After the meal I took some pictures of the rocks, and Little Bear asked me what I wanted them for. I told him those marks were a history of an ancient tribe of people. "Yes," he said, "many, many, moons. Our tribe knew nothing of them. Long, maybe so, heap years, much old squaw live with Mountain Crows. Crows call her 'Under-The-Ground.' She tell much of little folks way up mountain. Much eat Big Horn sheep. Much pray sun and heap Great Spirit. Old squaw say, little squaw much good face, all time good, bucks no fight, yes." I told him I had been upon the Medicine and Bald mountains and had seen their shrine wheel, and where they had lived in the Big Horn mountains. I told him I had also been far up Clark's Fork, where their sheep pens were, "Yes," I said, "they are all gone. Great chief, Pretty Eagle, and I were old friends, and he told me all about the little Indians, their bows and arrows, and many things the old squaw had told him about their lives on the mountains; but Sheep Eaters, all gone now." "Ugh," he replied, "by and by, maybe so, Crees all gone, Crows all. Heap bad for Injins." I told him it would be a long time before that happened, and that some day perhaps the Government would let the Crees come and live with the Crows, on the beautiful Little Horn. "Yes," he said, "that would be very nice. If the Great Father at Washington would only say the word, we would come and work very hard. We do not like our reservation in the north-west. It is too cold and the land is poor and the Red Coats are not good to Injins." When our visit was over and the Indians were preparing to move, I turned the camera on the camp. A squaw who was watching me, gave a grunt, turned her back, and ran; and the others, alarmed scattered like dry leaves before a wind. They did not return until I had taken the camera down and put it away. Little Bear explained that they were afraid, because they thought the camera a bad spirit. As the little band moved off toward the north, Chief Little Bear came and grasped my hand and said, "You have always been my friend, good-bye." As they rode away with all their worldly goods packed on a few poor cayuses, I could not help contrasting their present condition with that of thirty years ago. Then the red man owned the country. The plains, the rivers, the trees were his; and his, too, were the wild horse, the buffalo, the elk, the deer, and the fish. Self reliant, free, happy, he was then; today, a beggar. Everything taken from him, his tribal relations broken, left alone. The hardest stroke of all was to have the tribal relations broken, and to be forced under the control of the hated and despised pale face. Happy indeed were the Sheep Eaters never to have been driven from their mountain home and never to have known the power of the pale face! CHAPTER VI CURIOSITIES AROUND PAINT ROCKS