mountains; but Sheep Eaters, all gone now."

"Ugh," he replied, "by and by, maybe so, Crees all gone, Crows all. Heap
bad for Injins."

I told him it would be a long time before that happened, and that some
day perhaps the Government would let the Crees come and live with the
Crows, on the beautiful Little Horn.

"Yes," he said, "that would be very nice. If the Great Father at
Washington would only say the word, we would come and work very hard. We
do not like our reservation in the north-west. It is too cold and the
land is poor and the Red Coats are not good to Injins."

When our visit was over and the Indians were preparing to move, I turned
the camera on the camp. A squaw who was watching me, gave a grunt,
turned her back, and ran; and the others, alarmed scattered like dry
leaves before a wind. They did not return until I had taken the camera
down and put it away. Little Bear explained that they were afraid,
because they thought the camera a bad spirit.

As the little band moved off toward the north, Chief Little Bear came
and grasped my hand and said, "You have always been my friend,
good-bye."

As they rode away with all their worldly goods packed on a few poor
cayuses, I could not help contrasting their present condition with that
of thirty years ago. Then the red man owned the country. The plains, the
rivers, the trees were his; and his, too, were the wild horse, the
buffalo, the elk, the deer, and the fish. Self reliant, free, happy, he
was then; today, a beggar. Everything taken from him, his tribal
relations broken, left alone. The hardest stroke of all was to have the
tribal relations broken, and to be forced under the control of the hated
and despised pale face. Happy indeed were the Sheep Eaters never to have
been driven from their mountain home and never to have known the power
of the pale face!

CHAPTER VI

CURIOSITIES AROUND PAINT ROCKS

For two days we camped among the Paint Rocks, studying them, but could
find nothing that indicated battle or fighting. Neither did we find any
dead, nor graves, nor even bones. If, like the Crows, they buried in the
trees, the last trace was gone. There were no mounds of earth, or
indications of earth burials. The rocks were mostly covered with
likenesses of nude men, women, and children, and with emblems. In places
the artist evidently stood on some elevation of wood or stone, for the
carving was higher than the average man could reach. Along a cre