To Feed My People: The Coming of Buffalo

When the people came from the underworld, they traveled southward for four days. During that time they got very hungry, for all they had to eat were the seeds of wild plants. The women made a kind of flour by grinding the seeds between two flat rocks, and a kind of gruel by stirring the flour into water, but still the people were hungry, and they grew tired and weak.

Each night the people camped and rested, and on the fourth night after they left the underwolrd, one family set its tipi apart from the main camp. The father went with the mother to look for wild seeds and the children stayed behind to keep up the fire in the tipi.

Pretty soon the children heard somebody strike the side of the tipi, and call to them, "May I come in?"

"Come in," they said, "but we have nothing but water to give you."

"Oh, that's all right," said the stranger, and he walked into the tipi. The stranger was a raven. He had his bow in its case and a quiver full of arrows on his back. He hung them up on the lodge poles as if he lived there and could put his medicine wherever he wanted to. Then the raven turned around and went out, and the children sat and looked at the quiver.

"I wonder what's in it?" the oldest boy said.

"I don't know," answered the oldest girl.

"Let's look and see," suggested the youngest boy.

So the children took the quiver down and peered inside it. There was a lump of meat and fat.

"What's that, sister?" said the smallest girl.

"Let's taste and try," sid the oldest boy.

So he reached into the quiver and pulled out the lump of meat and fat, and tasted it. "It's good," he said. He handed it to the others. All the children ate the meat, and as they ate it they began to get fat. Their mouths were smeared with grease, and even their eyes stuck out with all the good food they had been eating.

Long after dark, the mother came in with her basket of wild seeds. The fire was burning brightly in the tipi, and she could see how much her children had changed since she left them.

What has happened to you?" the mother cried.

"Look, Mother," said all the children together, and they showed her the lump of meat and fat, which was no larger and no smaller than when the raven had left it.

"What is that?" the mother exclaimed.

"Taste it," cried all the children together. "Taste it, Mother. it's good."

So the mother tasted the meat, and she, too, began to grow fat and healthy. She ran out of the tipi to find her husband and tell him about the wonderful thing that had happened. All the people in camp came to see the fat, healthy, beautiful children. They agreed that they would wait to see if the raven came back with more food.

Meantime, Raven knew what had happened. When he found that the food had been stolen from his quiver, he flew away to the east, to a mountain that was too far away for the people to see and find. The bat, who was outside the tipi in the darkness, saw the raven fly away, and followed him. Then she came back and told the people where the raven had gone.

All the people decided to gather in a council and talk things over. "Let us go to Raven's home and find out where he gets that wonderful food," they finally decided.

The people had to travel at night, for the bat was the only guide they had and she could not see in the daytime. Four nights they traveled and at last they came to a place in the mountains where there were many ravens. No one could recognize the raven who had visited the people's camp, although they looked and looked for him. The other ravens flew about in great swooping circles, cawing and crying, but saying nothing that the people could understand.

There were a great many logs lying on the ground in that place, pointing in this direction and that. "We should look for logs where there has been a fire," the people decided and they searched the mountain side, until they found a place where there was a great circle of ashes on the ground. All the ravens cooked together, and left the ashes of a great campfire lying there.

"But where do they get the food they cook?" the people said to one another. And no one could answer.

"Let's lie down in the pine needles and hide and watch," said the war chief. "Then perhaps we can see where the ravens find their food."

All the people sat that night and watched, and the next night and the next. The ravens flew over their hiding place in great circles, cawing aloud as they swooped amd dipped, but they never dropped any food or showed the place where it was hidden.

"Hiding and watching will do us no good," the war chief told the people. "We must try another way."

"What shall we do?" everyone wanted to know.

"Let us call on our medicine man," the war chief decided. "He is the wisest of us all. He will know what to do."

The war chief gave his pipe - his straight pipe, made of a straight piece of cane and wrapped around with sinew - to four of the bravest of his young men. "Take this to our medicine man," he instructed them.

The old medicine man was waiting. The four young men stood before him, and, one after another, three of them offered him the pipe. Each time the medicine man refused, until the fourth young man took the pipe and closed the medicine man's hands over it. Then he smoked the pipe, once to each of the four corners of the world, once to the Father above, once to the Earth below, and a last puff to the place where he stood and the people all around him.

"Why do you come to me?" the medicine man asked them.

"Father, we have come to you to help us learn where the ravens get their meat," the young men answered.

Again the old man smoked, this time to the four world corners and then he said, "Very well. I will do what I can to help you. Take me to your chief."

The four young men led the medicine man to the war chief and when they had smoked together, the medicine man asked, "How can I help you?"

"Use your power to find out for us where the ravens get their food," the war chief replied.

"Very well," said the medicine man. "Who was the first of the people to taste that food?"

"I did," said the oldest boy of the lonely band family.

"Come to me and do what I tell you to do," said the medicine man and when the boy stood before him, he used his magic power to turn the boy into a puppy.

"Stay here," the medicine man told him. "The rest of us are going away." The puppywagged his tail to show that he understood.

Then all the people gathered together whatever they owned and without making any secret of their movements they left the camp where they had hidden in the pine needles. In the morning, when the ravens saw that the people had gone, they came clustering around the camp, as ravens do, to see what had been left behind.

