CHAPTER VII
OLD-TIME HUNTING WAYS
"Well," said Hugh, when they rode up to the tent, "I'm glad you got somemeat. Now, before you even unsaddle, I'm going to send one of you boysup into that cottonwood tree there. Knot a couple of those sling ropestogether and let us haul that meat up above the flies if we can. It'llspoil in a day if we leave it down here close to the ground, where theblow flies can get at it."
The wisdom of this advice was recognized at once, and Jack promptlyscrambled up into the cottonwood and made his way into the lowerbranches. Joe threw him the end of a sling rope and Jack climbed wellinto the tree, and then, passing the rope over a branch, the meat washauled up and tied thirty or forty feet above the ground, out of reachof the flies and exposed to the breeze which blew almost constantly upor down the lake.
As they sat around the fire that night after supper Jack said, "Hugh, aman who was hunting sheep all the time would get to have mighty goodwind, wouldn't he?"
"Yes," said Hugh, "that's surely so. Good wind, strong legs and a mightysteady head come to anyone who hunts sheep or goats much. You've got tobe climbing up or down pretty much all the time. You must look for yourgame on the high peaks and ridges and along the cliffs. Of course,where sheep are plenty you can follow the sheep trails, but sometimesit's just pretty straight up and down climbing over the rocks and inplaces where, if a man lost his footing, he would roll a long way. Inever minded climbing over the rocks, no matter how steep they were, butsometimes it's wearying work to crawl around over the shale, that yieldsand slips under your feet, and where for every foot you go up you slipback nine inches; and of course, when the mountains are covered withsnow and ice it's harder yet, because you never can be quite sure ofyour foothold."
"Well," said Jack, "there are some Indians that hunt sheep almostaltogether, aren't there?"
"Yes," replied Hugh, "the Sheep Eaters get their name from the fact thatthey used to make their main living by hunting sheep."
"I've heard of the Sheep Eaters," said Jack, "but I've forgotten whothey are and where they lived. Tell me what you know about them, won'tyou?"
"Well," said Hugh, "they live south of here and their main range used tobe somewhere near that country that we went through two or three yearsago, where those hot springs and spouting geysers are. Sheep Eaters, asI understand it, are a band of the Bannocks, and the Bannocks arerelations to the Snakes.
"In old times they say that these Sheep Eaters used to make drives ofsheep. They would build a lot of blinds, and hide along the trails wherethe sheep were accustomed to go up and down the mountains, and thenthey'd send men around and scare the sheep, and when they came down nearthe blinds the Indians hidden there would shoot them. Then, of course,they used to still-hunt them with bows and arrows. I've heard that themen who were hunting sheep used to carry a head and skin and coverthemselves with it in part, and disguised in that way, used to get upwithin arrow shot of the game. The man's legs were rubbed with white orgray clay, and if he went along in a stooping posture, with his bodycovered with the animal's skin and the head, it's easy to see how hemight get up pretty close to the game. I read a book once written byJohn Franklin, that man, you know, that was lost up in the Arctic a goodmany years ago and about whom there was a great deal of excitement atthe time, in which he told how the Huskies up north used to hunt caribousomething the same way, only in this case there were two men, onewalking behind the other, both stooping down and the man in the leadcarrying a caribou's head. The book said that the rear man carried thetwo guns, and that the man in front, who carried the head, imitated thedeer so well that sometimes they could walk right up to the edge of theherd. Seems to me I've heard something of the same sort about Indiansusing the antelope head in hunting antelope."
