Fools Crow

Rides-at-the-door sits in his lodge thinking that while he has succeeded with Fools Crow, he has failed with Running Fisher. He has learned about his younger son’s relationship with his third wife. Kills-close-to-the-lake enters and resigns herself to being shamed for her disgraceful conduct. Rides-at-the-door tells Kills-close-to-the-lake that she has dishonored his lodge. However, he says that he was wrong to take such a young wife and asks her forgiveness for neglecting her and allowing his other wives to mistreat her. While he cannot forgive her for her shameful behavior, he will allow her to return home to her father if she vows never to tell anyone the real reason for her return. He tells Running Fisher to go seek refuge with his mother’s relatives among “the far north people” (346). Running Fisher tells his father that he has acted so shamefully because he knows himself to be “a nothing-one” (347). He believes that on the day of the eclipse, before the attack on the Crow camps, he lost his courage. Since then, he has had to watch his brother earn wealth and honor and learn medicine, as well as gain a wife who carries his child. He is now nothing but a jealous coward. Rides-at-the-door regrets that he did not realize Running Fisher’s feelings earlier and tells his son that if he purifies himself during his stay with the Siksikas people, he may someday return to the Lone Eaters. 

The mysterious woman tells Fools Crow that she is Feather Woman, the wife of Morning Star and mother of Star Boy. She explains that she was sent to this place instead of the Sand Hills to live in mourning. Each day at dawn her husband and son appear to “remind [her] of her transgression” (353). She tells the story of how she dug up the sacred turnip and was sent back to earth with Star Boy by her husband and parents-in-law, Sun and Moon, as punishment. She believes that her crime and her grief has brought about the “sickness and hunger, Napikwans and war” that the Pikuni now experience (355).

She suddenly gets up and leaves the tipi where they are sitting. Fools Crow looks at the designs on the tipi and sees that they represent the history of the Pikuni. Suddenly, the designs begin to move, and he realizes that he is being shown what will happen to his people in the future. After seeing people dying of white-scabs disease, he sees the seizers riding into the country of the Pikuni. He then sees that there are no longer any blackhorn grazing where they were once abundant. He is then shown many Pikuni people grieving, surrounded by their dead. He realizes that his people are starving because they no longer have the animals that they once relied on for food. The last image is of Pikuni children attending a Napikwan school wearing Napikwan clothes and hairstyles. The woman returns and tells Fools Crow that despite what he has witnessed, he can still do “much good” for his people by preparing them “for the times to come” (362). He tells her that he grieves for his children and their children and the fact that they will never “know the life their people once lived” (362). Feather Woman says that although much will be lost to them, the stories of their ancestors will still be passed down to them.