on't hurt me. I am a Piegan. Are any of my
people here?"

"Many of your relations are here," some one said. "They will protect you."

Some young men seized and tied her, as her husband had said to do. They had
hard work to keep her mother from killing her. "_Hai yah_!" the old woman
cried. "There is my Snake woman daughter. Let me split her head open."

The fight was soon over. The Piegans killed the people almost as fast as
they came out of their lodges. Some few escaped in the darkness. When the
fight was over, the young warriors gathered up a great pile of lodge poles
and brush, and set fire to it. Then the poor man tore the dress off his bad
wife, tied the scalp of her dead Snake man around her neck, and told her to
dance the scalp dance in the fire. She cried and hung back, calling out for
pity. The people only laughed and pushed her into the fire. She would run
through it, and then those on the other side would push her back. So they
kept her running through the fire, until she fell down and died.

The old Snake woman had come out of the brush with her relations. Because
she had been so good, the Piegans gave her, and those with her, one-half of
all the horses and valuable things they had taken. "_Kyi!_" said the Piegan
chief. "That is all for you, because you helped this poor man. To-morrow
morning we start back North. If your heart is that way, go too and live
with us." So these Snakes joined the Piegans and lived with them until they
died, and their children married with the Piegans, and at last they were no
longer Snake people.[1]

[Footnote 1: When the Hudson's Bay Company first established a fort at
Edmonton, a daughter of one of these Snakes married a white employee of the
company, named, in Blackfoot, _O-wai_, Egg.]

THE LOST CHILDREN

Once a camp of people stopped on the bank of a river. There were but a few
lodges of them. One day the little children in the camp crossed the river
to play on the other side. For some time they stayed near the bank, and
then they went up over a little hill, and found a bed of sand and gravel;
and there they played for a long time.

There were eleven of these children. Two of them were daughters of the
chief of the camp, and the smaller of these wanted the best of
everything. If any child found a pretty stone, she would try to take it for
herself. The other children did not like this, and they began to tease the
little girl, and to take her things away from her. T