There was a village. They would gather the boys to wrestle. One boy was an orphan. He went from place to place. When he found a family good to him he would stay with them. An old man gave him a gun and he went hunting. He brought in a turkey. One evening he did […]
There were two little boys playing all the time together. They were tesha. The folks of one lived away at some distance. The other was the chief’s son. One day they went bird hunting. The chief’s son came back without his friend. On a mountain they had found a big hole. The chief’s son threw
There was a mean boy; his mother’s brother, a chief, wanted to kill him. His mother begged him off. The chief said he must not fight at home, but go out to strange Indians to fight. One day the boy disappeared. He came back and shot off his gun .221 He brought in two scalps
White Moon related a set of “funny stories” told him by old man Grasshopper, some of which are “tall stories” or stories of Spanish picaresque type like those recorded by Handy at Zuni. Grasshopper said that once he lost his horse, it was gone almost a year. And one day he lost his hogs, they
Many years ago there lived in the Blood camp a boy named Screech Owl (A’-tsi-tsi). He was rather a lonely boy, and did not care to go with other boys. He liked better to be by himself. Often he would go off alone, and stay out all night away from the camp. He used to
One day, as Old Man was walking about in the woods, he saw something very queer. A bird was sitting on the limb of a tree making a strange noise, and every time it made this noise, its eyes would go out of its head and fasten on the tree; then it would make another
There was once a man who had two bad wives. They had no shame. The man thought if he moved away where there were no other people, he might teach these women to become good, so he moved his lodge away off on the prairie. Near where they camped was a high butte, and every
Once Old Man was traveling around, when he came to the Sun’s lodge, and the Sun asked him to stay a while. Old Man was very glad to do so. One day the meat was all gone, and the Sun said, “Kyi! Old Man, what say you if we go and kill some deer?” “You
Once Old Man was traveling, and becoming tired he sat down on a rock to rest. After a while he started to go on, and because the sun was hot he threw his robe over the rock, saying: “Here, I give you my robe, because you are poor and have let me rest on you.
Once Old Man was traveling around, when he heard some very queer singing. He had never heard anything like this before, and looked all around to see who it was. At last he saw it was the cottontail rabbits, singing and making medicine. They had built a fire, and got a lot of hot ashes,
In those days there was a Piegan chief named Owl Bear. He was a great chief, very brave and generous. One night he had a dream: he saw many dead bodies of the enemy lying about, scalped, and he knew that he must go to war. So he called out for a feast, and after
Fifty years ago the name Blackfoot was one of terrible meaning to the white traveler who passed across that desolate buffalo-trodden waste which lay to the north of the Yellowstone River and east of the Rocky Mountains. This was the Blackfoot land, the undisputed home of a people which is said to have numbered in
For a long time the buffalo had not been seen. The pis’kun was useless, and the hunters could find no food for the people. Then a man who had two wives, a daughter, and two sons, said: “I shall not stop here to die. Tomorrow we will move toward the mountains, where we shall perhaps
A long time ago the Blackfeet were camped on Backfat Creek. There was in the camp a man who had but one wife, and he thought a great deal of her. He never wanted to have two wives. As time passed they had a child, a little girl. Along toward the end of the summer,
Once a camp of people stopped on the bank of a river. There were but a few lodges of them. One day the little children in the camp crossed the river to play on the other side. For some time they stayed near the bank, and then they went up over a little hill, and
A long time ago there were four Blackfeet, who went to war against the Crees. They traveled a long way, and at last their horses gave out, and they started back toward their homes. As they were going along they came to the Sand Hills; and while they were passing through them, they saw in
One day Old Man went out hunting and took the fox with him. They hunted for several days, but killed nothing. It was nice warm weather in the late fall. After they had become very hungry, as they were going along one day, Old Man went up over a ridge and on the other side
Once, long ago, the antelope and the deer met on the prairie. At this time both of them had galls and both dew claws. They began to talk together, and each was telling the other what he could do. Each one told how fast he could run, and before long they were disputing as to
Old Man was very hungry. He had been a long time without food, and was thinking how he could get something to eat, when he saw a band of elk on a ridge. So he went up to them and said, “Oh, my brothers, I am lonesome because I have no one to follow me.”
This happened long ago. In those days the people were hungry. No buffalo nor antelope were seen on the prairie. The deer and the elk trails were covered with grass and leaves; not even a rabbit could be found in the brush. Then the people prayed, saying: “Oh, Old Man, help us now, or we
