Stories

Men and women formerly did not live together as they do now, they were in separate bands like animals. Old Man was the means of bringing them together. The women were then camped on Crow Lodge River, beside a piskun, and secured their game by driving them over a high cliff. They were skilled in the art of tanning, and knew how to make good clothes and lodges from skins. Then men on the other hand, killed their game with bows and arrows. They did not know how to tan skins, or sew. Their lodges were made of green hides and their clothes of rough skins, roughly fastened together. When Old man came to the women’s camp, he met the Chief Woman and told her about the condition of the men. She asked him to bring the men to their camp, that they might choose a mate. Old man led the men to a hill outside of the women’s camp, where they all stood in a line. The Chief Woman, who also had first choice, came out very shabbily dressed. She walked along the line of men and selected Old Man for her mate. But he did not recognise her in her poor clothes and refused to go with her. The Chief Woman was very angry. She returned to camp and instructed the other women to pass by Old Man in their choosing. She dressed in her best clothes and returned again to the men. This time Old Man liked her appearance so much, that he kept getting in her way, seeking to be chosen. But she selected another mate. When the other women selected their mates, Old Man was left out. The chief Woman then changed him into a pine tree. There were formerly three pine trees beside the Women’s Piskun. There is now a fourth, which we call Old Man.

The first Indian were on the other side of the ocean, and Old Man decided to lead them to a better place. So he brought them over the ice to the far north. When they were crossing ice [said to be Buffalo Lake], the Sarcee were in the middle and there was a boy riding on a dog travois. As they were going along, this boy saw a horn of some animal sticking up through the ice. Now the boy wanted this horn, and began to cry. So his mother took an ax and cut it off. As she did so, the ice gave way and only those on this side of the place where the horn was will ever get here.

Now Old Man led these people down to where the Blood Reserve now is, and told them this would be a fine country for them, and that they would be very rich. He said, “I will get all the people here.” All the people living there ate and lived like wild animals; but Old Man went among them and taught them all the arts of civilization. (When crossing the ice, only about thirty lodges succeeded in getting across, and among these were the representatives of all the tribes now in this country. At that time the Blackfoot were just one tribe.) When he was through teaching them, he did not die, but went among the Sioux, where he remained for a time, but finally disappeared. He took his wife with him. He had no children.

Ksiistsi-komm (Thunder) was jealous of a man and his wife. He struck their tipi, knocked them unconscious and stole the woman. When the man recovered, he wandered all over asking many animals to help. All the animals were afraid of the power of thunder. Finally, Omahkai-stow (Raven) agreed to help. He flew to Ksiistsi-komm’s home and challenged him. Ksiistsi-komm shot lightning bolts to Omahkai-stow, trying to kill him. Omahkai-stow used his own power and by flapping his wings he brough the cold north wind and snow. Gradually, the cold slowed down Ksiistsi-komm until he could no longer send out the dangerous bolts of lightning. It was a long battle, but eventually Ksiistsi-komm gave up and returned the man’s wife.

Omahkai-stow insisted that he and Ksiistsi-komm divide the year into two parts – Winter which is Raven’s season and Summer – Thunder’s time. Omahkai-stow also ordered Ksiistsi-komm to make a peace treaty with Nitsitapii and to give the people his pipe as a sign of this agreement. From that day onward we open our thunder Medicine Pipe bundles each spring when we first hear the Thunder. We ask for good weather, good crops, and good luck for the coming year. Omahkai-stow lived on the Crowsnest Mountain.

Far up in the north there is a place known as Old Man’s Gambling Place. There is where Old Man played the game of the arrows and the rolling wheel. Once when he came to this place, he found some people playing at the game. He joined them, and lost his robe and moccasins. As soon as he took them off, the robe became back-fat, and the moccasins buffalo-tongues. As the winner had no use for such things, he gave them back at once. Then Old Man put the tongues on his feet, and they became moccasins, and, putting the back-fat on his shoulders, it became a robe. So he gambled again and again, always with the same results.

