American Borders: Milk River

Milk River: A Vision Quest

In a a vision quest, a young Blackfoot would spend four days and nights without water or food on top of a hoodoo -- their word for the strange rock formations in this valley.

THE NATIVE AMERICANS made this a sacred place. They trekked over the windy, barren plains and prairie attracted, as I was, by a small mountain peak in the distance. After trudging day after day over the flat land, they must have been astonished to arrive suddenly on the lip of a river valley so abrupt that if they had been traveling on wheels at high speed, they might have fallen right in.

In the valley lie clusters of twisted rock formations, like petrified tornadoes, laced with pits and holes that make some resemble faces. The tops of many are flat, providing perfect perches from which to watch the subtle spectacles of nature: deer feeding at sunset, or the closing of a cactus flower with morning's first light.

I arrived just before sunset to view a slow, muddy river below me, winding its way around a busy but clean campground. To assuage curiosity and to save the larger part of the park, visitors in one sacrificial area are allowed to climb on the miniature buttes and top-heavy rocks balanced on slender stems.

The border between the US and Canada was called the "medicine line" by the Blackfoot, because for some reason unknown and magical to them, the Canadian Mounties would stop chasing them when they crossed the line heading south with contraband whiskey. Likewise the Americans would stop the chase when they ran to the north.

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AFTER TAKING IN this astonishing view for a time, I rode into camp. It was Monday, and there were plenty of empty sites. I chose one next to the river, next to what looked to be a family of eight. The parents, who were in the first stages of making dinner, looked up and waved. The girls, who ranged in age from about four to twelve, all stared. Before I could even unpack, Moe walked over and handed me a beer, then invited me to dinner.

Moe (for Maurice) and Kathy were on vacation with their granddaughters. They all lived in Calgary and were here for a week. Before five minutes had passed it was clear that I'd been "adopted." The three older girls clamored for my attention, and it was decided that ten-year-old Melissa would be my volunteer guide to the campground bath house, which I could see through the trees one row of campers beyond. Melissa held my hand and chatted away about the campground and swimming and the rabbits.

A thousand feet later we were best friends.

"It's so nice to be friends," she said in her bright, happy child-voice. "Sometimes you just don't know when you're going to make friends." Her turned-up face was hopeful and confident.

She handed me a roll of toilet paper. "Here," she said. "I'll wait for you."

Back at camp, Christa, "eleven going on twelve," was reading a romance novel and a horror novel simultaneously. She had one or the other in her hand all the time. On one, the cover illustration centered on a woman dressed in a long pink gown, her hair spilling down her back, which was bent and supported by the arm of a man whose face you couldn't quite see. In the background was an expanse of green lawn and a plantation home, complete with gleaming white columns. The other book was covered in heavy, shiny red paper, the title framed by the drooling open mouth of a canine, sharp teeth glittering. Chantal, who was "ten going on eleven" ran around hyperactively or told silly jokes. Melissa watched us all adoringly.

IT RAINED ALL NIGHT, but morning brought a bright clear sky. Through the tent's screen window I watched a deer munching grass beside a table rock across the river. I unzipped the door. Two rabbits froze, except for their quivering pink noses, and waited for the right moment to bound away.

The girls were already awake and had signed up for the interpretive tour. When I said I was going too, the older girls, Melissa, Christa, and Chantal, spent the next half-hour arguing about whose "adult" I would be. I was literally surrounded by these little people, all arguing for my attention. We walked along and one or the other, or all of them, would suddenly clasp my hand or pull at my shirt. They surprised me, and made me laugh.

But they listened attentively on the tour, where we learned that it was the Blackfoot who considered this a sacred place -- and a useful one too. They drove buffalo from the plains over the cliffs, and the animals' bones are still buried here, along with arrowheads and butchering tools.

We wandered along a trail by a row of rocks with carvings and drawings on them. The prairie was above us, the river below. Some small children whimpered. It was getting hot.

