Sitting Bull's body was taken to Fort Yates and was buried in an Army wooden coffin. In 1953 Lakota family members exhumed what was believed to be his remains, to be reinterred near Mobridge, South Dakota, his birthplace.

Tribe: Hunkpapa Lakota
Born: c. 1831 -
Grand River, South Dakota
Native name: Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotȟake (born Hoka Psice)
Known for: Battle of Little Big Horn, resistance to USA
Died: December 15, 1890 (aged 58–59) at the
Grand River, South Dakota, Standing Rock Indian Reservation
Cause of death: Shot by Indian Police
Resting place: Mobridge, South Dakota
Religious beliefs: Lakota
Spouses: Light Hair, Four Robes, Snow-on-Her, Seen-by-her-Nation, and Scarlet Woman.
Children: One Bull (adopted son),

Crow Foot (son),

Many Horses (daughter), and

Walks Looking (daughter).

Parents: Jumping Bull (father) and
Her-Holy-Door (mother)
Relatives: Big Foot (half brother) and
White Bull (nephew)

1891 Account of Sitting Bull
Shortly after his Death
 by W. FLETCHER JOHNSON

The fragmentary and often contradictory narratives rehearsed in the foregoing chapter contain much fiction and some fact. The general consensus of opinion now is that Sitting Bull was born at a camp on Willow Creek, near the mouth of the Cheyenne River, and near old Fort George, about 1830. He was the son of Jumping Bull, a Sioux chief, and a nephew of Four Horns and Hunting His Lodge, who were also chiefs. His father was, for an Indian, a wealthy man, and was " the owner of a great many ponies in four colors." Although not destined to be a warrior, Sitting Bull, who was at first called Sacred Standshot, soon became a famous hunter. At ten years old he was famous all through the tribe as a killer of buffalo calves. As his father was rich and did not need the meat, the boy gave away all the game he killed to the poorer members of the tribe, and thus gained great popularity. When he was thirteen years old his father died, and he thereupon " killed buffaloes and fed his people." The next year he fought with and killed a young Indian a few years older than himself, and his name was then changed to Lame Bull or Sitting Bull, on account of a wound which he then received, which made him permanently lame.

Before he reached his fifteenth year Sitting Bull began to develop those traits which afterward made him a terror to the white settlers of the frontier. He is described by an old Western scout as a boy of rather stocky appearance, not " straight as an arrow" like the traditional Indian. He was fearless under all circumstances, a magnificent rider, an accurate shot, and capable of enduring an extraordinary amount of fatigue.

He was three times married, one of his wives dying soon after the wedding. The other two wives were named She That Was Seen by the Nation, and She That Had Four Robes. They bore in all nine children, including a pair of twins—a most unusual thing among Indians. When, after the Custer massacre, Sitting Bull at last surrendered at Fort Buford, one of his sons, a young man of 18, was at school in Chicago. Another, a boy of six years, was with the chief, and at the formal pow-wow the chief put his heavy rifle in the little fellow's hands and ordered him to give it to Major Brotherton, saying :

" I surrender this rifle to you through my young son, whom I now desire to teach in this way that he has become a friend of the whites. I wish him to live as the whites do and be taught in their schools. I wish to be remembered as the last man of my tribe who gave up his rifle. This boy has now given it to you, and he wants to know how he is going to make a living."

Sitting Bull is commonly thought of as a warrior. In point of fact he was not. He was a " medicine man;" which means that he included within himself the three professions of the priesthood, medicine and law. He inherited from his father the chieftanship of a part of the Sioux tribe. But his remarkable ascendancy over the whole tribe or nation was due to his miracle-working and to his talents as a politician. He played upon the credulity of the Sioux with his " medicine " or "miracles", until they believed him to possess supernatural powers, and were ready to follow his lead in everything.

Some other chiefs inherited wider authority, such as Red Cloud and Crazy Horse, and some minor chiefs were inclined now and then to dispute his sway, such as Gall, Rain-in-the-face, and Broad Trail. But when Sitting Bull made an appeal to the religious fanaticism of the people, there was no withstanding him. To the day of his death he was the principal chief of all the Sioux and leader of 6,000 braves, who at all times were ready at his command.

Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake autographed photo "Sitting Bull"

Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake

(Tatanka Iyotaka)
By: ~Anonymous Lakota
Saturday, December 15th, 2002 was the 112th Memorial anniversary of the assassination of Tatanka Iyotaka, more commonly known as Sitting Bull. This inspirational leader was murdered deep within Lakota Nation territory, a vast area encompassing much of the central and northern Great Plains. Tatanka Iyotaka in his day was one of the most influential leaders on the prairie. Today, he is the most recognizable Indian in the world.

Tatanka Iyotaka was not impressed by white society and their version of civilization. He was shocked and saddened to see the number of homeless people living on the streets of American cities. He gave money to hungry white people many times when he was in the large cities.

He counseled his people to be wary of what they accept from white culture. He saw some things which might benefit his people; but cautioned Indian people to accept only those things that were useful to us, and to leave everything else alone. Tatanka Iyotaka was a man of clear vision and pure motivation.

Sitting Bull autograph dated on card's reverse June 12th 1889.

As is often the case with extraordinary people, Tatanka Iyotaka was murdered by his own people. The colonial force set the weak of his own race against him. A tactic they continue to use. Indian police today carry on the tradition started by the assassins of Tatanka Iyotaka and Tasunke Witko. Indian police harassing, arresting, even killing other Indian people keeps the colony in control. Seeing that their paychecks, just like those of the elected tribal/band councilors, come from the colonial government points to that quite clearly.

The unrelenting love for his land and his people caused the enemies of the Lakota to fear Tatanka Iyotaka. The Hunkpapa Oyate and the Titonwan Lakota had many powerful leaders, but Tatanka Iyotaka will forever remain the icon of traditional, full-blood strength and dignity.

THE DEATH OF SITTING BULL, AND
A TRAGEDY AT WOUNDED KNEE
by Warren K. Morehead 1914
Edited by Stanley L. Klos 1999

It seems that the Indian police brought Major McLaughlin information as to the intentions of the famous medicine man. The Major became convinced that Sitting Bull must be arrested and confined, and he therefore sent a squad of police under Lieutenant Bull Head. Among the thirtynine Indian policemen who made the arrest were four relatives. Aside from the officer in charge, Bull Head, Red Tomahawk and Shave Head seem to have been the most prominent.

Sitting Bull's settlement consisted of a number of houses stretched on the banks of the Grand River for a distance of four or five miles. The group surrounding Sitting Bull's cabin was comprised of half a dozen log cabins and a corral.

The police entered upon their mission in the night and arrived at daylight. " Many of the houses were deserted, the Indians having been engaged in dancing the greater part of the previous night. The entrance of the policemen awakened the camp, but they saw no one, as Bull Head wheeled his men between the Sitting Bull houses and ordered them to dismount. Ten policemen, headed by Bull Head and Shave Head, entered one of the houses, eight policemen the other. In the house entered by Bull Head's party they found the old medicine man, his two wives, and Crow Foot his son, a youth of seventeen years.

