened into an amber flood which quiv-
ers between the arch of lapis-lazuli sky
and the warm, balsam-scented earth that
sighs forth the life of the woods. Al-
ready the trees not of the evergreen kind
are hung with bewilderingly gorgeous
leaves of scarlet, russet-brown and yel-
lowing green ; the haze has grown denser
and its ghostly presence insinuates itself
among the very needles of the pines. It
is Autumn. The gush of life has reached
its climax and is ebbing. High on the
steepled mountains is a wreath of filmy
white that trails low in the ravines. It
seems as fragile as a bridal veil, but it is
171

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

the foreword of Winter which will soon
descend with driving blast and piping
gale, lancing sleet and enshrouding snow
to chill the last red ember-glow of the
brilliant autumnal days. It was at this
time that the Indian's blood ran hot with
longing for the hunt. Lodges were aban-
doned and only those too weak to stand
the hardship of the march were left be-
hind. Chiefs and braves, women and chil-
dren struck out for the haunts of the buf-
falo where the fat herds grazed before the
impending cold.

These children of the forest sought
their prey with the woodcraft handed
down from old to young through unnum-
bered generations. Indeed, it was neces-
sary for them to outwit the game by strat-
egy in the early days before the wealthy
and progressive Nez Perce Kayuses, who
were first to break the wild horses of the
western plains, brought the domesticated
pony among them. In passing, it is in-
teresting to know that the term "cayuse"
172

THE PASSING BUFFALO

applied to all Indian horses, had its ori-
gin with this tribe^ since the chief article
of trade of the Kayuses was the horse, the
horse of Indian commerce became known
as a "cayuse." The Selish used the
method of the stockade. After the march
into the buffalo country, they camped in
a spot where they could easily fashion an
enclosed park by means of barricades
built among the trees. A great council
of the chiefs and warriors was held and
this august body appointed a company of
braves to guard the camp and prevent any
person from leaving its boundaries lest in
so doing the wily buffalo should become
alarmed and quit the neighbouring hills.
The council proclaimed anew the ancient
laws of the chase, and then began the
building of the pen. This was a kind of
communal work in which the entire tribe
engaged, and as all contributed labor so
all should benefit alike from its fruits.
There within the mock park, whose plea-
sant green fringe of trees was in reality a

173

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

prison wall, would be trapped and killed
the food for the sterile winter months,
when, but for that bounty, starvation
would stalk gaunt among them and lay
the strongest warrior as low as a new
born babe or the feebly old who totter
on the threshold of death. The place
chosen for the pen was a level glade and
the enclosure was built with a single open-
ing facing a cleft in the surrounding hills.
From this opening, an avenue also cun-
ningly fenced and gradually widening to-
wards the hills, was constructed, so that
the animals driven thither, could escape
neither to the right nor the left, but must
needs plunge into the imprisoning park.

Next came the election of the Master
of Ceremonies, the Lord of the Pen. He
was a man seasoned with experience,
mighty with the knowledge of occult
things — one of the Wah-Kon, Medicine
Men or jugglers, who possessed thepower
of communicating with the Great Spirit.
This high functionary determined the

174

THE PASSING BUFFALO

crucial moment when the hunt should be-
gin, and when the buffalo, roused from
the inertia of grazing, should be driven
into the snare. In the center of the clear-
ing he posted the "medicine-mast," made
potent by three charms, "a streamer of
scarlet cloth two or three yards long, a
piece of tobacco and a buffalo horn,"
which were supposed to entice the ani-
mals to their doom. It was he who, in
the early dawn, aroused the sleeping
camp with the beating of his drum and
the chanting of incantations; who con-
ferred with the great Manitous of the
buffalo to divine when the time for the
chase had come.

Under the Grand Master were four
swift runners who penetrated into the
surrounding country to find where the
buffalo were browsing and to assist by
material observation the promptings of
the spirits of the hunt. They were pro-
vided by the Grand Master with a Wah-
Kon ball of skin stuffed with hair, and

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

when the herds were found in a favourable
spot and the wind blew from the direc-
tion of the animals to the pen, one of the
runners, breathless with haste, bearing in
his hand the magic ball, appeared before
the Grand Master and proclaimed the
joyful news. There was a mighty beat-
ing of the Grand Master's drum, and out
of the lodges ran the excited people, all
bent with concentrated energy upon the
approaching sport. Every horseman
mounted, and those less fortunate armed
themselves and took their positions in
two lines extending from the entrance to
the enclosure toward the open, separating
more widely as the distance from the pen
increased, thus forming a V shape with
but a narrow gateway where the lines
converged.

Then through the silent, human barri-
cade rode the bravest of the braves,
astride the fleetest horse and he went un-
armed, always against the wind, envel-
oped in a buffalo skin which hung down
176

THE PASSING BUFFALO

over his mount. All was quiet. Only the
light Autumn wind flowing through the
trees carried the curious, crisp, cropping
noise of thousands of iron-strong jaws
tearing the lush, green grass. And as the
rider came upon the crest of the hill and
looked at the panorama of waving ver-
dure peopled by multitudes of bison
stretching far away across the meadows
and over the rolling ground beyond, it
must have been a sight to quicken the
pulses and stir the blood. Suddenly there
sounded a prolonged and distressing cry
^the cry of a buffalo calf which wailed
shrilly for a moment, then ceased. It
came from the brave alone in the open,
shrouded in the buffalo hide.

There was a movement in the herd.
Every heavily maned head rose, and quiv-
ering nostrils snuffed the running wind.
At first the buffalo advanced slowly, as
if in doubt; gradually their pace quick-
ened to a trot, a gallop, then lol the whole
vast band came hurtling and lurching in
177

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

its furious career like the swells of a
tempestuous, black sea, breaking into
angry waves at every shock. And from
those deep throats came a mighty roar,
ponderous and resonant as the thunder of
the surf.

Still the cry of the calf reverberated
and re-echoed, and the single horseman
crouching beneath his masquerade, led
the herd on and on, eluding their on-
slaught, luring them forward between
the lines of his companions who stood si-
lent, trembling with eagerness for the
sport. Then pell-mell the mounted hunt-
ers rushed out from cover and the wide
extremes of the V shaped line closed in
so that the horsemen were behind the
herd. This done, the wind blowing to-
ward the corral, took the scent of the In-
dians to the buffalo. Pandemonium
reigned. Men, women and children on
foot, leaped out from their hiding places
with demoniac yells, brandishing spears,
hurling stones and shooting arrows from

178

THE PASSING BUFFALO

their bows. The stampeded animals, sur-
rounded save for the one loophole ahead,
plunged into the pen. The chase was
over and the slaughter began. The tribe

would live well that Winter-time I
♦ « * «

Among the Omawhaws of the first part
of the last century, the hunt was preceded
by much preparation and ceremony. Gen-
erally by the month of June their stores
of jerked buffalo meat were well-nigh
exhausted, and the little crops of maize,
pumpkins, beans and water-melons, with
the yield of the small hunting parties pur-
suing beaver, otter, elk, deer and other
game, were scarcely sufficient to fill the
wants of the tribe. So, after the harvest-
ing and trading were done, the chiefs
called a council and ordered a feast to
be held in the lodge of one of the most
distinguished of their number, to which
all hunters, warriors and chiefs should be
invited. Accordingly the squaws of the
chosen host were commanded by him to
179

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

make ready the choicest maize and the
plumpest dog for the ceremonial board.
When all was in readiness the host called
two or three venerable criers to his lodge.
He smoked the calumet with them, then
whispered that they should go through
the village proclaiming the feast and bid-
ding the guests whom he named. He in-
structed the criers to "speak in a loud
voice and tell them to bring their bowls
and spoons." They sallied forth singing
among the lodges^ calling to the distin-
guished personages to come to the ban-
quet. After these summons the criers
went back to the lodge of the host, quick-
ly followed by the guests who were seated
according to their rank. The ceremony
of smoking was performed first, then the
Head Chief arose, thanked his braves for
coming and explained to them the object
of the assembly, which was the selection
of a hunting ground and the appointment
of a time to start. After him the others
spoke, each giving his opinion frankly,
1 80

THE PASSING BUFFALO

but always careful to be respectful of the
opinions of others.

Neither squaws nor children were suf-
fered to be present. The criers tended
the kettle and when the speech-making
was done, one dipped out a ladle of soup,
held it toward the North, South, East and
West, and cast it into the ashes of the
fire. He also flung a bit of the best part
of the meat into the flame as a sacrifice to
Wahconda, the Great Spirit. The guests
then received their portions, the excel-
lence of which depended upon their rank.
The feast closed as it began, with the
smoking of the calumet and at its conclu-
sion the criers went forth again, chanting
loud songs in praise of the generosity of
the host, enumerating the chiefs and war-
riors who partook of his bounty, finally
proclaiming the decision of the council
and announcing the time and place of the
hunt. This was an occasion of great re-
joicing. The squaws at once began to
mend the clothing and the weapons of
i8i

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

their lords and pack their goods; and the
young braves, gay with paint and bright
raiment, beguiled the hours with gaming
and dancing in the presence of the
chiefs.

When the day of the journey arrived
the whole community departed, the chiefs
and wealthy warriors on horseback, the
poorer folk afoot. Sometimes the quest
of the buffalo was prolonged over weary
weeks, and a meager diet of Pomme
blanche or ground-apple, was insufficient
to stay the pangs of hunger that assailed
the tribe. The hunters preceded the main
body, carefully reconnoitering the coun-
try for bison or foes. When at length
herds were discovered, the hunters threw
up their robes as a signal, the tribe halted
and the advance party returned to report.
They were received with pomp and dig-
nity by the chiefs and medicine men who
sat before the people solemnly smoking
and offering articulate thanks to Wah-
conda. In a low voice the hunters in-
182

THE PASSING BUFFALO

formed the dignitaries of the presence of
buffalo. These mighty personages, in
turn, questioned the huntsmen as to the
numbers and respective distances of the
herds, and they replied by illustrating
with small sticks the relative positions of
the bands.

An old man of high standing then ad-
dressed the people, telling them that the
coveted game at length was nigh, and
that on the morrow they would be re-
warded for the long fast and fatigue.

That night a council was held and a
corps of stout warriors elected to keep
order. These officers painted themselves
black, wore the crow and were armed
with war-clubs in order that they might
enforce the mandates of the council and
preserve due decorum among the excited
tribe folk.

Early in the morning the hunters on
horseback, carrying only bows and arrows
and the warriors provided with war-
clubs, led by the pipe-bearer who bore

183

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

the sacred calumet, advanced on foot.
Once in view of the splendid, living mass-
es covering the green plains as with a
giant sable robe, they halted for the pipe-
bearer, the representative of the Magi,
to perform the propitiatory rite of smok-
ing. He lighted his calumet of red, baked
clay, bowed his head in silence, then held
the stem in the direction of the herds. Af-
ter this he smoked, exhaling the aromatic
clouds towards the bufifalo, the heavens,
the earth and the four points of the com-
pass, called by them the "sunrise, sunset,
cold country and warm country," or by
the collective term of the "four winds."
At the completion of this ceremony the
head chief gave the signal and the hunts-
men charged upon their prey.

From this point their methods were
somewhat the same as those of the Selish,
except that instead of building a stockade,
they, themselves, enclosed the herd in a
living circle, pressing closer and closer
upon it until the killing was complete.
184

THE PASSING BUFFALO

This surrounding hunt was called Ta-
wan-a-sa.

The chase was the grand event, the
test of horsemanship, of archery, of fine
game-craft and often the opportunity for
glory on the war-path as well — for where
the buffalo abounded there lurked the
hidden enemy, also seeking the coveted
herds, and an encounter meant battle to
the death. Both ponies and hunters were
trained to the ultimate perfection of skill
and the favoured buffalo horse served no
other purpose than to bear his master in
the chase. As the cavalcade descended
upon the startled game, the rider caressed
his faithful steed, called him "father,"
''brother," "uncle," conjured him not to
fear the angry beasts yet not to be too
bold lest he be hurt by goring horns and
stamping hoofs, and urged him with hon-
eyed speech to the full fruit of his
strength and cunning. And the horse, re-
sponding, flew with winged stride, un-
guided by reins to the edge of the com-
i8s

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

pact, fleeing band, never hesitating, never
halting until the shoulder of the animal
pursued, was exposed to the death-deal-
ing shot. It was just behind the shoulder
blade that the huntsman sought to strike.
The inclination of his body in one direc-
tion or another was sufficient to send the
horse speeding after fresh prey.

The hunters, themselves, scorned dan-
ger and knew not fear. If they were un-
certain how deep the arrow had pene-
trated they rode close to the infuriated
brute to examine the nature of the shot,
and if necessary to shoot again. And even
though in the grand melee, a single ani-
mal was often pierced with many arrows,
there were seldom quarrels as to whom
the quarry belonged, so nicely could they
reckon the value of the different shots
and determine which had dealt the most
speedy death.

Onward and onward they sped, circ-
ling and advancing at once, like a whirl-
wind on the face of the prairie. At length,
i86

THE PASSING BUFFALO

the darting riders were seen more and
more vividly as they compressed their line
about the routed band, until finally, only
a heap of carcasses lay where the herd
had been. Then the tribe came upon the
scene. The squaws cut and packed the
meat. If a hunter were unfortunate and
killed no game, he helped dissect the buf-
falo of a lucky rival. On completion of
his task he stuck his knife in the portion
of the meat he desired and it was given to
him as compensation for his labor.

