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One day one of the women said to the
other, "It is very lonely here; we have no one to talk with or to
visit."
"Let us kill our husband," said the
other: "then we can go back to our relations and have a good time."
Early next morning the man set out to
hunt, and as soon as he was out of sight his wives went up on top of
the butte where he used to sit. There they dug a deep hole and covered
it over with light sticks and grass and earth, so that it looked like
the other soil near by, and placed the buffalo skull on the sticks
which covered the hole.
In the afternoon, as they watched for
their returning husband, they saw him come over the hill loaded down
with meat that he had killed. When he threw down his load outside the
lodge, they hurried to cook something for him. After he had eaten he
went up on the butte and sat down on the skull. The slender sticks
broke and he fell into the hole. His wives were watching him, and when
they saw him disappear, they took down the lodge and packed their dogs
and set out to go to the main camp. As they drew near it, so that
people could hear them, they began to cry and mourn.
Soon some people came to meet them and
said, "What is this? Why are you mourning? Where is your husband?"
"Ah," they replied, "he is dead. Five
days ago he went out to hunt and he did not come back. What shall we
do? We have lost him who cared for us"; and they cried and mourned
again.
Now, when the man fell into the pit he
was hurt, for the hole was deep. After a time he tried to climb out,
but he was so badly bruised that he could not do so. He sat there and
waited, thinking that here he must surely die of hunger.
But traveling over the prairie was a wolf
that climbed up on the butte and came to the hole and, looking in, saw
the man and pitied him.
"Ah-h-w-o-o-o! Ah-h-w-o-o-o-o!" he howled,
and when the other wolves heard him they all came running to see what was
the matter. Following the big wolves came also many coyotes, badgers, and
kit-foxes. They did not know what had happened, but they thought perhaps
there was food here.
To the others the wolf said, "Here in this
hole is what I have found. Here is a man who has fallen in. Let us dig him
out and we will have him for our brother."
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All the wolves thought that this talk was
good, and they began to dig, and before very long they had dug a hole down
almost to the bottom of the pit.
Then the wolf who had found the man said,
"Hold on; wait a little; I want to say a few words." All the animals
stopped digging and began to listen, and the wolf said, "We will all have
this man for our brother; but I found him, and so I think he ought to live
with us big wolves." All the others thought that this was good, and the
wolf that had found the man went into the hole that had been dug, and
tearing down the rest of the earth, dragged out the poor man, who was now
almost dead, for he had neither eaten nor drunk anything since he fell in
the hole. They gave the man a kidney to eat, and when he was able to walk
the big wolves took him to their home. Here there was a very old blind
wolf who had great power and could do wonderful things. He cured the man
and made his head and his hands look like those of a wolf. The rest of his
body was not changed.
In those days the people used to make holes
in the walls of the fence about the enclosure into which they led the
buffalo. They set snares over these holes, and when wolves and other
animals crept through them so as to get into the pen and feed on the meat
they were caught by the neck and killed, and the people used their skins
for clothing.
One night all the wolves went down to the
pen to get meat, and when they had come close to it, the man-wolf said to
his brothers, "Stop here for a little while and I will go down and fix the
places so that you will not be caught." He went down to the pen and sprung
all the snares, and then went back and called the wolves and the
others—the coyotes, badgers, and kit-foxes—and they all went into the pen
and feasted and took meat to carry home to their families. In the morning
the people found the meat gone and all their snares sprung, and they were
surprised and wondered how this could have happened. For many nights the
nooses were pulled tight and the meat taken; but once when the wolves went
there to eat they found only the meat of a lean and sickly bull. Then the
man-wolf was angry, and he cried out like a wolf,
"Bad-food-you-give-us-o-o-o! Bad-food-you-give-us-o-o-o-o!"
When the people heard this they said to one
another, "Ah, it is a man-wolf who has done all this. We must catch him."
So they took down to the piskun [pen or enclosure] pemmican and nice back
fat and placed it there, and many of them hid close by. After dark the
wolves came, as was their custom, and when the man-wolf saw the good food,
he ran to it and began to eat. Then the people rushed upon him from every
side and caught him with ropes, and tied him and took him to a lodge, and
when they had brought him inside to the light of the fire, at once they
knew who it was. They said, "Why, this is the man who was lost."
"No," said the man, "I was not lost. My
wives tried to kill me. They dug a deep hole and I fell into it, and I was
hurt so badly I could not get out; but the wolves took pity on me and
helped me or I would have died there."
When the people heard this they were angry,
and they told the man to do something to punish these women.
"You say well," he replied; "I give those
women to the punishing society. They know what to do."
After that night the two women were never
seen again.
Compiled and edited by
Kathy Weiser/Legends
of America,
updated August, 2010.
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About the Author:
Blackfoot Indians Stories
was published by George Bird Grinnell in 1913.
George Bird Grinnell studied at Yale with an
intense desire to be a naturalist. He talked his way onto a fossil
collecting expedition in 1870, and then served as the naturalist on
Custer's expedition to the Black Hills in 1874.
Grinnell was interested in what he could learn from the
Indian
tribes of the region, and early on, was well known for his ability to get
along with
Indian
elders. The
Pawnee called him White Wolf, and eventually adopted him into the
tribe. Grinnell was also editor of Forest and Stream, the leading
natural history magazine in North America, the founder of the Audubon
Society and the Boone and Crockett Club, and an advisor to Theodore
Roosevelt. Glacier National Park came about largely through his efforts.
Grinnell also spent significant time working for fair and reasonable
treaties with
Native
American tribes, and for the preservation of America's wild lands and
resources.
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1913, photo courtesy Library of Congress.
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