"The women were very much frightened and began to cry. Sitting Bull sat up and asked what was the matter.

'You are under arrest and must go to the agency,' said Bull Head.

" 'Very well,' said Sitting Bull, 'I will go with you.' And he told one of his wives to go to the other house and bring him his best clothes. He showed no concern at his arrest, but evidently wanted to make a good impression and dressed himself with some care. He had also asked that his best horse, a gray one, be saddled, and an Indian policeman had the animal at the door by the time Sitting Bull was dressed and ready to leave.

"There had been no trouble in the house, and the police, when they walked out, were surprised at the extent of the demonstration. They came out of the building in a little knot, Bull Head on one side of Sitting Bull, Shave Head on the other, and Red Tomahawk directly behind. They had been twenty minutes or more in Sitting Bull's house, and it was in the gray of the morning when they came out. They stepped out into a mass of greatly excited Ghost dancers, nearly all armed and crowding about the main body of the police, who had held the way clear at the door. As Sitting Bull stepped out with his captors he walked directly toward the horse, with the evident intention of mounting and accompanying the police. He was some distance from the door when his son, Crow Foot, seeing that the old man intended to make no resistance, began to revile him: —

" 'You call yourself a brave man and you have declared that you would never surrender to a blue-coat, and now you give yourself up to Indians in blue uniforms,' the young man shouted.

"The taunt hit Sitting Bull hard. He looked into the mass of dark, excited faces, and commenced to talk volubly and shrilly, and there was a menacing movement in the crowd.

"The last moment of Sitting Bull's life showed him in a better light, so far as physical courage goes, than all the rest of it. He looked about him and saw his faithful adherents — about 160 crazed Ghost dancers— who would have gone through fire at his bidding; to submit to arrest meant the end of his power and his probable imprisonment; he had sure news from Pine Ridge that he, only, was needed to head the hostiles there in a war of extermination against the white settlers. He made up his mind to take his chance, and screamed out an order to his people to attack the police.

"Instantly Catch-the-Bear and Strikes-the-Kettle, who were in the front rank of the crowd, fired at point-blank range, Catch-the-Bear mortally wounding First Lieutenant Bull Head, and Strikes-the-Kettle shooting First Sergeant Shave Head in the abdomen. Lieutenant Bull Head was a few yards to the left and front of Sitting Bull when hit, and immediately wheeling, he shot Sitting Bull through the body, and at the same instant Second Sergeant Red Tomahawk, who with revolver in hand was rearguard, shot him in the right cheek, killing him instantly; the lieutenant, the first sergeant, and Sitting Bull falling together.

"Sitting Bull's medicine had not saved him, and the shot that killed him put a stop forever to the domination of the ancient regime among the Sioux of the Standing Rock reservation.

"The tale of the bloody fight that ensued has been told, and the world knows how those thirty-nine Indian policemen, with four of their relatives who volunteered to accompany them,— a total of forty-three in all — fought off 160 Ghost dancers, eight of whom were killed and five wounded; how Second Sergeant Red Tomahawk, after the two higher ranking police officers had been mortally wounded, took command and drove the Indians to the timber; how Hawk Man No. 1 ran through a hail of bullets to get the news to the cavalry detachment, and how six faithful friends of the Whites, policemen of the Standing Rock reservation, laid down their lives in doing their duty that morning. Two days later, on December 17, 1890, we buried Shave Head and four other Indian policemen with military honors in the cemetery at Standing Rock, and, while Captain Miner's entire company of the Twenty-Second U. S. Infantry fired three volleys over the graves of these red heroes, and a great concourse of the Sioux of the reservation stood in the chill bright sunlight of a fair winter's day, mourning aloud for their dead, I quietly left the enclosure and joined a little burial-party in the military cemetery at Fort Yates, situated about five hundred yards south of the agency cemetery. Four military prisoners dug the grave, and in the presence of A. R. Chapin, Assistant Surgeon, U. S. A., H. M. Deeble, Acting Assistant Surgeon, U. S. A., Lieutenant P. G. Wood, U. S. A., Post Quartermaster, now Brigadier General, retired, and myself, the body of Sitting Bull, wrapped in canvas and placed in a coffin, was lowered into the grave."*

Naturally the death of Sitting Bull caused great commotion and many Indians joined the Ghost dancers. In spite of promises to the contrary, they imagined that all those who had incurred the ill will of the authorities were to be killed.

About this time Major Brooke sent out American Horse with Two Strike and others to persuade the rest of the Ghost dancers to come in. There were a number of skirmishes in which a few persons were killed on each side.

On December 28th, Major Whitside in charge of the Seventh Cavalry came up with Big Foot's band. This same Indian, Big Foot, and his people were traveling toward Pine Ridge agency. According to Mooney's account, Whitside demanded unconditional surrender which was at once given. The Indians and the soldiers went into camp twenty miles northeast of Pine Ridge agency. All of this was communicated to Major Brooke, who sent Colonel Forsythe with four companies of the Seventh Cavalry to join Whitside. This gave Whitside a total of 470 men as against 106 warriors and a number of women and children, frequently estimated from 200 to 250. The other Ghost dancers under Kicking Bear and Short Bull had been persuaded by American Horse and Little Wound to come in to the agency and were encamped at the Catholic mission, five miles out. December 29th (the next day) the officers ordered the Indians to be disarmed. In the center of the camp of the Indians a white flag had been erected. Early in the morning a battery of four Hotchkiss guns had been posted,and these were trained on the Indian camp. The cavalry was placed in squads at various angles, almost entirely surrounding the Indians, or at least on the flank. Chief Big Foot was ill with pneumonia, and the troops had provided him with a tent warmed by a camp stove. About eight o'clock in the morning the men were ordered to give up their guns. Following Mooney's account further, twenty of them came out with only two guns. The Indians seemed unwilling to give them up, and some of the soldiers were ordered to go into the tents and secure them. Mooney says that this search consumed time and created excitement. My information is to the effect that the soldiers threw things about in the tents and took guns away from those who had them; many children were badly frightened and began to cry, and the Indians were now told by the shaman, Yellow Bird, that they were to be disarmed and then killed. I was told that the medicine man threw dust high in the air and it broke like a little cloud and then the massacre began. Mooney presents the same idea, in a little different form.

While this searching had continued, a large part of the soldiers had been ordered up to within ten yards of the Indians, which further added to their terror and convinced them that Yellow Bird spoke the truth, that they were all to be shot down.

RUDOLF CRONAU (1855-1939), graphite and ink wash on paper of Tatanka Iyotake, Sitting Bull, signed, dated and inscribed 'Rud. Cronau - 1881 Fort Randall S. Dac.' and inscribed 'Sitting Bull' 15½ x 12¼ inches

One or two Indians drew revolvers or rifles and fired upon the soldiers, who returned the fire, killing almost half the warriors at the first discharge of their guns Many sticks were afterwards set up at this place by the Indians. The survivors sprang to their feet, seized knives, clubs or the few remaining guns, and fought desperately.

