Pretty-shield: Medicine Woman of the Crows

Preface

THROUGHOUT FORTY-SIX YEARS IN MONTANA I HAVE HAD much to do with its several Indian tribes, and yet have never, until now, talked for ten consecutive minutes directly to an old Indian woman. I have found Indian women diffident, and so self-effacing that acquaintance with them is next to impossible. Even when Indian women have sometimes acted as my interpreters while gathering tribal legends they remained strangers to me. I had nearly given up the idea of ever writing the life of an old Indian woman when Pretty-shield delighted me by consenting to tell me her story.

Of all the old Indian women I know Pretty-shield would have been my choice, since in her the three essential qualifications for such story telling are in happy combination, age that permits her to have known the natural life of her people on the plains, keen mentality, and, above all, the willingness to talk to me without restraint. Besides these necessary qualifications Pretty-shield is a Wise-one, a medicine-woman, of the Crow tribe. She not only belongs to a great Crow clan, the Sore-lips that has given her people many leaders and chiefs, but to a prominent Crow family. And there is yet another reason why I should have selected Pretty-shield, having written American, the life of the aged Crow chief; Pretty-shield’s story would be contemporaneous, since she is not more than eleven years younger than the Chief, and of the same tribe; and the tribe itself is ideal. The Crows (Absarokees), who are essentially plainsmen, have inhabited what is now Southeastern Montana for generations. They were constantly at war with the Sioux, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and Blackfeet, so that nothing need be said of their ability as warriors. Their survival against such enemies, who greatly outnumbered them, is an eloquent proclamation that the Crows were brave.

Like the old men Pretty-shield would not talk at any length of the days when her people were readjusting themselves to the changed conditions brought on by the disappearance of the buffalo, so that her story is largely of her youth and early maturity. There is nothing to tell, because we did nothing, she insisted when pressed for stories of her middle life. There were no buffalo. We stayed in one place, and grew lazy.

Some of her stories are obviously tribal myths, others grandmother tales, and yet all, to the Indian mind, teach needed truths that may be obscure to others. Nothing is more bewildering to me than recording the dreams of old Indians. Trying to determine exactly where the dream begins and ends is precisely like looking into a case in a museum of natural history where a group of beautiful birds are mounted against a painted background blended so cunningly into reality that one cannot tell where the natural melts to meet the artificial.

Such a story as this, coming through an interpreter laboring to translate Crow thoughts into English words, must suffer some mutation, no matter how conscientious the interpreter may be (and Goes-together was conscientious). However, in this, as in all my work with Indians, my knowledge of the sign-language made it always possible for me to know about what Pretty-shield said, so that, even though she wished to do so, the interpreter could never get very far afield without my knowing of the divergence.

Anyhow Pretty-shield was all that I could have wished. If I have failed to let my readers know her the fault is mine.

F.B.L.

PRETTY-SHIELD

Medicine Woman of the Crows

One

I WAS KINDLING A FIRE IN AN OLD-FASHIONED CANNON stove occupying a corner of a room in the unused school building at Crow Agency when Pretty-shield entered with her interpreter, Goes-together, wife of Deer-nose, the Indian Police Judge. My back was toward the door, and besides this, the March winds from the plains rattled the window sashes so noisily that I did not hear the women’s moccasined feet until they were by my side. I felt relieved. They had promised to come; but knowing the natural shyness of Indian women I had been fearful that they might disappoint me.

The day is cold, I said, casually.

Yes, Goes-together answered. And then Pretty-shield spoke rapidly in Crow.

She wants to know what it is that you wish her to tell you, said Goes-together, leaning against the wall.

About herself, everything that happened to her since she was a little girl, I answered, putting chunks of soft coal into the wide door of the cannon stove.

Ahhh! We shall be here until we die, laughed Pretty-shield, her eyes merry. Many things have happened to me. I am an old woman, Sign-talker.

That is the reason why I want your story, Pretty-shield, I said, placing three hard-bottomed chairs beside a table. I want only a woman’s story, a woman who has lived a long time.

Seated, she watched me arrange my paper and a dozen sharpened pencils, her face again serious. I offered her a cigarette.

No, she said. My mother did not smoke, and I have never smoked.