Someone, either by order of the chief
or of his own free will, presented his kill
to the Medicine for a feast. There was
great revelry and joy, dancing and eating
of marrow bones, to celebrate the after-
math of the royal sport.

Ill

Although the meat of the buffalo was
the Indians' chief article of food, this was
by no means the only bond between the

187

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

red man and the aboriginal herds of the
plains. Besides the almost innumerable
utilitarian purposes for which the differ-
ent parts of the animals were used, there
was scarcely a phase of life or a ceremony
in which they did not figure. In the
dance, a rite of the first importance, in
the practice of the Wah-Kon, or medi-
cine, in the legends of the creation and
the after-death, the buffalo had his place.
Such lore might make a quaint and curi-
ous volume, but we shall consider only
the more striking uses and traditions of
the bison in their relation to the life of the
early West.

The buffalo was, in truth, the great po-
litical factor among the tribes ; nearly all
of the bitter warfare between nation and
nation was for no other purpose than to
maintain or gain the right to hunt in fa-
vourable fields. Thus the Judith Basin,
the region of the Musselshell and many
other haunts of the herds, became also
battle fields of bloodshed and death. Not
i88

THE PASSING BUFFALO

only did the bison cause hostilities among
the nations, but they were likewise the
reason of internal strife. It is said that
the Assiniboines, or Sioux of the Moun-
tains, separated from the main body of
the tribe on account of a dispute between
the wives of two rival chiefs, each of
whom persisted in having for her portion
the entire heart of a fine bison slain in the
chase. This was the beginning of a feud
which split the nation into independent,
antagonistic tribes.

The utmost economy was generally ob-
served by the early Indians in the use of
the buffalo. Each part of the animal
served some particular purpose. The
tongue, the hump and the marrow bones
of the thighs were considered the great-
est delicacies. The animals killed for
meat were almost always cows, for the
flesh of buffalo bulls could be eaten only
during the months of May and June.

Among the Omawhaws of nearly two
centuries ago^ all the meat save the hump
189

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

and chosen parts reserved for immediate
use, was cut into '4arge, thin slices" and
either dried by the heat of the sun or
"jerked over a slow^ fire on a low scaf-
fold." After being thoroughly cured it
was compressed into "quadrangular pack-
ages" of a convenient size to carry on a
pack saddle. The small intestines were
carefully cleaned and turned inside out
to preserve the outer coating of fat, then
dried and woven into a kind of mat.
These mats were packed into parcels of
the same shape and size as the meat. Even
the muscular coating of the stomach was
preserved. The large intestines were
stuffed with flesh and used without de-
lay. The vertebrae were pulverized with
a stone axe after which the crushed bone
was boiled. The very rich grease that
arose to the surface was skimmed and pre-
served in bladders for future use. The
stomach and bladder were filled with this
and other sorts of fat, or converted into
water bottles. All of the cured meat was
190

THE PASSING BUFFALO

cached^ in French-Canadian phrase, un-
til hunger drove the Indians to draw upon
these stores.

The pemmican of song and history was
a kind of hash made by toasting buffalo
meat, then pulverizing it to a fine consis-
tency with a stone hammer. Mr. James
Mooney in the Fourteenth Annual Re-
port of the Bureau of Ethnology, de-
scribes the process as follows; **In the
old times a hole was dug in the ground
and a buffalo hide was staked over so as
to form a skin dish, into which the meat
was thrown to be pounded. The hide was
that from the neck of the buffalo, the
toughest part of the skin, the same used
for shields, and the only part which
would stand the wear and tear of the ham-
mers. In the meantime the marrow bones
are split up and boiled in water until all
the grease and oil comes to the top, when
it is skimmed off and poured over the
pounded beef. As soon as the mixture
cools, it is sewed up into skin bags (not
191

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

the ordinary painted parfleche cases)
and laid away until needed. It was some-
times buried or otherwise cached. Pem-
mican thus prepared will keep indefi-
nitely. When prepared for immediate
use, it is usually sweetened with sugar,
mesquite pods, or some wild fruit mixed
and beaten up with it in the pounding.
It is extremely nourishing, and has a very
agreeable taste to one accustomed to it.
On the march it was to the prairie Indian
what parched corn was to the hunter of
the timber tribes, and has been found so
valuable as a condensed nutriment that it
is extensively used by arctic travellers and
explorers. A similar preparation is used
upon the pampas of South America and
in the desert region of South Africa,
while the canned beef of commerce is an
adaptation from the Indian idea. The
name comes from the Cree language, and
indicates something mixed with grease or
fat. (Lacombe.)"

Among the Sioux at Pine Ridge and
192

THE PASSING BUFFALO

Rosebud, in the ceremony of the Ghost
Dance, pemmican was celebrated in the
sacred songs. Mr. Mooney gives the
translation of one of them:
^'Give me my knife,

Give me my knife,

I shall hang up the meat to dry — Ye'ye'!

I shall hang up the meat to dry — Ye'ye'!

Says grandmother — Yo'yo'l

Says grandmother — Yo'yo'!

When it is dry I shall make pemmican,

When it is dry I shall make pemmican,

Says grandmother — Yo'yo'l

Says grandmother — Yo'yo'l"

Though at first the main object for
which the buffalo was hunted was the
flesh, next in importance and afterwards
foremost, was the hide made into the buf-
falo robe of commerce. Since these robes
played such an important part in the
early traffic and were partly responsible
for the annihilation of the bison, it is
worth while to consider how they were

193

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

procured and treated. The skins to be
dressed were taken in the early Spring
while the fur was long, thick and luxuri-
ant. Those obtained in the Autumn called
"Summer skins" were used only in the
making of lodges, clothing, and for other
domestic purposes. To the squaws was
assigned the preparation of the hides as
well as the cutting and curing of the
meat. Immediately after the hunt while
in the "green" state the skins were
stretched and dried. After this, they were
taken to the village and subjected to a
process of curing which was carried on
during the leisure of the women. The
hide was nearly always cut down the cen-
ter of the back so that it could be more
easily manipulated. The two parts were
then spread upon the ground and scraped
with a tool like an adze until every par-
ticle of flesh was removed. In this way
all unnecessary thickness was obviated
and the hide was made light and pliable.
When the skin had been reduced to the
194

THE PASSING BUFFALO

proper thinness a dressing made of the
liver and brains of the animal were
spread over it. This mixture was allowed
to dry and the same process was repeated
save that in the second instance while the
hide was wet it was stretched in a frame,
carefully scraped with pumice stone,
sharp-edged rocks or a kind of hoe, until
it was dry. To make it as flexible as pos-
sible, it was then drawn back and forth
over twisted sinew. The parts were sewed
together with sinew and the bufifalo robe
was ready for the trader's hands.

As early as 1819 these robes were in
great demand and one trader reported
that in a single year he shipped fifteen
thousand to St. Louis.

In the everyday life of the Indians the
products of the buffalo yielded nearly
every comfort and necessity. The hides
were used not only for robes and port-
able lodges which furnished shelter on
the march, but they were made into
battle shields; upon their tanned sur-

195

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

face the primitive artist traced his
painted record of the chase, the fray,
or the mystic medicine. They were laid
upon the earth for the young braves to
play their endless games of chance upon,
and the wounded were taken from the
field on stretchers of buffalo hides swung
between a pair of ponies. From them two
kinds of boats were made. One, described
by James in his account of the journey of
his party in 1819-20 is as follows:

"Our heavy baggage was ferried across
in a portable canoe, consisting of a single
bison hide, which we carried constantly
with us. Its construction was extremely
simple; the margin of the hide being
pierced with several small holes, admits a
cord, by which it is drawn into the form
of a shallow basin. This is placed upon
the water, and is kept sufficiently distend-
ed by the baggage which it receives ; it is
then towed or pushed across. A canoe of
this kind will carry from four to five
hundred pounds."

196

THE PASSING BUFFALO

The second variety, known as a "bull-
boat," was made of willows woven into a
round basket and lined with bufifalo hide.

The grease of these beasts was used to
anoint the Indians' bodies and to season
the maize or corn.

From the horns were made spoons,
sometimes holding half a pint, and often
ornamented upon the handles with curi-
ous carving.

The shoulder blade fastened to a stick
served for a hoe or a plow.

From the hide of unborn bufifalo calves
bags were made to contain the war-paint
of braves.

It would be at once possible and profit-
able to continue enumerating the practi-
cal uses of the buffalo, but far more in-
teresting than these facts were the cere-
monies, superstitions and traditions in
which they were bound up.

Perhaps, first among the rites in sacred
significance and solemn dignity was the
smoking of the calumet. This was sup-
197

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

posed to be not only an expression of
peace among men and nations, but a pro-
pitiatory offering to the Manitous, or
guardian spirits, and to the Master of
Life.

According to Colonel Mallory in the
Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of
Ethnology^ the Sioux believed that this
supreme emblem of good will was
brought to them by a white buffalo cow,
in the old days when the different bands
of the nation were torn with internal
strife. During this period of hostility a
beautiful white buffalo cow appeared,
bearing a pipe and four grains of corn,
each of a different colour. From the milk
which dripped from her body, sprang
the living corn, so from the beginning the
grain and the buffalo meat were decreed
to be the food of the Indians. She gave
to the rival factions, the pipe which was
the sacred calumet, instructing them that
it was the symbol of peace among men
and he who smoked it with his fellows, by
198

THE PASSING BUFFALO

that act sealed the bond of brotherhood.
After staying for awhile among the grate-
ful people, and teaching them to call her
"Grandmother," which is a term of affec-
tionate reverence among the Indians, she
led them to plentiful herds of her own
kind and vanished into the spiritland
whence she came.

The odour of the buffalo was believed
to be agreeable to the Great Spirit so that
the tobacco or kinnikinick of the calumet
was flavoured with animal's excrement in
order that the aroma wafted upward
might be most pleasing. This custom of
flavouring the pipe with the scent of the
buffalo was carefully observed by the
Pawnee Loups of the olden time, a tribe
which claimed descent from the ancient
Mexicans, in the awful ceremonies pre-
ceding a human sacrifice to Venus, the
"Great Star." Upon this austere occa-
sion four great buffalo skulls were placed
within the lodge where the celebration
was held and they were offered the sacred
199

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

nawishkaro or calumet. The bodies of
their chiefs or those who died gloriously
in war were robed in buffalo skins, fur-
nished with food and weapons, and
placed sitting upright, in a little lodge
near a route of travel or a camp in order
that the passers by might see that they had
met their death with honour. The Paw-
nees also used bison skulls as signals, and
we find in James' Travels this interesting
account:

"At a little distance in front of the en-
trance of this breastwork, was a semi-cir-
cular row of sixteen bison skulls, with
their noses pointing down the river. Near
the center of the circle which this row
would describe if continued, was another
skull marked with a number of red lines.

"Our interpreter informed us that this
arrangement of skulls and other marks
here discovered, were designed to com-
municate the following information,
namely, that the camp had been occupied
by a war party of the Pawnee Loup In-
200

THE PASSING BUFFALO

dians, who had lately come from an ex-
cursion against the Cumancias, Tetans or
some of the Western tribes. The number
of red lines traced on the painted skull
indicated the number of the party to have
been thirty-six; the position in which the
skulls were placed, that they were on
their return to their own country. Two
small rods stuck in the ground, with a few
hairs tied in two parcels to the end of
each signified that four scalps had been
taken."

There are many other similar instances
recorded by different adventurers who
braved the early West, yet this was but
one of numerous uses of buffalo skulls
and heads. Among the Aricaras upon
each lodge was a trophy of the war path
or the chase composed of strangely paint-
ed buffalo heads topped with all kinds
of weapons.

There was a curious belief among the
Minitarees that the bones of the buffalo
killed in the chase became rehabilitated
20 1

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

with flesh and lived again, to be hunted
the following year. In support of this
superstition they had a legend that once
upon a time on a great hunt a boy of the
tribe was lost. His people gave him up
for dead but the succeeding season a huge
bison was slain and when the body was
opened the boy stepped out alive and
well. He related to his dumbfounded
companions, how the year before, he had
become separated from them as he pur-
sued a splendid bull. He felled his
game with an arrow, but so far had he
gone that it was too late to overtake and
rejoin the tribe before nightfall. There-
fore, he cut into the bison's body, removed
a portion of the intestines and feeling the
keen frost of evening upon his unshel-
tered body, sought warmth within the
carcass. But, lo! when the boy awakened
the buffalo was whole again and he was
a prisoner within his whilom prey!

The Gros Ventres, in the day of Lewis
and Clark, thought that if the head of the

202

THE PASSING BUFFALO

slain bufifalo were treated well, the living
herd would come in plentiful numbers to
yield an abundance of meat.

Of the many bands into which the
Omawhaw nation was divided there were
two, the Ta-pa-eta-je and the Ta-sin-da,
bison tail, which had the bufifalo for their
medicine. The first of these were sworn
to abstain from touching buffalo heads,
and the second were forbidden the flesh
of the calves until the young animals were
more than one year old. If these vows
were broken by a member of the band and
the sacred pledge so violated, a judgment
such as blindness, white hair or disease
was believed to be sent upon the offender.
Even should one innocently transgress the
law, a visitation of sickness was account-
ed his condign portion and not only he
but his family were included in the wrath
and punishment of the outraged Mani-
tous.

