Boys' Book of Indian Warriors Part 28

So, although all the wages went to her husband, she knows that the white people of the great United States remember the loving services of the brave little Bird-woman, who without the promise of pay, helped carry the Flag to the Pacific.

CHAPTER XVII

THE LANCE OF MAHTOTOHPA (1822-1837)

HERO TALES BY FOUR BEARS THE MANDAN

While the United States was getting acquainted with the Western Indians, there lived among the Mandans in the north a most noted hero--the chief Mah-to-toh-pa, or Four Bears.

Young Captain Lewis the Long Knife Chief, and stout Captain Clark the Red Head, who with their exploring party wintered among the Mandans in 1804-1805, and enlisted the Snake Bird-woman as guide, were the first white men to write a clear account of the curious Mandans; but they did not tell the half.

For a curious people indeed were these Mandans, dwelling in two villages on the Missouri River above present Washburn in central North Dakota.

They were polite, hospitable, and brave. Their towns were defended by ditches and loose timber palisades, not tight like those of the Iroquois and Hurons. Their houses were circular; of an earthern floor sunk two feet, and heavy six-foot logs set on end inside the edge of it, with a roof of timbers, woven willow, and thick mud-plaster; with a sunken fire-place under a hole in the center of the roof, and with bunks, screened by elk-hides or buffalo-robes, along the walls.

These houses were large enough to shelter twenty to forty persons; the roofs were favorite loafing spots, for men, women, and dogs.

The Mandans formed a happy, talkative people, of strange appearance, but exceedingly clean, fond of bathing, either in the river or in wicker tubs. Their hair was heavy, sometimes reached to the ground, and was black, brown, and frequently gray or pure white even on the young. Their eyes were likely to be hazel, blue or gray, instead of black; their skin almost white. They made gla.s.sy clay vases and bowls, and remarkable blue gla.s.s beads. In fact, they seemed to have white manners, white arts, and white blood. Rumor a.s.serted that they were partly Welsh, descended from the lost colony of the Welsh prince, Madoc.

Now this Madoc, a prince of the early Welsh people, set sail about the year 1180, with ten s.h.i.+ps, to found a colony in a new Western continent that he claimed to have discovered.

He never was heard from. He and his ten s.h.i.+ploads vanished. But if he reached North America, and traveled inland, to be swallowed up amidst the red blood, the strange Mandans may have been the proof of his arrival.

Their round boats, of bowl-like wicker-work covered with hide, and their way of dipping the paddle from the front instead of from the rear, were exactly the Welsh method of canoe travel.

In the days of Mah-to-toh-pa the Mandans numbered two thousand, in two towns allied with the towns of the Minnetarees. They were beset by the tough, winter-traveling a.s.siniboins to the north, and by the treacherous Arikarees and the bold Sioux to the south. Therefore when in 1833 the wandering artist George Catlin of Pennsylvania, who spent eight years painting Indians in their homes all the way from Florida to the Rocky Mountains, made a long stay among the Mandans, they rejoiced him by their brave tales as well as with their curious habits.

According to all the reports, the "bravest of the braves" in the Mandan towns was Mahtotohpa; second chief by rank, but first of all by deeds.

"Free, generous, elegant, and gentlemanly in his deportment--handsome, brave and valiant," says Artist Catlin. Such words speak well for Four Bears, but not a bit too well.

Before he arrived at the Artist Catlin lodge to have his portrait painted, the warning ran ahead of him: "Mahtotohpa is coming in full dress!" He was escorted by a great throng of admiring women and children. Now it was twelve o'clock noon, and he had been since early morning getting ready, so as to appear as befitted a n.o.ble chief.

His dress was complete: s.h.i.+rt, leggins, moccasins, head-dress, necklace, belt, robe, medicine-bag, tobacco sack, pipe, quiver, bow, knife, lance, s.h.i.+eld, tomahawk and war-club. And as he proudly stood erect, waiting, he made a splendid sight.

His s.h.i.+rt was mountain-sheep skins, one before, one behind, sewed together at their edges. They were embroidered with porcupine quills brightly dyed, and fringed with the black scalp-locks of the enemies whom he had slain in combat, and ta.s.seled with ermine tails. They were pictured with his deeds, painted in sign language.

The leggins were of finely dressed deer-skin, worked with the porcupine quills, fringed with the scalp-locks, and fitting tightly from moccasins to thighs.

The moccasins were of buck-skin, armored with the dyed quills.

The head-dress was a crest of two polished buffalo horns set in a thick mat of ermine, from which fell clear to his heels a ridgy tail of countless eagle plumes also set in the ermine fur.

The necklace was of fifty grizzly-bear claws, strung from otter skin.