While this was going on, other troops operated the Hotchkiss guns and sent a storm of shells and bullets among the women and children standing or running about the tipis. Mooney says "the guns poured in two-pound explosive shells at the rate of fifty per minute, mowing down everything alive.

" The terrible effect may be judged from the fact that one woman survivor, Blue Whirlwind, with whom the author conversed, received fourteen wounds, while each of her two little boys were also wounded by her side. In a few minutes 200 Indian men, women and children, with sixty soldiers, were lying dead and wounded on the ground, the tipis had been torn down by the shells and some of them were burning above the helpless wounded, and the surviving handful of Indians were flying in wild panic to the shelter of the ravine, pursued by hundreds of maddened soldiers and followed up by a raking fire from the Hotchkiss guns, which had been moved into position to sweep the ravine.

"There can be no question that the pursuit was simply a massacre, where fleeing women, with infants in their arms, were shot down after resistance had ceased and when almost every warrior was stretched dead or dying on the ground. On this point such a careful writer as Herbert Welsh says: 'From the fact that so many women and children were killed, and that their bodies were found far from the scene of action, and as though they were shot down while flying, it would look as though blind rage had been at work, in striking contrast to the moderation of the Indian police at the Sitting Bull fight when they were assailed by women.' The testimony of American Horse and other friendlies is strong in the same direction. Commissioner Morgan in his official report says that 'Most of the men, including Big Foot, were killed around his tent, where he lay sick. The bodies of the women and children were scattered along a distance of two miles from the scene of the encounter'."

I agree with Mooney, that a man should not criticize the soldiers of his own country. As for the shooting of armed warriors, we will all give assent. As to the murder of women and children, whose only thought was to escape with their lives, one may not trust himself to write in moderation. The Indians told me that many of the Seventh Cavalry troops cried out, "Remember Custer," as they pursued little boys and girls and destroyed them. We might as well draw the veil of charity over the concluding scene — the pursuit and the butchery.

There was one heroic character, Father Kraft, of the Catholic mission, Pine Ridge. He spoke Sioux fluently and endeavored to stop the fight. He was stabbed through the lungs, yet with bullets flying about him, he administered the last rites of the church to the dying until he fell unconscious. Mooney pays him a deserved tribute. The Indians were so excited that they did not recognize him, claiming that he had on a soldier's overcoat because of the cold. Mooney affirms this is not correct, but that he wore his priestly robes.

The immediate result of the massacre of Wounded Knee was the stampeding of all the Indians into the hills. They believed that they were to be murdered.

General Miles adopted harsh measures against the Indians and they soon surrendered all their guns and came in to the agency.

Doctor McGillicuddy, the former Agent at Pine Ridge, who was entirely familiar with the events, stated to Mooney on January 15, 1891, "Up to date there has been neither a Sioux outbreak nor war. No citizen in Nebraska or Dakota has been killed, molested, or can show the scratch of a pin, and no property has been destroyed off the reservation. Only a single non-combatant was killed by the Indians, and that was close to the agency. The entire time occupied by the campaign, from the killing of Sitting Bull to the surrender at Pine Ridge, was only thirty-two days. The late hostiles were returned to their homes as speedily as possible."

The Indians quit, but the white people did not. On January llth, some white people led by three brothers named Culbertson,* pursued an aged Oglala, who was a very friendly Indian, for many miles. His name was Few Tails, and he was accompanied by his wife, another Indian named One Feather, his wife and two children. They had been hunting in the Black Hills and had a pass from the agency. They were returning in two wagons loaded with meat. The Culbertson brothers and these other white men fired on Few Tails, killing that Indian and both ponies attached to that wagon. His wife jumped out and received two bullets, bringing her down. Mooney says that the murderers then attacked the other wagon shooting the wife of One Feather, but as she was not badly hurt, she drove away as rapidly as possible and the Indian leaped upon one of the spare ponies and held off the white men for eight or ten miles. They again came up, and he turned and fought them off while his wife drove ahead with the wagon.

Cabinet photograph signed "Sitting Bull" in Sitting Bull's square hand in lower portion of the mount. Circa 1882

The senseless panic had seized upon all settlers in the country because of the Ghost dance and the Wounded Knee fight. This is illustrated by Mooney's concluding description of the first part of the fight.

"As they drove they passed near a house, from which several other shots were fired at the flying mother, when her husband again rode up and kept off the whole party until the wagon could get ahead. Finally, as the ponies were tired out, this heroic man abandoned the wagon and put the two children on one of the spare ponies and his wounded wife and himself upon another and continued to retreat until the Whites gave up the pursuit. He finally reached the agency with the wife and children."

To give readers an adequate conception of what has too frequently occurred in the West, I desire to state that while One Feather and his family escaped, wounded, the wife of the other Indian, Few Tails, was shot twice, and lay helpless on the ground all night. In the morning she found one of the ponies alive, and mounted it and reached a settler's house fifteen miles away.

"Instead of meeting help and sympathy, however, she was driven off by the two men there with loaded rifles, and leaving her horse in her fright, she hurried away as well as she could with a bullet in her leg and another in her breast, passing by the trail of One Feather's wagon with the tracks of his pursuers fresh behind it, until she came near a trader's store about twenty miles farther south. Afraid to go near it on account of her last experience, the poor woman circled around it, and continued, wounded, cold, and starving as she was, to travel by night and hide by day until she reached the Bad Lands. The rest may be told in her own words:

" 'After that I traveled every night, resting daytime, until I got here at the beef corral. Then I was very tired, and was near the military camp, and early in the morning a soldier came out and he shouted something back, and in a few minutes fifty men were there, and they got a blanket and took me to a tent. I had no blanket and my feet were swelled, and I was about ready to die. After I got to the tent a doctor came in—a soldier doctor, because he had straps on his shoulders — and washed me and treated me well."

"A few of the soldiers camped near the scene of the attack had joined in the pursuit at the beginning, on the representations of some of the murderers, but abandoned it as soon as they found their mistake. According to all the testimony, the killing was a wanton, unprovoked, and deliberate murder, yet the criminals were acquitted in the local courts. The apathy displayed by the authorities of Meade county, South Dakota, in which the murder was committed, called forth some vigorous protests. Colonel Shafter, in his statement of the case, concludes, referring to the recent killing of Lieutenant Casey: 'So long as Indians are being arrested and held for killing armed men under conditions of war, it seems to me that the white murderers of a part of a band of peaceful Indians should not be permitted to escape punishment.' The Indians took the same view of the case, and when General Miles demanded of Young-man-afraid-ofhis-horses the surrender of the slayers of Casey and the herder Miller, the old chief indignantly replied: 'No; I will not surrender them, but if you will bring the white men who killed Few Tails, I will bring the Indians who killed the white soldier and the herder; and right out here in front of your tipi I will have my young men shoot the Indians and you have your so'diers shoot the white men, and we will be done with the whole business."

"In regard to the heroic conduct of One Feather, the officer then in charge of the agency says: 'The determination and genuine courage, as well as the generalship he manifested in keeping at a distance the six men who were pursuing him, and the devotion he showed toward his family, risking his life against great odds, designate him as entitled to a place on the list of heroes'."