The Crow Indians, Up-sa-ro-ka, or
Absaroka, used the buffalo as a part of

203

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

their great medicine. An early traveller,
Dougherty, describes an extraordinary
"arrangement of the magi." In his own
words, "the upper portion of a cotton-
wood tree was emplanted with its base in
the earth, and around it was a sweat
house, the upper part of the top of the
tree arising through the roof. A gray
bison skin, extended with oziers on the in-
side so as to exhibit a natural appearance,
was suspended above the house, and on
the branches were attached several pairs
of children's moccasins and leggings, and
from one limb of the tree, a very large
fan made of war-eagles' feathers was de-
pendent."

This leads to an interesting superstition
of the Indians, which was that any varia-
tion in the usual colour of the buffalo was
caused by the special interference of the
Master of Life, and a beast so distin-
guished from his kind was venerated re-
ligiously, much as the ancient Egyptians
worshipped the sacred bull. Once a
204

THE PASSING BUFFALO

"grayish-white" bison was seen and upon
another occasion a calf with white fore-
feet and a white frontal mark. An early
traveller once saw in an Indian lodge, the
head of a buffalo perfectly preserved,
which was marked by a white star. The
man to whom it belonged treasured it as
his medicine, nor would he part with it
at any price.

" 'The herds come every season,' he
said, 4nto the vicinity to seek their white-
faced companion!' "

Maximilian, in his Travels in North
America, gives an interesting descrip-
tion of the martial and sacred significance
of the robes of white buffalo cows among
the Mandans and Minitarees. He says
that the brave who has never possessed
this emblem is without honour, and the
merest youth who has obtained it ranks
above the most venerable patriarch who
has never owned the precious hide. In-
deed, "of all the distinctions of any man
the white buffalo hide" was supreme. As
205

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

the white bufifalo were extremely rare it
was seldom a hunter killed one for him-
self. The robes were brought by other
tribes, often from far distant parts of the
country, to the Mandans who traded from
ten to fifteen horses for a perfect speci-
men. It was necessary for the hide to be
that of a young cow not more than two
years old, and it had to be cured "with
the horns, nose, hoofs and tail" complete.
In Maximilian's words: "The Mandans
have peculiar ceremonies at the dedica-
tion of the hide. As soon as they have
obtained it they engage an eminent medi-
cine man, who must throw it over him;
he then walks around the village in the ap-
parent direction of the sun's course, and
sings a medicine song. When the owner,
after collecting articles of value for three
or four years, desires to ofifer his treasure
to the lord of life, or to the first man, he
rolls it up, after adding some wormwood
or a head of maize, and the skin then re-
mains suspended on a high pole till it rots
206

THE PASSING BUFFALO

away. At the time of my visit there was
such an offering at Mih-Tutta-Hang-
Kush, near the stages for the dead with-
out the village. Sometimes, when the
ceremony of dedication is finished, the
hide is cut into small strips, and the mem-
bers of the family wear parts of it tied
over the head, or across the forehead,
when they are in full dress. If a Mandan
kills a young white buffalo cow it is ac-
counted to him as more than an exploit,
or having killed an enemy. He does
not cut up the animal himself, but em-
ploys another man, to whom he gives a
horse for his trouble. He alone who has
killed such an animal is allowed to wear
a narrow strip of the skin in his ears. The
whole robe is not ornamented, being es-
teemed superior to any other dress, how-
ever fine. The traders have, sometimes,
sold such hides to the Indians, who gave
them as many as sixty other robes in ex-
change. Buffalo skins with white spots
are likewise highly valued by the Man-
207

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

dans; but there is a race of these animals
with very soft, silky hair, which has a
beautiful gold lustre when in the sun-
shine; these are, likewise, highly prized."

There are numerous myths of a white
buffalo cow, who at will, assumed the
form of a beautiful maiden.

The Sioux in common with the Ari-
caras and the Minitarees observed the
custom of fasting before going to war or
upon the hunt. They had a "medicine
lodge," where a buffalo robe was spread
and a red painted post was planted. Upon
the top of the lodge was tied a buffalo
calf skin holding various sacred objects.
After preliminary rites they tortured
themselves, one favorite method being to
make a gash under their shoulder blades,
run cords through the wounds and drag
two large bison heads to a hill about a
mile distant from their village, where
they danced until they fell fainting with
exhaustion.

Some of the tribes performed the Ta-
208

THE PASSING BUFFALO

nuguh-wat-che, or bison dance. The par-
ticipants were painted black, wore a head
dress made of the skin of a buffalo head
which was cut after the fashion of a cap.
It was adjusted in a manner to resemble
a live animal, and extending from this
head dress, over the half-naked and black-
ened bodies of the dancers, depended a
long strip of hide from the back of
the buffalo which hung down like a
tail.

The Omawhaws believed that the Great
Wahconda appeared sometimes in the
shape of a bison bull and they, like other
tribes, cherished legends of a fabulous
age when animals spoke together, did bat-
tle and possessed intelligence equal to that
of men. The following myth of the bison
bull, the ant and the tortoise, related by
James, is an interesting example of these
fables :

Once upon a time an ant, a tortoise
and a buffalo bull formed themselves in-
to a war party and determined to attack

209

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

the village of an enemy in the vicinity.
They decided in council that the tortoise
being sluggish and slow of movement,
should start in advance and the ant and
bull should time their departure so as to
overtake him on the way. This plan was
adopted and the awkward tortoise floun-
dered forth on his hostile mission alone.
In due time the bison bull took the ant
upon his back, lest on account of his mi-
nuteness he be lost, and together they set
out for the enemy's country. At length
they came to a treacherous bog where
they found the poor tortoise struggling
vainly to free himself. This caused the
ant and the bull much merriment as they
crossed safely to solid ground. But the
tortoise, scorning to ask the aid of his
brothers in war, replied cheerfully to
their taunts and insisted that he would
meet them at the hostile village.

The ant and the bison advanced with
noise and bravado and the watchful
enemy perceiving them, issued from their

2IO

THE PASSING BUFFALO

lodges and wounded both, driving them
to headlong, inglorious retreat.

Finally the tortoise with sore travail,
reached his destination to find his com-
panions flown, and because he could not
flee also, he fell into the hands of the foe
—a prisoner. These cruel people decided
to put him to death at once. They threat-
ened him with slow roasting in red coals
of fire, with boiling and many awful tor-
tures, but the astute tortoise expressed his
willingness to suffer any of these penal-
ties. Therefore the enemy consulted to-
gether again and held over his head the
fate of drowning. Against this he protest-
ed with such frenzied vehemence that his
captors immediately executed the sen-
tence, and bearing him to a deep part of
the river which flowed through their
country, flung him in. Thus restored to
his native element he plunged to the bot-
tom of the stream, then arose to the sur-
face to see his enemies gaping from the
bank in expectation of his agony. He

211

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

grabbed several of them, dragged them
down and killed them, and appeared once
more triumphantly displaying their
scalps to the bewildered multitude of
thwarted warriors who were helpless to
avenge their brethren. The tortoise, sat-
isfied with his achievement, returned to
his home where he found the ant and the
bull prone upon the floor of the lodge,
wounded, humbled and fordone. * * *
Finally, the Minitarees and other
tribes had a curious legend of their
origin. They believed that their fore-
fathers once dwelt in dark, subterranean
caverns, beyond a great, swift-running
river. Two youths disappeared from
amongst them and after a short absence
returned to proclaim that they had found
a land lighted by an orb which warmed
the earth to fecundity, where deep waters
shimmered crystal white and countless
herds of bison covered grass and flower-
decked plains. So the youths led the peo-
ple up out of the primal darkness into the

212

THE PASSING BUFFALO

pleasant valleys where they dwelt ever-
more. And as the bison were celebrated
in this child-like tradition of the Begin-
ning, so likewise, did they figure in the
primitive conception of the hereafter.
That region of Summer where the good
Indian should find repose, was pictured
as an ideal country, fair with verdure and
rich with herds of bufifalo which the good
spirits would go seeking through the
golden vistas of eternity.

IV

When the first explorers penetrated
the fastnesses of the New World the buf-
falo was lord of the continent. Coronado
on his march northward from Mexico
saw hordes of these unknown beasts which
a chronicler of 1600 described naively as
"crooked-backed oxen." The mighty
herds roamed through the blue grass of
Kentucky, the Carolinas, that region now
the state of New York, and probably

213

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

every favorable portion of North Ameri-
ca. Very gradually they were pushed
farther and farther westward to the vi-
cinity of the Rocky Mountains, which
was for many years their refuge and re-
treat. In 1 8 19 the official expedition sent
by John C. Calhoun to examine the
Rocky Mountains, their tribes, animal
and plant life^ found the buffalo reduced
in numbers, though in the wild stretches
of country lying South along the Arkan-
sas, they were seen in countless hordes.
The report says:

"During these few days past, the bisons
have occurred in vast and almost continu-
ous herds, and in such infinite numbers
as seemed to indicate the great bend of
the Arkansas as their chief and general
rendezvous."

The account continues to narrate how

the scent of the white men borne to the

farthest animal, a distance of two miles,

started the multitudes speeding away, and

214

THE PASSING BUFFALO

yet so limitless were those millions, that,
day after day, they flowed past like a sea
until their presence became as a part of
the landscape, and by night their thunder-
ous bellow echoed through the savage
wastes.

In Bradbury's Travels there is a de-
scription of a fight among bufifalo bulls.
He says :

"On my return to the boats, as the wind
had in some degree abated, we proceeded
and had not gone more than five or six
miles before we were surprised by a dull,
hollow sound, the cause of which we
could not possibly imagine. It seemed
to be one or two miles below us; but as
our descent was rapid, it increased every
moment in loudness, and before we had
proceeded far, our ears were able to catch
some distinct tones, like the bellowing of
buffaloes. When opposite to the place
from whence it proceeded, we landed, as-
cended the bank, and entered a small
skirting of trees and shrubs, that sep-
215

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

arated the river from an extensive plain.
On gaining a view of it, such a
scene opened to us as will fall to the lot
of few travellers to witness. This plain
was literally covered with bufifaloes as
far as we could see, and we soon discov-
ered that it consisted in part of females.
The males were fighting in every direc-
tion, with a fury which I have never seen
paralleled, each having singled out his
antagonist. We judged that the number
must have amounted to some thousands,
and that there were many hundreds of
these battles going on at the same time,
some not eighty yards from us. The noise
occasioned by the trampling and bellow-
ing was far beyond description."

At that time the bison paths were like
well trodden roadways and served as such
to the explorers. These paths always led
by most direct routes to fresh water, and
therefore were of the greatest assistance
to travellers unacquainted with the undis-
covered lands.

2l6

THE PASSING BUFFALO

Such were the legions of the plains
even when the East had refused them
shelter. And although it was roughly
estimated that the tribes dwelling along
the Missouri River killed yearly 100,000
for food, saddle covers and clothes, this
did not appreciably lessen their hosts.
Not until the white tide flowed faster and
faster over the wilds was the doom of the
buffalo sounded, together with that of the
forests which sheltered them, and the In-
dians who were at once their foes and
their friends.

Then the destruction was swift beyond
belief. The royal game which Coro-
nado saw in 1585, which Lewis and Clark
in their adventurous journey into the un-
known West encountered at every turn,
was nearly gone. They endured in such
numbers that as late as 1840 Father De
Smet said:

"The scene realized in some sort the
ancient tradition of the holy scriptures,
speaking of the vast pastoral countries of
217

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

the Orient, and of the cattle upon a thou-
sand hills."

It was inconceivable to the Indians
that civilization should wreak such utter
desolation. They could not comprehend
the passing of the mighty herds any more
than they could appreciate the destruc-
tion of the forests or their own decline.
They did not know that the railroad
which traversed the highway of the plains
between the East and West ran through
miles upon miles of country whitened
with buffalo bones; that veritably the
prairies which had been the pasture of the
herds were now become their graveyard
— a graveyard of unburied dead. They
did not know that armies of workingmen
and settlers had drawn upon the buffalo
for food and warmth, that the beasts had
been harried and hunted North, South,
East and West, sometimes legitimately,
but too often in cruel, wanton sport, until,
at last, it became an evident fact that they
were visibly nearing their end. A kind
218

THE PASSING BUFFALO

of Stampede possessed the terrified beasts.
Their old haunts were usurped. Where
the fostering forests had given them shel-
ter, towns arose. Baffled and dismayed
they fled, hither and thither, only to
crash headlong within the range of the
huntsman's gun. So they charged at ran-
dom, ever pressed closer and closer to bay
by the encroaching life which was their
death.

About the year of 1883 it was known
that the last thinned and vagrant remnant
of the buflfalo was virtually gone. Mad-
dened into desperate bewilderment they
had done an unprecedented thing. In-
stead of going northward as their habit
had been since man first observed their
kind, they turned and fled South. This
was their end. The half-breeds of the
Red River, the Sioux of the Missouri,
and most relentless of all, the white hide-
hunter, beset the wild, retreating band.
Their greed spared neither beast that tot-
tered with age, nor calf fresh from its

219

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

mother's womb. All fell prey to the mas-
tering greed of the lords of the great free
land.

Upon the shores of the Cannonball
River, so-called from the heaps of round
stones upon its banks, on the edge of the
Dakotas, the buffalo made their last
stand. Driven to bay they stood and fell
together, the latest offspring of a van-
ished race.

