The Sheep EatersAllen, William A. (William Alonzo)
History
The Sheep Eaters
Allen, William A. (William Alonzo)
Tukuarika Indians
Just imagine a stream of clear, pure water running through a canyon,
small and narrow, with a smooth-surfaced rock face, cut by the water
when the earth and stone were young and tender, on which one could
write as on a black-board in a school room. Here the Sheep Eaters
came to record their history. Here father and son came to write the
traditions of their tribe; and here came that old squaw, whose name
in her own tribe, as translated by the Crow chief, Pretty Eagle, was,
"Under-The-Ground." Emblems, original with their tribe, were cut with
the obsidian arrowhead in irregular semicircles. The outlines of men
and women were about three feet in height. In some places the storms,
the wind and the water, had erased parts of the engraving. In other
places hunters had built their smoking camp-fires against the face of
the rock and blurred the markings, or had wantonly fired bullets into
the faces and destroyed the work of the Indians.
As I was getting my camera arranged to get a picture of one group, an
old Indian came riding up the creek on a pinto pony. Soon came dogs, and
squaws dragging their tepee poles, and without so much as a "How," they
began tearing off their packs and setting up their lodges. The packs
consisted of old kettles, stale meat, old elk skins made into robes,
parflesakes filled to the brim with pemmican, made of elk fat, choke
cherries, and jerked elk half dried and half horsehair. Several young
puppies, too young to walk, were tied with soft thongs just under the
fore legs of the ponies.
Within half an hour the whole Little Basin was filled with the smell of
spoiled meat and musty old blankets, spread in the sun to dry, and the
whole camp looked like the dump ground of a small town.
The old chief turned the entire care of the horses, dogs, provisions and
camp over to the squaws, and while they were busy, he came slowly toward
the camera, watching every move I made in trying to get a picture of the
Paint Rocks. He was about five feet tall, heavy set and rather dark. His
good, round head well set on fine shoulders, was covered with long,
heavy hair, carefully braided in small braids, which hung below his
waist. At intervals these braids were cemented with some wax and painted
red and green, which gave them the appearance of being bound with
straps. The sternness of his large mouth, square chin, and heavy jaw was
relieved by the large, brown eyes. Three scars on his face told of a
battle fought many years ago, as also did the knife scar on his breast
and the old gun-shot wound. On his wrist were brass wristlets, and
three missing finger joints told of mournings for his dead. A medicine
bag and a half dozen elk teeth swung at his throat; these and beaded
moccasins and leggings showed him to be a chief. An Indian he was all
through.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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