When Buffalo Ran.
caught some of the dogs, and harnessed them to little travois, and took their baby brothers and sisters, and others of the younger children, and moved off a little way from the camp, and there pitched their httle lodges. The boys went too, and we all played at living in camp. In these camps we did the things that older people do. A boy and girl pretended to be husband and wife, and lived in the lodge; the girl cooked and the boy went out hunting. Sometimes some of the boys pretended that they werebuflFalo, and showed themselves on the prairie a little way oflF, and other boys were hunters, and went out to chase the buflfalo. We were too little to have horses, but the boys rode sticks, which they held between their legs, and lashed with their quirts to make them go faster. Among those who played in this way was a girl smaller than I, the daughter of Two Bulls—a brave man, a friend to my uncle. The little girl's name was Standing Alone; she was pretty and nice, and always pleasant; but she was always busy about something—always working hard, and when she and I played at being husband and wife, she was always going for wood, or pretending to dress hides. I liked her, and she liked me, and in these play camps we always had our little lodge together; but if I sat in the lodge, and pretended to be resting longer than she thought right, she used to scold me, and tell me to go out and hunt for food, saying that no lazy man could be her husband. When she said this I did not answer and seemed to pay no attention to her words, but sat for a little while, thinking, and then I went out of the
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Standing Alone.
lodge, and did as she said. When I came in again, whether I brought anything or not, she was always pleasant.
Once, when we were running buffalo, one of the boys, who was a buffalo, charged me when I got near him, and struck me with the thorn which he carried on the end of his stick, and which we used to call the buffalo's horn. The thorn pierced me in the body, and, according to the law of our play, I was so badly wounded that I was obliged to die. I went a little way toward the village, and then pretended to be very weak. Then my companions carried me into the camp, and to the lodge, and Standing Alone mourned over her husband who had been killed while hunting buffalo. Then one of the boys, who pretended that he was a medicine man, built a sweat lodge, and doctored me, and I recovered.
The Way to Live.
I MUST have been ten years old when my uncle first began to talk to me. Long before this, when he had made a bow and some arrows for me, he had told me that I must learn to hunt, so that in the time to come I would be able to kill food, and to support my mother and sisters. "We must all eat," he had said, "and the Creator has given us buffalo to support life. It is the part of a man to kill food for the lodge, and after it has been killed, the women bring in the meat, and prepare it to be eaten, while they dress the hides for robes and lodge skins."
My uncle was a brave man, and was always going off on the warpath, searching for the camps of enemies, taking their horses, and sometimes fighting bravely. He was still a young man, not married; but was quiet and of good sense and all the people respected him. Even the chiefs and older men used to listen to him when he spoke; and sometimes he was asked to a feast to which many older men were invited.
All my life I have tried to remember what he told me this first time that he talked with me, for it was good advice, and came to me from a good man, who afterwards became one of the chiefs of the tribe.
One day, soon after he had returned from one of his warpaths, he said to me, early in the morning: "My son, get your bow and arrows, and you and I will go over into
When Buffalo Ran. the hills, hunting. We will try to kill some rabbits, and perhaps we may find a deer."
I was glad to go with my uncle; no grown man had ever before asked me to go with him, and to have him speak to me like this made me feel glad and proud. I ran quickly and got my bow, and we set out, walking over the prairie. We walked a long way, and I was beginning to get tired, when we came to a place where we started first one rabbit and then another, and then a third. I shot at one, but missed it; and my uncle killed all three. After this we went up to the top of a high hill, to look over the country. We saw nothing, but as we sat there my uncle spoke to me, telling me of the things that he had done not long before; and after a time he began to tell me how I ought to live, and what I ought to do as I grew older.
He said to me: "My son, I am going to tell you some things that will be useful to you; and if you listen to what I say, your life will be easier for you to live; you will not make mistakes, and you will come to be liked and respected by all the people. Before many years now you will be a man, and as you grow up you must try more and more to do the things that men do. There are a few things that a boy must always remember.
"When older people speak to you, you must stop what
you are doing and listen to what they say, and must do
as they tell you. If anyone says to you, 'My son, go out
and drive in my horses,' you must go at once; do not
wait; do not make anyone speak to you a second time;
start at once.
The Way to Live.
"You must get up early in the morning; do not let the sun, when it first shines, find you in bed. Get up at the first dawn of day, and go early out into the hills and look for your horses. These horses will soon be put in your charge, and you must watch over them, and must never lose them; and you must always see that they have water.
"You must take good care of your arms. Always keep them in good order. A man who has poor arms cannot fight.
"It is important for you to do all these things. But there is one thing more important than anything else, and that is to be brave. Soon you will be going on a warpath, and then you must strive always to be in the front of the fighting, and to try hard to strike many of the enemy. You must be saying all the time to yourself, 'I will be brave; I will not fear anything.' If you do that, the people will all know of it, and will look on you as a
man.
<<
There is another thing: if by chance you should do anything that is great, you must not talk of it; you must never go about telling of the great things that you have done, or that you intend to do. To do that is not manly. When you are at war you may do brave things, and other people will see what you have done, and will tell of it. If you should chance to perform any brave act, do not speak of it; let your comrades do this; it is not for you to tell of the things that you have done.
"If you listen to my words you will become a good man, and will amount to something. If you let the wind
When Buffalo Ran.
blow them away, you will become lazy, and will never do anything,"
So my uncle talked to me for a long time, and just as he had finished his talking, we saw, down in the valley below us, a deer come out from behind some brush, and feed for a little while, and then it went back into another patch of brush, and did not come out again.
"Ah," said my uncle, "I think we can kill that deer." We went around a long distance, to come down without being seen to where the deer was, and we had crept up close to the edge of the bushes before the deer knew that we were there. When we reached the place we walked around it, he on one side and I on the other; and presently the deer sprang up out of the bushes, and my uncle shot it with his arrow; and after it had run a distance it fell down, and when we got to it, was dead. I also shot at it with one of my sharp-pointed arrows, but I did not hit it. After we had cut up the meat of the deer, and made it into a pack, done up in the hide, we started back to the camp. I felt proud to have gone on a hunt with a man and to be carrying the rabbits.
As we walked along to the camp that night, my uncle told me other things. He said: "Always be careful to do nothing bad in camp. Do not quarrel and fight with your fellows. Men do not fight with each other in the camp; to do that is not manly."