But the poor Indian, he who had
shared the freedom of the continent with
his horned friend^ could not yet under-
stand that the buffalo were gone — gone
as the sheltering woods were going, even
as he, himself, must go. Evolution is
cruel as well as beneficent and there is
a pang for each poor, lesser existence
crushed out in the race, as there is joy in
the survival of the strongest and best.
And those who are superior to-day must
themselves be superseded to-morrow and
fall into the abysmal yesterday, mere
stepping stones toward the Infinite. The

220

THE PASSING BUFFALO

Indians, knowing none of these things,
became troubled and perplexed. In vain
they sought the herds on their old-time
hunting grounds, but only stark, bleached
bones were there and they went back to
their lodges, hungry, gaunt and wan.

In years past the bufifalo had disap-
peared at intervals to unknown pastures,
then returned multiplied and reinforced.
Was it not possible that they had gone
upon such a journey, perhaps to the ul-
timate North where the Old Man dwelt,
to seek refuge in a mighty polar cave un-
der his benign protection? So from their
meager stores the Indians oflfered sacri-
fices of horses and other of their most val-
ued possessions, to the Old Man, that he
might drive the buffalo back to the de-
serted pasture lands near the Rocky
Mountains.

"They are tired," said Long Tree of
the Sioux, "with much running. They
have had no rest. They have been chased
and chased over the rocks and gravel of

221

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

the prairie and their feet are sore, worn
down, like those of a tender-footed horse.
When the buffalo have rested and their
feet have grown out again, they will re-
turn to us in larger numbers, stronger,
with better robes and fatter than they
ever were."

Still the years passed and the buffalo
came not, and some there were who said
that if the Old Man, the Great Spirit of
the North, loved his children of the for-
est, he would not have left them to suffer
so painfully and long.

Then out of dumb despair came sudden
hope; out of the bitter silence sounded a
Voice and a prophet came "preaching
through the wilderness," even as John the
Baptist had come, centuries ago, bringing
a message of peace and the promise of
salvation. This prophet was Wovoka,
founder of the Ghost Dance religion,
who arose in "the land of the setting sun,"
in the shadow of the Sierras. He told
the wrapt people that when "the sun

222

THE PASSING BUFFALO

died" he went to heaven where he saw
God, the spirits of those long dead and
vast herds of revivified buffalo feeding in
the pastures of the skies. Heaven would
not be perfect to the Indian without the
buffalo, and the red man, less jealous than
ourselves of his paradise, was willing to
share the bliss of immortality with his
old-time companions of the plains. The
tenets of the new creed were gentle,
teaching peace, truth, honesty and univer-
sal brotherhood. Under the thrall of
the Ghost Dance, devotees dropped to
earth insensible and had visions of the
spirit-world. Wovoka prophesied that at
the appointed time the ghostly legions,
led by a spirit captain, would descend
from heaven^ striking down the unbeliev-
ers and restoring to the Indians and the
buffalo dominion over the earth.

With the awful desperation of a last

hope the Indians leaped high into the

Night surrounding them to grasp at a star

— a star, alas I which proved to be but a

223 «f

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

will-o'-the-wisp set over a quagmire of
death. Nothing seemed impossible to
their excited fancy. Had not the white
race killed the Christ upon a Cross of tor-
ture, and would he not come to earth
again as an Indian, to gather his children
together in everlasting happiness when
the grass should be green with the
Spring? Meantime they must dance,
dance through the weary days and nights
in order that the prophesy might be ful-
filled.

An alarm spread through the country.
What meant this frenzied dance of circ-
ling, whirling mystics who strained with
wide eyes to look beyond the skies? An
order came that the dance must cease.
This decree was but human, the one
which bade them dance they believed to
be divine. And dance they did, wildly,
madly, to the sharp time of musketry un-
til the hurrying feet were stilled and the
dancers lay cold and stark on the field
of Wounded Knee.

♦ 224

THE PASSING BUFFALO

In all the annals of the Indians' tragic
tale there is nothing more pitiful than this
Dance of Death. The poor victims, to-
gether with the last hope of a despairing
race, were buried at Wounded Knee, and
the white man wrought his will.

Slowly and steadily the woods were
laid low, inevitably the Indians retreated
farther and farther back, closer pressed,
routed as the buffalo had been. All hope
of the return of the beloved herds left
their hearts and they knew at last that
they would find them only in those Elys-
ian fields of perpetual summertime — the
Happy Hunting Ground.

The sun set red behind the mountains.
The shadows stole down, gray and mys-
tical as ghosts. From afar the coyote's
dolorous cry plained through the silence
and the owl hooted dismally as he awak-
ened at the approach of night. There in

225

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

the pallid dusk lay the bleached skull and
the arrowhead of black obsidian, mute
reliques of the past. The royal buffalo
is no more, the hunter that hurled the bolt
is gone. We may find the inferior off-
spring of the one in city parks, of the
other on ever-lessening reservations, but
degeneracy is more pitiful than death,
and the old, free herds that ranged the
continent are past as the fleet-footed,
strong-hearted tribes have vanished from
the plains.

So the story of the two fallen races is
told eloquently by this whitened skull
on the hillside and the jet-black arrow
head flung by the stilled red hand.

226

LAKE McDonald & its trail

CHAPTER VII

LAKE MCDONALD AND ITS TRAIL

IN the northern part of Montana,
towards the Canadian border, the
Main Range of the Rocky Moun-
tains has been rent and carved by
glacial action during ages gone by, un-
til the peaks, like tusks, stand separate
and distinct in a mighty, serrated line.
No one of these reaches so great a
height as Shasta, Rainier or Hood,
but here the huge, horned spine rises
almost sheer from the sweep of tawny
prairie, and not one, but hosts of pin-
nacles, sharp as lances, stand clean cut
against the sky. Approaching the range
from the East, in the saffron glow of sun-
set, one might fancy it was wrought of
amethyst, so intense and pure is the
colour, so clear and true the minutest de-
229

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

tail of the grandly sculptured outline.
Within the ice-locked barriers of those
heights live glaciers still grind their pas-
sages through channels of stone ; down in
shadowy ravines, voiceful with silver-
tongued falls, lie fair lakes in the embrace
of over-shadowing altitudes. The larg-
est of these lakes, McDonald, is the heart
of a vast and marvelous country, the cen-
ter of many trails.

The road to Lake McDonald winds
along the shores of the Flathead River
for half a mile or more, skirting the
swift current now churned itno white
foam by rapids, then calm and trans-
parent, revealing the least stone and
tress of moss in its bed, in shades of lim-
pid emerald. Leaving the river, the way
lies through dense forests of pine and
tamarack, cedar and spruce, and so close-
ly do the spreading boughs interlace that
the sun falls but slightly, in quivering,
pale gold splashes upon the pads of moss
and the fragrant damp mold which bursts
230

LAKE MCDONALD AND ITS TRAIL

into brilliant orange-coloured fungus and
viciously bright toadstools. Each fallen
log, each boulder wrested from its place
and hurled down by glacier or avalanche,
is dressed in a faery garb of moss and tiny,
fragrant shell-pink bells called twinflow-
ers, because two blossoms, perfect twins,
always hang pendent from a single stem
as slender as spun glass, and these small
bells scent the air with an odour as sweet
as heliotrope. Within the forest dim
with perpetual twilight, one feels the
vastness of great spaces, the silence of
great solitudes.

Suddenly there bursts upon one, with
all the up-bearing exhilaration of a first
sight of the sea, a scene which, once en-
graved upon the heart, will remain for-
ever. The trees part like a curtain drawn
aside and the distance opens magnificent-
ly. The intense blue of the cloudless sky
arches overhead, the royal waters of the
lake flow blue and green with the colours
of a peacock's tail or the variegated
231

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

beauty of an abalone shell ; sweeping up-
ward from the shores are tall, timbered
hills, so thickly sown with pine that each
tree seems but a spear of grass and the
whole forest but a lawn, and towering be-
yond, yet seeming very near in the pure,
white light, is a host of peaks silvered
with the benediction of the clouds — the
deathless snow. The haze that tints their
base is of a shade one sometimes finds in
violets, in amethysts, in dreams. Indeed,
these mountains seem to descend from
heaven to earth rather than to soar from
earth towards heaven, so great is their
sublimity.

As one floats away on the lake the view
changes. New vistas open and close, new
peaks appear above and beyond as though
their legion would never come to an end.
Straight ahead two irregular, rugged
mountains with roots of stone emplanted
in the water, rise like a mighty portal, and
between the two, seeming to bridge them,
is a ridge called the "Garden Wall." The
232

LAKE MCDONALD AND ITS TRAIL

detail of the more immediate steeps grows
distinct and we see from their naked
crests down their timbered sides, deep
furrows, the tracks of avalanches which
have rushed from the snow fields of Win-
ter, uprooting trees and crushing them
in the fury of the mad descent. A long,
comparatively level stretch, not unlike
a gun sight set among the bristling,
craggy summits, is the "Gunsight Pass,"
the difficult way to the Great St. Mary's
Lakes, the Blackfeet Glacier and the
wonderful, remote region on the Eastern
slope of the range. Huge, white patches
mark glaciers and snow fields, for it
is within these same mountains that the
Piegan (Sperry) and many others lie.
And as we drift on and on across the
smooth expanse of water, the magic of it
steals upon our souls. For there is about
the lake a charm apart from the beauty
of the waters and the glory of the peaks ;
of spirit rather than substance; of soul-
essence rather than earthly form. That

233

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

mysterious force, whatever it may be, ris-
ing from the water and the forest soli-
tudes and descending from the mountain
tops, flows into our veins with the amber
sunshine and we feel the sweeping uplift
of altitudes heaven-aspiring that take us
back through infinite ages to the Source
which is Nature and God.

The good old captain of the little craft
weaves fact and fancy into wonderful
yarns as he steers his launch straight for
the long, purplish-green point which is
the landing. To him no ocean greyhound
is more seaworthy than his boat, and he
likes to tell of timid tender-feet entreat-
ing him to keep to shore when the lake
was tumultuous with storm, and how he,
spurning danger, guided them all safely
through the trough of the waves. He
keeps a little log wherein each passenger
is asked to write his name. The poor old
man has a maimed hand, his eyes are
filmy with years and his gums are all but
toothless, but it would seem that nature

234

G

LACIER Camp

LAKE MCDONALD AND ITS TRAIL

has compensated him for his afflictions by
concentrating his whole strength in his
tongue. He knows each landmark well,
and gravely points out to the credulous
traveller, the highest mountain in the
world; calls attention to the 18,000 fath-
oms of lake depth whence no drowned
man ever rises, and other marvels, each
the greatest of its kind upon the circum-
ference of the globe. There came a day
soon after when the lake chafed beneath
a lashing gale and the little craft and her
gallant captain were dumped inglorious-
ly upon the beach. But accidents happen
to the best of seamen, and the launch, af-
ter a furious expulsion of steam, and
much hiccoughing, was dragged once
more into her place upon the wave.

Although there is evidence that Lake
McDonald was long ago frequented by
some of the Indian tribes, it was not
known to the world until comparatively
recent times. There are two stories of its
discovery and naming, both of which

23s

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

have a foundation of truth. The first is
that Sir John McDonald, the famous
Canadian politician, riding across the
border with a party, cut a trail through
the pathless woods and happening to
penetrate to the lake, blazed his name up-
on a tree to commemorate the event, thus
linking his fame with the newly found
natural treasure. The old trail remains
— probably the virgin way into the wil-
derness. The second story — which is from
the lips of Duncan McDonald, son of
Angus, runs thus: He and a little band
of Selish were crossing from their own
land of the Jocko into the country of the
Blackfeet which lies East of the Main
Range, to recover some ponies stolen by
the latter tribe, when they came in view
of this lake hitherto unknown to them.
Duncan McDonald, who was the leader
or partizan, as the French-Canadians say,
blazed the name "McDonald" upon some
pines along the shore. It matters little
who was actually the first to set foot on
236

LAKE MCDONALD AND ITS TRAIL

these unpeopled banks, but it is a strange
coincidence that the two pathfinders
should have borne the same name.

The purplish-green point draws near-
er, log cabins appear among the trees,
each one decorated with a bear skin hung
near its door. This is a fur trading center
as well as a resort of nature lovers, and
upon the broad porch of the club house is
a heap of pelts of silver tip, black and
brown bear, mountain lion and lynx, and
from the walls within, bighorn sheep and
mountain goats' heads peer down. The
trappers themselves, quaint, old hunters
of the wilderness, come out of their re-
treats to trade. But even now their day
is passing. With the advent of outside
life these characters, scarcely less shy than
the game they seek, move farther back
into uncontaminated solitudes. They are
the last, lingering fragment of that old
West which is so nearly a sad, sweet mem-
ory, a loving regret.

Each hour of the day traces its lapse in

237

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

light and shadow on the lake, until the
sunset flowing in a copper tide, draws
aureoles of golden cloud over the white-
browed peaks, transforming their huge
and rugged bulk into luminous light-giv-
ing bodies of faded roses and lavender.
As the evening wanes the mountains burn
out in ashes of roses, still lightened here
and there upon their ultimate heights,
with a glow as faint as the memory of a
dead love, and the living halo of the
clouds deepens into coral crowns. Then
the lake becomes a vast opal, kindling
with fires that flash and die in the grow-
ing dusk.

