When Buffalo Ran by George Bird Grinnell

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[Illustration: PEOPLE LOOKING FROM THE LODGES]

_WHEN BUFFALO RAN_

_BY GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL_

_Copyright, 1920, by
Yale University Press._

_First published, 1920._

_Table of Contents._

Introduction: The Plains Country
The Attack on the Camp
Standing Alone
The Way to Live
Lessons of the Prairie
On a Buffalo Horse
In the Medicine Circle
Among Enemy Lodges
A Grown Man
A Sacrifice
A Warrior Ready to Die
A Lie That Came True
My Marriage

_List of Illustrations._

People Looking from the Lodges
Hunting in the Brush along the River
My Grandmother Lived in Our Lodge
My Grandfather ... Long before Had Given up the Warpath
I Killed Many Buffalo and My Mother Dressed the Hides
Holding the Pipe to the Sky and to the Earth
"Do Not Go, Wait a Little Longer"
Watch the Men and Older Boys Playing at Sticks

_The Plains Country._

Seventy years ago, when some of the events here recounted took place,
Indians were Indians, and the plains were the plains indeed.

Those plains stretched out in limitless rolling swells of prairie until
they met the blue sky that on every hand bent down to touch them. In spring
brightly green, and spangled with wild flowers, by midsummer this prairie
had grown sere and yellow. Clumps of dark green cottonwoods marked the
courses of the infrequent streams--for most of the year the only note of
color in the landscape, except the brilliant sky. On the wide, level river
bottoms, sheltered by the enclosing hills, the Indians pitched their
conical skin lodges and lived their simple lives. If the camp were large
the lodges stood in a wide circle, but if only a few families were
together, they were scattered along the stream.

In the spring and early summer the rivers, swollen by the melting snows,
were often deep and rapid, but a little later they shrank to a few narrow
trickles running over a bed of sand, and sometimes the water sank wholly
out of sight.

The animals of the prairie and the roots and berries that grew in the
bottoms and on the uplands gave the people their chief sustenance.

In such surroundings the boy Wikis was born and grew up. The people that he
knew well were those of his own camp. Once a year perhaps, for a few weeks,
he saw the larger population of a great camp, but for the most part half a
dozen families of the tribe, with the buffalo, the deer, the wolves, and
the smaller animals and birds, were the companions with whom he lived and
from whom he learned life's lessons.

The incidents of this simple story are true.

The life of those days and the teachings received by the boy or the girl
who was to take part in it have passed away and will not return.

_The Attack on the Camp._

It is the first thing that I can recollect, and comes back to me now
dimly--only as a dream. My mother used to tell me of it, and often to laugh
at me. She said I was then about five or six years old.

I must have been playing with other little boys near the lodge, and the
first thing that I remember is seeing people running to and fro, men
jumping on their horses, and women gathering up their children. I remember
how the men called to each other, and that some were shouting the war cry;
and then that they all rode away in the same direction. My mother rushed
out and caught me by the hand, and began to pull me toward the lodge, and
then she stopped and in a shrill, sweet voice began to sing; and other
women that were running about stopped too, and began to sing songs to
encourage their husbands and brothers and sons to fight bravely; for
enemies were attacking the camp.

I did not understand it at all, but I was excited and glad to hear the
noise, and to see people rushing about. Soon I could hear shooting at a
distance. Then presently I saw the men come riding back toward the camp;
and saw the enemy following them down toward the lodges, and that there
were many of these strangers, while our people were only a few. But still
my people kept stopping and turning and fighting. Now the noise was louder.
The women sang their strong heart songs more shrilly, and I could hear more
plainly the whoops of men, and the blowing of war whistles, and the reports
of guns.

Presently one of our men fell off his horse. The enemy charged forward in a
body to touch him, and our few men rushed to meet them, to keep them from
striking the fallen one, and from taking the head. And now the women began
to be frightened, and some of them ran away. My mother rushed to the lodge,
caught up my little sister, and threw her on her back, and holding me by
the hand, ran toward the river. By this time I was afraid, and I ran as
hard as I could; but my legs were short and I could not keep up, even
though my mother had a load on her back. Nevertheless, she pulled me along.
Every little while I stumbled and lost my feet; but she dragged me on, and
as she lifted me up, I caught my feet again, and ran on.

Before long I began to tire, and I remember that I wanted to stop. In after
years mother used to laugh at me about this, and say that I had asked her
to throw away my sister, and to put me on her back and carry me instead.
She used to say, too, that if she had been obliged to throw away either
child I should have been the one left behind, for as I was a boy, and would
grow up to be a warrior, and to fight the enemies of our tribe, I might
very likely be killed anyway, and it might as well be earlier as later.

When we reached the river, my mother threw herself into it. Usually it was
not more than knee-deep, but at this time the water was high from the
spring floods, and my mother had to swim, holding my sister on her back,
and at the same time supporting me, for though I could swim a little, I was
not strong enough to breast the current, and without help would have been
carried away.

