第14章

"I,the brave Little Wound,to-day kill the only fierce enemy!"Scarcely were the last words uttered when he screamed as if stabbed to the heart.One of his older companions shouted:

"Dive into the water!Run!Dive into the water!"for there was a lake near by.This ad-vice he obeyed.

When we had reassembled and were indulging in our mimic dance,Little Wound was not allowed to dance.He was considered not to be in ex-istence--he had been killed by our enemies,the Bee tribe.Poor little fellow!His swollen face was sad and ashamed as he sat on a fallen log and watched the dance.Although he might well have styled himself one of the noble dead who had died for their country,yet he was not unmindful that he had screamed,and this weakness would be apt to recur to him many times in the future.

We had some quiet plays which we alternated with the more severe and warlike ones.Among them were throwing wands and snow-arrows.In the winter we coasted much.We had no "dou-ble-rippers"or toboggans,but six or seven of the long ribs of a buffalo,fastened together at the larger end,answered all practical purposes.Some-times a strip of bass-wood bark,four feet long and about six inches wide,was used with considerable skill.We stood on one end and held the other,using the slippery inside of the bark for the out-side,and thus coasting down long hills with re-markable speed.

The spinning of tops was one of the all-absorbing winter sports.We made our tops heart-shaped of wood,horn or bone.We whipped them with a long thong of buckskin.The handle was a stick about a foot long and sometimes we whittled the stick to make it spoon-shaped at one end.

We played games with these tops--two to fifty boys at one time.Each whips his top until it hums;then one takes the lead and the rest fol-low in a sort of obstacle race.The top must spin all the way through.There were bars of snow over which we must pilot our top in the spoon end of our whip;then again we would toss it in the air on to another open spot of ice or smooth snow-crust from twenty to fifty paces away.The top that holds out the longest is the winner.

Sometimes we played "medicine dance."This,to us,was almost what "playing church"is among white children,but our people seemed to think it an act of irreverence to imitate these dances,therefore performances of this kind were always enjoyed in secret.We used to observe all the im-portant ceremonies and it required something of an actor to reproduce the dramatic features of the dance.The real dances occupied a day and a night,and the program was long and varied,so that it was not easy to execute all the details perfectly;but the Indian children are born imi-tators.

The boys built an arbor of pine boughs in some out-of-the-way place and at one end of it was a rude lodge.This was the medicine lodge or head-quarters.All the initiates were there.At the further end or entrance were the door-keepers or soldiers,as we called them.The members of each lodge entered in a body,standing in single file and facing the headquarters.Each stretched out his right hand and a prayer was offered by the leader,after which they took the places assigned to them.

When the preliminaries had been completed,our leader sounded the big drum and we all said "A-ho-ho-ho!"as a sort of amen.Then the choir began their song and whenever they ended a verse,we all said again "A-ho-ho-ho!"At last they struck up the chorus and we all got upon our feet and began to dance,by simply lifting up one foot and then the other,with a slight swing to the body.

Each boy was representing or imitating some one of the medicine men.We painted and decor-ated ourselves just as they did and carried bird or squirrel skins,or occasionally live birds and chipmunks as our medicine bags and small white shells or pebbles for medicine charms.

Then the persons to be initiated were brought in and seated,with much ceremony,upon a blanket or buffalo robe.Directly in front of them the ground was levelled smooth and here we laid an old pipe filled with dried leaves for tobacco.

Around it we placed the variously colored feathers of the birds we had killed,and cedar and sweet-grass we burned for incense.

Finally those of us who had been selected to per-form this ceremony stretched out our arms at full length,holding the sacred medicine bags and aiming them at the new members.After swinging them four times,we shot them suddenly forward,but did not let go.The novices then fell forward on their faces as if dead.Quickly a chorus was struck up and we all joined in a lively dance around the sup-posed bodies.The girls covered them up with their blankets,thus burying the dead.At last we resurrected them with our charms and led them to their places among the audience.Then came the last general dance and the final feast.

I was often selected as choir-master on these oc-casions,for I had happened to learn many of the medicine songs and was quite an apt mimic.My grandmother,who was a noted medicine woman of the Turtle lodge,on hearing of these sacrilegious acts (as she called them)warned me that if any of the medicine men should discover them,they would punish me terribly by shriveling my limbs with slow disease.

Occasionally,we also played "white man."Our knowledge of the pale-face was limited,but we had learned that he brought goods whenever he came and that our people exchanged furs for his mer-chandise.We also knew that his complexion was pale,that he had short hair on his head and long hair on his face and that he wore coat,trousers,and hat,and did not patronize blankets in the day-time.This was the picture we had formed of the white man.