heard the shooting and the shouting, they came rushing to help us; and when
the enemy saw them coming, they began to yield and then to run away. Our
warriors followed and killed some of them; but the most of them got away
after having killed four warriors of our camp, whose hard fighting and
death had perhaps saved the little village.

After the enemy had retreated, my mother crossed the river again, being
helped over by a man who was on the side opposite the camp, and who let us
ride his horse, while he held its tail and swam behind it.

In the village that night there was mourning for those who had lost their
lives to save their friends. Their relations cried very pitifully over the
dead; and early the next day their bodies were carried to the top of a hill
near the village, and buried there.

After the mourning for the dead was ended, the people had dances over the
scalps that had been taken from the enemy, rejoicing over the victory. Men
and women blackened their faces, and danced in a circle about the scalps,
held on poles; and old men and old women shouted the names of those men who
had been the bravest in the fight. We little boys looked on and sang and
danced by ourselves away from the circle.

It was soon after this that my uncle made me a bow and some blunt-headed
arrows, with which he told me I should hunt little birds, and should learn
to kill food, to help support my mother and sisters, as a man ought to do.
With these arrows I used to practice shooting, trying to see how far I
could shoot, how near I could send the arrow to the mark I shot at; and
afterwards, as I grew a little older, hunting in the brush along the river,
or on the prairie not far from the camp with the other little boys. We
hunted the blackbirds, or the larks, or the buffalo birds that fed among