kes. A glorious country to ride over--a country in which
the eye ranged across miles and miles of fair-lying hill and
long-stretching valley; a silent, beautiful land upon which summer had
stamped so many traces, that December had so far been powerless to efface
their beauty. Close by to the south lay the country of the great
Blackfeet nation--that wild, restless tribe whose name has been a terror
to other tribes and to trader and trapper for many and many a year. Who
and what are these wild dusky men who have held their own against all
comers, sweeping like a whirlwind over the sand deserts of the central
continent? They speak a tongue distinct from all other Indian tribes;
they have ceremonies and feasts wholly different, too, from the feasts
and ceremonies of other nations; they are at war with every nation that
touches the wide circle of their boundaries; the Crows, the Flatheads,
the Kootenies, the Rocky Mountain Assineboines, the Crees, the Plain
Assineboines, the Minnitarrees, all are and have been the inveterate
enemies of the five confederate nations which form together the great
Blackfeet tribe. Long years ago, when their great forefather crossed the
Mountains of the Setting Sun and settled along the sources of the
Missouri and the South Saskatchewan, so runs the legend of their old
chiefs, it came to pass that a chief had three sons, Kenna, or The Blood,
Peaginou, or The Wealth, and a third who was nameless. The two first were
great hunters, they brought to their father's lodge rich store of moose
and elk meat, and the buffalo fell before their unerring arrows; but the
third, or nameless one, ever returned empty-handed from the chase, until
his brothers mocked him for his want of skill. One day the old chief said
to this unsuccessful hunter, "My son, you cannot kill the moose, your
arrows shun the buffalo, the elk is too fleet for your footsteps, and
your brothers mock you because you bring no meat into the lodge; but see,
I will make you a great hunter." And the old chief took from the
lodge-fire a piece of burnt stick, and, wetting it, he rubbed the feet of
his son with the blackened charcoal, and he named him Sat-Sia-qua, or The
Blackfeet, and evermore Sat-Sia-qua was a mighty hunter, and his arrows
flew straight to the buffalo, and his feet moved swift in the chase. From
these three sons are descended the three tribes of Blood, Peaginou, and
Blackfeet, but in addition, for many generations, two other tribes