Apauk, Caller of Buffalo E-Book

James Willard Schultz

• Herausgeber: Enhanced Media Publishing
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Blackfoot boy Apauk longs to be the Buffalo Caller, the member of the tribe responsible for luring buffalo to a death trap concealed beyond the edge of a cliff. Apauk endures many tests, some of them heartbreaking, before he learns the ‘medicine’ or secret to being a master of the herd. This is his story.

Leseprobe

Apauk, Caller of Buffalo

By James Willard Schultz

Table of Contents

Title Page

Apauk, Caller of Buffalo

Introduction

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

Further Reading: Army Life in a Black Regiment

Apauk, Caller of Buffalo by James Willard Schultz. First published in 1916. This edition published 2017 by Enhanced Media Publishing. All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-387-04801-4.

Introduction

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ALTHOUGH I had known Apauk — Flint Knife — for some time, it was not until the winter of 1879-80 that I became intimately acquainted with him. He was at that time the oldest member of the Piegan tribe of the Blackfeet Confederacy, and certainly looked it, for his once tall and powerful figure was shrunken and bent, and his skin had the appearance of wrinkled brown parchment.

In the fall of 1879, the late Joseph Kipp built a trading-post at the junction of the Judith River and Warm Spring Creek, near where the town of Lewistown, Montana, now stands, and as usual I passed the winter there with him. We had with us all the bands of the Piegans, and some of the bands of the Blood tribe, from Canada. The country was swarming with game, buffalo, elk, antelope, and deer, and the people hunted and were care-free and happy, as they had ever been up to that time.

Camped beside our trading-post was old Hugh Monroe, or Rising Wolf, who had joined the Piegans in 1816, and it was through him that I came to know Apauk well enough to get the story of his remarkably adventurous and romantic youth. The two old men were great chums. Old as they were — Monroe was born in 1798, and Apauk was several years his senior — on pleasant days they mounted their horses and went hunting, and seldom failed to bring in game of some kind. And what a picturesque pair they were!

Both wore capotes — hooded coats made from three-point Hudson Bay Company blankets — and leggins to match, and each carried an ancient Hudson Bay fuke, or flint-lock gun. They would have nothing to do with cap rifles, or the rim-fire cartridge, repeating weapons of modern make. Hundreds — yes, thousands of head of various game, many a savage grizzly, and a score or two of the enemy — Sioux, Cree, Crow, Cheyenne, and Assiniboine, had they killed with the sputtering pieces, and they were their most cherished possessions.

Oh, that I could live over again those buffalo days! Those winter evenings in Monroe's or Apauk's lodge, listening to their tales of the long ago! Nor was I the only interested listener: always there was a complete circle of guests around the cheerful fire; old men, to whom the tales brought memories of their own eventful days, and young men, who heard with intense interest of the adventures of their grandfathers, and of the "calling of the buffalo," which strange and wonderful method of obtaining at one swoop a whole tribe's store of winter food, they were never to witness. For the luring of whole herds of buffalo to their death had been Apauk's sacred, honored, and danger-fraught avocation. He had been the most successful caller the confederacy of tribes had ever known, and so close to the gods was he believed to be that the people accorded him a position more honored than that of the greatest chief. As will be seen, the man himself had most implicit faith in his medicine; his dreams, the wanderings of his shadow while his body slept, were as real to him as was any act of his in broad daylight.

I did not, of course, get Apauk's story of his life in the sequence in which it is here laid down. On consecutive evenings he would relate incidents far apart in time, and only by later questionings would I be able to fill in the gaps. But at last I got together the whole of it, to my own satisfaction, and I hope the reader may get as much pleasure from the story as I did in the hearing of it.

Apauk, bringer of plenty, died with five hundred of his people during the Starvation Winter, 1881-83, on the Blackfeet Reservation.

CHAPTER I

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TWO of the sayings of my people are burned into my memory. One is, "Poverty is unhappiness"; the other, "Those without relatives are very poor." Both were more than true of Pitaki, my twin sister, and me, in our tenth winter, for it was then that we lost our good father and mother and all their property, and we had not one relative, man or woman. It happened this way: We, the Pikuni, were encamped on the Two Medicine River, and our brother tribe, the Kai'na, were hunting on Milk River, two days' ride away. Came from there a messenger to my father saying he could now have the medicine pipe that he had so long been trying to buy from Low Wolf. The price was one horse, three tails of eagle feathers, a pair of shell ear-rings, and a steel spear that my father had captured in a raid against the people of the always-summer land, far to the south.