Then, as though for emphasis, she drew her blanket more tightly about her ample shoulders. And I do not know if whisky is sweet or sour, she added, a little bitterly, I thought.

Talk signs to me, and Crow to Goes-together, I said in the sign-language.

Instantly her blanket fell from her shoulders. Yes, she signed, her eyes telling me that she perfectly understood the reason for this request. She never forgot it. Her sign-language told her story as well as her spoken words.

Settling back in her chair, she let her eyes wander idly about the room, as though perplexed. I saw that a beginning was going to be difficult, that Pretty-shield felt out of place and might give up the task of story telling. I must lead her, by roundabout ways, to talk of herself, and must not wait. I would first question her a little about the social customs of the Crows.

Tell me how a man treated a married sister-in-law, I suggested.

Ahh, you know, or you would not have asked me, she laughed, so good-naturedly that I felt reassured. A man was not permitted by tribal law to speak to a sister-in-law who was a married woman; and she could not lawfully speak to him. If either had a message for the other it must be sent by the woman’s brother, if she had one, and if not, then by somebody else. Sometimes a man, and his woman, and a sister-in-law, and her man, had to live, for a time, in the same lodge, and yet this law was no different because they had to live together. It was the same with a man’s mother-in-law. He could not speak to her, nor she to him; and they could not even sit together in the same lodge. This last law was not often broken; but the other one was sometimes forgotten.

And a man who married a woman had the right to demand her unmarried sisters as his wives? I asked.

Yes, if he wanted them, and their relatives believed he could take good care of them, she said. The women had little to say in this. A man, wanting a woman, would go first to her father, sometimes offering horses, sometimes nothing at all. The woman’s father, if he thought the young man worthy, would talk things over with his relatives [clan] and then, if they agreed, the match was announced, a feast given, and a new lodge was set up for the young couple, even though the man might already have two or three lodges with women in them, and even children. If a woman’s father had died, then her oldest brother acted in her father’s place in all things pertaining to marriage. A man’s parents always gave presents to his woman, when he took her, even horses, and fine clothing.

Where were you born? I asked, to get her started with her story.

I was born across the Big [Missouri] river from the mouth of Plum creek in the moon when the ice goes out of rivers [March] of the snow that Yellow-calf, and his war-party, was wiped out by the Lakota [Sioux]. The rolls of the Old Agency show her age to be seventy-four.

My mother’s name was Kills-in-the-night. My father was Crazy-sister-in-law. There were eleven of us children. I was the fourth child to be born to my parents, who were respected people of the Crow tribe.

And your name? I asked.

"Little-boy-strikes-with-a-lance, my father’s father, gave me my name, Pretty-shield, on the fourth day of my life, according to our custom. My grandfather’s shield was handsome; and it was big medicine. It was half red and half blue. This war-shield always hung on his back-rest at night. In the daytime it nearly always hung on a tripod back of his lodge, which of course faced the east.

No, a woman’s name was never changed unless, when she was yet very young, she did not grow strong. If she was weak, and her parents were afraid that they might lose her they sometimes asked one of her grandfathers to change her name to help her.

Do women ever name children? I asked.

Yes, sometimes, she said. A wise-one, even though she be a woman, possesses this right. I named my own children, and all of my grandchildren. My Helpers, the ants, gave me all these names. I listen to the ant-people, even to this day, and often hear them calling each other by names that are fine. I never forget them.

She moved her chair, with a glance at the big stove that by now was heating the room. I closed the damper, wondering if this was the time to ask Pretty-shield to tell me her medicine-dream.

My name was changed because I was sickly when I was a little girl, offered Goes-together, as I returned to my chair. And I grew strong afterward, she added, soberly.

I could not imagine Goes-together as a puny child. She is stout, a fat woman, much heavier than Pretty-shield.

Tell me of your girlhood, Pretty-shield, I said. Begin with your first memories.

Now she smiled, her eyes full of fun. "We were a happy people when I came onto this world, Sign-talker. There was plenty to eat, and we could laugh. Now all this is changed. But I will try to begin with the first things I remember.

"About the time when I came to live on this world my aunt, Strikes-with-an-axe, lost two little girls. They had been killed by the Lakota; and so had her man. This aunt, who was my mother’s sister, mourned for a long time, growing thinner, and weaker, until my mother gave me to her, to heal her heart. This aunt, Strikes-with-an-axe, was a River Crow. You know that because of a quarrel, just before my time [about 1832], the Crows divided into two tribes, the Mountain Crows, and the River Crows? Well, I was born a Mountain Crow, and this aunt was a River Crow.

