Blackfeet Tales of Glacier National ParkSchultz, James Willard
History
Blackfeet Tales of Glacier National Park
Schultz, James Willard
Glacier National Park (Mont.); Indians of North America -- Folklore; Siksika Indians -- Folklore
"But Crow Man only laughed: 'I will show you what I can do to that sky
god,' he told them, and got out his medicines and called Cold-Maker to
come to his aid. By this time Thunder Man was come almost to camp; was
making a terrible noise just overhead. But Cold-Maker came quickly,
came in a whirling storm of wind and snow. Thunder Man raged, shooting
lightning, making thunder that shook the earth. Cold-Maker made the
wind blow harder and harder, so that some of the lodges went down
before it, and he caused the snow to swirl so thickly that the day
became almost as dark as night. For a long time the two fought,
lightning against cold, thunder against snow, and little by little
Cold-Maker drove Thunder Man back: he could not face the cold, and at
last he fled and his mutterings died away in the distance. He was
gone!
"'There! I told you I could drive him away,' said Crow Man. 'Mink
Woman, you people all, rest easy: Thunder Man will never again attempt
to enter this camp.' And with that he told Cold-Maker that he could
return to his Far North home. He went, taking with him his wind and
storm. The sun came out, the people set up their flattened lodges, and
all were once more happy.
"And Lame Bull, he retained the pipe, and found that its medicine was
as strong as ever. And from him it had been handed down from father to
son and father to son to this day, and still it is strong medicine.
"Kyi! That was the way of it."
[Illustration: MOVING CAMP FROM TWO MEDICINE
The end of the procession]
II
PU-NAK´-IK-SI (CUTBANK)
_July 18._
Down came our lodges this morning, and to-night we are camped in
Cutbank Canyon, just below the great beaver ponds some six or seven
miles from the head of the stream. When I first saw these ponds, years
and years ago, they were dotted with beaver houses, and at dusk one
could see the busy woodcutters swimming from them in all directions to
get their evening meal of willow or quaking aspen bark, preparatory to
beginning their nightly work of storing food for winter use. I never
killed a beaver, but I have torn down beaver dams in order to watch
the little animals repair them. Beavers have a language as well as
men: there was always a chief engineer who told the workers just what
to do, and he himself rectified their mistakes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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