It was a big price that Low Wolf asked for the medicine, and my father considered it for three days before he made up his mind what to do. On top of the other things, to ask a horse seemed unreasonable. Horses were rare and valuable animals in those days; many of our people were still using dogs for carrying burdens; our young men were just beginning to bring in big herds of horses from the far south country of the Spaniards, so very far away that the war trail thence and back was two summers and a winter in length. We had only six horses, three for packing our lodge and property, and three for riding, my sister and I riding double when camp was moved.

After all, it was my mother who settled my father's mind. She knew how much he wanted that pipe, because it was truly great medicine and would cure the pain he suffered from an old wound in his side. So she said: "Give the horse, my man, give it. Let us have the pipe. Nearly all my life I have walked beside the dogs when camp was moving, and I can do so again."

"You are truly generous," my father told her. "As you say, so I shall do, but you shall not walk. Hereafter, when we move camp, we will mount the children behind us. And then, in the spring, I shall again go to war and do my best to capture a big herd of horses from the enemy."

Because the weather was very cold, and the trip to the Kai'na camp and back would be a short one, it was arranged that Pitaki and I should stop in the lodge of No Runner during our parents' absence. Pitaki was glad to do that, for No Runner had five little girls, all her friends, and she loved to be with them. But I pleaded to go with my father; I wanted to see the beautiful ceremony of his taking over the medicine pipe.

The ways of the gods are strange. Maybe they put it into my father's mind to tell me no, that I must remain there and take care of my sister. He and my mother hurried the next morning to make an early start. At daylight I brought in the horses. When I came in they had the lodge down, and everything ready to pack, and just at sunrise they struck out south. "Be good children while we are gone," said my mother, as she got into the saddle.

"Yes, be good. We shall be gone only five nights," said my father.

We answered that we should be good, and watched them out of sight, and then ran to No Runner's lodge for our morning meal. The five nights passed. Came the sixth day, and at noon, as the day was sunny and warm, Pitaki and I went up from the valley to the edge of the plain to watch for our parents' coming, that we might run and greet them as soon as they were near. They did not come.

"Well, they will come tomorrow," said Pitaki, as we hurried down to camp as night shadows began to darken the valley.

"Yes, tomorrow, sure," I answered.

But they came not on that day. Nor the next day. Nor the day after that, although from sunrise to sunset we two watched from the rim of the plain for sight of them. And the longer we watched the more we worried; it was not like my father to say five nights and not mean that number exactly. We began to fear that one or the other of them was sick, or maybe hurt from the fall of a horse.

Late in the afternoon of the sixth day of our watch, we saw with tired eyes a band of eight riders coming on the trail, one of them a woman. We were sure that she was our mother, and one of the others our father, that they were coming with some of the Kai'na people on a visit to our camp.

But when they had come closer, we saw that they were all Kai'na and our hearts were like heavy stones inside us. But we should have news of the long absent ones. We ran and met the riders, crying, "Where are our father and mother? What news of them can you tell us?"

They just sat on their horses and stared at us, and at last the woman asked:—

"Your father — your mother. Who are they?"

"Two Bears! Sings Alone!" I shouted. "You know them. They went ten days ago to your camp to buy Low Wolf's medicine pipe. You must have seen them there."

They all stared at us, and at one another a long time in silence, and one by one each shook his head; and at last one of them said: —

"There is a mistake somewhere, children. Your father is not in our camp, nor has he been there this winter. And I know that Low Wolf still has his medicine pipe: I saw the sacred bundle of it only two nights ago."

At that Pitaki sat down and began to cry, "They are dead. My mother, my father, they are dead."

The Kai'na woman got down and tried to comfort her. "Take courage, little girl," she said. "Most likely they somewhere on the trail lost their horses, and are looking for them."

And then she took Pitaki up behind her, and we all went down the hill to camp.

Pitaki did take courage; but right then I knew that our father and mother were lost forever.

When good-hearted No Runner heard from me that the Kai'na had seen nothing of the absent ones, he went straight to the chief's lodge with the news, and the chief at once sent for some of the Kai'na visitors.

When he learned from their own mouths that my father and mother were not in their camp, nor had been there, he ordered out the Siezer band of the All Friends Society to search for them. They left camp that very evening, forty or fifty young men. Every one of the band that had a horse, or could borrow one, joined in the search.

They were gone five nights. Five nights of hope for my sister, of despair for me. I knew what they would say when they returned. No, perhaps I did have a little hope, a little, faint, secret hope that I would see our loved ones again, but that quickly died when I looked upon the faces of the searchers as they came riding through camp to the chief's lodge. Hand in hand Pitaki and I followed them, and heard the chief ask: "Well, what learned ye?"