The belt was of tanned buck-skin, supporting tomahawk and broad-bladed scalping knife with elk-horn haft.

The robe slung from his shoulders like a Roman toga was the softened hide of a young buffalo bull worn fur side in; and on the white skin side all the battles of his life had been painted.

The medicine-bag was a beaver skin, ornamented with hawk-bills and ermine. He held it in his right hand.

His tobacco sack was of otter skin decorated with porcupine quills. In it were dried red-willow bark, flint and steel, and tinder.

His pipe was of curiously carved red pipe-stone from the peace quarries in present Minnesota. The stem was ash, three feet long, wound with porcupine quills to form pictures of men and animals; decorated with wood-p.e.c.k.e.rs' skins and heads, and the hair of the white buffalo's tail. It was half painted red, and notched for the years of his life.

His quiver was of panther skin and filled with arrows, flint pointed and steel pointed, and some b.l.o.o.d.y.

His bow was of strips of elk-horn polished white, cemented with glue of buffalo hoof, and backed with deer sinews to give it spring. Three months had been required to make it. There was none better.

His lance had a deadly two-edge steel blade, stained with the dried blood of Sioux and Arikaree and Cheyenne and a.s.siniboin. The six-foot ashen shaft was strung with eagle feathers.

His s.h.i.+eld was the hide from a buffalo's neck, hardened with hoof glue.

Its center was a pole-cat skin; its edges were fringed with eagle feathers and antelope hoofs that rattled.

His battle-axe was of hammered iron blade and skull-p.e.c.k.e.r, with ash handle four feet long and deer-sinew grip. Eagle feathers and fur tufts decorated it.

His war-club was a round stone wrapped in raw-hide at the end of a cow-tail, like a policeman's billy.

After his portrait was painted, Mahtotohpa spread out his wonderful robe, and told the stories of the twelve battles and the fourteen scalps pictured on it by his own hand; and these stories included that of his Arikaree lance, and Cheyenne knife.

The lance story came about in this way. In the shaft of the lance, near the blade, there had been set an antelope p.r.o.ng; and when Mahtotohpa posed for his portrait, with the b.u.t.t of the lance proudly planted on the ground, he carefully balanced an eagle feather across this p.r.o.ng.

"Do not omit to paint that feather exactly as it is," he said, "and the spot of blood upon it. It is great medicine, and belongs to the Great Spirit, not to me. I pulled it from the wound of an enemy."

"Why do you not tie it to the lance, then?"

"Hus.h.!.+" rebuked Mahtotohpa. "If the Great Spirit had wished it to be tied on, it would never have come off."

Whereupon, presently, he told the story of the mighty lance. This had been the lance of a famous Arikaree warrior, Won-ga-tap. Some years back, maybe seven or eight, the Mandans and the Arikarees had met on horses near the Mandan towns, and had fought. The Mandans chased the Arikarees, but after the chase the brother of Mahtotohpa did not come in.

Several days pa.s.sed; and when Mahtotohpa himself found his brother, it was only the body, scalped and cut and pierced with an arrow, and fastened through the heart to the prairie by the lance of Won-ga-tap.

Many in the village recognized that as the lance of Won-ga-tap.

Mahtotohpa did not clean it of its blood, but held it aloft before all the village and swore that he would clean it only with the blood of Wongatap the Arikaree.

He sent a challenge to the Arikarees; and for four years he waited, keeping the lance and hoping to use it as he had promised. Finally his heart had grown so sore that he was bursting; and again holding the lance up before the village, he made a speech.

"Mahtotohpa is going. Let n.o.body speak his name, or ask where he is, or try to seek him. He will return with fresh blood on this lance, or he will not return at all."

He set out alone, on foot, like Piskaret, the Adirondack, had set out in his great adventure against the Iroquois. By night journeys he traveled two hundred miles, living on the parched corn in his pouch, until he was seven days hungry when at last he came to the Arikaree town where the lodge of Wongatap was located.

He knew the village well, for there had been brief periods when the Mandans and the Arikarees were at peace; besides, it was a warrior's business to know an enemy's lodges.

The Arikaree towns were much the same as the Mandan towns. Now Mahtotohpa lay outside and watched, until at dusk he might slip through between the pickets, and seek the lodge of Wongatap. He was enveloped in a buffalo robe, covering his head, so that he would be taken for an Arikaree.

He peeped through a crack in the Wongatap lodge and saw that his enemy was getting ready for bed. There he was, Wongatap himself, sitting with his wife in the fire-light, and smoking his last pipe. Pretty soon, as the fire flickered out, he rapped the ashes from his pipe, his wife raked the coals of the fire together, until morning; and now they two crawled into their bunk.