The dark forests that cloak the lake
shores, are threaded with trails each
leading to some treasure store of Nature
far ofif in the secrecy of the hills. One of
great beauty starts from the head of the
lake, beneath the shadow of the moun-
tains, and overhangs the boisterous, rock-
rent torrent of McDonald's Creek. The
narrow way is padded thick with pine
238

LAKE MCDONALD AND ITS TRAIL

needles ground into sweet, brown powder
which deadens the least intrusive footfall,
as though the whole wood were barken-
ing to the singing of the waters through
the silence of the trees. Along the trail
are mosses of multitudinous kinds. The
delicate star moss unfolds its feathery
points of green; a strange variety with
thick, mottled leaves grows like a full
blown rose around decayed trees, and a
small, pale, gray-green trumpet-shaped
moss rears hosts of elfin horns. Only a
skilled botanist could classify these rich
carpets which Nature has spread over the
dead royalty of her forests, so that even
in their death there is resurrection; even
in their decay, new life. Bluebells and
twinflowers, those delicate faery-bells of
pink, sweet grass, pigeon berry and many
another blossom beautiful in its strange-
ness, weave their colour into gay patterns
on the green; blend their fragrance with
the balsam sweetness of the woods. And
all around, the stately pine trees grow

239

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

bearded with long, gray moss which
marks their antiquity and foretells their
doom. The stream below, flowing be-
tween steep banks that it has cut during
centuries of ceaseless washing, raises its
song to a roar as it flings its swift current
over a parapet of stone in a banner of
shimmering, white foam. Above, the wa-
ter breaks in whirling rapids and farther
still is another fall. Towering in the dis-
tance is an exalted peak, the father of this
stream, whose snowy gift pours down its
perennial blessing into the clear tide of
the lake.

So it is, the streams that issue from the
glaciers yield their pure tribute to Lake
McDonald, and all the trails, uncoiling
their devious and dizzy ways over the
mountains, bring us back to these shores.
And every time that we return it breaks
upon us with renewed freshness of mood.
It may be ridden by a wind that lashes
it into running waves of purple and wine
colour, marked with the white foot-prints
240

LAKE Mcdonald and its trail

of the gale. It may be still as the first
thought of love, holding in its broad mir-
ror the bending sky and mountains peer-
ing into its secrecy. It may be ephem-
eral with mist that dims the mountains
into pale, shadowy ghosts; or it may be
like a voluptuous beauty glittering with
jewels and clad in robes of silken sheen;
again, it may be Quakerish in its pallid
monotone. The changing cycle of the
day and night each brings its different
gift of beauty, and likewise, the passing
seasons deck the mountains and the waters
with a glory all their own, until, with
martial hosts of cloud, with banners
streaming silver and emblazoned with
lightning-gleam, Winter spreads its gar-
ment of white upon the mystery of the
wild. Perhaps the lake is never so exqui-
site as then. At least it seems so, as with
closed eyes and passive soul, a memory
undimmed arises out of the past.

It is night in the dead of Winter. The
silence of deep sleep and isolation is on
241

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

the world. The snow has fallen like a
flock of white birds and the air has
cleared to the degree of scintillating bril-
liance that mocks the diamond's flash.
The full moon is beneath a cloud and its
veiled light, filtering through the vapor,
shows dimly the shadowy waters and the
wan peaks fainting far away. Then the
cloud passes. The moon leaps into the
heavens and a flood of white light illu-
mines the water, the sky and the moun-
tains, transforming the whole into a faery
scene of arctic splendour. It is as though
the last breath of life had vanished in that
chaste frozen atmosphere, and the earth
had become a Palace of Dreams.

And though that Palace of Dreams
vanishes as dreams must, like a melting
snow crystal or a frosty sigh upon the
night, there remains in our hearts a
yearning which shall bear us back to the
reality of beauty that rewards each pil-
grim who returns to the deathless glory
of the mountain-married lake.
242

ABOVE THE CLOUDS

CHAPTER VIII

ABOVE THE CLOUDS

OF all the trails in the McDonald
country, there is none more trav-
elled, or more worthy of the toil
than that which leads to the Piegan gla-
cier. From the moment we stand in ex-
pectant readiness in the little clearing be-
hind the log cabins comprising the hotel,
a new phase of existence has begun for
us. So strange are the place and the con-
ditions that it seems we must have stepped
back fifty years or more, into that West
whose glamour lives in story and song.
Strong, tanned, sinewy guides who wear
cartridge belts and six-shooters, load
grunting pack-horses and "throw" dia-
mond-hitches in businesslike silence.
When at last all is ready, the riders
mount the Indian ponies or "cayuses" —
245

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

AUie Sand^ the yellow cow pony; Babe,
the slumbrous; Bunchie, but recently
subdued, and Baldy, nicknamed "Fool-
ish" because of the musical pack of ket-
tles, camp stoves and sundries that jingle
and jump up and down upon his back,
lightening the way with merriment for
those who follow. With a quickened beat-
ing of the heart, the good cheer and God-
speed of friendly voices ringing in our
ears, we take leave of the last haunt of
civilization and strike out into the virgin
solitude of heaven-aspiring peaks.

As the feeling of remoteness smites the
spirit when we pass beyond the railway
station of Belton and follow in creaking
wagons the shadow-curtained road to the
lake, so now it returns with stronger im-
pulse, calling to life new emotions be-
gotten of the Wild. The world-rush
calms into the great stillness of untrod-
den places, the world-voices sigh out in
the murmuring breeze, the petty traffic
of the cities is forgotten in the soulful si-
246

ABOVE THE CLOUDS

lence of the trees. And out of this newly
*ound affinity with the Nature forces, the
love of adventure thrills into being, to-
gether with the fine scorn of danger and
the resolve to do that which we set out to
do no matter what the cost or the peril.
Here the "white feather" is the greatest
badge of dishonour, and he who fails
through cowardice to win his goal is a
man among men no more. This spirit is
the faint, far-off echo of the hero-bearing
days of the early West.

Our guide is a stocky, little man of sol-
dierly bearing, clad in khaki suit and
cow-boy hat, whom his fellows call
"Scotty." He is brown with exposure,
smoothly shaven, and his keen, blue eyes
are slightly contracted at the corners
from the strain of peering through vast
distances — a characteristic of men who
follow woodcraft and huoting. He rides
ahead silently but for a rebuke to the
slumbrous "Babe," such as, "Go on, you
lazy coyote," or a familiar, half-caress-
247

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

ing remark to Bunchie, the ex-outlaw,
who is his favourite. Indeed, he, like
most men who have ridden the range, has
the habit of talking to the ponies as
though they knew and understood. And
who can be sure they do not?

The forests begin as soon as the bit of
clearing is passed, then single file the lit-
tle cavalcade moves on through huckle-
berry fields, purplish-black with luscious,
ripe berries, where bears come to feed and
fatten, where, also, thirsty wayfarers stop
to eat the juicy fruit. The pines clasp
branches overhead in a lacy, broken roof
whose pattern of needle and burr shows
in dark traceries against patches of blue
sky remote and far beyond. A thick,
sweet shadow dappled now and again
with splashes of yellow sun tempers the
air which presses its cool touch upon our
brows. On either hand a dense, even
lawn of tender green fern and mist-maid-
en covers the earth and through the si-
lence sounds the merry clamour of a
248

ABOVE THE CLOUDS

sjream. It ripples gaily along between
wooded banks, breaking into little crests
of foam upon the rocks, showing through
the glassy medium of its waters, every
stone and pebble of its speckled bed pol-
ished and rounded by ceaseless flowing.
The horses splash through the creek and
upon the opposite side begins anew the
delicate lawn of mist-maiden and fern,
so freshly, tenderly green with the pale
greenness of things that live away from
the sun, so ephemerally exquisite as to
embarrass coarse, mortal presence. It is
a spot fit for fairies to dance upon; fit for
wood-nymphs and white hinds to make
merry in ; fit for the flute-like melody of
Pan to awake to dancing echoes as he calls
the forest sprites unto high revelry.

A forest ranger joins us. He is tramp-
ing to the Gunsight Pass with his axe
upon his shoulder and his kit upon his
back, to repair the trail to the Great St.
Mary's Lakes.

The shades of brown and green, the

249

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

shadow threaded with an occasional
strand of gold, are livened by crimson
patches of Indian Paint Brush, bluebells,
white starry lilies called Queen's Cups,
trembling feathers of coral pink, sun-
yellow and white syringa. Beneath the
overhanging verdure, around and upon
the mossy rocks, the ever-present twin-
flowers open their delicate petals and
sweeten the air, and from clumps of
coarse grass rise cones of minute white
blossoms, the bear-grass, one of the most
curious of the mountain flowers. This
ranger knows the common names of near-
ly all the plants, and at every turn new
varieties spring up. He stops to gather
each kind of bloom until we have a great
bouquet — a potpourri of all the floral
beauty of the multitudes that people our
path.

The way is very fair, ministering to
the senses; troops of new, forest forms
and colours pass before the eye, the min-
gled sweets of the flowers, the pungent
250

ABOVE THE CLOUDS

mould and balsam of spruce and pine
breathe sensuously into the nostrils, and
the fingers of the wind caress and soothe
as they pass. Through the voiceful si-
lence, sounds that are on the borderland
between fancy and reality, thrill for a
moment, then are lost in the grand chorus
of trees and rushing rivers. A stream of
volume and velocity flowing through a
deep gorge falls twice in its downward
rush. These two falls, the Wynona and
Minneopa, flash great, white plumes
among steeps of green forest.

With sharp descent and stubborn climb,
the trail, that seems the merest thread, un-
tangles its skein and leads, at length, into
a small basin partly enclosed within
sheer, naked rock-walls, whence three
delicate silver streams trickle down and
join the creek that waters a little park.
Beyond, the peaks loom up masterfully,
sheathing their icy lances in the clouds.
High over the lip of the mighty rock-
wall, rising like the giant counterpart of

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

an ancient battlement, lies the glacier.
Up that precipitous, overhanging para-
pet we must make our way, but where the
footing or how the ascent is to be won,
fancy cannot fathom, for it would seem
no living thing save a mountain goat, a
bighorn sheep or an eagle could scale
this stronghold of Nature. Across the
basin, where there is a gentler slope, the
mountain side is dotted with groups of
tall, spire-like pines. The level meadow
is grassy and shaded with small spruce
of the size of Christmas trees. And in
this peaceful spot, girt with grim, chal-
lenging steeps, the tinkle of the stream
sounds pastorally sweet, while the more
distant and powerful roar of the three
tumbling streams chants a solemn under-
tone to the merry lilt.

Here the camp is made. A fire crackles
gaily and our tents are pitched beneath
the trees. Suddenly a shadow falls, —
dimly, almost imperceptibly. The sun
has gone. It is only six o'clock in mid-
252

ABOVE THE CLOUDS

summer, but so lofty are the barrier-
heights that even now we are in a world
of shade, — shade of a strangely luminous
kind, hinting of ruddy lights that are ob-
scured but not quenched. Through the
quiet, echo the whistle of the marmot,
the metallic whirr of contentious squir-
rels going off like small alarm clocks, and
the mellow, drowsy note of bells ringing
to the rhythmic crop of browsing ponies.
So the long beautiful twilight settles over
the mountains until the sounds are stilled
save the tinkling bells and the water-
voices singing their ceaseless song. The
forest sleeps. Long, mystical fancy-bear-
ing moments and tens of moments pass,
and something of awe closes down with
the gloaming. Then through the dim,
monkish grey shadow pulses a red-gold
stream of light that runs in long, uneven
streamers across the face of the grim,
dark walls, transfiguring them into radi-
ant shapes of living golden-rose. In that
effulgence of glory, lost peaks gleam for

253

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

a second out of the dusk and vanish into
nothingness again, snowy diadems flash
into being and fade like a dream. The
life-blood of the day ebbs and flows,
sending out long, slender fingers to
trace its fleeting message on the rocks,
then with a deepening, crimson glow it
flickers and is fled. Night settles fast and
the flare of the camp fire, shedding its
spark-spangles in brilliant showers, re-
claims one little spot from the devouring
blackness. It is a magical thing — this
campfire, and the living ring around it is
an enchanted circle. Perhaps its warmth
penetrates even to the heart, or perhaps
the bond of human fellowship asserts it-
self more strongly when only the precari-
ous, flamboyant fire-light, leaping and
waning, throwing forth a rain of sparks,
or searing grey with sudden decline, sep-
arates our little group from utter desola-
tion. Whatever the charm may be, it falls
upon us all, and with eyes fixed on the
ember-pictures or raised to the starry

254

ABOVE THE CLOUDS

skies, we listen to tales of the long ago
and of a present as unfamiliar as the
past. The reserve of our guide is quite
broken and he tells in a low, reminiscent
voice, of wonder-spots in the range, — for
he knows its every peak and gorge, — of
the animals that dwell in its solitary re-
cesses and of how the Piegan Glacier got
its name.

The Piegan Indians are a branch of
the Blackfeet tribe, and in the early days
they were almost as noted horse raiders as
the Absarokes who flourished near the
Three Tetons, in the country of the Yel-
lowstone. Back and forth across the
passes they came and went in their ne-
farious traffic, secure from pursuit among
the horns of these lonely heights. The vi-
cinity of the eternal ice-fields, probably
this little basin itself, sheltered the shad-
owy bands, and thus the glacier became
known by their name. Still, you may look
in vain on the maps for Piegan Glacier;
you will find it called Sperry instead.