And the leader's answer: "Nothing. There is no trace of them along the trail, nor on Badger, Birch, Back Fat, and Scattering Timber Creeks. We went even to the Kai'na camp. They had not been there."

"Now, this is strange, that a man, a woman, six horses, lodge and lodge poles and property, should cross the country and leave no trace of their passing," the chief cried. "Are you sure that you used your eyes?"

The leader was patient with the old man and softly answered: "You forget that there have been snows, and warm black-winds since Two Bears and his woman left us. These alone, to say nothing of the passing of riders, and countless herds of buffalo and antelope, were enough to wipe out the footprints of their horses."

"Then, what can have happened to them?" the chief asked.

He received I know not how many different answers. There are a thousand ways for people to disappear. Death in many, many forms is ever lurking by the trails. My own belief is that a war party killed them, then cached their lodge and lodge poles, and rode away with their horses and property. At the time I had no thought but that we were certainly never to see father and mother again. I felt Pitaki's hand slip from mine. She fell, and for a little while was dead. No Runner picked her up and we went to his lodge. There, when life came back to her, she began to cry, to mourn for our lost ones, and for days could not be comforted. And, if I did not cry, I felt as badly as she did. For long days, and moons, for many a winter and summer, we were to know what it is to be without father's and mother's loving care — and the trail that we were to follow was to be a hard one.

Said No Runner and his woman: "Take courage, children. We are poor, but this lodge shall be your lodge. We will do all we can for you. Anyhow, there is plenty of meat; you shall not starve."

Yes, of food there was plenty. No Runner was a good hunter. But there were so many in that lodge, he and his woman, five daughters, a grandfather and grandmother, that there was little room for us. And must I tell it? Yes. As the days passed, the five daughters of the lodge began to let us see in many ways that they did not want us there. The two oldest, when their father and mother were not around, would say mean things to us about our poverty, our poor clothes, and order us to do things as though we were slaves. Myself, I did not much mind that, but many a time I found Pitaki crying because of their arrow-sharp words, and that did hurt me. I knew that we must soon leave that lodge, and began to look about for one where we might be welcome.

Came an evening when No Runner loudly scolded his daughters because of their bad words to us. All the near lodges, all passers heard him, and when he had done and the two oldest daughters had gone out behind the lodge to cry, there came in a little, slender, old woman named Suyaki, she of pleasant voice. A beautiful, singing voice she had.

As women do, she took her seat near the doorway, and No Runner cried out: "Welcome, Suyaki. Welcome you are in this lodge. Now, what can I do for you?"

"Oh, chief! Good heart! You can do much for me. You can give me these two fatherless and motherless ones to be my children," she answered. "As you know, my good old man is dead. His shadow has gone to the Sand Hills. My daughters, my sons, want me to live with them, but I cannot give up my own little lodge, my little properties, my habit of long years to go and come, and do always as I please. Give me the children, chief, to be company to me — to make laughter in my lodge once more. Oh, I promise you, I will be good to them."

Now, when she said that, so earnestly that her voice trembled; when, as she talked, I saw tears gather in her eyes and roll down her fine wrinkled face, why, my heart was hers at once. I looked at Pitaki. Her eyes were shining; she was anxiously watching No Runner to hear what he would say.

And he said:—

"The gods are good. My woman and I, we love these fatherless and motherless ones, and we know that they are not happy here. Our lodge is crowded — there are other things — no matter. I was just praying to be shown what to do with them — for them, and you come straight in with the answer. Take them, if they will go with you, take them."

Almost before he had said the last word, Pitaki cried out, "We will go with you, Suyaki, oh, yes, we will go with you."

While saying so she was turning and beginning to gather up the buffalo robes that made her bed. Everyone laughed at her haste. The old woman looked at me. I just made the sign for yes. I could not speak. I could not tell how glad I was that she wanted us.

Said No Runner, as we were going out, "Suyaki, be not sparing with the meat. A plenty you shall have of my own killing."

As it was, we were carrying a parfleche full of fine dried meat and back fat that his good woman had given us. So it was that we left our father's band, the Small Robes, and went to live in the upper end of camp with the Lone Eaters, itself a very large band. Why the ancient ones gave the band that name I do not know. Certainly its members did not eat alone; they gave as many feasts as any others of our tribe.

"There, my children, my children!" said Suyaki when we were come into her lodge and she had uncovered the coals in the fire-place and laid wood upon them. "My lodge is your lodge. I will move my couch to the right of the doorway. You, my son, are the man here, so your couch shall be at the rear. And you, my daughter, make your bed there at the left of the doorway."

