captive would be kept
for a time, and then the chief would take him off away from the camp, and
give him provisions, clothing, arms, and a horse, and let him go. The
captive man always had a hard time at first. When he was brought into the
camp, the women and children threw dirt on him and counted _coups_ on him,
pounding him with sticks and clubs. He was rarely tied, but was always
watched. Often the man who had taken him prisoner had great trouble to
keep his tribesmen from killing him.

In the very early days of this century, war parties used commonly to start
out in the spring, going south to the land where horses were abundant,
being absent all summer and the next winter, and returning the following
summer or autumn, with great bands of horses. Sometimes they were gone two
years. They say that on such journeys they used to go to _Spai'yu ksah'ku_,
which means the Spanish lands--_Spai'yu_ being a recently made word, no
doubt from the French _espagnol._ That they did get as far as Mexico, or at
least New Mexico, is indicated by the fact that they brought back branded
horses and a few branded mules; for in these early days there was no stock
upon the Plains, and animals bearing brands were found only in the Spanish
American settlements. The Blackfeet did not know what these marks
meant. From their raids into these distant lands, they sometimes brought
back arms of strange make, lances, axes, and swords, of a form unlike any
that they had seen. The lances had broad heads; some of the axes, as
described, were evidently the old "T. Gray" trade axes of the southwest. A
sword, described as having a long, slender, straight blade, inlaid with a
flower pattern of yellow metal along the back, was probably an old Spanish
rapier.

In telling of these journeys to Spanish lands, they say of the very long
reeds which grow there, that they are very large at the butt, are jointed,
very hard, and very tall; they grow in marshy places; and the water there
has a strange, mouldy smell.

It is said, too, that there have been war parties who have crossed the
mountains and gone so far to the west that they have seen the big salt
water which lies beyond, or west of, the Great Salt Lake. Journeys as far
south as Salt Lake were not uncommon, and Hugh Monroe has told me of a war
party he accompanied which went as far as this.

RELIGION

In ancient times the chief god of the Blackfeet--their Creator--was _Na'pi_
(Old Man). This is th