BLACKFOOT LODGE TALES





We were sitting about the fire in the lodge on Two Medicine. Double Runner,
Small Leggings, Mad Wolf, and the Little Blackfoot were smoking and
talking, and I was writing in my note-book. As I put aside the book, and
reached out my hand for the pipe, Double Runner bent over and picked up a
scrap of printed paper, which had fallen to the ground. He looked at it for
a moment without speaking, and then, holding it up and calling me by name,
said:--

"_Pi-nut-ú-ye is-tsím-okan,_ this is education. Here is the difference
between you and me, between the Indians and the white people. You know what
this means. I do not. If I did know, I should be as smart as you. If all
my people knew, the white people would not always get the best of us."

"_Nísah_ (elder brother), your words are true. Therefore you ought to see
that your children go to school, so that they may get the white man's
knowledge. When they are men, they will have to trade with the white
people; and if they know nothing, they can never get rich. The times have
changed. It will never again be as it was when you and I were young."

"You say well, _Pi-nut-ú-ye is-tsím-okan,_ I have seen the days; and I know
it is so. The old things are passing away, and the children of my children
will be like white people. None of them will know how it used to be in
their father's days unless they read the things which we have told you, and
which you are all the time writing down in your books."