So it was that Suyaki gave us a home in her little, worn, old lodge. Except for a few parfleches containing her few clothes, her woman trinket-savings of many winters, and her tanning implements, it was quite bare, and more than large enough for the three of us. All her man's things had been buried with him, or had been taken by the three married sons. Horses she had not, but she did have eight fine, big dogs of the ancient, wolf-like breed, for packing her lodge and things when camp was moved.

True to his promise. No Runner gave us much meat of his killing, and Suyaki's sons and daughters gave us some, and all the buffalo hides and skins of the deer kind we needed for clothing and bedding. My sister had never done any tanning, but now, without being asked, she began work on the lighter skins and was soon able to make soft leather. When, with a little help, she made a pair of moccasins for me, and saw how well they fitted when I put them on, she was so pleased that she cried. After that she made all my footwear, of buffalo robe for winter, and of leather with parfleche soles for summer.

Nor was I idle. Whenever they would let me, I went hunting with No Runner and Suyaki's sons, and helped them butcher and bring in the meat. When there was nothing else to do, I practiced shooting with the bows and arrows that No Runner made for me, and oh, how good I felt when I killed my first rabbit and brought it to our lodge. Also, I joined the Mosquitoes, the boys' band of the All Friends Society, and never failed to attend the meetings which the old men called for the purpose of teaching us to become good warriors and hunters. What did they teach us? Well, I shall never forget an early morning when an old man named Red Crow went from lodge to lodge, calling us out to bathe in the river with him, and then led us to the rim of the valley from which we could see far up and down it, and away out on the plains in all directions. As we came near the top the old man said, "Get down on hands and knees now, all of you, and crawl the rest of the way. Only the foolish ones walk boldly to the rim of a valley, or the summit of a butte, to become a mark for the eyes of every living thing in the country. The good hunter sees the game without being seen, and looks out a way to get within short bow range of it. The successful warrior is he who discovers the enemy without being discovered, and finds a way to surprise and attack them — or safely retreat if the party be too large to attack."

We crawled after him to the top, and looked over the country from the shelter of the sagebrush, and he soon allowed us to sit up, because, he said, the country seemed to be peaceful. A war party, however, might be somewhere around. And after a time he asked, "What do you all see?"

"Buffalo."

"Antelope."

"A band of elk."

"Yes, so you do," he said; "but there is something else. Look again."

We looked and looked, all over the plains and in the valley until our eyes became tired, but could see nothing else, and when we gave up he pointed to the north where two buzzards were sailing round and round not far above the plain. "Watch the birds as well as the animals," he told us. "Were you a war party now, you would go over there and see what those two are hovering over. You would learn if the animal had been killed by a traveling war party, or by a hunter from some camp, and when and in what direction the hunter or party had gone."

So it was that the old men taught us. We learned caution; we learned that there was a meaning for everything we saw. A dust cloud, for instance, if slow moving, was caused by a moving camp. If fast, it was raised by a band of frightened game, or by riders pursuing it, or traveling rapidly over the country. Oh, I liked well those teachings in the early mornings. And just as interesting were the evenings by the lodge fire, where these same old men told us all about the gods, and dreams and strong medicines, and the war trails of great medicines.

As the old men taught me the ways of the hunter and warrior, so Suyaki and her old women friends taught my sister the ways of a woman, and she eagerly learned to cook, and sew, and make her dresses and moccasins, and to do beautiful embroidery work of colored porcupine quills. Later, she was to learn all about different roots and leaves and flowers, and become a great doctor of the sick; but that time was still far off.

Suyaki was good to us, and always cheerful. When we mourned for our lost ones she did her best to comfort us. She made fun of her poverty, and ours, and kept talking of the things we should have when I became old enough to go to war and take horses, and to hunt and trap fur with which to buy goods from the white traders recently come into the northern part of our country.

There were not yet traders on the Missouri and its streams. Poor we were. True, we always had enough meat to eat, mostly the poorest parts of the animals. But we had no fine clothes. Beside the boys and girls of our age we were like two brown buffalo birds in a flock of hummingbirds. Worst of all, we had no horses, and were always trudging along behind with our dogs when camp was moved. Nothing hurt me so much as that, especially when some of the boys I played with would prance by on their horses and make jokes about my being on foot. At such times I would pray the gods to make me grow fast, and comfort myself by vowing that someday I would have more horses than any of them.

Passed several winters and summers and came the time when I killed my first buffalo with a real bow and real flint-pointed arrows given me by No Runner, who continued ever to be our good friend. On the morning after he made me the present, I went up the valley with Pitaki and the dogs, some saddled and some drawing travois, my mind made up not to return [...]