horses feeding on the hills, and went into the camp and cut loose two more.  Then we went off with the horses.  When we started, it was so foggy that I could not see the stars, and I did not know which way to run.  I kept travelling in what I supposed was the direction toward home, but I did not know where I was going.  After we had gone a long way, I stopped and got off my horse to fix my belt.  My wife did not dismount, but sat there waiting for me to mount and ride on.

“I spoke to my wife, and said to her, ‘We don’t know which way to go.’  A voice spoke up right behind me and said:  ’It is well; you go ahead.  You are going right.’  When I heard the voice, the top of my head seemed to lift up and felt as if a lot of needles were sticking into it.  My wife, who was right in front of me, was so frightened that she fainted and fell off her horse, and it was a long time before she came to.  When she got so she could ride, we went on, and when morning came I found that we were going straight, and were on the west side of the West Butte of the Sweet Grass Hills.  We got home all right.  This must have been a ghost.”

Now and then among the Blackfeet, we find evidences of a belief that the soul of a dead person may take up its abode in the body of an animal.  An example of this is seen in the story of E-k[=u]s’-kini, p. 90.  Owls are thought to be the ghosts of medicine men.

The Blackfeet do not consider the Sand Hills a happy hunting ground.  There the dead, who are themselves shadows, live in shadow lodges, hunt shadow buffalo, go to war against shadow enemies, and in every way lead an existence which is but a mimicry of this life.  In this respect the Blackfeet are almost alone.  I know of scarcely any other American tribe, certainly none east of the Rocky Mountains, who are wholly without a belief in a happy future state.  The Blackfeet do not especially say that this future life is an unhappy one, but, from the way in which they speak of it, it is clear that for them it promises nothing desirable.  It is a monotonous, never ending, and altogether unsatisfying existence,—­a life as barren and desolate as the country which the ghosts inhabit.  These people are as much attached to life as we are.  Notwithstanding the unhappy days which have befallen them of late years,—­days of privation and hunger,—­they cling to life.  Yet they seem to have no fear of death.  When their time comes, they accept their fate without a murmur, and tranquilly, quietly pass away.

MEDICINE PIPES AND HEALING

The person whom the whites term “medicine man” is called by the Blackfeet Ni-namp’-skan.  Mr. Schultz believes this word to be compounded of nin’nah, man, and namp’-ski, horned toad (Phrynosoma), and in this he is supported by Mr. Thomas Bird, a very intelligent half-breed, who has translated a part of the Bible into the Blackfoot language for the Rev. S. Trivett, a Church of England missionary.  These gentlemen conclude that the word means “all-face man.”  The horned toad is called namp’-ski, all-face; and as the medicine man, with his hair done up in a huge topknot, bore a certain resemblance to this creature, he was so named.  No one among the Blackfeet appears to have any idea as to what the word means.