| "The crow country"
said he, "is a good country." The Great Spirit has put it
exactly in the right place; while you are n it you fare well; whenever
you go out of it, whichever way you travel, you fare worse.
If you go to the south, you have to water over great barren plains;
the water is warm and bad and meet with fever and ague. To the north
it is cold; the winters are long and bitter and there is no grass;
you can not keep horses there but must travel with dogs. What is a
country without horses?
On the Columbia they
are poor and dirty, paddle about in canoes and eat fish. Their teeth
are worn out; they are always taking fish bones out of their mouths;
fish is poor food.
To the east they dwell
in villages; they live well, but they drink the muddy waters of
the Missouri - that is bad. A Crow's dog would not drink such water.
About the forks of the
Missouri is a fine country; good water, good grass, plenty of buffalo.
In summer it is almost a good as the Crow country, but in winter
it is cold; the grass is gone and there is no salt weed for the
horses.
The Crow country is exactly
in the right place. It has snowy mountains and sunny plains, all
kinds of climates and good things for every season. When the summer
heats scorch the prairies, you can draw up under the mountains,
where the air is sweet and cool, the grass fresh, and the bright
streams come tumbling out of the snow banks. There you can hunt
the elk, the deer and the antelope when their skins are fit for
dressing; there you will find plenty of white bears and mountain
sheep.
In the autumn when your
horses are fat and strong from the mountain pastures you can go
down into the plains and hunt the buffalo, or trap beaver on the
streams. And when the winter comes on, you can take shelter in the
woody bottoms along the rivers; where you find buffalo meat for
yourselves and cottonwood bark for your horses, or you may winter
in the Wind Rivr valley, where there is salt weed in abundance.
The Crow country is exactly
in the right place. Everything good is to be found there. There
is no country like Crow country."
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