"I can remember going away to live with my aunt, and the River Crows, although I could not have been three years old. This separation from my mother and my sisters was in fact not a very real one, because all the Crows came together often. These meetings gave me opportunities to see my family, so that I was happy, perhaps happier than I should have been at home. My aunt’s lodge was large, and she lived alone, until I came to stay with her. She needed me, even though I was at first too young to help her.

"I well remember the first time that the Crow clans gathered after I had left my mother to live with my aunt. It was in the springtime. A crier, on a beautiful bay horse, rode through the big village telling the people to get ready to move to the mountains. His words set thoughts of again seeing my mother and sisters and brothers dancing in my young head. I felt very happy. Almost at once my aunt began to pack up; and then she took down her lodge.

How I loved to move, especially when the clans were going to meet at some selected place, always a beautiful one. She turned to look out of the window at the wide plains, screened by the giant cottonwoods that surround Crow Agency, her eyes wistful.

"A crier would ride through the village telling the people to be ready to move in the morning. In every lodge the children’s eyes would begin to shine. Men would sit up to listen, women would go to their doors to hear where the next village would be set up, and then there would be glad talking until it was time to go to sleep. Long before the sun came the fires would be going in every lodge, the horses, hundreds of them, would come thundering in, and then everybody was very busy. Down would come the lodges, packs would be made, travois loaded. Ho! Away we would go, following the men, to some new camping ground, with our children playing around us. It was good hard work to get things packed up, and moving; and it was hard, fast work to get them in shape again, after we camped. But in between these times we rested on our traveling horses. Yes, and we women visited while we traveled. There was plenty of room on the plains then, so that many could ride abreast if they wished to. There was always danger of attack by our enemies, so that far ahead, on both sides, and behind us, there were our wolves who guarded us against surprise as we traveled. The men were ever watching these wolves, and we women constantly watched the men.

I have been dreaming, she said, smiling, not telling stories. I will try to stay awake after this.

Just here a boy of about sixteen years entered the room with an air of assurance. Decked out in the latest style of the movie cowboy, ten-gallon hat, leather cuffs and all, he approached Pretty-shield, spoke a few words to her in Crow, and then stood waiting while the old woman dug down into a hidden pouch for a silver dollar, which she gave him without a word.

My grandson, said Pretty-shield, when the boy had gone. "I have told you that I have raised two families of grandchildren. This one is of the first lot. They never got over needing me, though," she smiled, her kind face again merry.

I wonder how my grandchildren will turn out, she said, half to herself, a dazed look coming into her eyes. They have only me, an old woman, to guide them, and plenty of others to lead them into bad ways. The young do not listen to the old ones now, as they used to when I was young. I worry about this, sometimes. I may have to leave my grandchildren any day now.

Did you ever whip your own children? I asked.

No, Sign-talker, you know that my people never did such things. We talked to our children, told them things they needed to know, but we never struck a child, never.

She stopped short, her lips pressed tightly together. "Lately I did strike a child, she said, grimly. There seemed to be nothing else to do. Times and children have changed so. One of my granddaughters ran off to a dance with a bad young man after I had told her that she must not go. I went after her. It was a long way, too, but I got her, and in time. I brought her home to my place, and used a saddle-strap on her. I struck hard, Sign-talker. I hope it helped her, and yet I felt ashamed of striking my grandchild. I am trying to live a life that I do not understand.

Young people know nothing about our old customs, and even if they wished to learn there is nobody now to teach them. I believe that you know more about our old ways than any other man of your age, Crow or white man. This is the reason why I hide nothing from you. I have even spoken the names of the dead, which you know we Crows never do. Ask me anything you wish to know, and I will tell you, truthfully, Sign-talker.

You were telling about the time the Crow clans gathered.

Ahhh, we moved to the mountains, she murmured, her hands keeping up with her spoken words, "and when we reached the big village what a fine time we had! The meat! Fat meat, and dancing! I can hear the drums and the singing even now, and see the men dancing. My mother took me to her lodge, told me that I had