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Title: Trails Through Western Woods

Author: Helen Fitzgerald Sanders

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Language: English

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    TRAILS THROUGH
    WESTERN WOODS


[Illustration: LAKE ANGUS McDONALD]




    TRAILS THROUGH
    WESTERN WOODS

    By

    HELEN FITZGERALD SANDERS

    _Illustrations from Photographs
    by the Author_

    NEW YORK & SEATTLE
    THE ALICE HARRIMAN COMPANY
    1910




    COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY
    THE ALICE HARRIMAN COMPANY

    _Published, July 1, 1910_

    THE PREMIER PRESS
    NEW YORK




_DEDICATION_


    _To the West that is passing; to the days
    that are no more and to the brave,
    free life of the Wilderness that
    lives only in the memory of
    those who mourn its loss_




PREFACE


The writing of this book has been primarily a labour of love, undertaken
in the hope that through the harmonious mingling of Indian tradition and
descriptions of the region--too little known--where the lessening tribes
still dwell, there may be a fuller understanding both of the Indians and
of the poetical West.

A wealth of folk-lore will pass with the passing of the Flathead
Reservation, therefore it is well to stop and listen before the light
is quite vanished from the hill-tops, while still the streams sing the
songs of old and the trees murmur regretfully of things lost forever and
a time that will come no more. We of the workaday world are too prone
to believe that our own country is lacking in myth and tradition, in
hero-tale and romance; yet here in our midst is a legended region where
every landmark is a symbol in the great, natural record book of a folk
whose day is done and whose song is but an echo.

It would not be fitting to close these few introductory words without
grateful acknowledgment to those who have aided me toward the
accomplishment of my purpose. Indeed, every page brings a pleasant
recollection of a friendly spirit and a helping hand. Mr. Duncan
McDonald, son of Angus, and Mr. Henri Matt, my Indian friends, have
told me by word of mouth, many of the myths and chronicles set forth
in the following chapters. Mr. Edward Morgan, the faithful and just
agent at the Flathead Reservation, has given me priceless information
which I could never have obtained save through his kindly interest. He
secured for me the legend of the Flint, the last tale told by Charlot
and rendered into English by Michel Rivais, the blind interpreter who
has served in that capacity for thirty years. Chief Charlot died after
this book was finished and he lies in the land of his exile, out of the
home of his fathers where he had hoped to rest. From Mr. Morgan also I
received the account of Charlot's meeting with Joseph at the LoLo Pass,
the facts of which were given him by the little white boy since grown
to manhood, Mr. David Whaley, who rode with Charlot and his band to the
hostile camp.

The late Charles Aubrey, pioneer and plainsman, furnished me valuable
data concerning the buffalo.

Madame Leonie De Mers and her hospitable relatives, the De Mers of
Arlee, were instrumental in winning for me the confidence of the Selish
people.

Mrs. L. Mabel Hight, the artist, who has caught the spirit of the
mountains with her brush, has added to this book by making the peaks
live again in their colours.

In conclusion I would express my everlasting gratitude to Mr. Thomas
H. Scott, of Lake McDonald, soldier, mountain-lover and woodsman, who,
with unfailing courage and patience, has guided me safely over many and
difficult trails.

For the benefit of students I must add that the authorities I have
followed in my historical references are: Long's (James') "_Expedition
to the Rocky Mountains, 1819-20_," Maximilian's "_Travels in North
America_," Father De Smet's "_Oregon Missions_," Major Ronan's "_History
of the Flathead Indians_," Bradbury's "_Travels_," Father L. B.
Palladino's "_Indian and White in the Northwest_," and the _Reports_ of
the Bureau of Ethnology.

          HELEN FITZGERALD SANDERS.