I present as an illustration in this book, the little monument erected on the Wounded Knee battlefield by the Sioux themselves some years after the massacre. It was dedicated in the presence of a great concourse of Indians. The inscription is given in Sioux on one side of the shaft, in English on the other. The War Department rather objected to it, so I was told, but it still stands as a monument typifying our treatment of the Indian in these modern days.

Some of the Sioux are still backward, and there are quite a number who do not attend the Protestant or Catholic missions. If one will talk with these so-called "non-progressives," one may hear them say, "We have not forgotten Wounded Knee."

A few brief concluding statements are in order. A perusal of this long narrative indicates that at the first the dance was a purely religious ceremony. The Sioux were deadly in earnest, they were sincere. They danced day and night until they dropped from exhaustion. There was nothing like it, so far as I can ascertain, in recent times in North America. They were in a frenzy. Yet there was no thought of war. Revivals among Protestant denominations in this country (especially in remote districts) frequently develop religious mania. Many older persons remember the "Camp Meetings" of the West and South in which people "got religion." The interference of police or troops at such a gathering would bring on a riot among the white Christians participating in the services.

Negroes of the South have been known to become insensible for hours — to enter a cataleptic state — and to relate visions on recovering. Hysteria at religious gatherings in the South is common among Negroes. In view of these facts, a religious mania is not surprising among Indians, who sought, as we have seen, salvation out of troubles. In fact the craze was induced by their wretched condition.

There was no danger at any time at Pine Ridge. What we did, not once, but on many nights, is proof of the assertion. There were a number of newspaper men in the little log hotel at Pine Ridge, and they sent many sensational accounts to the Eastern papers. Not one of them ever left the agency, until the battle of Wounded Knee had occurred, when a few went out to look over the field. Mr. Bartlett, who spoke Sioux quite well, and myself, were the only men to my knowledge who left the agency and visited the camps in the valley, one or two miles distant. The fact that we were able to do so, is sufficient refutation of the statement that the Indians desired to fight, or were savages. Both of us would have been killed were this statement true. We never experienced the slightest trouble, but on the contrary were afforded every facility. We often felt guns and revolvers under the blankets on which we reclined in the tipis. Force caused Wounded Knee. Humanity would have prevented it.

-- The American Indian in the United States 1850-1914, A Plea For Justice, Andover Press: 1914 by Warren K. Morehead 1914 and Edited by Stanley L. Klos 1999

http://www.sittingbull.org/

Artist Unknown
Red Road Ethic 12
Take What You Need,
Leave the Rest Be
There is nothing placed upon this
Earth that deserves to be destroyed
or wasted for the purpose of human
convenience. To destroy trees and leave
them unused simply because they
blocked the view of the garden, or to
kill animals only for their fur, is not a
rightful way to share the world with
another. To waste and discard some-
thing due to your own selfishness is an
act that goes against the Creator, and
strays you from the Red Road.
Now tell me this one little thing, if thou
hast any sense: Which of these two is
the wisest and happiest--he who
labours without ceasing and only
obtains, and that with great trouble,
enough to live on, or he who rests in
comfort and finds all that he needs in
the pleasure of hunting and fishing?
-GASPESIAN CHIEF

DECEMBER

DECEMBER ANISHINAABE MOON:
SMALL SPIRITS MOON
Winter--known as Wicta in Yuchi--
is upon us
-GASPESIAN CHIEF
December 1
A long time ago the Creator came to
Turtle Island and said to the Red
People, You will be the keepers of the
Mother Earth. Among you I will give
the wisdom about Nature, about the
interconnectedness of all things, about
balance and about living in harmony.
You Red People will see the secrets of
Nature. You will live in hardship and
the blessing of this is you will stay close
to the Creator. The day will come
when you will need to share the
secrets with other people of the earth
because they will stray from their
Spiritual ways. The time to start
sharing is today.
-DON COYHIS
MOHICAN
By: Terri Jean

THE REAL STORY OF THANKSGIVING (A Must Read)

by Susan Bates

Most of us associate the holiday with happy Pilgrims and Indians sitting down to a big feast. And that did happen - once.

The story began in 1614 when a band of English explorers sailed home to England with a ship full of Patuxet Indians bound for slavery. They left behind smallpox which virtually wiped out those who had escaped. By the time the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts Bay they found only one living Patuxet Indian, a man named Squanto who had survived slavery in England and knew their language. He taught them to grow corn and to fish, and negotiated a peace treaty between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Nation. At the end of their first year, the Pilgrims held a great feast honoring Squanto and the Wampanoags.

But as word spread in England about the paradise to be found in the new world, religious zealots called Puritans began arriving by the boat load. Finding no fences around the land, they considered it to be in the public domain. Joined by other British settlers, they seized land, capturing strong young Natives for slaves and killing the rest. But the Pequot Nation had not agreed to the peace treaty Squanto had negotiated and they fought back. The Pequot War was one of the bloodiest Indian wars ever fought.

In 1637 near present day Groton, Connecticut, over 700 men, women and children of the Pequot Tribe had gathered for their annual Green Corn Festival which is our Thanksgiving celebration. In the predawn hours the sleeping Indians were surrounded by English and Dutch mercenaries who ordered them to come outside. Those who came out were shot or clubbed to death while the terrified women and children who huddled inside the longhouse were burned alive. The next day the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared "A Day Of Thanksgiving" because 700 unarmed men, women and children had been murdered.

Cheered by their "victory", the brave colonists and their Indian allies attacked village after village. Women and children over 14 were sold into slavery while the rest were murdered. Boats loaded with a many as 500 slaves regularly left the ports of New England. Bounties were paid for Indian scalps to encourage as many deaths as possible.

Following an especially successful raid against the Pequot in what is now Stamford, Connecticut, the churches announced a second day of "thanksgiving" to celebrate victory over the heathen savages. During the feasting, the hacked off heads of Natives were kicked through the streets like soccer balls. Even the friendly Wampanoag did not escape the madness. Their chief was beheaded, and his head impaled on a pole in Plymouth, Massachusetts -- where it remained on display for 24 years.

The killings became more and more frenzied, with days of thanksgiving feasts being held after each successful massacre. George Washington finally suggested that only one day of Thanksgiving per year be set aside instead of celebrating each and every massacre. Later Abraham Lincoln decreed Thanksgiving Day to be a legal national holiday during the Civil War -- on the same day he ordered troops to march against the starving Sioux in Minnesota.

This story doesn't have quite the same fuzzy feelings associated with it as the one where the Indians and Pilgrims are all sitting down together at the big feast. But we need to learn our true history so it won't ever be repeated. Next Thanksgiving, when you gather with your loved ones to Thank God for all your blessings, think about those people who only wanted to live their lives and raise their families. They, also took time out to say "thank you" to Creator for all their blessings.

Our Thanks to Hill & Holler Column by Susan Bates susanbates@webtv.net

More About Thanksgiving...

