It was a very hot day.  All the lodge skins were raised and the people sat in the shade.  There was a chief, a very generous man, who all day long was calling out for feasts, and people kept coming to his lodge to eat and smoke with him.  Early in the morning this chief saw sitting on a butte near by a person close-wrapped in his robe.  All day long this person sat there and did not move.  When it was almost night the chief said, “That person has sat there all day in the strong heat, and he has not eaten nor drunk.  Perhaps he is a stranger.  Go and ask him to come to my lodge.”

Some young men ran up to the person and said to him, “Why have you sat here all day in the great heat?  Come to the shade of the lodges.  The chief asks you to eat with him.”  The person rose and threw off his robe and the young men were surprised.  He wore fine clothing; his bow, shield, and other weapons were of strange make; but they knew his face, although the scar was gone, and they ran ahead, shouting, “The Scarface poor young man has come.  He is poor no longer.  The scar on his face is gone.”

All the people hurried out to see him and to ask him questions.  “Where did you get all these fine things?” He did not answer.  There in the crowd stood that young woman, and, taking the two raven feathers from his head, he gave them to her and said, “The trail was long and I nearly died, but by those helpers I found his lodge.  He is glad.  He sends these feathers to you.  They are the sign.”

Great was her gladness then.  They were married and made the first Medicine Lodge, as the Sun had said.  The Sun was glad.  He gave them great age.  They were never sick.  When they were very old, one morning their children called to them, “Awake, rise and eat.”  They did not move.

In the night, together, in sleep, without pain, their shadows had departed to the Sandhills.

THE BUFFALO-PAINTED LODGES

The old lodges of the Piegans were made of buffalo skin and were painted with pictures of different kinds—­birds, or animals, or trees, or mountains.  It is believed that in most cases the first painter of any lodge was taught how he should paint it in a dream, but this was not always the case.

Two of the most important lodges in the Blackfeet camp are known as the [=I]n[)i]s’k[)i]m lodges.  Both are painted with figures of buffalo, one with black buffalo, and the other with yellow buffalo.  Certain of the Inis’kim are kept in these lodges and can be kept in no others.

This story tells how these two lodges came to be made.

The painters were told what to do long, long ago, “in about the second generation after the first people.”

In those days the old Piegans lived in the north, close to the Red Deer River.  The camp moved, and the lodges were pitched on the river.  One day two old men who were close friends had gone out from the camp to find some straight cherry shoots with which to make arrows.  After they had gathered their shafts, they sat down on a high bank by the river and began to peel the bark from the shoots.  The river was high.  One of these men was named Weasel Heart and the other Fisher.