  _Butte, Montana,
      April 5, 1910._




CONTENTS


       I. The Gentle Selish                                    15

      II. Enchanted Waters                                     77

     III. Lake Angus McDonald                                  89

      IV. Some Indian Missions of the Northwest                97

       V. The People of the Leaves                            155

      VI. The Passing Buffalo                                 169

     VII. Lake McDonald and Its Trails                        229

    VIII. Above the Clouds                                    245

      IX. The Little St. Mary's                               271

       X. The Track of the Avalanche                          281

      XI. Indian Summer                                       297




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


    Lake Angus McDonald                            _Frontispiece_

                                                      Facing Page
    Joe La Mousse                                              50

    Abraham Isaac and Michel Kaiser                            66

    Lake McDonald from McDonald Creek                          90

    Francois                                                  154

    Glacier Camp                                              234

    Gem Lake                                                  266

    On the Trail to Mt. Lincoln                               290




_THE GENTLE SELISH_




TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS




CHAPTER I

THE GENTLE SELISH


I

When Lewis and Clark took their way through the Western wilderness
in 1805, they came upon a fair valley, watered by pleasant streams,
bounded by snowy mountain crests, and starred, in the Springtime, by a
strangely beautiful flower with silvery-rose fringed petals called the
Bitter Root, whence the valley took its name. In the mild enclosure of
this land lived a gentle folk differing as much from the hostile people
around them as the place of their nativity differed from the stern,
mountainous country of long winters and lofty altitudes surrounding it.
These early adventurers, confusing this tribe with the nations dwelling
about the mouth of the Columbia River, spoke of them as the Flatheads.
It is one of those curious historical anomalies that the Chinooks who
flattened the heads of their children, should never have been designated
as Flatheads, while the Selish, among whom the practice was unknown,
have borne the undeserved title until their own proper and euphonious
name is unused and all but forgotten.

The Selish proper, living in the Bitter Root Valley, were one branch of
a group composed of several nations collectively known as the Selish
family. These kindred tribes were the Selish, or Flatheads, the Pend
d'Oreilles, the Coeur d'Alenes, the Colvilles, the Spokanes and the
Pisquouse. The Nez Percés of the Clearwater were also counted as tribal
kin through inter-marriage.

Lewis and Clark were received with great kindness and much wonder by
the Selish. There was current among them a story of a hunting party that
came back after a long absence East of the Rocky Mountains, bearing
strange tidings of a pale-faced race whom they had met,--probably the
adventurous Sieur de La Vérendrye and his cavaliers who set out from
Montreal to find a highway to the Pacific Sea. But it was only a memory
with a few, a curious legend to the many, and these men of white skin
and blue eyes came to them as a revelation.

The traders who followed in the footsteps of the first trail-blazers
found the natives at their pursuits of hunting, roving over the
Bitter Root Valley and into the contested region east of the Main
Range of the Rocky Mountains, where both they, and their enemies, the
Blackfeet, claimed hereditary right to hunt the buffalo. They were at
all times friendly to the white men who came among them, and these
visitors described them as simple, straight-forward people, the women
distinguished for their virtue, and the men for their bravery in the
battle and the chase. They were cleanly in their habits and honorable
in their dealings with each other. If a man lost his horse, his bow or
other valuable, the one who found it delivered it to the Chief, or Great
Father, and he caused it to be hung in a place where it might be seen by
all. Then when the owner came seeking his goods, the Chief restored it
to him. They were also charitable. If a man were hungry no one said him
nay and he was welcome even at the board of the head men to share the
best of their fare. This spirit of kindliness they extended to all save
their foes and the prisoners taken in war whom they tortured after the
manner of more hostile tribes. In appearance they were "comparatively
very fair and their complexions a shade lighter than the palest new
copper after being freshly rubbed." They were well formed, lithe and
tall, a characteristic that still prevails with the pure bloods, as does
something of the detail of their ancient dress. They preserve the custom
of handing down by word of mouth, from generation to generation, their
myths, traditions and history. Some of these chronicles celebrate events
which are estimated to have happened two hundred years or more ago.