INTRODUCTION FOR TEACHERS
By Chuck Larsen

This is a particularly difficult introduction to write. I have been a public schools teacher for twelve years, and I am also a historian and have written several books on American and Native American history. I also just happen to be Quebeque French, Metis, Ojibwa, and Iroquois. Because my Indian ancestors were on both sides of the struggle between the Puritans and the New England Indians and I am well versed in my cultural heritage and history both as an Anishnabeg (Algokin) and Hodenosione (Iroquois), it was felt that I could bring a unique insight to the project.

For an Indian, who is also a school teacher, Thanksgiving was never an easy holiday for me to deal with in class. I sometimes have felt like I learned too much about "the Pilgrims and the Indians." Every year I have been faced with the professional and moral dilemma of just how to be honest and informative with my children at Thanksgiving without passing on historical distortions, and racial and cultural stereotypes.

The problem is that part of what you and I learned in our own childhood about the "Pilgrims" and "Squanto" and the "First Thanksgiving" is a mixture of both history and myth. But the THEME of Thanksgiving has truth and integrity far above and beyond what we and our forebearers have made of it. Thanksgiving is a bigger concept than just the story of the founding of the Plymouth Plantation.

So what do we teach to our children? We usually pass on unquestioned what we all received in our own childhood classrooms. I have come to know both the truths and the myths about our "First Thanksgiving," and I feel we need to try to reach beyond the myths to some degree of historic truth. This text is an attempt to do this.

At this point you are probably asking, "What is the big deal about Thanksgiving and the Pilgrims?" "What does this guy mean by a mixture of truths and myth?" That is just what this introduction is all about. I propose that there may be a good deal that many of us do not know about our Thanksgiving holiday and also about the "First Thanksgiving" story. I also propose that what most of us have learned about the Pilgrims and the Indians who were at the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth Plantation is only part of the truth. When you build a lesson on only half of the information, then you are not teaching the whole truth. That is why I used the word myth. So where do you start to find out more about the holiday and our modern stories about how it began?

A good place to start is with a very important book, "The Invasion of America," by Francis Jennings. It is a very authoritative text on the settlement of New England and the evolution of Indian/White relations in the New England colonies. I also recommend looking up any good text on British history. Check out the British Civil War of 1621-1642, Oliver Cromwell, and the Puritan uprising of 1653 which ended parliamentary government in England until 1660. The history of the Puritan experience in New England really should not be separated from the history of the Puritan experience in England. You should also realize that the "Pilgrims" were a sub sect, or splinter group, of the Puritan movement. They came to America to achieve on this continent what their Puritan bretheran continued to strive for in England; and when the Puritans were forced from England, they came to New England and soon absorbed the original "Pilgrims."

As the editor, I have read all the texts listed in our bibliography, and many more, in preparing this material for you. I want you to read some of these books. So let me use my editorial license to deliberately provoke you a little. When comparing the events stirred on by the Puritans in England with accounts of Puritan/Pilgrim activities in New England in the same era, several provocative things suggest themselves:

1. The Puritans were not just simple religious conservatives persecuted by the King and the Church of England for their unorthodox beliefs. They were political revolutionaries who not only intended to overthrow the government of England, but who actually did so in 1649.

2. The Puritan "Pilgrims" who came to New England were not simply refugees who decided to "put their fate in God's hands" in the "empty wilderness" of North America, as a generation of Hollywood movies taught us. In any culture at any time, settlers on a frontier are most often outcasts and fugitives who, in some way or other, do not fit into the mainstream of their society. This is not to imply that people who settle on frontiers have no redeeming qualities such as bravery, etc., but that the images of nobility that we associate with the Puritans are at least in part the good "P.R." efforts of later writers who have romanticized them.(1) It is also very plausible that this unnaturally noble image of the Puritans is all wrapped up with the mythology of "Noble Civilization" vs. "Savagery."(2) At any rate, mainstream Englishmen considered the Pilgrims to be deliberate religious dropouts who intended to found a new nation completely independent from non-Puritan England. In 1643 the Puritan/Pilgrims declared themselves an independent confederacy, one hundred and forty-three years before the American Revolution. They believed in the imminent occurrence of Armegeddon in Europe and hoped to establish here in the new world the "Kingdom of God" foretold in the book of Revelation. They diverged from their Puritan brethren who remained in England only in that they held little real hope of ever being able to successfully overthrow the King and Parliament and, thereby, impose their "Rule of Saints" (strict Puritan orthodoxy) on the rest of the British people. So they came to America not just in one ship (the Mayflower) but in a hundred others as well, with every intention of taking the land away from its native people to build their prophesied "Holy Kingdom."(3)

3. The Pilgrims were not just innocent refugees from religious persecution. They were victims of bigotry in England, but some of them were themselves religious bigots by our modern standards. The Puritans and the Pilgrims saw themselves as the "Chosen Elect" mentioned in the book of Revelation. They strove to "purify" first themselves and then everyone else of everything they did not accept in their own interpretation of scripture. Later New England Puritans used any means, including deceptions, treachery, torture, war, and genocide to achieve that end.(4) They saw themselves as fighting a holy war against Satan, and everyone who disagreed with them was the enemy. This rigid fundamentalism was transmitted to America by the Plymouth colonists, and it sheds a very different light on the "Pilgrim" image we have of them. This is best illustrated in the written text of the Thanksgiving sermon delivered at Plymouth in 1623 by "Mather the Elder." In it, Mather the Elder gave special thanks to God for the devastating plague of smallpox which wiped out the majority of the Wampanoag Indians who had been their benefactors. He praised God for destroying "chiefly young men and children, the very seeds of increase, thus clearing the forests to make way for a better growth", i.e., the Pilgrims.(5) In as much as these Indians were the Pilgrim's benefactors, and Squanto, in particular, was the instrument of their salvation that first year, how are we to interpret this apparent callousness towards their misfortune?

4. The Wampanoag Indians were not the "friendly savages" some of us were told about when we were in the primary grades. Nor were they invited out of the goodness of the Pilgrims' hearts to share the fruits of the Pilgrims' harvest in a demonstration of Christian charity and interracial brotherhood. The Wampanoag were members of a widespread confederacy of Algonkian-speaking peoples known as the League of the Delaware. For six hundred years they had been defending themselves from my other ancestors, the Iroquois, and for the last hundred years they had also had encounters with European fishermen and explorers but especially with European slavers, who had been raiding their coastal villages.(6) They knew something of the power of the white people, and they did not fully trust them. But their religion taught that they were to give charity to the helpless and hospitality to anyone who came to them with empty hands.(7) Also, Squanto, the Indian hero of the Thanksgiving story, had a very real love for a British explorer named John Weymouth, who had become a second father to him several years before the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth. Clearly, Squanto saw these Pilgrims as Weymouth's people.(8) To the Pilgrims the Indians were heathens and, therefore, the natural instruments of the Devil. Squanto, as the only educated and baptized Christian among the Wampanoag, was seen as merely an instrument of God, set in the wilderness to provide for the survival of His chosen people, the Pilgrims. The Indians were comparatively powerful and, therefore, dangerous; and they were to be courted until the next ships arrived with more Pilgrim colonists and the balance of power shifted. The Wampanoag were actually invited to that Thanksgiving feast for the purpose of negotiating a treaty that would secure the lands of the Plymouth Plantation for the Pilgrims. It should also be noted that the INDIANS, possibly out of a sense of charity toward their hosts, ended up bringing the majority of the food for the feast.(9)

