River, a fort with a hundred police and horses and four huge cannons.Big Bear had ignored missionaries all his life, but with police that might be impossible. Was that the track message Bear had given him at Sounding Lake after he talked with his first policeman: a warning for the future?
Spring came with a last chinook blowing warm as summer, but there were no herds for a Thirst Dance. That guidance had been given, and so the band moved up the twisting Red Deer River as the frogs—good for eating—sang in marshes and oxbows, and hunted nesting geese and pelicans, the swans and cranes flying north. Scouts searched the horizon from every knob and butte, in every creek bed or coulee. The hunters with Big Bear rode west until they climbed through Old Man’s Bed onto the crown of the Wintering Hills, but in half a day they saw nothing, so they continued south around Dead Horse Lake. Soon the ravines of the Bow River cut below them, its water bright as sky flowing from the glacial mountains. Nothing but bleached skeletons in three days’ hard riding. They looked at one another, then without a word rode down. They forded the river on a ridge under the water so clear that their horses had no need to swim. The horses grappled up the muddy bank, and they dismounted, deeper in Blackfoot country than any Cree should dare, but if they found buffalo near the river—well—they would then decide if they could risk the women coming across to butcher them.
Big Bear looked down. Beside his moccasin was a small bump in the river mud. He bent, probed with his fingers, and suddenly he knew what he was touching. He washed the stone in a spot of water and its white grain emerged: it bent around to two back legs, curved forward over a white shoulder hump and under a nose to grey front bumps. As wide as his left hand.
Iniskim,
the Blackfoot called this: buffalo stone.
He clenched his fist, and power gathered in him hard and tight as his heart hammering. He could not believe what had been given him, but he had to. He was hiding it in his hand. He glanced at his men; they had all remounted, even Imasees, vigilant and alert to the water—the immense valley and the two river lines of horizon lying empty along the sky. He need explain nothing.
They fanned out on the high prairie, avoiding ridges so as not to appear on the skyline. But while they rode, Big Bear recognized that the highest hill, which in the deceptive level light at first seemed to be a distant butte, was actually a very close, massive rock cairn.
Thousands of stones mounded into a dome, its centre level with a mounted man’s waist. Most of the stones were the size of a human head, and lines of them radiated out like the roof rafters of a Blackfoot sundance lodge from itscentre pole. The lines ended at his horse’s hooves, in a necklace of single stones that circled around the central cairn. Sky and land cut deep to the shining river: every offered rock a prayer.
Slowly he rode around the west curve, and his men followed, riding wide, not a horse stepping inside the stones. There were small cairns in the outer ring, creating lines across the centre that pointed east and west, and then the ring opened south: two lines of large stones widening out over the prairie until they disappeared, as if marking the drive lanes for herding and chasing the stampeding buffalo into a pound or over a cliff. For generations People had acted their prayers here, petitioning the Buffalo Spirit to come, come, pity us, help us live, help us kill your animals.
Imasees was signalling: his son did not want them clustered together on the skyline. Big Bear signalled back and his hunters scattered, searching again.
Suddenly Big Bear could not endure the height of his horse; he had to slip off, fold his legs and sit, feel the ground where the driving lane opened the circle. The glacial stones piled together by People for millennia mounded up before him as if resting on the horizon, the prairie dimpled by
Spring came with a last chinook blowing warm as summer, but there were no herds for a Thirst Dance. That guidance had been given, and so the band moved up the twisting Red Deer River as the frogs—good for eating—sang in marshes and oxbows, and hunted nesting geese and pelicans, the swans and cranes flying north. Scouts searched the horizon from every knob and butte, in every creek bed or coulee. The hunters with Big Bear rode west until they climbed through Old Man’s Bed onto the crown of the Wintering Hills, but in half a day they saw nothing, so they continued south around Dead Horse Lake. Soon the ravines of the Bow River cut below them, its water bright as sky flowing from the glacial mountains. Nothing but bleached skeletons in three days’ hard riding. They looked at one another, then without a word rode down. They forded the river on a ridge under the water so clear that their horses had no need to swim. The horses grappled up the muddy bank, and they dismounted, deeper in Blackfoot country than any Cree should dare, but if they found buffalo near the river—well—they would then decide if they could risk the women coming across to butcher them.
Big Bear looked down. Beside his moccasin was a small bump in the river mud. He bent, probed with his fingers, and suddenly he knew what he was touching. He washed the stone in a spot of water and its white grain emerged: it bent around to two back legs, curved forward over a white shoulder hump and under a nose to grey front bumps. As wide as his left hand.
Iniskim,
the Blackfoot called this: buffalo stone.
He clenched his fist, and power gathered in him hard and tight as his heart hammering. He could not believe what had been given him, but he had to. He was hiding it in his hand. He glanced at his men; they had all remounted, even Imasees, vigilant and alert to the water—the immense valley and the two river lines of horizon lying empty along the sky. He need explain nothing.
They fanned out on the high prairie, avoiding ridges so as not to appear on the skyline. But while they rode, Big Bear recognized that the highest hill, which in the deceptive level light at first seemed to be a distant butte, was actually a very close, massive rock cairn.
Thousands of stones mounded into a dome, its centre level with a mounted man’s waist. Most of the stones were the size of a human head, and lines of them radiated out like the roof rafters of a Blackfoot sundance lodge from itscentre pole. The lines ended at his horse’s hooves, in a necklace of single stones that circled around the central cairn. Sky and land cut deep to the shining river: every offered rock a prayer.
Slowly he rode around the west curve, and his men followed, riding wide, not a horse stepping inside the stones. There were small cairns in the outer ring, creating lines across the centre that pointed east and west, and then the ring opened south: two lines of large stones widening out over the prairie until they disappeared, as if marking the drive lanes for herding and chasing the stampeding buffalo into a pound or over a cliff. For generations People had acted their prayers here, petitioning the Buffalo Spirit to come, come, pity us, help us live, help us kill your animals.
Imasees was signalling: his son did not want them clustered together on the skyline. Big Bear signalled back and his hunters scattered, searching again.
Suddenly Big Bear could not endure the height of his horse; he had to slip off, fold his legs and sit, feel the ground where the driving lane opened the circle. The glacial stones piled together by People for millennia mounded up before him as if resting on the horizon, the prairie dimpled by
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