255

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

The old name was discarded for that
of a Professor who spent some weeks
exploring its crevasses and under whose
supervision a corps of college students
spent a part of one summer's vacation,
building the glacier trail. Yet there are
those who love the old names as they love
the traditions for which they stand, and
to them the glacier will forever bear the
time-honoured title of these Indians who
have long since disappeared from its soli-
tudes.

As the hours pass we draw from our
guide and story-teller something of him-
self. Little by little, in fragmentary al-
lusions and always incidentally, during
that even-tide and the days following, we
learn thus much of his life. He was born
in those troublous days of Indian fighting
on the frontier, shortly after his father,
an army officer, was ordered out on cam-
paign against the Sioux. When he was
but a few weeks old word came to his
mother that her husband had been killed,
256

ABOVE THE CLOUDS

and she, sick and heart-broken, died, leav-
ing besides this infant one other boy. The
two children were left to the care of the
officers at Fort Kehoe, but they were sep-
arated while both were so young that
they did not realize the parting nor re-
member each other. Our guide became
the ward of a lieutenant who had been a
friend of his father. He played among
the soldiers and Indian scouts at the Fort
until he came to the age when he felt the
desire to learn, then he went East to
school, afterwards to college, always re-
turning in the summer to ride the range
or to lose himself in the mountains. And
when the college days were done that old
cry of the West, that old craving for the
life that knows no restraint nor hindering
bonds, beckoned him back inevitably as
Fate. Again and again he had gone forth
on the world's highway, once to serve in
Cuba in the war with Spain, where in a
yellow-fever hospital he met for the first
time his older brother, who even then was
257

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

dying of the pestilence, but always he re-
turned to the freedom of the wilderness.
He is a type in himself, who belongs to
the time of Lewis and Clark, rather than
to this century — a man who lives too late.
And there is about him, for all his care-
free indifference to the world, something
of indefinable pathos. He is quite alone
— he has no kinsfolk and few friends. He
is a man without a home but the forests,
who has renounced human companion-
ship for the solitudes, without a love but
the mountains, to whom the greatest sor-
row would be the knowledge that he
might never look upon them again. * *
A cloud, heavy with rain, drifts across
the sky, and big, cool drops splash with
a hissing noise in the fire, upon our up-
turned faces, upon the warm, flower-
sown earth which exhales, like incense,
the odours of sun-heated soil and summer
shower. The bright flames deepen to a
blood-red glow and ashes gather like
hoar frost on the cooling logs and boughs.
258

ABOVE THE CLOUDS

The circle around the fire disperses to
seek the narcotic gift breathed by the
pines, sung as a lullaby by the voices of
trees and streams.

The start for the glacier is made while
the day is young. Pack horses and camp
are left behind and with the guide lead-
ing the way, the tortuous climb is begun.
Sheer as those rock-walls seemed to be,
there is a footing for the careful ponies,
as from narrow ledge to ledge they turn
and zigzag up the mountain-face; and
naked as those steeps appeared, they are
animated with frisking conies and mar-
mots, and hidden among the stones are
rarely exquisite flowers. Here the moun-
tain lilies grow, blossoms with brown
eyes in each of their three white petals,
covered with soft, silvery fur which
makes them seem of the texture of velvet.
These lilies are somewhat similar to the
Mariposa lily of the California Sierras.
The ground-cedar, a minute and delicate
plant; strange varieties of fern and moss,
259

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

and everchanging, unfamiliar flowers
appear as we ascend, until, wheeling diz-
zily hundreds of feet above the basin up-
on the slight and slippery trail, with
things beneath dwarfed by distance
into a pigmy world and things above
looming formidably, the increasing alti-
tude shears the rocks and leaves them
bare and grim. The air grows sharp
with icy chilly great billowy, low-trailing
clouds drag over the mountain-tops,
down the ravines and float in detached
banners in free spaces below. Broad
stretches of snow lie ahead. The pains-
taking ponies pick their way across them,
for it is fifteen feet down to solid ground.
Sluggish streams creep between banks
crusty with old ice, and pretty falls, bro-
ken into lacy meshes of foam, cascade
down a parapet of rock and baptize us as
we pass. In this spot the stone wall has
been worn into a grotto where the water
plays as in a fountain. From every little
fissure ferns dart their long green lances
260

ABOVE THE CLOUDS

and feathery fronds, and the rocks are
grown over with moss.

From our eyrie we look down into a
small lake called Peary's, sunk within
dark and desolate cliffs, shattered and
ground down into fantastic forms. It is
but partly thawed and its cold, blue-
green centre is enclosed in opaque, green-
ish-white ice and drifts of snow. Indeed
snow is everywhere in broken drifts — in
the furrowed mountain-combs and along
the level in smooth white stretches. Close
to the margin of the ice-sealed shores is
a grotesque, sapless, scrubby vegetation,
as strange in its way as the brilliant-hued
waters or the rocks that impress us with
huge antiquity and elemental crudeness,
as though we stood face to face with
Earth's infancy, close in the wake of ebb-
ing, primeval seas. But for all the savage
roughness and arctic chill this is a scene
to cherish and remember — the blue cup
of heaven, flecked with a thistledown of
clouds, the black menace of shivered
261

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

rock-crests, the dazzle of the snow and
the darkly beautiful waters that are
neither blue nor green yet seemingly of
both colours, held fast in the circle of
cold, pale ice.

Above this lake, down an overhanging
wall, are more little falls, indeed the
whole country is interlaced with them as
though the life-blood of the mountains
flowed in silver veins upon the surface.
Within the hollow over the stone barrier
lies Nansen's Lake, even more frigid in
its ice-sheath, more palely green in the
little patch of water which the sun has
laid bare. And although the mountains
soar tremendously, yet ever and anon the
course lies upward over the frowning
brows, over the very crowns of the Range,
until the high peaks, stripped of atmos-
pheric illusion, stand stark and naked to
the gaze. There is in this sudden intimacy
with the fellows of the clouds, the veiled
lords of upper air, an awe which we feel
before powers incomprehensible.
262

ABOVE THE CLOUDS

At last the trail ceases; overhead are
cliffs no horse could climb. The guide
ties the ponies, and with a stout rope
clambers ahead up a smoothly sculptured
parapet. We follow him ^nd find our-
selves on a bleak waste which leads to a
small basin^ strewn with great boulders
and lesser rocks, dark and of the colour of
slate. Growing upon these rock-heaps
are masses of flowering moss starred by
tiny pink buds and blossoms, or white
spattered with the crimson of heart's
blood. And now the guide begins to
whistle — a long, plaintive note which is
answered presently by a similar sound and
a shrill, infantile treble, cheeping, cheep-
ing among the stones. Then from the se-
curity of her home a Ptarmigan, or Arc-
tic Grouse, hops into the open with her
family of five chicks jumping on her pa-
tient back, and tumbling, the merest puflF-
balls, at her feet. She chirps softly to
them, proud and dignified in her mater-
nity, ever watchful of her pretty little
263

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

brood. She is dressed in Quakerish sum-
mer-garb of mottled grey, the feathers
covering her to the utmost extremity of
her toes. Once the winter snows descend,
these birds become as white as the frigid
regions which they inhabit. Ordinarily
they are very wild, but this little mother,
knowing only friendliness from human
visitors, comes forth trustfully with her
beloved young, suffers them to be hand-
led and caressed and she, herself, with
wings dropped in the semblance of a
pretty courtesy, jumps into the hand of
the guide, and from that perch feeds dain-
tily on the pink and white buds of the
moss, as fragilely lovely as the snowflakes
to which they appear strangely akin. In-
deed, the bird, the flowers and the envi-
roning snow all seem more of the cloud-
land than of the earth.

But there is a sequel to the story of this

little grouse, which is, unhappily, a

tragedy. Not long after she greeted us,

giving an air of friendliness to the forbid-

264

ABOVE THE CLOUDS

ding, wind-swept rocks, a Tyrolese came
hunting through the mountains. He made
his camp near the home of the Ptarmigan
and her little ones, and one day when the
guide came calling to her there was no
answer but the empty whistling of the
wind. He called again and again; he
searched among the crags and the rock-
heaps, then he came upon the ashes of a
camp-fire and the mottled feathers and
silken down of the Ptarmigan and her
chicks. She had been betrayed at last by
her trustfulness, and she and her brood
had been cruelly sacrificed to the blood-
lust and appetite of that enemy of poor
dumb things — the man with the gun. * *
From the mossy basin of the Ptarmi-
gan we climb with ropes up a broken es-
carpment and there upon the very lip of
the glacier are blossoms so unearthly in
form and colour as to seem the merest
ghosts of flowers. One is a dark, ocean-
blue bell and another an ashen-green
thing furred over with a beard as soft and
265

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

colorless as a moth's wing. From this
eminence a stormy, wind-tossed little
lake, the Gem, flashes angrily-bright wa-
ters beneath snow splashed, wonderfully
stratified peaks, and there, through a gate-
way in the mountains, spreading out in a
vast plateau of white, lies the glacier, un-
dulating in frozen waves like a polar sea.
Even under its shroud of snow one can
trace its course by the seams and wrinkles
of a congealed current. It is flanked on all
sides by the savage, beetling peaks mar-
shalled in endless ranks like the spears
and unsheathed lances of war-gods in
their domain midway between earth and
heaven. Out across the death-white pal-
lor of snow^ in the death-chill of the ice-
fields, we strike out slowly, cautiously,
for the surface of the ice, now hidden by
snow, is cleft by crevasses even to the
mountain's core, and a misstep, a fall into
their depths would be doom. Far away
over the white stretches, a gaunt, spectral
coyote watches our painful progress. On
266

ABOVE THE CLOUDS

and on we go by a tusk-like peak, the "Lit-
tle Matterhorn," and ever on to a point
where the giant panorama unfolds its
mountain - multitudes, its barricaded
lakes, and the echo breaks into a chorus
that peals put as though each separate
crest were possessed of a brazen tongue.
These grimly naked heights, split and
rent with elemental shocks and the resis-
tance to huge forces, are the cradle of the
lightning and the thunder-bolt, the cita-
del whence the storm-hosts ride down on
blackwinged clouds upon the world.
And even now phantom troops of clouds
come gliding up out of the moist laps of
the valleys, out of lakes and streams, pass-
ing in shifting wraith-shapes over the
mountains, spreading their filmy scarfs
across the sky until the livid expanse of
snow, showing colourlessly in the grey
light, brings to one a vivid picture of the
ice-age, of a frozen world and the cold,
pitiless illumination of a burnt-out sun.
Fine, pricking points of snow cut with
267

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

the sharpness of needle-thrusts ; the wind
whips through the bleak gaps in the
Range and over the glacier, gathering
cold and speed as it comes. A chilling
numbness deadens our feet and hands. So,
wind-buffeted, storm-driven, with the
trumpeting gale in our ears, we turn back
from the kingdom where Winter is un-
broken, and descend through alternate
shadow and sun into the blooming
beauty, into the golden Summer that
swims in the world below, whence snow
and cold are only hinted of in a white-
breasted, mountain-kissing cloud.

268

THE LITTLE SAINT MARY'S

CHAPTER IX

THE LITTLE SAINT MARY'S

PERHAPS the most sublime sweep
of view within the entire Range is
gained from the summit of Mount
Lincoln. To accomplish this ascent it is
necessary to leave the tortuous "switch-
back" trail in full view of Gunsight Pass
and strike out over a trackless mass of
shattered rock, upward toward the peak.
The way is steep and difficult, the foot-
ing slippery and insecure. The muscles
strain to quivering tension, the breath
comes in gusty sighs and still the mighty
heap of dull rose and green rock rears its
jagged crest against the throbbing sky.
But even if the climb were tenfold longer
and the goal tenfold harder to win, it
would be a faint-hearted seeker after the
271

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

beautiful who would hesitate to make the
sacrifice of toil for the magnificent re-
ward that awaits him.

The rugged pedestal of stone that
crowns the peak, drops almost precipi-
tately three thousand six hundred feet,
and directly below, in a gorge formed by
this and a second chain of lofty moun-
tains, lie two jade-green lakes, the Little
Saint Mary's, joined by a slender, far-
leaping waterfall. So immense is the
distance, that this fall, spanning the seven-
teen hundred feet between the upper and
lower lakes, does not break the brooding
quiet with the whisper of an echo. The
slim, white column parts upon the rocks
into a diamond shape, and when, happily,
the sunshine catches in its spray, it be-
comes a tangle of rainbows. But now, it
unfolds its silver scarf silently, colourlessly
as a ghost, and the green lake, so far be-
low, receives the pouring tide with never
a ripple to mar its smooth surface. The
shadow gathers in the gorge and along
272

I'HE LITTLE SAINT MARY^S

the mountains^ the pines are darkly green
and in sharp contrast, the unmelted snow
fields lie pale and gray-white to the very
rim of the lakes forming a setting as of
old silver. After the first shock of that
sublimity has left the senses free of its
thrall, a vast panorama unfolds, domi-
nated by the majesty of mountain-lords
flanked and crowded by range upon range
of others, rising in lessening undulations
to the horizon's rim, as though a sea
whose giant billows strove to smite the
sky in the throes of an awful storm, were
suddenly transformed to stone.