5. A generation later, after the balance of power had indeed shifted, the Indian and White children of that Thanksgiving were striving to kill each other in the genocidal conflict known as King Philip's War. At the end of that conflict most of the New England Indians were either exterminated or refugees among the French in Canada, or they were sold into slavery in the Carolinas by the Puritans. So successful was this early trade in Indian slaves that several Puritan ship owners in Boston began the practice of raiding the Ivory Coast of Africa for black slaves to sell to the proprietary colonies of the South, thus founding the American-based slave trade.(10)

Obviously there is a lot more to the story of Indian/Puritan relations in New England than in the thanksgiving stories we heard as children. Our contemporary mix of myth and history about the "First" Thanksgiving at Plymouth developed in the 1890s and early 1900s. Our country was desperately trying to pull together its many diverse peoples into a common national identity. To many writers and educators at the end of the last century and the beginning of this one, this also meant having a common national history. This was the era of the "melting pot" theory of social progress, and public education was a major tool for social unity. It was with this in mind that the federal government declared the last Thursday in November as the legal holiday of Thanksgiving in 1898.

In consequence, what started as an inspirational bit of New England folklore, soon grew into the full-fledged American Thanksgiving we now know. It emerged complete with stereotyped Indians and stereotyped Whites, incomplete history, and a mythical significance as our "First Thanksgiving." But was it really our FIRST American Thanksgiving?

Now that I have deliberately provoked you with some new information and different opinions, please take the time to read some of the texts in our bibliography. I want to encourage you to read further and form your own opinions. There really is a TRUE Thanksgiving story of Plymouth Plantation. But I strongly suggest that there always has been a Thanksgiving story of some kind or other for as long as there have been human beings. There was also a "First" Thanksgiving in America, but it was celebrated thirty thousand years ago.(11) At some time during the New Stone Age (beginning about ten thousand years ago) Thanksgiving became associated with giving thanks to God for the harvests of the land. Thanksgiving has always been a time of people coming together, so thanks has also been offered for that gift of fellowship between us all. Every last Thursday in November we now partake in one of the OLDEST and most UNIVERSAL of human celebrations, and THERE ARE MANY THANKSGIVING STORIES TO TELL.

As for Thanksgiving week at Plymouth Plantation in 1621, the friendship was guarded and not always sincere, and the peace was very soon abused. But for three days in New England's history, peace and friendship were there.

So here is a story for your children. It is as kind and gentle a balance of historic truth and positive inspiration as its writers and this editor can make it out to be. I hope it will adequately serve its purpose both for you and your students, and I also hope this work will encourage you to look both deeper and farther, for Thanksgiving is Thanksgiving all around the world.

Chuck Larsen Tacoma Public Schools September, 1986

THE PLYMOUTH THANKSGIVING STORY

By Chuck Larsen

When the Pilgrims crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 1620, they landed on the rocky shores of a territory that was inhabited by the Wampanoag (Wam pa NO ag) Indians. The Wampanoags were part of the Algonkian-speaking peoples, a large group that was part of the Woodland Culture area. These Indians lived in villages along the coast of what is now Massachusetts and Rhode Island. They lived in round- roofed houses called wigwams. These were made of poles covered with flat sheets of elm or birch bark. Wigwams differ in construction from tipis that were used by Indians of the Great Plains.

The Wampanoags moved several times during each year in order to get food. In the spring they would fish in the rivers for salmon and herring. In the planting season they moved to the forest to hunt deer and other animals. After the end of the hunting season people moved inland where there was greater protection from the weather. From December to April they lived on food that they stored during the earlier months.

The basic dress for men was the breech clout, a length of deerskin looped over a belt in back and in front. Women wore deerskin wrap-around skirts. Deerskin leggings and fur capes made from deer, beaver, otter, and bear skins gave protection during the colder seasons, and deerskin moccasins were worn on the feet. Both men and women usually braided their hair and a single feather was often worn in the back of the hair by men. They did not have the large feathered headdresses worn by people in the Plains Culture area.

There were two language groups of Indians in New England at this time. The Iroquois were neighbors to the Algonkian-speaking people. Leaders of the Algonquin and Iroquois people were called "sachems" (SAY chems). Each village had its own sachem and tribal council. Political power flowed upward from the people. Any individual, man or woman, could participate, but among the Algonquins more political power was held by men. Among the Iroquois, however, women held the deciding vote in the final selection of who would represent the group. Both men and women enforced the laws of the village and helped solve problems. The details of their democratic system were so impressive that about 150 years later Benjamin Franklin invited the Iroquois to Albany, New York, to explain their system to a delegation who then developed the "Albany Plan of Union." This document later served as a model for the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution of the United States.

These Indians of the Eastern Woodlands called the turtle, the deer and the fish their brothers. They respected the forest and everything in it as equals. Whenever a hunter made a kill, he was careful to leave behind some bones or meat as a spiritual offering, to help other animals survive. Not to do so would be considered greedy. The Wampanoags also treated each other with respect. Any visitor to a Wampanoag home was provided with a share of whatever food the family had, even if the supply was low. This same courtesy was extended to the Pilgrims when they met.

We can only guess what the Wampanoags must have thought when they first saw the strange ships of the Pilgrims arriving on their shores. But their custom was to help visitors, and they treated the newcomers with courtesy. It was mainly because of their kindness that the Pilgrims survived at all. The wheat the Pilgrims had brought with them to plant would not grow in the rocky soil. They needed to learn new ways for a new world, and the man who came to help them was called "Tisquantum" (Tis SKWAN tum) or "Squanto" (SKWAN toe).

Squanto was originally from the village of Patuxet (Pa TUK et) and a member of the Pokanokit Wampanoag nation. Patuxet once stood on the exact site where the Pilgrims built Plymouth. In 1605, fifteen years before the Pilgrims came, Squanto went to England with a friendly English explorer named John Weymouth. He had many adventures and learned to speak English. Squanto came back to New England with Captain Weymouth. Later Squanto was captured by a British slaver who raided the village and sold Squanto to the Spanish in the Caribbean Islands. A Spanish Franciscan priest befriended Squanto and helped him to get to Spain and later on a ship to England. Squanto then found Captain Weymouth, who paid his way back to his homeland. In England Squanto met Samoset of the Wabanake (Wab NAH key) Tribe, who had also left his native home with an English explorer. They both returned together to Patuxet in 1620. When they arrived, the village was deserted and there were skeletons everywhere. Everyone in the village had died from an illness the English slavers had left behind. Squanto and Samoset went to stay with a neighboring village of Wampanoags.

One year later, in the spring, Squanto and Samoset were hunting along the beach near Patuxet. They were startled to see people from England in their deserted village. For several days, they stayed nearby observing the newcomers. Finally they decided to approach them. Samoset walked into the village and said "welcome," Squanto soon joined him. The Pilgrims were very surprised to meet two Indians who spoke English.