Of the origin of the Selish nothing is known save the legend of their
coming out of the mountains; and perhaps we are none the poorer, for no
bald historical record of dates and migrations could be as suggestively
charming as this story of the people, themselves, colored by their own
fancy and reflecting their inner life. Indeed, a nation's history and
tradition bear much the same relation to each other as the conventional
public existence of a man compared with that intangible part of him
which we call imagination, but which is in reality the sum-total of his
mental inheritance: the hidden treasure of his spiritual wealth. Let us
look then, through the medium of the Indian's poetic imagery, into a
past rose-hued with the sunrise of the new day.

Coyote, the hero of this legend, figures in many of the myths of the
Selish; but they do not profess to know if he were a great brave bearing
that name or if he were the animal itself, living in the legendary age
when beasts and birds spoke the tongue of man. Likely he was a dual
personality such as the white buffalo of numerous fables, who was at
will a beautiful maiden or one among the vast herds of the plains.
Possibly there was, indeed, such a mighty warrior in ages gone by about
whose glorified memory has gathered the half-chimerical hero-tales which
are the first step toward the ancestor-worship of primitive peoples.
In all of the myths given here in which his name is mentioned, except
that one of Coyote and the Flint, we shall consider him as an Ideal
embodying the Indians' highest conception of valor and achievement.

Long, long ago the Jocko was inhabited by a man-eating monster who lured
the tribes from the hills into his domain and then sucked their blood.
Coyote determined to deliver the people, so he challenged the monster
to a mortal combat. The monster accepted the challenge, and Coyote went
into the mountains and got the poison spider from the rocks and bade him
sting his enemy, but even the venom of the spider could not penetrate
the monster's hide.

Coyote took counsel of the Fox, his friend, and prepared himself for the
fray. He got a stout leather thong and bound it around his body, then
tied it fast to a huge pine tree. The monster appeared with dripping
fangs and gaping jaws, approached Coyote, who retreated farther and
farther away, until the thong stretched taut and the pine curved like
a bow. Suddenly, the tree, strained to its utmost limit, sprang back,
felling the monster with a mortal stroke. Coyote was triumphant and the
Woodpecker of the forest cut the pine and sharpened its trunk to a point
which Coyote drove through the dead monster's breast, impaling it to the
earth. Thus, the Jocko was rid of the man-eater, and the Selish, fearing
him no more, came down from the hills into the valley where they lived
in plenty and content.

The following story of Coyote and the Flint is of exceptional interest
because it is from the lips of the dying Charlot--Charlot the unbending,
the silent Chieftain. No word of English ever profaned his tongue, so
this myth, told in the impressive Selish language, was translated word
for word by Michel Rivais, the blind interpreter at the Flathead Agency,
who has served faithfully and well for a period of thirty years.

"In the old times the animals had tribes just like the Indians. The
Coyote had his tipi. He was hungry and had nothing to eat. He had bark
to shoot his arrow with and the arrow did not go through the deer. He
was that way a long time when he heard there was Flint coming on the
road that gave a piece of flint to the Fox and he could shoot a deer and
kill it, but the Coyote did not know that and used the bark. They did
not give the Coyote anything. They only gave some to the Fox. Next day
the Fox put a piece of meat on the end of a stick and took it to the
fire. The Fox had the piece of meat cooking there and the Coyote was
looking at the meat and when it was cooked the Coyote jumped and got the
piece of meat and took a bite and in it was the flint, and he bit the
flint and asked why they did not tell him how to kill a deer with flint.

"'Why didn't you tell me?' the Coyote asked his friend, the Fox. 'When
did the Flint go by here?'

"The Fox said three days it went by here.

