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
[Illustration: AT THE NARROWS. UPPER ST. MARY'S LAKE]
In the summer of this year I also named Divide Mountain, because it is
the outermost mountain on the Atlantic-Arctic watershed. At the same
time I named Kootenai Mountain, also for a very good reason. Some
members of that tribe were encamped beside me at the foot of the upper
lake. I noticed often that they would ride out of camp at daylight and
return at noon or a little later with all the bighorn or goat meat
that their horses could carry, and finally I asked them where they
went to make their killings so quickly.
"Come with me to-morrow and I will show you something," one of them
answered. And the next morning I rode with him up Red Eagle Valley and
part way up a mountain, where we tied our horses and went on afoot for
a couple of hundred yards. Then, looking down into a _coulée_, we saw
a dozen or more bighorn in the bottom of it and killed four of them.
They had been eating salty clay and drinking from a salt spring that
oozes from the ground there, so I named the place Kootenai Lick, and
also gave the mountain the name Kootenai. Thereafter I knew where to
go for bighorn when I wanted one.
In 1884 I named Almost-a-Dog Mountain, after one of the few survivors
of the Baker massacre, which took place on the Marias River, January
1, 1870. At that time Colonel E. M. Baker, with a couple of companies
of cavalry from Fort Shaw, Montana, was trying to find the camp of Owl
Child, a Piegan Blackfoot, and murderer of a settler named Malcolm
Clark, and arrest him. By mistake he struck the camp of Heavy Runner
and his band of friendly Indians, and, although the chief came running
toward him waving his letters of recommendation and his Washington
medals, Baker ordered his men to begin firing, and a terrible massacre
ensued, the Indians firing not one shot in defense, as about all the
able-bodied men were at the time on a buffalo hunt. When the firing
was over, two hundred and seventeen old men and women and children lay
dead and dying in their lodges and in the camp. The soldiers then shot
the wounded, collected the lodges and property of the Indians in great
piles, and set fire to them and departed.[9]
[9] The above is an extract from an affidavit by the late Joseph
Kipp, who was Baker's scout and guide at the time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account