The Pilgrims were not in good condition. They were living in dirt-covered shelters, there was a shortage of food, and nearly half of them had died during the winter. They obviously needed help and the two men were a welcome sight. Squanto, who probably knew more English than any other Indian in North America at that time, decided to stay with the Pilgrims for the next few months and teach them how to survive in this new place. He brought them deer meat and beaver skins. He taught them how to cultivate corn and other new vegetables and how to build Indian-style houses. He pointed out poisonous plants and showed how other plants could be used as medicine. He explained how to dig and cook clams, how to get sap from the maple trees, use fish for fertilizer, and dozens of other skills needed for their survival.

By the time fall arrived things were going much better for the Pilgrims, thanks to the help they had received. The corn they planted had grown well. There was enough food to last the winter. They were living comfortably in their Indian-style wigwams and had also managed to build one European-style building out of squared logs. This was their church. They were now in better health, and they knew more about surviving in this new land. The Pilgrims decided to have a thanksgiving feast to celebrate their good fortune. They had observed thanksgiving feasts in November as religious obligations in England for many years before coming to the New World.

The Algonkian tribes held six thanksgiving festivals during the year. The beginning of the Algonkian year was marked by the Maple Dance which gave thanks to the Creator for the maple tree and its syrup. This ceremony occurred when the weather was warm enough for the sap to run in the maple trees, sometimes as early as February. Second was the planting feast, where the seeds were blessed. The strawberry festival was next, celebrating the first fruits of the season. Summer brought the green corn festival to give thanks for the ripening corn. In late fall, the harvest festival gave thanks for the food they had grown. Mid-winter was the last ceremony of the old year. When the Indians sat down to the "first Thanksgiving" with the Pilgrims, it was really the fifth thanksgiving of the year for them!

Captain Miles Standish, the leader of the Pilgrims, invited Squanto, Samoset, Massasoit (the leader of the Wampanoags), and their immediate families to join them for a celebration, but they had no idea how big Indian families could be. As the Thanksgiving feast began, the Pilgrims were overwhelmed at the large turnout of ninety relatives that Squanto and Samoset brought with them. The Pilgrims were not prepared to feed a gathering of people that large for three days. Seeing this, Massasoit gave orders to his men within the first hour of his arrival to go home and get more food. Thus it happened that the Indians supplied the majority of the food: Five deer, many wild turkeys, fish, beans, squash, corn soup, corn bread, and berries. Captain Standish sat at one end of a long table and the Clan Chief Massasoit sat at the other end. For the first time the Wampanoag people were sitting at a table to eat instead of on mats or furs spread on the ground. The Indian women sat together with the Indian men to eat. The Pilgrim women, however, stood quietly behind the table and waited until after their men had eaten, since that was their custom.

For three days the Wampanoags feasted with the Pilgrims. It was a special time of friendship between two very different groups of people. A peace and friendship agreement was made between Massasoit and Miles Standish giving the Pilgrims the clearing in the forest where the old Patuxet village once stood to build their new town of Plymouth.

It would be very good to say that this friendship lasted a long time; but, unfortunately, that was not to be. More English people came to America, and they were not in need of help from the Indians as were the original Pilgrims. Many of the newcomers forgot the help the Indians had given them. Mistrust started to grow and the friendship weakened. The Pilgrims started telling their Indian neighbors that their Indian religion and Indian customs were wrong. The Pilgrims displayed an intolerance toward the Indian religion similar to the intolerance displayed toward the less popular religions in Europe. The relationship deteriorated and within a few years the children of the people who ate together at the first Thanksgiving were killing one another in what came to be called King Phillip's War.

It is sad to think that this happened, but it is important to understand all of the story and not just the happy part. Today the town of Plymouth Rock has a Thanksgiving ceremony each year in remembrance of the first Thanksgiving. There are still Wampanoag people living in Massachusetts. In 1970, they asked one of them to speak at the ceremony to mark the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrim's arrival. Here is part of what was said:

"Today is a time of celebrating for you -- a time of looking back to the first days of white people in America. But it is not a time of celebrating for me. It is with a heavy heart that I look back upon what happened to my People. When the Pilgrims arrived, we, the Wampanoags, welcomed them with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end. That before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a tribe. That we and other Indians living near the settlers would be killed by their guns or dead from diseases that we caught from them. Let us always remember, the Indian is and was just as human as the white people.

Although our way of life is almost gone, we, the Wampanoags, still walk the lands of Massachusetts. What has happened cannot be changed. But today we work toward a better America, a more Indian America where people and nature once again are important."

Elder’s Meditation of the Day October 15

“All of us begin to rethink what is good about ourselves – put the past where it belongs – and get on with the possibilities of the present!” –Howard Rainer, TAOS PUEBLO-CREEK

There is a saying, you move toward and become that which you think about. So the question for today is, what are you thinking about? Are you thinking bad things about yourself or are you thinking good things about yourself? Are you thinking about a worldly life? Are you thinking good things about people or are you gossiping about people? Are you focusing on past things or are you living in the future? We need to bring our thoughts into the NOW, right here.

Great Spirit, let me experience living in the present moment.

By: Don Coyhis

Red Road Lesson 10

Turtle Island
Northern America has been called
Turtle Island by many Native tribes
for generations. The reference stems
from a belief that the continent was
placed upon the Great Turtle's back.
Drawings of North America often depict
the land as a turtle, and some use the
tortoise as a representation of their
tribes.
Indians love their friends and kin-
dred, and treat them with kindness.
-CORNPLANTER
SENECA, 1736-1836

October 15
In our language there is no word to
say inferior or superiority or equality
because we are all equal . . .
-ALANIS OBOMSAWIN,
ABENAKI

On This Date in
Native American History
October 15, 1925: The Vanishing Amer-
ican, a controversial motion picture
exploring the mismanagement and cor-
ruption of reservations and how this
affects the American Indian, premiered
in New York City. This sympathetic
view of indigenous people was not
completely well received by the
American public, and many debated
not only the condition of the American
Indian, but also what should be done
with them.


By: Terri Jean

Some of us go to great lengths to keep
from doing detail work--anything from flipping
through a directory for one name in ten thousand
to guessing at amounts in a recipe. No time, no
time.
Time isn't saved by guessing. Even when
we hit it right once in a while--most of the time we
are just a little off. How many of us take our basic
instructions from hearsay--how many don't really
want to know anyhow?
Life itself has an instruction book. There's
no reason to guess at what is right or wrong. We
have a script for every part we play in life. When we
have a need of any kind, the script has the wisdom
to handle it. The Scriptures leave out nothing--and
the biggest mistake we can make is to say we don't
believe it--and go off to figure it out by guessing.

We were put here by the Creator and these were our
rights.
CHIEF WENINOCK
YAKIMA
1855

By: Joyce Sequichie Hifler

BLACKFOOT LEGEND OF THE BEGINNING

Chewing Black Bones, a respected Blackfeet elder, told Ella E. Clark the following creation myth in 1953. Clark later published the account in her book, Indian Legends from the Northern Rockies.

