The Vengeful Wife and Other Blackfoot Stories

by Hugh A. Dempsey

Overview

The Vengeful Wife and Other Blackfoot Stories by historian Hugh A. Dempsey presents tales from the Blackfoot tribe of the plains of northern Montana and southern Alberta. Drawn from Dempsey’s fifty years of interviewing tribal elders and sifting through archives, the stories are about warfare, hunting, ceremonies, sexuality, the supernatural, and captivity, and they reflect the Blackfoot worldview and beliefs.

This remarkable compilation of oral history and accounts from government officials, travelers, and fur traders preserves stories dating from the late 1700s to the early 1900s. "The importance of oral history," Dempsey writes, "is reflected in the fact that the majority of these stories would never have survived had they not been preserved orally from generation to generation."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780806137711
Publisher:	University of Oklahoma Press
Publication date:	01/11/2006
Pages:	298
Sales rank:	962,714
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Hugh A. Dempsey, Chief Curator Emeritus of the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta, is the author of Crowfoot: Chief of the Blackfeet and The Amazing Death of Calf Shirt and Other Blackfoot Stories. A longtime editor of Alberta History, Dempsey is an honorary chief of the Blood tribe of the Blackfoot.

Read an Excerpt

The Vengeful Wife and Other Blackfoot Stories

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By Hugh A. Dempsey

UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS

Copyright © 2003 University of Oklahoma Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-4794-9

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CHAPTER 1

The Vengeful Wife

The summer of 1775 was a good time for Blackfoot women to pick the succulent figlike fruit of the prickly-pear cactus. The weather had been warm and the fruit plentiful. Although primarily meat eaters—and more particularly buffalo-meat eaters—the Blackfoot also enjoyed fruits of the land such as prickly pears, saskatoon berries, and wild turnips. The tribe was at war with the Snakes, the Crows, and the Crees, but its members still found time to gather such food when it became ripe.

Calf Looking, Onista'miwa, was a subchief of his band. He had a beautiful wife, Elk Woman, Ponoka'ki, and two young children. His band was camped south of the Little Bow River, and although enemy war parties had been seen in the area, the women had been anxious to pick prickly pears. After repeated requests Calf Looking finally agreed to take his wife to a place about twenty miles from the camp where the fruit was known to be plentiful. When other women heard they were going, they joined the two, making a happy cavalcade of horses and riders.

When they arrived at the site, Calf Looking rode to the top of a nearby hill to watch for enemies. From his vantage point he could look across the rolling foothills to the Rocky Mountains in the distance and, to the south and east, to the open prairie. After a short time he noticed something in the distance. At first he thought it might be a small herd of buffalo moving quickly along the grassy valley, but as they came nearer, he saw that it was a mounted war party at full gallop. Their scouts had obviously seen the pickers and had told the warriors to attack. It would be an easy kill: plenty of women and only one man.

Quickly, Calf Looking signaled the danger to the women, who immediately discarded their bags and rushed for their horses. Most of the older women had their own ponies, inferior little mounts that usually pulled travois when they were on the trail. They were no match for the magnificent horses of their enemies, for the attackers were soon recognized as Shoshonis, or Snakes, who possessed some of the finest horses in the Rocky Mountain region. As the fleeing women galloped towards their distant camp, one by one the slower ones lagged behind and were ruthlessly killed with a blow from a war club or the thrust of a spear.

Calf Looking was mounted on a fine buffalo runner, but his wife was not so lucky. Her travois pony could not keep up with the faster horses, so she cried to her husband for help. As he swung his horse around, Elk Woman jumped on behind him, clasping her arms tightly around his waist. But Calf Looking's horse, as good as it was, could not carry a double load and stay ahead of the Shoshoni pursuers. Finally, the young man turned to his wife and shouted, "Get off. The enemy will not kill you. You're too young and pretty. Some of them will take you, and I'll get a big party of our people and rescue you."