There was once a Great Spirit who was good. He made a man and a woman. Then Old Man came along. No one made Old Man; he always existed. The Great Spirit said to him, “Old Man, have you any power?” “Yes,” said Old Man, “I am very strong.” “Well,” said the Great Spirit, “suppose you make some mountains.” So Old Man set to work and made the Sweet-Grass Hills. To do this, he took a piece of Chief Mountain. He brought Chief Mountain up to its present location, shaped it up, and named it. The other mountains were called blood colts [sic?] “Well,” said the Great Spirit, “you are strong.”

“Now,” said Old Man, “there are four of us, — the man and woman, you and I.” The Great Spirit said, “All right.”

The Great Spirit said, “I will make a big cross for you to carry.” Old Man said “No, you make another man so that he can carry it.” The Great Spirit made another man. Old Man carried the cross a while, but soon for tire and wanted to go. The Great Spirit told him that he could go, but he should go out among the people and the animals, and teach them for to live, etc.

Now the other man got tired of carrying the cross. He was a white man. The Great Spirit sent him off as a traveler. So he wandered on alone. The man and woman who had been created wandered off down towards Mexico, where they tried to build a mountain in order to get to the sky to be with their children; but the people got mixed up until they came to have many different languages.

After the flood, Old Man mixed water with different colors. He whistled, and all the people came together. He gave one man a cup of one kind water, saying, “You will be chief of these people here.” To another man he gave differently colored water, and so on. The Blackfoot, Piegan, and Blood all received black water. Then he said to the people, “Talk,” and they all talked differently; but those who drank black water spoke the same. This happened on the highest mountain in the Montana Reservation [Chief Mountain?].

During the flood, Old Man was sitting on the highest mountain with all the beasts. The flood was caused by the above people, because the baby (a fungus) of the woman who married a sart was heedlessly torn in pieces by an Indian child. Old Man sent the Otter down to get some earth. For a long time he waited, then the Otter came up dead. Old man examined his feet, but found nothing on them. Next he sent Beaver down, but after a long time he also came up drowned. Again nothing was found on his feet. He sent Muskrat to dive next. Muskrat also was drowned. At length he sent the Duck (?). It was drowned, but in its paw held some earth. Old Man saw it, put it in his hand, feigned putting it on the water three times, and at last dropped it. Then the above-people sent rain, and everything grew on the earth.

All animals of the Plains at one time heard and knew him, and all birds of the air heard and knew him. All things that he made understood him, when he spoke to them, — the birds, the animals, and the people.
Old Man was travelling about, south of here, making the people. He came from he south, travelling north, making animals and birds as he passed along. He made the mountains, prairies, timber, and brush first. So he went along, travelling northward, making things as he went, putting rivers here and there and falls on them, putting red paint here and there in the ground, —fixing up the world as we see it to-day. He made the Milk River (the Teton) and crossed is, and, being tired, went up on a little hill and lay down to rest. As he lay on his back, stretched out on the ground, with arms extended, he marked himself out with stones, —the shape of his body, head, legs, arms, and everything. There you can see those rocks to-day. After he had rested, he went on northward, and stumbled over a knoll and fell down on his knees. Then he said, “You are a bad thing to be stumbling against”; so he raised up two large buttes there, and named them the Knees, and they are called so to this day. He went on further north, and with some of the rocks he carried with him he built the Sweet Grass Hills.

[...]

After this, Old Man kept on, travelling north. Many of the animals that he had made followed him as he went. These animals understood him when he spoke to them, and he used them as his servants. When he got to the north point of Porcupine Mountains, there he made some more mud images of people, and blew breath upon them, and they became people.

[...]

After he had taught the people these things, he started off again, travelling 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 here he again went on northward. When he had come nearly to the Red Deer’s River, he reached the hill where the Old Man sleeps. There he lay down and rested himself. The form of his body is to be seen there yet.
When he awake form his sleep, he travelled further northward and came to a fine high hill. He climbed to the top of it, and there sat down to rest. He looked over the country below him, and it pleased him. Before him the hill was steep, and he said to himself, “Well, 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 down are to be seen yet, and this place is known to all people as the “Old Man’s Sliding Ground.”
This is as far as the Blackfeet followed Old Man. The Crees know what he did further north.