"The Coyote took his blanket and his things and started after the Flint
and kept on his track all day and evening and said, 'Here is where the
Flint camped,' and he stayed there all night himself, and next day he
travelled to where the Flint camped, and he said, 'Here is where the
Flint camped last night,' and he stayed there, and the next day he went
farther and found where the Flint camped and he said, 'The Flint started
from here this morning.' He followed the track next morning and went not
very far, and he saw the Flint going on the road, and he went 'way out
that way and went ahead of the Flint and stayed there for the Flint to
come. When the Flint met him there the Coyote told him:

"'Come here. Now, I want to have a fight with you to-day.'

"And the Flint said:

"'Come on. We will fight.'

"The Flint went to him and the Coyote took the thing he had in his hand
and struck him three or four times and the Flint broke all to pieces and
the Coyote had his blanket there and put the pieces in the blanket and
after they were through fighting and he had the pieces of flint in his
blanket he packed the flint on his back and went to all the tribes and
gave them some flint and said:

"'Here is some flint for you to kill deer and things with.'

"And he went to another tribe and did the same thing and to other tribes
and did the same until he came to Flint Creek and then from that time
they used the flint to put in their arrows and kill deer and elk.

"That is the story of the Flint."

       *       *       *       *       *

Coyote was the chosen one to whom the Great Spirit revealed the disaster
which reduced the Selish from goodly multitudes of warriors to a handful
of wretched, plague-stricken invalids. Old women are still fond of
relating the story which they received from their mothers and their
mothers' mothers even to the third and fourth generation.

Coyote laid down to rest and dreamed that the Voice of the Great Spirit
sounded in his ears, saying that unless the daughter of the Chief became
his bride a scourge would fall upon the people. When morning broke he
sought out the Chief and told him of the words of the Voice, but the
Chief, who was a haughty man, would not heed Coyote and coldly denied
him the hand of his daughter in marriage.

Coyote returned to his lodge and soon there resounded through the
forests the piercing cry of one in distress. Coyote rushed forth and
beheld a man covered with sores across the river. This man related to
Coyote how he was the last survivor of a war party that had come upon
a village once occupied by the enemy whom they sought, but as they
approached they saw no smoke arising from the tipis and no sign of life.
They came forward very cautiously, but all was silent and deserted. From
lodge to lodge they passed, and finally they came upon an old woman,
pitted and scabbed, lying alone and dying. With her last breath she told
them of a scourge which had fallen upon the village, consuming brave and
child alike, until she, of all the lodges, was left to mourn the rest.
Then one by one the war party which had ridden so gallantly to conquest
and glory, felt an awful heat as of fire run through their veins.
Burning and distraught they leaped into the cold waters of a river and
died.

Such was the story of the man whom Coyote met in the woods. He alone
remained, disfigured, diseased, doomed. So Coyote brought him into the
village and quenched his thirst that he might pass more easily to the
Happy Hunting Ground. But as the Great Spirit had revealed to Coyote
while he slept, the scourge fell upon the people and laid them low,
scarcely enough grief-stricken survivors remaining to weep for their
lost dead.

       *       *       *       *       *

Besides this legendary narrative of the visitation of smallpox there
are other authenticated instances of the plague wreaking its vengeance
upon the Selish and depleting their villages to desolation. In this wise
the tribe was thinned again and again and as early as 1813, Mr. Cox
of the Northwest Fur Company, told in his "Adventures" that once the
Selish were more powerful by far in number than in the day of his coming
amongst them.

There was also another cause for the nation's decline quite as
destructive as the plague;--the unequal hostility continuing generation
after generation, without capitulation or truce, with the Blackfeet.
The country of the Selish abounded in game but it was a part of the
tribal code of honour to hunt the buffalo in the fields where their
ancestors had hunted. All of the deadly animosity between the two
peoples, all of the bloodshed of their cruel wars, was for no other
purpose than to maintain the right to seek the beloved herds in the
favoured fields which they believed their forefathers had won. The
jealousy with which this privilege of the chase was guarded and
preserved even to the death explains many national peculiarities, forms,
indeed, the keynote to their life of freedom on the plains.