In the crushing might of these great
spaces, peering over the brink of the
mountain top into the bosom of the
smooth, still lakes as coldly beautiful as
an emerald's heart, that half-mad idea of
self-annihilation clutches at the mind.
Perhaps it is the exhilarating leap of the
waterfall that tempts one, or perhaps the
hypnotic charm of the deep-set, jewel-
bright pools, or perhaps some unguessed

273

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

secret of gravity which impels the totter-
ing atom into the depths of life-absorbing
space. It is the same terrible, savage joy,
the magnetism of elemental force which
we feel as we stand on the brink of the
Grand Canon of the Yellowstone, with
the glorious, brave call to death crying
from the water voices, while the whisper
of life sounds sweetly from the vocal
winds of heaven.

And even as we gaze, the sun's light
dies and the world is ashen pale. Sud-
denly over the distant ranges, storm
clouds come trooping in black hosts. A
heavy silence falls, broken now and again
by the boom of thunder and the fright-
ened cry of shelter-seeking birds. Perched
upon a point of rock, silhouetted against
the sky, a bighorn sheep watches the
gathering tempest, unmindful of the mut-
tering thunder and the ominous glow of
lightning kindling in the sable-winged
array. There is something noble about
him as he turns his crest upward to bear
274

THE LITTLE SAINT MARY'S

the onslaught of the blast. The purple
of the mountains overhanging the lake
deepens to black — the blue-black of a
clear, night sky — and the snow filling the
ravines lies passionless and white as
death. Beneath the driving storm-ban-
ners, a luridly vivid light casts its reflec-
tion upon the earth in a gilded path, re-
vealing the smallest detail of valley and
height before the darkness wraps them in
its mantle. The Kootenais for one brief
instant shine like towers of brass and a
pallid mist overhanging an arm of the
remote Flathead Lake becomes a golden
fleece, then the garish glare passes and
mystery and shadow settle down. Violet
tongues of lightning dart from the trail-
ing clouds, the martial fifing of the wind
makes shrill music through the bleak
cairns and empty wastes, and great,
splashes of rain fall fragrantly, refresh-
ingly upon the warm ground. But in all
the tumult, the cold, jade-green lakes lie
unshaken, calm. So truly are they the
275

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

mountains' brides, held securely in their
embrace of stone, that not even the wild
riding of the gale nor the shivering thun-
derbolt disturbs their untroubled depths,
while their champions, the peaks, in hel-
mets of pale ice do battle with the ele-
ments.

The deafening cannonade becomes
fainter, the sword-thrust of lightning
strikes at other quarry, and the storm,
with torn banners dragging low down the
mountain sides, like routed hosts in re-
treat, follow the wake of the thunder, the
lightning and the tempest-ridden wind.
And as the sun shines forth from the
heavens a transformation beams like a
blessing from every crag and rock. Still
wet with the summer rain, they take on
strangely beautiful hues of sparkling rose
colour, and green like that of the mother
ocean, and the naked, glacier-ground es-
carpments reveal the exquisite illumina-
tions wrought in flowing, multi-colored
bands, in subtle shade and wordless rune,
276

THE LITTLE SAINT MARY'S

of the record book wherein is writ the his-
tory of aeons.

Through the dazzle of the sun the sea
of mountains re-appears, a flowing tide of
purple billows growing more ethereally
blue in the distance until they seem but
the azure shadow of heaven. And far be-
neath in the deep, dark gorge, cool with
perpetual shade, flanked by mighty
mountain walls, are the polished jade-
green lakes and the fall, spinning its end-
less silver skein into the untroubled wa-
ters below.

277

TRACK OF THE AVALANCHE

CHAPTER X

THE TRACK OF THE AVALANCHE

THE trail to Avalanche Basin starts
from the shores of Lake McDon-
ald and plunges almost immedi-
ately into forests mysterious with prim-
eval grandeur. Perhaps their dense-
ness is the reason for the wealth of rank-
growing weed and shrub that forms one
vast screen beneath the spreading branch-
es of pine, tamarack and kingly cedar
trees. Whether this is the cause or not,
the trail is richer in vegetation than any
other that lays open the secrets of the for-
est's heart. Tall, juicy-stalked bear-weed,
devil's walking cane, prickly with veno-
mous thorns, slim, graceful stems of wild
hollyhock crowned with pale, lavender
blossoms, and broad-leafed thimble berry,
bearing fragile, crapy-petalled flowers,

281

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

weave their verdure into a tangled mass.
An occasional path crushed down freshly
shows where a bear has lately been, for
these lavish brakes are a haunt of the
three varieties that dwell in the surround-
ing mountains — the black, the brown and
the silver tip, or grizzly. Strange sounds
come up out of the silence, borne through
dim, dark vistas where shy things peep
and dry twigs snap under careful,
stealthy tread. A woodpecker drums
resonantly on the bole of a tree; shrilly
elfin music quavers with reedy sweetness
from the security of dense thickets. A
haunting spell steals over the heart and
turns the mind to thoughts of sirens, wa-
ter sprites, and Piping Pan, for in spite
of generations of culture, somewhat of
that ancient worship of the Wild is re-
vived in us when we are in the virgin
woods. The hypnotic charm of the great
silence and solitude possesses us and there
comes a feeling as of memory of half-for-
gotten things lived in a dream, — or was it
282

THE TRACK OF THE AVALANCHE

reality? The inarticulate voices of the
past come calling in sylvan melody out of
the closed lips of the centuries, re-awak-
ening the life of our forebears and reveal-
ing to us a fleeting glimpse of something
which we cannot define or understand. In
this spell of the wilderness we not only
feel the emotion of young world-life and
race-childhood, but that of our own
more personal childhood when the pur-
suit of a butterfly or a flower winged our
feet and warmed our hearts. It may be
the scent of a familiar shrub, the flight of
a bird, or even the shimmer of dew that
brings us afresh, for a moment, that gaily
painted memory which the years may dim
but never quite obliterate.

The trail is dark with shadow, — the
awe of the woods, — roofed with boughs
and so still that we seem to hear the
breathing of the trees. A sudden turn
unfolds a little lake, bright with a living
pattern of lily-pads, bursting buds and
golden water-lilies. Through a rift in
283

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

the pines the distant mountains appear;
then the green tide of branches flows to-
gether and there is nothing but silence
and shadow and the forest. The woods
deepen. Low, bushy maples grow among
the pines, Colorado spruce sheds its
silver sheen amidst the more somber foli-
age, and towering high above the loftiest
pines and tamaracks, of magnificent cir-
cumference and sweep of limb, are the ce-
dars, the Lords of the Forest. Off to one
side of the trail, among the thick-sown
trees, is a giant boulder completely cov-
ered with moss, a throne fit for Pan. The
pines around it are of goodly size, yet they
sprang and grew, perhaps centuries after
that huge stone came hurtling downward
in a great avalanche, or was borne from
the mountain tops by the slow progress
of a glacier.

Again the forest pageant changes.

There are groves of pine stricken with

hoary age, bearded like patriarchs with

long, pendent streamers of colourlessmoss ;

284

THE TRACK OF THE AVALANCHE

then comes a young growth of pine, fore-
doomed to early death which already
shows in the bronze of premature decay.
It is a beautiful spot, nevertheless, bal-
sam-sweet and strewn with needles that
nurture violets of yellow and purple, twin
flowers and Queen's Cups.

There is a sound like wind among the
trees though not a branch stirs, and pres-
ently there bursts into view a sight of
wild, exhilarating grandeur. A swift,
tumultuous stream rushing down a steep,
narrow channel, clean-cut as a sabre
stroke, dashes headlong into a rainbow-
ridden fall. The volume of water is
churned into a passion of swirling foam
that flings its light mist heavenward to
descend again in rain. Ferny, mist-fed,
moss-grown banks slope gently to the de-
clivity and over smooth, emerald cush-
ions, lacy leaf and trailing boughs, tiny,
crystal drops, glinting prismatic hues,
tremble and pass away. The air is very
sweet with a new and unfamiliar fra-
285

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

grance, and amidst the moss, half hidden
beneath grosser leaf and protruding root,
is a flower, the loveliest of all the lovely
woodland host. It is a small, snowy blos-
som of five petals and a golden heart,
growing on a slender stem from a cluster
of glossy, earth-clinging leaves, and as
though to hide its chaste, shy beauty, the
modest flower turns its face downward
towards the ground. Its scent is strong
and heavy like that of the magnolia. The
guide, who travels the mountains over
from the earliest budding to the ultimate
passing of the flowers, has never seen this
stranger blossom before, and we find it
on no other trail. It was unknown, un-
named, so we call it the Star of the
Mountains and leave it blooming in the
secrecy of that elfin dell.

Above the thunder of the fall sounds
a slight, shrill bird note and through the
clouds of spray darts a little brown bird,
dipping almost into the boiling current,
rising upward with a graceful swell and
286

THE TRACK OF THE AVALANCHE

a wild, free lilt, perching finally on a tiny
point of rock just over the shock and roar
of the flood. This strange little winged
sprite is a water-ouzel who makes her
home and raises her young upon these in-
secure, spray-drenched walls, with the
water-challenge pealing its menace and
breathing its chill on her nest. She and
her kind haunt the lonely mountain
creeks and rivers, seeking some fall or cat-
aract that flings its spray and sings its song
to the silent, ice-imprisoned world. Once
the mating season is over and the young
are fledged, each bird takes its solitary
flight and becomes a veritable spirit of
the woodland streams.

The dense forests become broken and
sheer cliffs rise to stupendous heights. Up-
on their sharp and slender pinnacles wild
goat and bighorn sheep dwell, and in
passing we see a goat so far away on
those dizzy steeps that he seems the merest
patch of white. Through this gorge, be-
tween the mountains, are deep hewn fur-
287

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

rows where year after year, century after
century, the burden of ice from the peaks
descends in avalanches. In the Spring
when the first thaw begins, a deafening
roar like a cannonade heralds the furious
onslaught of ice and snow. At such times
the Avalanche Trail is a dangerous way
to travel, and even now a distant booming
reminds us that the mountain forces are
never idle, that in their serenity there is
force, in their mystery there is still the
energy of creation.

Through this narrow passage between
overhanging crags, the trail continues un-
til, bearing upward, it suddenly crosses
a pretty, milky-hued stream, and thence to
a hill-side overlooking a sheet of water
opaque and pearly white, in a setting of
dark-browed woods. It is Avalanche
Lake. The water is perfectly calm, not a
breath of air rustles the slightest leaf, but
there is no reflection of throbbing, blue
sky, of green woods or purple mountains
— it does not thrill to the passion of the
288

THE TRACK OF THE AVALANCHE

Summer, flash back azure and gold and
picture in its responsive heart the glories
of earth and heaven. Because of this, it
is different from all the other lakes of
these mountains and the shell-like white-
ness of its surface, pallidly beautiful as
a great pearl, has a peculiar beauty none
the less striking for its strangeness. The
cause of the milkiness of these waters
seems at first without satisfactory explana-
tion, but as we examine them more close-
ly we see that they are charged with infi-
nite multitudes of tiny air bubbles, and
every stream that feeds the lake, having
fallen from enormous heights, is likewise
full of infinitesimal air beads. On the
other hand, some contend that the water,
pouring down from the glacier is white
with particles of finely pulverized rock.

Pushing straight past the lake, through
almost impenetrable thickets of whipping
willows that fight like live things to
guard from vandal footsteps what lies be-
yond, the journey reaches its climax in
289

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

Avalanche Basin. There, in that vast
amphitheatre sculptured from the living
rock by glaciers^ carved and scarred by
innumerable avalanches descending
through the ages, overhung by the Piegan
ice fields, six silver streams leap the full
height of the great rock walls. The falls
seem to melt away before they touch the
reality of earth, veritable spirits, born of
the snowdrift and the sun; white ghosts
spending themselves in spray to reascend
into the clouds.

A rich growth of green grass, coloured
with broad splashes of Indian Paint
Brush, covers the sloping floor of the ba-
sin. Standing on its extreme elevation
upon a platform of rock, and thence over-
looking the country that lies ahead, the
scene is one of uplifting majesty. Below,
within the sombre circle of the pines, is
the lake, palely fair as a white sea shell
or a milk opal whose latent colours never
quite shine forth from its cloudy depths.
Farther still, is the gorge, opening like
290

<

h

THE TRACK OF THE AVALANCHE

a gateway into the region of the ava-
lanche, and farther still, is Heaven's
Peak, mingling with the cloudless sky.
The strata on these mountains laid bare
as though but yesterday they were rent
asunder, flow in undulating ribbons of
colour varying from red-violet to dull,
antique gold. But between the quivering
sky of Summer and the warm, flower-sown
earth, is a ghostly tide of purple haze, an
amethystine shadow which touches every
rock and tree and peak with magical illu-
sion. And through that veil, as through
enchantment, each rock, each tree, each
peak is transfigured and for a brief hour
is given a semblance of the divine. The
gorge is filled with flowing purple, the
glorified gateway might be Heaven's
Gate, even as the dominant mountain,
royal in the thickening blue distance, is
Heaven's Peak.

Here the sordid world seems to melt
away; the sunshine has got into our blood
and the transfiguring haze has penetrated
291

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

even to our hearts. We seem so intimately
a part of this mighty, primeval place
where the infinity of the past and the in-
finity of the future are married in one
great mystery, that we dare to listen for
secrets of the one from the chant of the
falls; to lift the veil of circumventing
blue and peer into the other. So, stand-
ing upon that rock platform, from the re-
ality of the present we speed our souls in-
to the ideality of Time's poles. Though
the song of the water-voices that have
sung aeons, rings in our ears, and the liv-
ing letter of the world-book is shown in
the mountain's open page, we may not
know the portent of either message. And
though we gaze with seeking vision
through the shadow into the ultimate blue
above, the haze draws its protecting gar-
ment thicker, closer about the treasure-
house of Nature, and the sun darts amber
lances earthward to blind aspiring eyes.
So we pass humbly upon our way, the
water-voices singing in our ears, the arch
292

THE TRACK OF THE AVALANCHE

of Heaven trailing its garment over earth,
still guarding the riddle of the future in
its azure keep.