After we had crossed the river and come out on the other side, we looked
back toward the village, and could see that the enemy were retreating. They
might easily have killed or driven off the few warriors of our small camp,
but not far from us there was a larger camp of our people, and when they
heard the shooting and the shouting, they came rushing to help us; and when
the enemy saw them coming, they began to yield and then to run away. Our
warriors followed and killed some of them; but the most of them got away
after having killed four warriors of our camp, whose hard fighting and
death had perhaps saved the little village.

After the enemy had retreated, my mother crossed the river again, being
helped over by a man who was on the side opposite the camp, and who let us
ride his horse, while he held its tail and swam behind it.

In the village that night there was mourning for those who had lost their
lives to save their friends. Their relations cried very pitifully over the
dead; and early the next day their bodies were carried to the top of a hill
near the village, and buried there.

After the mourning for the dead was ended, the people had dances over the
scalps that had been taken from the enemy, rejoicing over the victory. Men
and women blackened their faces, and danced in a circle about the scalps,
held on poles; and old men and old women shouted the names of those men who
had been the bravest in the fight. We little boys looked on and sang and
danced by ourselves away from the circle.

It was soon after this that my uncle made me a bow and some blunt-headed
arrows, with which he told me I should hunt little birds, and should learn
to kill food, to help support my mother and sisters, as a man ought to do.
With these arrows I used to practice shooting, trying to see how far I
could shoot, how near I could send the arrow to the mark I shot at; and
afterwards, as I grew a little older, hunting in the brush along the river,
or on the prairie not far from the camp with the other little boys. We
hunted the blackbirds, or the larks, or the buffalo birds that fed among
the horses' feet, or the other small birds that lived among the bushes and
trees in the bottom. If I killed a little bird, as sometimes I did, my
mother cooked it and we ate it.

[Illustration: HUNTING IN THE BRUSH ALONG THE RIVER]

This was a happy time for me. We little boys played together all the time.
Sometimes the older boys allowed us to go with them, when they went far
from the village, to hunt rabbits, and when they did this, sometimes they
told us to carry back the rabbits that they had killed; and I remember that
once I came back with the heads of three rabbits tucked under my belt,
killed by my cousin, who was older than I. Then we used to go out and watch
the men and older boys playing at sticks; and we had little sticks of our
own, and our older brothers and cousins made us wheels; and we, too, played
the stick game among ourselves, rolling the wheel and chasing it as hard as
we could; but, for the most part, we threw our sticks at marks, trying to
learn how to throw them well, and how to slide them far over the ground.

[Illustration: WATCH THE MEN AND OLDER BOYS PLAYING AT STICKS]

I remember another thing--a sad thing--that happened when I was a very
little boy.

It was winter; the snow lay deep on the ground; a few lodges of people were
camped in some timber among the foothills; buffalo were close, and game was
plenty; the camp was living well. With the others I played about the camp,
spinning tops on the ice, sliding down hill on a bit of parfleche, or on a
sled made of buffalo ribs, and sometimes hunting little birds in the brush.
All this I know about from having heard my mother tell of it; it is not in
my memory. This is what I remember: One day, with one of my friends, I had
gone a little way from the camp, and down the stream. A few days before
there had been a heavy fall of snow, and after that some warm days, so that
the top of the snow had melted. Then had come a hard cold, which had frozen
it, so that on the snow there was a crust over which we could easily run.

As we were playing we went around the point of a hill, and suddenly, close
to us, saw a big bull. He seemed to have come from the other side of the
river, and was plowing his way through the deep snow, which came halfway up
to the top of his hump. When we saw the bull we were a little frightened;
but as we watched him we saw that he could hardly move, and that after he
had made a jump or two he stood still for a long time, puffing and blowing,
before he tried to go further. As we watched him he came to a low place in
the prairie, and here he sank still deeper in the snow, so that part of his
head was hidden, and only his hump showed above it. My friend said to me,
"Let us go up to this bull, and shoot him with our arrows." We began to go
toward him slowly, and he did not see us until we had come quite close to
him, when he turned and tried to run; but the snow was so deep that he
could not go at all; on each side it rose up, and rolled over, away from
him, as the water is pushed away and swells out on either side before a
duck that is swimming. My friend was very brave, and he said to me, "I am
going to shoot that bull, and count a coup on him"; and he ran up close to
the bull, and shot his blunt-headed arrow against him, and then turned off.
The bull tried hard to go faster, but the snow was too deep; and when I saw
that he could not move, I, too, ran up close to him, and shot my arrow at
him, and the arrow bounded off and fell on the snow. Again my friend did
this, and then I did it; and each time the bull was frightened and
struggled to get away: but the last time my friend did it the bull had
reached higher ground, where the snow was not so deep, and he had more
freedom. My friend shot his arrow into him, and I was following not far
behind, expecting to shoot mine; but when the bull felt the blow of the
last arrow, he turned toward my friend and made a quick rush; the snow was
less deep; he went faster; my little friend slipped, and the bull caught
him with his horns and threw him far. My friend fell close to me, and where
he fell the snow was red with his blood, for the great horn had caught him
just above the waist, and had ripped his body open nearly to the throat.