"Well," said Jack, "that's seems queer. I don't believe you could dothat with any game in these days." "No," said Hugh, "maybe not, but youmust remember in those old times game was plenty; it never was scared bynoises, because then they didn't have any guns, and the people in anyrange of mountain country were not many and were not often seen by thegame. Speaking of this way of using game heads makes me think of a storythat Wolf Voice told me about something that his grandfather saw agreat many years ago. You don't know Wolf Voice, of course, but he's ayoung fellow--not so very young either, come to think about it; he mustbe a middle-aged man by this time. He's half Cheyenne and half Minitari,and he did some considerable scouting for General Miles a few years ago.This is what he told me that his grandfather saw: He was one of a warparty of Cheyennes that had gone off to try and take horses from theSnakes. One morning they were traveling along through the mountains,fifteen or sixteen of them, walking through a deep canyon. Presently oneof them saw on a ledge of the canyon far above them, the head andshoulders of a big mountain sheep, which seemed to be looking out overthe valley. The man pointed it out to the other members of the warparty, and they watched it as they went along. After a while it drewback from the ledge, and a little later they saw it again, further alongthe canyon, and it stood there right at the edge of the precipice andseemed to be looking up and down the valley. The Cheyennes kept watchingit as they went along, and presently they saw a mountain lion jump onthe sheep's back from another ledge above it and both animals fell overthe cliff, a long way before they struck the rocks below. The Cheyennes,feeling sure that the sheep had been killed either by the fall or by thelion, ran to the place to get the meat. When they got there, the lionwas trying to get away on three legs and one of the Indians shot it withan arrow. Then they went to the sheep, and when they started to skin itthey saw that it wasn't a sheep, but a man wearing the skin and head ofa sheep. He had been hunting, and his bow and arrows were wrapped inthe skin and lay against his breast. The fall had killed him. They couldtell from the way his hair was dressed and from his moccasins that hewas a Bannock."
"Well," said Jack, "that's an interesting story, and that brings thefashion these people had right home to us, doesn't it?"
"Yes," said Hugh, "I guess there's no doubt but that they made thesedisguises and used them. Why, Joe here will tell you what he's heardfrom his grandfathers about the way the men used to dress up and leadthe buffalo into the piskuns."
"Yes, I think I've heard about that. They used to wear a kind of buffaloskin dress, didn't they, Joe?"
"Yes," said Joe, "sometimes they wore a kind of a cap and coat made ofbuffalo skins, and sometimes they just carried their robes. Of course,they didn't show themselves close to and in plain sight of the buffalo.They just showed themselves enough to make the buffalo wonder what theywere, and follow 'em to try to find out. The Indians think that it wasthe power of the buffalo rock that used to make the buffalo come, but Iguess it was just nothing but curiosity. Everybody has seen antelope getscared and run away, and then if a man dodges out of sight very likelythey'll turn around and run back and close up to him, to try to find outwhat it was they got scared at."
"Sure, that's so," said Hugh, "and it isn't antelope or buffalo alone.You'll see elk and black-tailed deer do the same thing. They'll standand look and look, and often you can fire three or four shots at thembefore they'll start to run away. In the same way if a bear seessomething that he don't understand, why, he gets up on his hind legs andlooks as hard as he can. Of course, all these animals would rather smellthan look; their noses tell them the truth and they don't have to smella second time to find out whether it's an enemy or not, but often theyhave to look half a dozen times. Animals are mighty inquisitivecreatures. If they see something they don't understand they want to findout about it."
"Why, Hugh," said Jack, "it isn't animals alone. Birds do the samething. I've never seen this myself, but the books tell about it and Italked with one man, a friend of my uncle's, who had seen it himself. Inthe winter when the ducks are down South and in big flocks they used tohave a way of shooting them that they called toling. The way they did itwas this: If a lot of ducks were sitting on the water too far off fromthe shore to be shot at, the gunners would go down and
hide close to theshore and then they would send out a little dog that was trained to runup and down and play about so as to attract the attention of the ducks.The ducks might be sitting far off in a big raft or flock, many of themperhaps asleep; but when they saw the little dog playing, some of themwould lift their heads and swim in toward the shore to find out what hewas doing. Gradually more and more ducks would lift their heads and swimin, until, finally, the whole flock would be coming. As they got nearer,the dog, which of course was watching them, would make himself smallerand smaller, until finally he just crawled along the shore on his bellyand perhaps gradually worked away from the beach and into the grass, butthose fool ducks would keep swimming in, trying to see him, until atlast they would get within gunshot, and the people hidden there wouldgive them one barrel on the water, and then one as they rose, andsometimes kill twenty-five or thirty of them."
