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
With all these men, and especially Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill
and Guardipe, I hunted and traveled much in the old days. Naturally,
we spend much of our time telling over this-and-that of our
adventures. Meantime the children play around, as happy as Indian
children ever are, and their mothers do the lodge work, which is
light, and gather in groups to chat and joke. The boys have just been
skipping stones on the smooth surface of the lake. The number of skips
a stone makes before it finally sinks, denotes the number of wives the
caster will have when he reaches manhood.
Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill and Two Guns are medicine men. The
former has the Elk medicine pipe, the latter the Water medicine pipe,
both ancient medicines in the tribe. They are spiritual, not material,
medicines. In fact, they are the implements used in prayers to the sun
and other gods, and each carries with it a ritual of its own.
Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill has just told me that we will have
some prayers with his pipe a few days from now. I shall be glad to
take part in it all once more.
_July 16._
Again my people are filled with resentment against the whites. I told
them this afternoon that the falls in the river between this and the
lower lake had been given a foolish white men's name. I could not tell
them what it was, for there is no Blackfeet equivalent for the word
"Trick." But what a miserable, circus-suggesting name that is to give
to one of the most beautiful of waterfalls, and the only one of its
kind in America, and in all the world, for all I know! A short
distance below the outlet of the upper lake the river sinks, and a
half-mile farther on gushes into sight from a jagged hole halfway up
the side of a high and almost perpendicular cliff.
"In the long ago we named that Pi´tamakan Falls," said
Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill.
"Yes? And who was he?" I asked, although I had a fair recollection of
the story of that personage. But I had forgotten the details of it,
and wanted them all.
"Not he, but she!" he corrected me.
"But Pi´tamakan (Running Eagle) is a man's name," I objected.
"True. But this woman earned the right to bear a man's name, and so it
was given her. She was the only woman of our people to receive that
honor, so far as I know. Listen! You shall hear all about it."
THE WOMAN WHO EARNED A MAN'S NAME
"As a girl, her name was Weasel Woman. She was the eldest of two
brothers and two sisters, and when she had seen fifteen winters both
their father and mother died. But unlike children in such circumstances,
they did not give up their lodge and scatter out to live with
relatives and friends. Said Weasel Woman: 'Somehow, some way, we can
manage to live. You boys are old enough to hunt and bring in meat and
skins. We three sisters will keep the lodge in good order, and tan the
skins for our clothing and bedding, and other uses.' And as she said, so
it was done, and the orphan family prospered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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