The woman pleaded with him, begging that they should die together, but heedless of her cries, Calf Looking shoved her from the horse and she tumbled to the ground. Then, with a burst of speed, his horse raced ahead, soon catching up with the others and outdistancing their pursuers.

No one had seen the young chief's actions and he told no one what had happened. Instead, like the other men who had lost wives, he painted his face black and wailed and lamented her loss. Later, when a relief party had been assembled, they rode back along the tragic route, each family stopping to pick up the slain and scalped woman who was their wife or mother. When the party reached the prickly-pear cactus field, Calf Looking's wife was the only one unaccounted for. As her husband had predicted, because of her beauty she had been taken prisoner instead of being killed. When they returned to camp, the chief dressed in his finest clothes, mounted his best horse—a coal black buffalo runner—and rode through the village, crying and announcing to all that he was going in pursuit of his missing wife.

When he went back to his lodge, Calf Looking cut off his hair in mourning and dressed in old rags—he was a pathetic figure as he sat and wept. Many people came to share his grief and to offer to join him in rescuing Elk Woman. The chief then invited his three brothers and his wife's three brothers into the tepee, where they all smoked, thus signifying their willingness to go with him. One of his wife's brothers included in the group was a young boy still in his teens, a handsome lad who had the longest hair of anyone in the camp. When the ceremony ended, the young chief took the pipe outside so that others who wanted to join the war party could also smoke.

Siksika elder Joe Little Chief recalled that after everyone had smoked, Calf Looking told the people, "Here is what I will do. My three brothers, also my wife's three brothers, and I will go and look for my wife. When we come back, if we do not come home with her, then all of you can go with me."

The following morning, Calf Looking and his six relatives picked up the trail of the Shoshoni raiders; they followed it south for many days across the open prairies until at last they came to a big river. On the far bank they could see the smoke rising from the Shoshoni camp. The Blackfoot party found a grove of trees on the side of a hill from which they had a good view of the land around them and the enemy camp across the water.

"I'll go down tonight and try to see my wife," he told the others. "You just stay here and wait. If I don't come back, you start off for home."

The young chief swam the river and then, with his robe wrapped around him to shield his face, he boldly walked into the enemy camp just as the shadows of evening were creeping over the land. He wandered from tepee to tepee, glancing inside if the door was open and always watching for a glimpse of his missing wife. At last he came to a large tepee in the center of the camp. By this time the village was in darkness, and peering through a narrow slit at the top of the doorway, Calf Looking saw his wife sitting quietly on the left side of the lodge.

Until then, he had not known for certain whether she was alive or dead. They had not found her body as they followed the Shoshoni trail, but if she had been killed it could easily have been carried away by wolves or other prairie beasts. But in fact, when Elk Woman was pushed from the horse, she landed unharmed and was quickly claimed by one of the triumphant warriors. He was immediately challenged by another, and in the end they agreed to present the girl to their chief. Upon seeing her, the chief decided to take her as his wife rather than as a slave, so she had been treated kindly.

Slipping away from the camp, Calf Looking searched for a place where he might intercept his wife without being discovered. Near the river, he found the path where the women went to get water, and along the shore was a cut bank with a hole large enough for him hide within it. Crawling inside, he pulled the earth around him until only his eyes showed through a narrow crack.

Next morning, he watched as the women came for water. They arrived in twos and threes, often laughing and joking as they dipped water from the turgid stream. There were young girls who were glad to be away from the eyes of their watchful mothers; old women who paused only briefly before returning to their labors, and even a few young men who casually strolled to the water's edge as though looking for missing horses but were actually trying to catch the attention of a particular girl. All day they came and went, but the young chief's wife never appeared. Then, in the late afternoon, a lone woman came for water. It was Elk Woman. Quickly, Calf Looking pushed the earth aside, jumped from the hole, and grasped his surprised wife by the arm.

"I came for you," he said. "Our children are very lonesome, so I came with three of my brothers and three of your brothers to look for you."

