This red man of the plains is a veritable Apollo Belvedere. He is pronounced by all ethnologists as possessing a physique hardly paralleled by any of the northern tribes. He fulfills in his life the nobility of his stature. At the age of sixty-five, his figure, seventy-four inches in height, stands unbent—supple and graceful. His whole aspect is that of quiet dignity, his voice is soft and musical, his eye is keen and penetrating; modestly and earnestly he describes his share in the Custer [pg 131] fight. He was trustworthy to the point of death. Very many times the safety of an entire command depended upon his caution and sagacity. He served as scout under Terry, Crook, and Custer.

While telling his story he stood upright, lifted his hands full length, which among the Crows signified an oath, meaning that he would tell the truth. His Indian boyhood name was Be-Shay-es-chay-e-coo-sis, “White Buffalo That Turns Around.” When he was about ten years of age his grandfather named him after an event in his own father's life. A white man pursued his father, firing his gun above his father's head in order to make him run. And he was afterward called “White-Man-Runs-Him.”

Regarding his boyhood days he tells us: “Until I was fifteen years of age, together with my boy playmates, we trained with bows and arrows. We learned to shoot buffalo calves, and this practice gave us training for the warpath. It answered two purposes: protection and support. We were also taught the management of horses. We early learned how to ride well. When the camp moved we boys waited and walked to the new camp for exercise, or we hunted on the way. We felt brave enough to meet anything. Thus it was that we roamed over the hills, and climbed the rocks in search of game, but we were sure to arrive at the camp just [pg 132] in time for the meal which had been prepared by the squaws. If on our way to the camp we came across game, such as a rabbit, we shot it with our arrows, broiled it and ate it for fun. When we got to the new camp we would all praise one boy for some deed that he had performed on the way, and then we would sing and dance. That boy's folks would give all us boys a dish of pemmican for the good deed he had performed. The little girls had small tepees. They practised cooking, learning from the older women. These girls would serve delicacies to us, and we would sing and dance around their tepee.”

“When we were quite small boys we would go out hunting horses, and bring back a dog and call it a horse. When we made a new camp we seldom stayed more than ten days. In that way our health was sustained by travel. While we were on the move from one camp to another, we had to cross wide streams. We boys would measure the width of the river, and compete with each other to see who could swim across without stopping. I am telling you now what I did to build myself up to be the man I am now. The boys who were the same age and size as myself would wrestle, and if a boy downed me three or four times, I kept up the practice of wrestling until I had more strength. Then I could throw this boy and I was satisfied. I selected a boy to run a race; if the boy [pg 133] passed me, then I made the distance longer, and if he passed me again, I made the distance still longer, for I knew that I was long-winded. Then I won the race.”

“Fifteen or twenty of us boys would go out to the river, and daub ourselves up with mud and so disguise ourselves that no one in the camp would know us. Then we would take jerked buffalo beef that the women had hung up around the camp to dry and go off out of sight and have a feast. None of us was caught at it, because they could not tell one boy from another. During this time I watched what old people did. When I came to grow up, I went forth equipped. I always had an amibition to do more than the best man in the camp could do. When I went on the chase, I made up my mind that I would bring home a buffalo or I would not go home. And my folks rejoiced, believing that they had a good boy to help support the family.”

“We were surrounded by many different tribes, Shoshones, Sioux, Piegans, and Gros Ventres. They were all our enemies. We often went on the warpath against these people, because they were always trying to take our horses and conquer our land. When we went on the warpath sometimes we would stop and kill a buffalo and have a feast. If we could, we crawled up on the enemy's camp and stole his horses. If we met a foe we tried to kill him and bring his scalp home.”

“Our custom of painting was a sign. If in a dream we saw any one painted, that was our medicine. In our dreams we would see various kinds of paints and how to use them; we would see certain birds and feathers, and we adopted this as our style of paint. Others would try to buy from us our style of paint. The kind of paint and feathers we wore made us brave to do great deeds—to kill the enemy or take his horses. We did not buy horses, but stole them. We gave the horses to our relations. If I got one or more horses, it represented so much value to me, and brought honour to me. And, besides, the girls admired the man who could go out and get horses, and in this way we won a wife. After marriage I would sell a horse, buy elk teeth, beaded leggings, and put them on my wife as a wedding present. Elk teeth and horses were a sign of wealth. Then my wife would make a tepee, and put it up; then I would settle down and have a home.”

“In early days we had nothing for clothing except the skins of animals. We used the buffalo hide or the deer hide for a breechclout. For a bucket we used the tripe of the buffalo, after thoroughly cleaning it. We would hang it up on the branch of a tree, full of water, and drink out of it.”

“The white people came long before I was born, but when I first remember the white man I thought he was very funny. [pg 135] I never knew of any one person particularly, but I know there are good white people and bad white people, honest white people and dishonest white people, true white people and mean white people. We always take it for granted that what the white people say is true, but we have found out by experience that they have been dishonest with us and that they have mistreated us. Now when they say anything we think about it, and sometimes they are true. I am saying this about the white people in general.”

“Going back to the days when we had no horses, we would see the buffalo on the plains; we then surrounded them, driving them as we did so, near to the edge of some steep precipice. When we got the buffalo up near the edge of the precipice we would all wave our blankets and buffalo robes and frighten the buffalo and they would run off the steep place, falling into the valley below, one on top of another. Of course the undermost animals were killed. Then we would go down and get them and take away the meat.”

“The Indians found some dogs on the prairie. After they got the dogs they would fasten a pole on either side of the dogs with a tanned hide fastened between the poles, and the Indians would put their trappings, their meat, and their pappooses on this hide stretched between the poles. In that way they moved from place to place, the dog carrying the [pg 136] utensils of the camp. We called it a travois. One day when we were moving, the dog who was carrying a baby in the travois saw a deer and ran after it. He went over a bank and carried the baby with him, and finally came back without the baby.”

“In counting the dead on the battlefield we placed sticks by the dead soldiers or Indians, then gathered the sticks up, took them to one place in a pile and there counted the sticks. We count by fixing events in our mind. We have a brain and a heart, and we commit to memory an event, and then we say Chief So-and-So died when we broke camp on the Big Horn, and So-and-So were married when we had the big buffalo hunt in the snow. Or we had a big fight with the Sioux when our tepees were placed in a ring in the bend of the Yellowstone River. We dated our time from these events.”