One little raven boy, looking around and around, suddenly found the puppy. He picked it up in his arms and ran to his father with it. "Look what I have found," the little boy cried.

"Put it down," his father ordered.

"Throw it away," his mother exclaimed.

"You don't know what kind of dog it is," the parents both said together. "It might be dangerous. Perhaps it has some kind of disease. Get rid of it."

"Please let me keep it," the little boy begged and he began to cry. "it's a pretty puppy. Look. He's trying to talk to me with his eyes."

"Perhaps he's trying to put a curse on you!" the mother screamed. "Don't have anything to do with that thing! Throw it away, I tell you!"

But the little boy begged and pleaded. He was their only child and his parents could hardly stand to see him so sad.

"I tell you what," said the father finally. "I'll pass a blazing stick in front of his eyes. If he doesn't cry or turn away, then you can keep him. But one yip out of that puppy and away he goes!"

The father seized a blazing stick from the fire and passed it in front of the puppy's eyes. Of course, the little boy had understood everything the raven said, so he stared back at the flame without making a sound.

"All right," agreed the raven father then. "If he can do that, you can keep him."

The little boy and the puppy snuggled down happily in their buffalo robes that night. The puppy had never before felt anything so warm and soft.

The little raven and his new pet played happily all the next day. Late in the evening, they went back into the raven tipi. "It's suppertime," the mother said.

"All right," answered the father, and he brushed the ashes away from the fireplace. A great flat stone lay there. The raven lifted the stone and disappeared beneath it. Presently he came back, driving a buffalo before him. He killed the buffalo with his stone knife and all the ravens gathered for the feast.

Every day for three days the same thing happened. The father raven brought a buffalo out of the earth beneath the fireplace stone. On the fourth morning, the boy of the People decided that he could do the same thing.

He waited until the sun was high in the sky and all the ravens were busy outside the tipi, in their camp. Then he turned himself back into a boy and took a white eagle feather in his right hand. With his magic feather, the boy pushed away the fireplace stone and descended into the hole in the earth which it had covered.

Down below there was a beautiful world, green with grass, with lakes of blue water scattered here and there. Many animals were grazing and there were great herds of buffalo of many colors. Four of them seemed to be the chiefs.

The boy took his eagle feather and went up to the first buffalo which was white. He put the white feather in the white buffalo's mouth. The buffalo shook his head.

"That is not for me," said the white buffalo. "Take it to my brother." He jerked his head in the direction of the black buffalo chief.

The boy went to the black buffalo chief and placed the feather in his mouth but the buffalo shook his head.

"That is not for me," he said, "Go back to my brother. He really is the greatest of all the animals."

So the boy took the feather back and returned to the white buffalo. "I know your power now," he said. "You are really the chief of all the animals - their leader and the most sacred of them all." The buffalo held the feather in his mouth and followed the boy to the surface of the earth. All the other animals, of every kind, followed them. That is why the hide of a white buffalo is sacred and must be used in many ceremonies.

By the time the boy of the people and the animals came through the hole, it was night, and the ravens were asleep. One of them heard the animals pass and jumped to his feet, wide-awake. He tried to push back the stone over the hole but he was too late; the animals were gone.

"Well, you have won over us." the raven said. "The animals belong to the people now. But whenever you kill any game, you must leave the eyes for the ravens to eat." And so it has been done ever since.

The boy found the track the people had left and with the animals following him, set out to find his family. He came to the first place where the people had camped and there he found an old firestick someone had forgotten, lying beside the cold camp fire ashes.

"Which way did my people go?" the boy asked the firestick. "When did they leave here?"

"They traveled west, back to the mountains," the firestick replied. "They left here three days ago."

The next morning, the boy and the animals started on and in the evening they came to another deserted campground. Here they found an old ladder someone had left behind.

"When did my people leave here?" the boy asked the ladder.

"Two days ago," the ladder answered. "You are following close on their trail."

At the third camping place, the following night, the boy found another old firestick and when he asked it how far away the people were, the firestick answered, "They left here yesterday."

The fourth night, they found another old ladder. "Oh, the people left here early this morning," the ladder said when the boy questioned it. "Hurry along on your way. You'll catch up with them."

And so it was. On the fifth evening the boy with his animals following him as tamely as if they were sheep, walked into the people's camp. The buffalo scattered out and all the animals began to graze wherever they could find food.

One of the deer went to the lodge of an old woman who lived all alone and began to nibble the brush that covered her shelter. The old woman was angry, because it had taken her a lot of time and trouble to build even her little brush hut. She caught up a stick from the fire and rushed outside where she began to beat the deer over the nose. The white ashes on the stick stuck to the deer's nose and from that day to this, every deer has carried a white mark across its face.

"Stay away from the people from now on," the old woman ordered. "Your nose will tell you when you are getting near them."

The deer left the camp and all the other animals followed him for they would not stay in a place where their brother was mistreated. And from that day to this, animals will come near a camp only at night, and the people must search far and wide for game in the daytime.

Men and animals were no longer friends and because of the old woman, the animals could smell the people and stay far away from them.