He told her that the others were hiding in the trees on the nearby hill and urged her to hurry so they could cross the river before he was discovered. But the woman drew back, saying, "Wait. These people have given me a great many pretty things. Let me go back. When it is night I will gather them up, steal a horse, and cross over to you."

Nothing the young man said could change her mind. She insisted that she should capture some trophies from the Shoshonis so that she could return to her people with pride rather than as an escaped prisoner. At last Calf Looking reluctantly agreed to wait for her across the river until she slipped away during the night.

As Elk Woman was returning to the lodge with her water, she picked up some black ashes from an old fire and put them in her mouth, as though she had been eating them. She threw herself on the ground, twisting and moaning as if demented, and then fell into unconsciousness. The Shoshoni chief carried her into the lodge and called for a medicine man to treat her. When she recovered, she used sign language to explain what had happened, for she could not yet speak her captors' tongue, nor could they understand Blackfoot.

With signs, she said that the Sun spirit had struck her down and given her a vision. This caused a stir among the people who crowded the lodge, as visions were an important part of their culture. She said the Sun spirit had told her that seven enemies of the Shoshonis were hiding in the trees across the river. One was a chief who was very powerful, while another was a young man with long hair. She told them that the life of the chief should be spared, that he should be brought to the camp and offered as a sacrifice to the Sun spirit.

The Shoshonis believed everything the woman said, for they had great faith in visions. The war chief organized a raiding party, which quickly surrounded the grove of trees just before sunset and attacked the Blackfoot hiding place. Calf Looking and his followers did not have a chance. As the arrows began flying into the trees, the chief's oldest brother shouted that they had been betrayed but that he would claim the honor of being the first to die. Brandishing his knife and war axe, he dashed from the trees but was slain before he reached the Shoshoni lines. The second brother said he would follow, so that his older brother would not travel alone on the road to the Sand Hills, the land of the dead. He too was killed.

When Calf Looking was the only one left alive, the Shoshoni leader called for his warriors to seize him and, after a short struggle, he was taken prisoner and brought back across the river. As the Shoshonis rode triumphantly into camp, they waved the bloody scalps in the air and displayed the war trophies of knives, bows, and axes taken from the bodies of the dead Blackfoot warriors. Especially prized was the scalp of Elk Woman's youngest brother, its the long black hair waved about in triumph before the scalp was presented to the Shoshoni chief.

Calf Looking was taken to the chief's lodge, where he was bound hand and foot. Elk Woman calmly sat in front of him and mockingly offered him food, but the angry Blackfoot retorted, "You have no heart, no pity. I came looking for you because our children are so lonesome for you. Look what you have done. Your brothers and my brothers have all been killed."

"What does he say?" the Shoshoni asked in sign language.

Elk Woman replied that the man had called the Shoshonis cowards and claimed that no torture could hurt him. He dared the chief to pour hot coals from his pipe onto his chest.

During times of war a dare could not be ignored or denied, so two men threw the Blackfoot on his back and pulled up his shirt, and the burning ashes were scattered on this chest. In spite of the searing pain and the smell of burning flesh, Calf Looking refused to cry out and would not give his wife the satisfaction of seeing his agony.

"You have no pity," he snarled at his wife. "Look what you told them to do to me."

The Shoshoni chief again made signs to Elk Woman, asking what the prisoner was saying. She replied that he was still defiant, and now he dared the chief to pour boiling water over his head. Again the chief could not refuse, so he instructed a woman to boil some water, and when it was ready, she poured a little of it on the prisoner's head. Calf Looking writhed in pain but refused to cry out, even when his hair began to fall out in chunks. He refused to ask for pity, and so the woman continued to pour the boiling water until all his hair was gone and he had lost consciousness.

When he was revived, he was in such pain that he wanted to die quickly. "Pity me," he said to his vengeful wife. "I have suffered enough. Let them kill me now. Let me hurry to join those who are already traveling to the Sand Hills." Again the chief asked the woman to translate, and she said Calf Looking wanted to be given to the Sun spirit, just as she had predicted in her vision. The chief agreed and said that next morning the Blackfoot prisoner would be tied to a tree and left to starve to death as an offering to the Sun.