"Well," said Hugh, "that's one on me. I never heard of that before, butsince we're branching off onto ducks, I'll tell you what I have heard ofand know of its being done, too, though I never did see it done. Inspring and fall, in ponds where the wild rice grows, over, say, inMinnesota, there used to be terrible lots of ducks and geese stopping inspring and fall to feed, on their way north and south. The Indians, theSioux anyhow, and likely Chippewas or Saulteaux, when they found a placewhere these ducks were right plenty, used to strip off and make a kindof a little hat or cap of grass that they'd put on their heads, and thenthey'd wade in the water and move along very slowly so that this capwould look either like a little floating trash or a little group ofgrass stems projecting above the water, and then they'd work up close tothe ducks and catch them by the feet and pull them under and then wringtheir necks."
"Yes," said Jack, "I guess that's all right, for I've heard of EastIndian people doing the same thing, only they fitted a kind of a gourdover their heads and walked around with that, so that it just lookedlike a gourd floating in the water. Don't the Blackfeet do anything likethis, Joe?"
"I guess not," said Joe; "I never heard anything like it. They say inold times, long before the white people came, the Piegans used to go tothe shallow prairie lakes where ducks and geese bred, at the time of theyear when they can't fly, and then the dogs and young men would go intothe pond on one side and drive out all the birds on the other and therethe women and children would kill them with sticks. In the early spring,too, when the birds had their nests, they used to go to these lakes andget plenty of eggs. I bet you never heard the way they used to cookthem."
"I don't know," said Jack, "I reckon I never did."
"Why," said Joe, "they used to dig a hole in the ground, a pretty deephole, and then put some water in it, and right over the water they'dbuild a little platform of twigs and put on that platform as many eggsas it would hold, and above that they'd build another platform and puteggs on that and so on to the top, maybe have three or four of theselittle platforms built of willows to hold the eggs up. Then from the topof the ground they dug out a little slanting hole to the bottom of thefirst hole. Then they covered the big hole with twigs and put grass onthat and dirt on the grass. Then they built a fire close to the hole andheated rocks and rolled them down the little side hole, so that theywould go into the water at the bottom of the big hole. They would keeprolling these hot rocks in until the water got very hot and made plentyof steam. The steam couldn't get out of the big hole and it just stayedthere hot and cooked the eggs. Then when they thought the eggs werecooked they uncovered the big hole and took them from the platforms andthere they were all cooked."
"That was ingenious, wasn't it, Hugh?" said Jack.
"Yes, so it was," said Hugh, "but then these people were mightyingenious in many ways. Just think of the way they used to cook in abuffalo hide, or in the paunch of an animal. You and I would eat rawmeat all our lives before we could get up such a scheme as that."
"Yes, that's so," replied Jack. "It's about the last thing I shouldthink of. Practically all their boiling had to be done by means of hotstones put into the water, for, of course, they never had any vesselsthat could be set over a fire until they got pottery. I don't supposeanybody knows when they first invented it, but it may have been a longtime ago."
"Well," said Hugh, "don't be too sure about their not having anything toput over a fire to boil. I never saw it myself, but I've been told bypeople that I believe, that these Saulteaux up North used to boil waterin their birch bark dishes. They say that they could hang a birch barkkettle over the fire and boil water in it, and that the birch barkwouldn't take fire while the water was in the kettle."
"Well," said Jack, "I certainly would like to see that done. I supposeit's so, if you've been told so by people that you believe, but it seemsto me that's one of the hardest stories that's been told me since I'vebeen out in this country."