“Well, now,” they replied; “we have those animals, how are we to kill them?”

“I will show you,” he said.

He took them to the edge of a cliff and showed them how to heap up piles of stone, running back from the cliff like this [Illustration:  two lines of diverging dots in a narrow < shape], with the point of the V toward the cliff.  He said to the people, “Now, do you hide behind these piles of stones, and when I lead the buffalo this way, as they get opposite to you, stand up.”

Then he went on toward a herd of buffalo and began to call them, and the buffalo started toward him and followed him, until they were inside the arms of the V. Then he ran to one side and hid, and as the people rose up the buffalo ran on in a straight line and jumped over the cliff and some of them were killed by the fall.

“There,” he said, “go and take the flesh of those animals.”  Then the people tried to do so.  They tried to tear the limbs apart, but they could not.  They tried to bite pieces out of the bodies, but they could not do that.  Old Man went to the edge of the cliff and broke some pieces of stone with sharp edges, and showed them how to cut the flesh with these.  Of the buffalo that went over the cliff, some were not dead, but were hurt, so they could not run away.  The people cut strips of green hide and tied stones in the middle, and with these hammers broke in the skulls of the buffalo and killed them.

When they had taken the skins from these animals, they set up poles and put the hides over them, and so made a shelter to sleep under.

In later times the creator marked off a piece of land for the five tribes, Blackfeet, Bloods, Piegans, Gros Ventres, and Sarsis, and said to these tribes, “When people come to cross this line at the border of your land, take your bows and arrows, your lances and your war clubs and give them battle, and keep them out.  If they gain a footing here, trouble for you will follow.”

OLD MAN STORIES

Under the name Na’pi, Old Man, have been confused two wholly different persons talked of by the Blackfeet.  The Sun, the creator of the universe, giver of light, heat, and life, and reverenced by every one, is often called Old Man, but there is another personality who bears the same name, but who is very different in his character.  This last Na’pi is a mixture of wisdom and foolishness; he is malicious, selfish, childish, and weak.  He delights in tormenting people.  Yet the mean things he does are so foolish that he is constantly getting himself into scrapes, and is often obliged to ask the animals to help him out of his troubles.  His bad deeds almost always bring their own punishment.

Interpreters commonly translate this word Na’pi as Old Man, but it is also the term for white man; and the Cheyenne and Arapahoe tribes tell just such stories about a similar person whom they also call “white man.”  Tribes of Dakota stock tell of a similar person whom they call “the spider.”