It is possible that the Selish would have been annihilated had not the
establishment of new trading-posts enabled them to get fire-arms which
the Blackfeet had long possessed. This means of defence gave them fresh
strength and thereafter the odds against them were not as great.

The annals of the tribe, so full of tragedy and joy, of fact and
fancy, of folk-lore and wood-lore, contain many stories of war glory
reminiscent of the days of struggle. Even now there stands, near
Ravalli in the Jocko, a rock resembling a man, called by the Indians
the Stone Sentinel, which touchingly attests the fidelity and bravery
of a nameless hero. The story is that one of the runners who had gone
in advance of a war-party after the Indian custom, was surprised while
keeping watch and killed by the Blackfeet. The body remained erect and
was turned to stone, a monument of devotion to duty so strong that not
even death could break his everlasting vigil.

Notwithstanding their love of glory on the war-path and hunting-field,
they were a peaceable people. The most beautiful of their traditions
are based upon religious themes out of which grew a poetical symbolism,
half devotional, half fantastic. And even to-day, in spite of their
profession of Christianity, there lives in the heart of the Indian the
old paganism, not unlike that of the Greeks, which spiritualizes every
object of the woods and waters.

They thought that in the Beginning the good Spirit came up out of the
East and the Evil Spirit out of the West, and then began the struggle,
typified by light and darkness, which has gone on ever since. From this
central idea they have drawn the rainbow Spirit-fancy which arches their
dream-sky from horizon to horizon. They consider some trees and rocks
sacred; again they hold a lake or stream in superstitious dread and shun
it as a habitation of the evil one.

Thus, a cave in the neighbouring hills where rattlesnakes sleep in
Winter, they avoided in the past, not on account of the common snakes,
but because within the damp, dark recesses of that subterranean den, the
King of Snakes, a huge, horned reptile dwelt, appearing occasionally in
all his venomous, scaled beauty, striking terror wherever he was seen.
A clear spring bubbled near the cave but not even the cold purity of
the water could tempt the Indians to that accursed vicinity until by
some revelation they learned that the King Snake had migrated to other
fastnesses. He is still seen, so they say, gliding stealthily amongst
deserted wastes, his crest reared evily, and death in his poison tail.

In contrast to this cave of darkness is the spiritual legend of the
Sacred Pine. Upon those same gentle hills of the Jocko it grows, lifting
its lessening cone of green toward heaven. It has been there past the
memory of the great-grand-fathers of the present generation and from
time immemorial it has been held sacred by the Selish tribe. High upon
its venerable branches hangs the horn of a Bighorn Sheep, fixed there so
firmly by an unknown hand, before even the tradition of the Selish had
shaped its ghostly form out of the mists of the past, that the blizzard
has not been strong enough to wrench it from its place, nor the frost
to gnaw it away. No one knows whence the ram's horn came nor what it
signifies, but the tree is considered holy and the Indians believe that
it possesses supernatural powers. Hence, offerings are made to it of
moccasins, beads, weasel skins, and such little treasures of wearing
apparel or handiwork as they most esteem, and at certain seasons,
beneath the cool, sweet shadow of its generous boughs the devoted
worshippers, going back through the little superficialities of recent
civilization to the magnetic pole of their own true blood and beliefs,
assemble to dance with religious fervor around its base upon the green.
The missionary fathers discourage such idolatrous practices; but the
poor children of the woods play truant, nevertheless, and wander back
through the cycle of the centuries to do honour to the old, sweet object
of their devotion in the primitive, pagan way. And surely the Great
Spirit who watches over white and red man impartially, can scarcely be
jealous of this tribute of love to a tree,--the instinctive, race-old
festival of a woodland tribe.

There is another pine near Ravalli revered because it recalls the days
of the chase. It stands upon the face of a mountain somewhat apart from
its brethren of the forest, and there the Bighorn Sheep used to take
refuge when pursued. If driven to bay, the leader, followed by his band,
leaped to death from this eminence. It is known as the Pine of the
Bighorn Sheep.