293

INDIAN SUMMER

CHAPTER XI

INDIAN SUMMER

AFTER the Summer's ripe maturity
has vanished with the first au-
tumnal storm, there steals over
the world a magical Presence. It has no
place in the almanac; it comes with a
flooding of amber light and a deepening
of amethyst haze; it plays like a passing
smile on the face of the universe and like
one, vanishes with the stern rebuff of the
wintry blast. What jugglery the sun and
earth and the four winds of heaven have
wrought no mortal man can tell, but cer-
tainly by some divine alchemy the dead-
ening blight is turned into gold, and upon
the lap of the world there lies, instead of
the appointed Fall, a changeling season,
the faery-child of Nature, illusive, fleet-
ing as a flock of yellow butterflies, a shim-
297

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

mer of radiant wings — the Indian Sum-
mer!

The whole earth is under the spell of
the mad, sweet witchery. The forests are
decked in a gay masquerade, too glorious
to be real, and our own sober senses are
half-mastered by the delusion that the
dead Summer is come to life again. In
open places where the fingers of the sun
still warm the moist ground, absent-mind-
ed bluebellSj strawberries and yellow vio-
lets bloom on forgetful that they should
already be taking their winter's rest. And
it is strange with what pleasure we seize
upon these fragile blossom-friends; with
what childish joy we caress their pale
petals so soon to be laid low. Yet in the
warm air lurks a hidden sting, the bitter-
sweet of sun and frost; in the very eflFul-
gence of life is the foreshadowing of
death. Already on the heights streamers
of cloud gather, leaving in their wake the
dazzle of fresh snow. And beneath these
low-streaming clouds, slanting earthward
298

INDIAN SUMMER

in broad, down-pouring rays, is a pure
white light upon the mountains. The
light on the mountains 1 What a revela-
tion it is! The windows of heaven are
flung open and the celestial beams of Par-
adise illumine God's Cathedral Domes,
the peaks, for a brief space before sky-
wrought vestments of snow cover the al-
tar of His Sanctuaries.

The trails of yesterday are barred. For
prudence sake we must keep to the low
country or risk the fate of being "snowed
in." Therefore we choose the Kintla
Road and Camas Creek, where a large
band of moose roams in the forest soli-
tudes, hoping to reach Quartz Lakes near
the Canadian line before we shall be
driven back by the cold. The pine-sweet
air fills us with the very spirit of the
woods as we strike out over the gilded
trail through forests transfigured into a
welter of gorgeous hues, past deep-cleft
ravines purple as the heart of a violet, to
dim lilac mountains that melt into the
299

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

blue. What is it that is mystical, spiritual,
if you will, in this colour of violet? It is
not like the robust, tangible green of the
trees, the definite reality of the flowers'
multi-coloured petals. We cannot lay
our hands upon it any more than we can
grasp a sunbeam, for like hope deferred,
it lies forever beyond our reach. We see
it unwind its royal haze through gorge
and forest; we watch it fade into pale lav-
ender on the ultimate pinnacles of the
range, but if we follow it what do we
find? Mere yawning cleft or greenwood
grove or jagged strata of dull rock.
Where is the subtle violet, the dim dream
lavender? Fled as subtly as the shadow
of a wing! Perhaps it is 2l shadow of the
divine, the soul-essence common to man
and the flower at his feet, the dumb, stone
mountains, the living air and the heaven
that embraces all in its enduring keep.

We pass into the deep, unbroken shad-
ow of virgin woods where bushes burn
with crimson rosehips, the thimbleberry

300

INDIAN SUMMER

shines in its autumn garb of yellow, the
tamarack gleams golden among its
somber brethren, the pines, and strange,
bright shrubs set us forever guessing. We
emerge into a billowing field of wild hay,
fringed with trees, above which we can
see the metallic sharpness of the moun-
tains. Shining over all impartially, shed-
ding its glory upon our souls, is the domi-
nant sun whose broad rays break into a
mist of ruddy gold. Again we dip into
eternal shadow, the horses' hoofs sound
with a dull cluck as they sink in and are
lifted from the soft mold. Often we are
startled by the sudden whirr of wings as
frightened grouse fly to shelter. Fungus
thrusts evil, flame-coloured tongues from
the damp, sweet soil and a marvelous va-
riety of moss and lichen trace their pat-
terns on logs, tree stumps and upon the
wind-thrown forest trees that toss their
gnarled roots high above our heads in an
agony of everlasting despair. We splash
through Dutch Creek, Camas Creek and
301

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

many another, and as we pause to eat a
frugal midday meal on the banks of
one of these, we find upon a trailing
limb, a dying butterfly. Poor little sprite
of yesterday! Its bright wings palpitate
feebly and it suffers us to take it in our
hands without making an effort to escape.
The last of its gay brethren, the blossom-
lovers, its hour is come and with its final
strength it has fluttered to this friendly
leaf to die. So, very gently we put it back
upon its chosen resting place, leaving it to
join ghostly bright winged flocks in the
sunshine of some immortal Arcady.

From a high ridge which falls away
abruptly into a water-hewn declivity, we
look through broad, open vistas far below
at the North Fork of the Flathead
River. The stream takes its way be-
tween banks of fine gray pebbles, part-
ing now over a sandy bar in slender
green ribbons, then uniting in one
broad current, again separating to curl
in white foam-frills around a boulder or
302

INDIAN SUMMER

little island. Mild and limpid as the
xiver now appears there is evidence of its
flood-tide fury in uprooted trees and livid
scars along its banks. Working silently
and secretly near the water's edge is a
beaver. We can scarcely distinguish him
as he toils patiently, bringing to our minds
the old Selish legend that the beavers are
a fallen tribe of Indians, doomed by the
Great Spirit to expiate an ancient wrong
by constant labor in their present shape.
But some day after the appointed pen-
ance, the Indians believe that the beavers
will resume the form of men and come
into their own again.

For two days we ride farther and far-
ther into the wilderness, camping by
night and taking up the trail with the
early dawn. And as we penetrate deeper
into the wild the pageant changes only to
become more sublime. Clumps of slen-
derly graceful silver poplars with gray,
satin-smooth boles and branches that burst
into a shower of golden leaves, shed glory

303

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

Upon our way. Dense woods of yellow
pine whose giant trunks hold all the
shades of faded rose, and silvery-green
Colorado spruce overshadow us and once
we find ourselves in a grove of yellow
tamarack hung with streamers of black
moss. Years upon years ago a forest fire
whose fury was nearly spent had scorched
these trees with its hot breath, changing
the feathery moss into flowing stream-
ers of black — ^veritable mourning weeds
— ^which contrast sharply with the golden
foliage. Even now it is easy to fancy that
the fire still burns and each tall tamarack
is a pillar of living flame.

The nights are no less wonderful than
the days. The melon-coloured harvest
moon floats high in the blue-black heav-
ens, touching the priestly trees with its
white rays. We sit beside our camp fire
listening to the crackle of dry twigs be-
neath a cautious tread, the occasional
whistle of a stag and the ominous note of
an owl hooting among the pines. Some-

304

INDIAN SUMMER

times we fancy that green and amber eyes
burn the darkness, and we cling close,
close to the primal birthright of the race
— the flaming brand — ^which raises its
bright barrier now as in the age of stone,
between mankind and the predatory
beasts of the wild. The wooded hosts
seem to press down with stifling persis-
tence upon us and an indefinable terror
creeps into our hearts, the inherent fear
of man, the atom, of Nature, the fathom-
less, the unknown.

As these nights wear on and we lie up-
on our couches of fragrant cedar boughs,
up out of the gulf of silence the lean-
flanked coyotes howl to the moon, and la-
ter still, when the pale disc dips beneath
the horizon and the shrouded secrecy of
before-dawn steals, like a timid ghost, out
of the Infinite, the trees find tongue and
murmur together though there is no wind
and the stream sings with a music as of
hidden bells. Strange, elfin sounds, the
merest echo of a whisper thrill out of the

305

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

quiet and sigh into silence again. A faint
patter-patter as of falling thistledown is
heard constantly, insistently, inevitably.
Can it be the beat of gossamer wings, the
trip of faery feet as the woodland sprites
hang the grass, the leaves, the finest-
spun thread of cobweb with beads of dew,
and trim the dark pines, like Christmas
trees, with tinsel frost?

Truly the pale morning light breaks
upon a transformed and enchanted world.
Silver filigree adorns the most common-
place limb and twig. Each pine needle
twinkles with a gem giving forth rain-
bow-hued rays beneath the first steel-cold
beams of the sun. The thorn-apple, whose
wine-red branches are furred with a
white beard, is etherealized into delicate
pastel shades of lavender and mauve by a
film of hoar frost. Ragged streamers of
fantastic mist-shapes rise and float heav-
ily through the moist air, obscuring, then
revealing stretches of stream-laced woods
and finally rolling away in lessening va-
306

INDIAN SUMMER

pour into the lingering dusk of ravines.
There is a mighty scene-shifting of Na-
ture in progress. The night phantoms,
the colourless dawn-shapes are hurried
off, while the sun^ riding high in the
deepening blue, touches stream and tree
and peak with the illumination of the new
day.

As we wander about breathing the bal-
sam sweetness of the pine-breath of the
new dawn^ we make curiously interesting
discoveries. By an unfortunate accident
we roll a hollow log over and uncover a
squirel's winter larder of small pine
cones, and at the same time we hear above
our heads, in trees so lofty that we cannot
penetrate the dense canopy of interlocked
limb, the domestic troubles of a pair of
these contentious little forest folk. In
high treble voices they quarrel and dis-
pute in a perfect hysteria of rage. Upon
the damp trail near camp we find large,
cloven hoof prints too big for those of a
deer, so probably our mysterious visitor

307

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

of the evening before was no less a per-
sonage than a lordly moose.

We linger on heedlessly, much the
same as the absent-minded flowers, cling-
ing as desperately to the woodland as the
dying butterfly, deceiving ourselves into
the half-belief that Winter is far away.
The air is still warm and the light shines
on the mountains. And that light lures
us on by its thrall to higher altitudes.
Down the gorges the snow gathers in
deepening drifts and the utmost peaks are
white as carven ivory. Still we resolve
to make one brave dash for the Quartz
Lakes, set one above the other in a chain
among sheltering canons and flanking
cliffs. Under the inspiration of the camp
fire we discuss the morrow's journey.
How splendid it will be to race with the
sun; to dare the sudden blizzard that
might cut oflF our retreat, for one brief
glimpse of that Upper World we have
grown to love with a passion akin to mad-
ness. But even as we speak a shadow falls,
308

INDIAN SUMMER

and looking upward we see that a gray
moth-wing of cloud hides the moon. Sure-
ly it is a passing vapour, the merest mist-
breath exhaled by the languid night. But
no 1 darker and heavier it unrolls. Wraith
shapes glide out from the black mass un-
til the stars are dead and the deep blue
dome of heaven is shrouded by an im-
penetrable pall. That night the heavy
rain drops beat a tattoo on the tent and the
mournful pines weep the sorrow of ages.

Undaunted we take up the trail, assur-
ing ourselves that soon the fickle weather
will be fair again. Occasionally a patch
of clear blue shows through the broken
flock of hurrying clouds and a wan sun
ray steals down for a moment to kiss the
woods goodbye. The forests are already
drenched and each bough that strikes us
pours upon us a little flood of rain. The
trees line up in somber walls and as the
storm settles into a steady downpour, be-
tween their dark fringes flows a narrow,
ashen stream of sky. Through the brood-

309

TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS

ing shadow tamaracks kindle, silver pop-
lars huddle together with quivering aure-
oles of gold, and the austere dusk beneath
their boughs is lighted with yellow-leafed
thimbleberry, glowing like sunbeams. It
seems as though the foliage of those re-
ceptive trees and shrubs has absorbed the
summer sun to give it forth again when
the world should be cloaked in shadow.
So complete is the illusion that often-
times, as a shaft of light gleams through
the tree tops, we cry exultantly:

"The sun is shining!"

In another second we see that it is but
the tamaracks burning like tall, yellow
candles through the autumnal gloom,
shedding their blessed gift of light to
cheer us on our way.

When we gain the lower Quartz Lake,
a deep green sheet of water bordered by
wooded shores, the heavy clouds drag low
and a rainbow arches the lake. We halt,
uncertain, raising our eyes questioningly
to the heights beyond that frown blackly
310

INDIAN SUMMER

through the tattered tapestry of the
clouds. The mountains are angry ! Very
reluctantly, sorrowfully, we turn to re-
trace our steps, thinking of future seasons
of sun and warmth and other quests of the
sublime that shall end in triumph. At
each gust the shearing wind despoils the
silver poplars of their crowns until the
naked branches leap wildly in a fantastic
dance of death.

The changeling season, the faery-child
of Nature has fled as mysteriously as it
came — fled like a flock of yellow butter-
flies into some ethereal region to await
its perennial resurrection. Dull Autumn
settles drab as a moth upon the saddened
world and the light has died from the
mountains.

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