Old Man came from the south, making the mountains, the prairies, and the forests as he passed along, making the birds and the animals also. He traveled northward making things as he went, putting red paint in the ground here and there --arranging the world as we see it today.

He made the Milk River and crossed it; being tired, he went up on a little hill and lay down to rest. As he lay on his back, stretched out on the grass with his arms extended, he marked his figure with stones. You can see those rocks today, they show the shape of his body, legs, arms and hair.

Going on north after he had rested, he stumbled over a knoll and fell down on his knees. He said aloud, "You are a bad thing to make me stumble so." Then he raised up two large buttes there and named them the Knees. They are called the Knees to this day. He went on farther north, and with some of the rocks he carried with him he built the Sweet Grass Hills.

Old Man covered the plains with grass for the animals to feed on. He marked off a piece of ground and in it made all kinds of roots and berries to grow: camas, carrots, turnips, bitterroot, sarvisberries, bull-berries, cherries, plums, and rosebuds. He planted trees, and he put all kinds of animals on the ground.

When he created the bighorn sheep with its big head and horns, he made it out on the prairie. But it did not travel easily on the prairie; it was awkward and could not go fast. So Old Man took it by its horns, led it up into the mountain, and turned it loose. There the bighorn skipped about among the rocks and went up fearful places with ease. So Old Man said to it, "This is the kind of place that suits you; this is what you are fitted for, the rocks, and the mountains."

While he was in the mountains, he made the antelope out of dirt and turned it loose to see how it would do. It ran so fast that it fell over some rocks and hurt itself. Seeing that the mountains were not the place for it, Old Man took the antelope down to the prairie and turned it loose. When he saw it running away fast and gracefully, he said, "This is what you are suited to, the broad prairie."

One day Old Man decided that he would make a woman and a child. So he formed them both of clay, the woman and the child, her son.

After he had molded the clay in human shape, he said to it,"You must be people." And then he covered it up and went away. The next morning he went to the place, took off the covering, looked at the images, and said "Arise and walk." They did so. They walked down to the river with their maker, and then he told them that his name was NAPI, Old Man.

This is how we came to be people. It is he who made us.

The first people were poor and naked, and they did not know how to do anything for themselves. Old Man showed them the roots and berries and said "You can eat these." Then he pointed to certain trees, "When the bark of these trees is young and tender, it is good. Then you can peel it off and eat it."

He told the people that the animals also should be their food. "These are your herds," he said. "All these little animals that live on the ground -- squirrels, rabbits, skunks, beavers, are good to eat. You need not fear to eat their flesh. All the birds that fly, these too, I have made for you, so that you can eat of their flesh."

Old Man took the first people over the prairies and through the forests, then the swamps to show them the different plants he had created. He told them what herbs were good for sicknesses, saying often, "The root of this herb or the leaf of this herb, if gathered in a certain month of the year, is good for certain sickness." In that way the people learned the power of all herbs. Then he showed them how to make weapons with which to kill the animals for their food. First, he went out and cut some sarvisberry shoots, brought them in, and peeled the bark off them. He took one of the larger shoots, flattened it, tied a string to it, and thus made a bow. Then he caught one of the birds he had made, took feathers from its wing, split them, and tied them to a shaft of wood.

At first he tied four feathers along the shaft, and with this bow sent the arrow toward its mark. But he found that it did not fly well. When he used only three feathers, it went straight to the mark. Then he went out and began to break sharp pieces off the stones. When he tied them at the ends of his arrows, he found that the black flint stones, and some white flint, made the best arrow points.

When the people had learned to make bow and arrows, Old Man taught them how to shoot animals and birds. Because it is not healthful to eat animals' flesh raw, he showed the first people how to make fire. He gathered soft, dry rotten driftwood and made a punk of it. Then he found a piece of hard wood and drilled a hole in it with an arrow point. He gave the first man a pointed piece of hard wood and showed him how to roll it between his hands until sparks came out and the punk caught fire. Then he showed the people how to cook the meat of the animals they had killed and how to eat it.

He told them to get a certain kind of stone that was on the land, while he found a harder stone. With the hard stone he had them hollow out the softer one and so make a kettle. Thus, they made their dishes.

Old Man told the first people how to get spirit power: "Go away by yourself and go to sleep. Something will come to you in your dream that will help you. It may be some animal. Whatever this animal tells you in your sleep, you must do. Obey it. Be guided by it. If later you want help, if you are traveling alone and cry aloud for help, your prayer will be answered. It may be by an eagle, perhaps by a buffalo, perhaps by a bear. Whatever animal hears your prayer you must listen to it."

That was how the first people got along in the world, by the power given to them in their dreams.

After this, Old Man kept on traveling north. Many of the animals that he had created followed him. They understood when he spoke to them, and they were his servants. When he got to the north point of the Porcupine Mountains, he made some more mud images of people, blew his breath upon them, and they became people, men and women. They asked him, "What are we to eat?"

By way of answer, Old Man made many images of clay in the form of buffalo. Then he blew breath upon them and they stood up. When he made signs to them, they started to run. Then he said to the people, "Those animals--buffalo--are your food."

"But how can we kill them?" the people asked.

"I will show you," he answered.

He took them to a cliff and told them to build rock piles: "Now hide behind these piles of rocks," he said. "I will lead the buffalo this way. When they are opposite you, rise up."

After telling them what to do, he started toward the herd of buffalo. When he called the animals, they started to run toward him, and they followed him until they were inside the piles of rock. Then Old Man dropped back. As the people rose up, the buffalo ran in a straight line and jumped over the cliff.

"Go down and take the flesh of those animals," said Old Man.

The people tried to tear the limbs apart, but they could not. Old Man went to the edge of the cliff, broke off some pieces with sharp edges, and told the people to cut the flesh with these rocks. They obeyed him. When they had skinned the buffalo, they set up some poles and put the hides on them. Thus they made a shelter to sleep under.

After Old Man had taught the people all these things, he started off again, traveling north until he came to where the Bow and Elbow Rivers meet. There he made some more people and taught them the same things. From there he went farther north. When he had gone almost to the Red Deer River, he was so tired that he lay down on a hill. The form of his body can be seen there yet, on the top of the hill where he rested.

When he awoke from his sleep, he traveled farther north until he came to a high hill. He climbed to the top of it and there he sat down to rest. As he gazed over the country, he was greatly pleased by it. Looking at the steep hill below him, he said to himself, "This is a fine place for sliding. I will have some fun." And he began to slide down the hill. The marks where he slid are to be seen yet, and the place is known to all the Blackfeet tribes as "Old ManÕs Sliding Ground."

Old Man can never die. Long ago he left the Blackfeet and went away toward the west, disappearing in the mountains. Before he started, he said to the people, "I will always take care of you, and some day I will return."

Even today some people think that he spoke the truth and that when he comes back he will bring with him the buffalo, which they believe the white men have hidden. Others remember that before he left them he said that when he returned he would find them a different people. They would be living in a different world, he said, from that which he had created for them and had taught them to live in.

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