Bonnie, our guide, told us that the Blackfoot used every part of the animal. The bones were made into implements, the nose cartilage into chewing gum. They were our first environmentalists, she told the group. "Perhaps if we had studied how they managed their lives, instead of experimenting with environmentalism on our own, from scratch, we would be way ahead of our present situation," she said.

Bonnie admires the Blackfoots, and has been invited to some of their gatherings, which is quite an honor for an outsider. A true "interpreter," she listens to the elders and the youngsters for clues about the meanings ofthe petroglyphs and pictograms carved and drawn on these rocks.

"SOME PEOPLE THINK a park interpreter is a language translator," she told me later, laughing. But her job is to find the most likely interpretation for the drawings. Sometimes it is obvious, or known by talking to the elders. For example, Bonnie pointed out in one pictogram that the end of the horse's nose was drawn without closure. This indicates that it is alive and breathing. If the nose is drawn closed, it is not breathing, which means it is dead. But a depiction of a person upside-down with another person standing over the figure is less clear. Depending on the interpretation, it might be a death scene, a birth scene, or it might be a soul rising from a dying person.

It is like any art or literature. What did the artist mean by this? It isn't always completely clear, and may always remain a private part of the artist's soul.

In Blackfoot tradition, the artist must keep his vision a secret. Drawings such as these played an important role in a ritual called a vision quest, in which young Blackfoot men would spend four days and nights without water or food on top of a hoodoo -- their word for the strange rock formations in this valley. During their time alone in the wilderness, the men would inscribe images on the rocks, but if a man admitted to making the inscriptions, his vision quest would be considered invalid.

Blackfoot men are said to have looked forward to their vision quests for many years, despite the four-day fast and the threat from wild animals. It was much more frightening then than now -- now there are just a few wolves, and no cougars. But the prairie wind howls over the tops of the sandstone rocks, and even in daylight with a full stomach, the imagination can run wild. Four days and nights here would easily be enough to visualize a scenario suitable for a secret soul painting.

The guided tour took us on a trail closed to unsupervised public use. With Bonnie there, we could get as close as we liked to the many drawings, and she told us we were free to take pictures of the rocks. "Just don't touch them, please," she asked, pointing out the damage done by outsiders. In places, modern visitors' initials and declarations of love obliterated the older sacred drawings.

AFTER THE TOUR, the girls rode to camp in Moe's truck while I hiked the two miles back alone, wanting to absorb what I had just seen and heard. The trail was empty, and I got to contemplate some pictograms all on my own. Only one was fenced off -- a large and important depiction of war, with more than 100 characters.

Farther along, the hoodoos rose above me, protecting me from the wind, and I could no longer see the river. Tiny rock flowers glowed almost fluorescent in the reflection of the sun on sandstone. Thick clumps of low-growing thistles bloomed purple around the base of the rocks; a cactus flower was closed, its waxy yellow cream petals holding in moisture from the night.

I picked some saskatoon berries, which were mealy, like old blueberries, and found some yellow currants. They were juicy and tart, like chewing on tiny sweet lemons.

The only reminder of modern human presence was the occasional numbered marker that corresponded to a description in the trail guide. Over here was a rock shaped like a man's face. Over there were some more pictograms.

Not far away a Mountie outpost ran along the border between the United States and Canada. This border was called the "medicine line" by the Blackfoot, because for some reason unknown and magical to them, the Canadian Mounties would stop chasing them when they crossed the line heading south with contraband whiskey. Likewise the Americans would stop chasing them there when they ran to the north.

ON THE WAY back to camp, I paused for a time to sit on a table rock in the sun. I tried to imagine being on a vision quest, restricted to that spot for four days and four nights. But it was hot, for one thing, and I was really thirsty. Then a group of rafters came along and startled a deer that had just crept up to the water.

I hadn't had a lifetime of preparation for the moment, and besides, I'm a girl and wouldn't have been allowed on a vision quest anyway. So I gave it up and followed the river back to my tent. When I arrived, I heard Moe talking. I didn't understand the first part of what he was saying, but the next sentence was clear:

"And she doesn't have to have a man around to help her do this, either," he said, in a stern voice. "You just try to remember that."