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Show 232 THE CALIFORNIA AND OREGON' TRAIL. himself honored that white men should give such preference to his hospitality. The squaw spread a buffalo-robe for us in the guest's place at the head of the lodge. Our saddles were brought in, and scarcely were we seated upon them before the place was thronged with Indians, who came crowding in to see us. The Big Crow produced his pipe and .filled it with the mixture of tobacco and slwngsasha, or red willow bark. Round and round it passed, and a lively conversation went forward. Meanwhile, a squaw placed before the two guests a wooden bowl of boiled buffalo-meat, but unhappily this was not the only banquet destined to be inflicted on us. Rapidly, one after another, boys and young squaws thrust their heads in at the opening, to invite us to various feasts in different parts of the village. For half an hour or mm·e we were actively engaged in passing from lodge to lodge, tasting in each of the bowl of meat set before us, and inhaling a whiff or two from our entertainer's pipe. A thunder-storm that had been threatening for some time now began in good earnest. We crossed over to Reynal's lodge, though it hardly deserved this name, for it consisted only of a few old buffalo-robes, supported on poles, and was quite open on one side. Here we sat down, and the Indians gathered round us. 'What is it,' said I, 'that makes the thunder?' 'It's my belief,' said Reyna!, 'that it is a big stone rolling over the sky.' ' Very likely,' I replied ; ' but I want to know what the Indians thjnk about it.' So he interpreted my question, which seemed to produce some doubt and debate. There was evidently a difference of • THE OGILLALLAH VILLAGE. 233 op.m ·w n. At las... t old Mene-Seela, or Red-Water, who sat b.y h1. mse lf a t on e side ' looked up with his ·withered face, and sa1d he had always known what the thunder was. It was a gr~at black bird ; and once he had seen it, in a dream, swoopmg down from the Black Hills, with its loud roaring wings; and when it flapped them over a lake, they struck lightning from the water.' 'The thunder is bad,' said another old man, who sat muffied in his buffalo-robe; 'he killed my brother last summer.' Reynal, at my request, asked for an explanation ; but the old man remained doggedly silent, and would not look up. Some time after, I learned how the accident occurred. The man who was killed belonged to an association which, among other mystic functions, claimed the exclusive power and privilege of fighting the thunder. Whenever a storm which they wished to avert was threatening, the thunder fighters would take their bows and arrows, their guns, their magic drum, and a sort of whistle, made out of the wing-bone of the war-eagle. Thus equipped, they would run out and fire at the rising cloud, whooping, yelling, whistling and beating their drum, to frighten it down again. One afternoon, a heavy black cloud was coming up, and they repaired to the top of a hill, where they brought all their magic artillery into play against it. But the undaunted thunder, refusing to be terrified, kept moving straight onward, and darted out a bright flash which struck one of the party dead, as he was in the very act of shaking his.long iron-pointed lance against it. The rest scattered and ran yelling in an ecstasy of superstitious terror back to .their lodges. The lodge of my host Kongra Tonga, or the Big C1·ow, |