I went up to him in a moment, and, catching him, pulled him over the smooth
crust, far from the bull; but when I stopped and looked at him, he was
still, his eyes were dull, and he did not breathe; he was dead.

I did not know what to do. I had lost my friend, and I cried hard. Also, I
wished to be revenged on the bull for what he had done; but I did not wish
to be killed. I covered my friend with my robe, and started running fast to
the camp, where I told my mother what had happened. Soon all the men in the
camp, and some of the women, had started with me, back to where the bull
was. My friend's relations were wailing and mourning, as they came along,
and soon we reached his body, and his relations carried him back to the
camp. Two of the men went to where the bull stood in the snow and killed
him; and after he was dead I struck him with my bow.

_Standing Alone._

Always as winter drew near, the camps came closer together, and the people
began to make ready to start off on the hunt for buffalo. By this time food
was scarce, and the people needed new robes; and now that the cold weather
was at hand, the hair of the buffalo was long and shaggy, so that the robes
would be soft and warm, to keep out the winter cold.

I remember that before the tribe started there used to be a great ceremony,
but I was too young to understand what it all meant, though with the others
I watched what the old men did, and wondered at it, for it seemed very
solemn. There was a big circle about which the people stood or sat, and in
the middle of the circle there were buffalo heads on the ground, and before
them stood old men, who prayed and offered sacrifices, and passed their
weapons and their sacred implements over the skulls, and then people
danced; and not long after this the women loaded their lodges and their
baggage on the horses, and put their little children into the cages on the
travois, or piled them on the loaded pack horses; and then presently, in a
long line, the village started off over the prairie, to look for buffalo.

Most of the way I walked or ran, playing with the other little boys, or
looking through the ravines to try and find small birds, or a rabbit, or a
prairie chicken. Sometimes I rode a colt, too young yet to carry a load, or
to be ridden by an older person, yet gentle enough to carry me. In this way
I learned to ride.

When buffalo were found, the young men killed them, and then the whole
camp, women and children, went out to where the buffalo lay, and meat and
hides were brought in to the camp, where the women made robes, and dried
meat. Food was plenty, and everybody was glad.

My grandmother lived in our lodge. She was an old woman with gray hair, and
was always working hard. Whenever there were skins in the lodge she worked
at them until they were tanned and ready for use. Often she used to talk to
me, telling me about the old times; how our tribe used to fight with its
enemies, and conquer them, and kill them; and how brave the men always
were. She used to tell me that of all things that a man could do, the best
thing was to be brave. She would say to me: "Your father was a brave man,
killed by his enemies when he was fighting. Your grandfather, too, was
brave, and counted many coups; he was a chief, and is looked up to by
everyone. Your other grandfather was killed in a battle when he was a young
man. The people that you have for relations have never been afraid, and you
must not be afraid either. You must always do your best, because you have
many relations who have been braves, and chiefs. You have no father to tell
you how you ought to live, so now your other relations must try to help you
as much as they can, and advise you what to do."

[Illustration: MY GRANDMOTHER LIVED IN OUR LODGE]

She used to tell me of the ancient times, and of things that happened then,
of persons who had strong spiritual power, and did wonderful things, and of
certain bad persons and animals, who harmed people, and of the old times
before the people had bows, when they did not kill animals for food, but
lived on roots and berries. She told me that I must remember all these
things, and keep them in my mind.

Sometimes my grandmother had hard pains in her legs, and it hurt her to
walk, and when she had these pains she could not go about much, and could
not work. When this happened, sometimes she used to ask me to go down to
the stream and fetch her a skin of water; and I would whine, and say to
her, "Grandmother, I do not want to carry water; men do not carry water."
Then she would tell us some story about the bad things that had happened to
boys who refused to carry water for their grandmothers; and when I was
little these stories frightened me, and I would go for the water. So
perhaps I helped her a little in some things after she was old. Yet she
lived until I was a grown man; and so long as she lived she worked hard;
except when she had these pains.

Sometimes my mother and some of her relations would go off and camp
together for a long time; and then perhaps they would join a larger camp,
and stay with them for a while. In these larger camps we children had much
fun, playing our different games. We had many of these. Some, like those I
have spoken of, we played in winter, and some we played in summer. Often
the little girls 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 little 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 were buffalo, and showed themselves on the prairie a little way
off, and other boys were hunters, and went out to chase the buffalo. 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 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 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.

"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 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.

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