It is told also that the creator made people and animals at another place and in another way. At the Porcupine Mountains, he made other earthen images of people and blew breath on the images, and they became people. They were men and women. After a time they asked him, “What are we to eat?” Then he took more earth and made many images in the form of buffalo, and when he had blown on them they stood up, and he made signs to them and they started to run. He said to the people, “There is your food.”

“Well, now,” they replied; “we have those animals, how are we to kill them?”

“I will show you,” he said.

He took them to the edge of a cliff and showed them how to heap up piles of stone, running back from the cliff-like, with the point of the V toward the cliff. He said to the people, “Now, do you hide behind these piles of stones, and when I lead the buffalo this way, as they get opposite to you, stand up.”

Then he went on toward a herd of buffalo and began to call them, and the buffalo started toward him and followed him until they were inside the arms of the V. Then he ran to one side and hid, and as the people rose up the buffalo ran on in a straight line and jumped over the cliff and some of them were killed by the fall.

“There,” he said, “go and take the flesh of those animals.” Then the people tried to do so. They tried to tear the limbs apart, but they could not. They tried to bite pieces out of the bodies, but they could not do that. Old Man went to the edge of the cliff and broke some pieces of stone with sharp edges, and showed them how to cut the flesh with these. Of the buffalo that went over the cliff, some were not dead but were hurt, so they could not run away. The people cut strips of green hide and tied stones in the middle, and with these hammers broke in the skulls of the buffalo and killed them.

When they had taken the skins from these animals, they set up poles and put the hides over them, and so made a shelter to sleep under.

In those days there were buffalo, and these black animals were armed, for they had longhorns. Once, as the people were moving about, the buffalo saw them and rushed upon them and hooked them and killed them, and then ate them. One day, as the creator was traveling about, he came upon some of his children that he had made lying there dead, torn to pieces and partly eaten by the buffalo. When he saw this, he felt bad. He said, “I have not made these people right. I will change this; from now on the people shall eat the buffalo.”

He went to some of the people who were still alive, and said to them, “How is it that you people do nothing to these animals that are killing you?” The people replied, “What can we do? These animals are armed and can kill us, and we have no way to kill them.”

The creator said, “That is not hard. I will make you something that will kill these animals.”

He went out and cut some straight service-berry shoots, and brought them in, and peeled the bark from them. He took a larger piece of wood and flattened it, and tied a string to it, and made a bow. Now he was the master of all birds and he went out and caught one, and took feathers from its wings and tied them to the shaft of wood. He tied four feathers along the shaft and tried the arrow at a mark and found that it did not fly well. He took off these feathers and put on three, and when he again tried it at the mark he found that it went straight. He picked up some hard stones and broke sharp pieces from them. When he tried them he found that the black flint stones made the best arrow points. He showed them how to use these things.

Then he spoke to the people, and said, “The next time you go out, take these things with you, and use them as I tell you. Do not run from these animals. When they rush at you, and have come pretty close, shoot the arrows at them as I have taught you, and you will see that they will run from you or will run around you in a circle.”

He also broke off pieces of stone, and fixed them in a handle, and told them that when they killed the buffalo they should cut up the flesh with these stone knives.

One day after this, some people went on a little hill to look about, and the buffalo saw them and called out to each other, “Ah, there is some more of our food,” and rushed upon them. The people did not run. They began to shoot at the buffalo with the bows and arrows that had been given them, and the buffalo began to fall. They say that when the first buffalo hit with an arrow felt it prick him, he called out to his fellows, “Oh, my friends, a great fly is biting me.”

With the flint knives that had been given them, they cut up the bodies of the dead buffalo. About this time Old Man came up and said to them, “It is not healthful to eat raw flesh. I will show you something better than that.” He gathered soft, dry rotten wood and made punk of it, and took a piece of wood and drilled a hole in it with an arrow point, and gave them a pointed piece of hardwood, and showed them how to make a fire with fire sticks, and to cook the flesh of animals.

After this, the people found a certain sort of stone in the land, and took another harder stone, and worked one upon the other and hollowed out the softer one, so as to make of it a kettle.’