Throughout Calf Looking's ordeal, the lodge had been filled with warriors who came to enjoy seeing the prisoner suffer. Near the entrance crouched a poor old woman whom everyone ignored. Her husband was dead, and she had survived on handouts of food from her neighbors and the chief. She lived in a tattered little lodge, with only her travois dog as her companion.

Her husband had been a Shoshoni; he had found her among the Crees many years earlier and had married her. Most people assumed that she was Cree, but she was really a Blackfoot who had been captured by the Crees when she was just a little girl. She had forgotten much of her original language, but she remembered enough to know that Elk Woman was lying when she translated the prisoner's messages. She felt sorry for the man and was determined to help him.

Next morning, the chief announced that they were moving camp and that the prisoner would be left behind as an offering to the Sun. The bark was stripped from a cottonwood tree, its trunk painted black, and the man tied securely in place. His face, too, was painted black to signify that he was to be left for the Sun spirit to claim.

Meanwhile, the old woman took her travois dog into the woods, tied a strip of leather around his jaws so that he could not bark, and left him tethered to a tree. When it came time to leave, she called for the dog but he did not appear. She cursed him, saying, "Wait till I find him, and I'll break his neck." As she stomped around the camp, the others laughed and ignored her and no one tried to help her. She was not surprised, for she was still considered to be a foreigner, even though she had been in the camp for many years. At one point the chief rode by and asked her why she was not ready. When she explained that her dog was missing, he offered to provide one of his own to pull her travois, but she refused, saying she would not leave her dog behind. The chief was not prepared to delay their departure for the sake of a crazy old woman, so when their horses were packed, everyone left.

As soon as they were out of sight, the woman released her dog and cut the cords that bound the unfortunate man. He collapsed to the ground, too weak from the tortures to move. Carefully, the woman bathed his head and placed a buckskin covering over it to protect it from the rays of the sun. She gave him a little water, and when he revived sufficiently she shared her small supply of pemmican with him. She had never had children of her own, so she told the young man that she was taking him as her son.

When he had regained some strength, Calf Looking thanked the woman and accepted her offer to become his mother. "I am a chief of the Blackfoot," he told her. "Now I will go back home to my people. I know when they see me and hear my story, they will have pity on me. You see all that grass? I will have an army as thick as the grass. I will have my revenge for what my wife has done to me."

He rested for a moment to catch his breath. Then he told the woman to pitch her tepee slightly apart from the others so that he would recognize it. Also, if the camp divided and went in different directions, she was to remain with the chief and plant a green stick in the ground, bent to point the direction they had gone. "Now I am going home," he said. "When I come, I will see you at night time and tell you what to do."

With a pair of moccasins and a small supply of dried meat supplied by his new mother, Calf Looking made his painful way back to his own territory. Many days later, as he approached his camp, he went to a nearby hill and sat there until one of the scouts noticed him. When the man drew near, the chief began to cry and wail, bemoaning the fate of his family and himself. Others came and saw his pitiful condition—his scalded head, burned chest, and lack of hair. He was escorted down to the camp, where he stopped in front of the lodge of his wife's parents.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Vengeful Wife and Other Blackfoot Stories by Hugh A. Dempsey. Copyright © 2003 University of Oklahoma Press. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

List of Illustrations,
Introduction,
1. The Vengeful Wife,
2. Medicine Pipes and Fur Traders,
3. Massacre at Sun River,
4. The Revenge of Bull Head,
5. They Acted Like Women,
6. The Battle at Elkwater Lake,
7. Ghosts,
8. Seen From Afar,
9. The Last Great Battle,
10. The Prisoners,
11. His Name Was Star Child,
12. Harrison's Horses,
13. Was Mary White Really White?,
14. The Bull Elk Affair,
15. The Rise and Fall of White Calf,
16. Mike Running Wolf,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,