Thus, it will be seen there lives among the Selish a symbolism, making
objects which they love chapters in the great unwritten book, wherein
is celebrated the heroic past. He who has the key to that volume of
tribe-lore, may learn lessons of valour and achievement, of patience and
sacrifice. And colouring the whole story, making beautiful its least
phase, is the sentiment of the people, even as the haze is the poetry
of the hills.


II

As heroic or disastrous events are celebrated in verbal chronicles
it follows that the home of the Selish is storied ground. Before the
pressure of civilization, encroaching in ever-narrowing circles upon
the hunting-ground of the Indians, cramping and crowding them within
a smaller space, driving them inch by inch to the confinement which
is their death, the Selish wandered at will over a stretch of country
beautiful alike in the reality of its landscape and in the richness
of myth and legend which hang over every peak and transfigure every
lake and stream. To know this country and the people it has sheltered
through past centuries one must first glean something of that ephemeral
story-charm which records in crag, in mist, in singing stream and
spreading tree the dreams made almost real by the thousands of souls
who have treasured them, and given them, lip to lip, from old to young,
since the forests were first green upon the hills.

The land of the Selish extended eastward to that portion of the Main
Range of the Rocky Mountains known to them as _Sin-yal-min_, or the
"Mountains of the Surrounded," from the fact that once a hunting party
surrounded and killed a herd of elk by a stream upon those heights;
another time a war-party surrounded and slew a company of Blackfeet
within the woods upon the mountain side. Though this range marked the
eastern boundary of their territory, they hunted buffalo, as we have
seen, still east of its mighty peaks,--a region made bloody by battles
between the Selish and the Blackfeet tribes. Westward, they wandered
over the fertile valley of Sin-yal-min, where they, in common with the
Pend d'Oreilles, Kootanais and Nez Percés enjoyed its fruits and fields
of grain. This valley is bounded to the north by the great Flathead
Lake, a body of water vast in its sweep, winding through narrow channels
among wooded shores ever unfolding new and unexposed vistas as one
traverses it. On a calm summer day, when the sun's rays are softened
by gossamer veils of haze, the water, the mountain-peaks and sky are
faintly traced in shades of grey and faded rose as in mother-of-pearl.
And on such days as this, at rare intervals, a strange phenomenon
occurs,--_the reflection of a reflection_. Looking over the rail of a
steamer within the semi-circular curve of the swell at its stern, one
may see, first the reflection of the shore line, the mountains and trees
appearing upside down, then a second shore line perfectly wrought in
the mirroring waters right side up, pine-crest touching pine-crest,
peak poised against peak. This lake was the Selish's conception of
the greatest of waters, for their wandering never took them to the
Atlantic or Pacific Seas, and in such small craft as they used to
travel over the forty miles of water among serpentining shores, the
distance must have seemed immense. Many islands rise from the lake,
the largest of them, Wild Horse Island, is timbered and mountainous,
and so big as to appear like an arm of the main land. This Wild Horse
Island, where in olden days bands of wild horses were found, possesses
a peculiar interest. Upon its steep cliffs are hieroglyphics traced
in pigments unknown to-day, telling the forgotten story of a lost
race. The same strange figures appear upon the sheer escarpments of
the mainland shore. These rock-walls are moss-grown and colored by the
lichen, chrome yellow, burnt orange, russet-brown and varying shades
of bronze-green like Autumn leaves, and upon them broods a shadow as
darkly impenetrable as the mystery which they hold. Still, it is easy to
distinguish upon the heroic tablets of stone, crude figures of horses
and some incomprehensible marks. These writings have been variously
interpreted or guessed at. Some declare them to be ancient war signals
of the Selish, others suggest that they were records of hunting parties
left behind for the guidance and information of the tribe; but they,
themselves, deny all knowledge of them, saying that to them as to us,
the pictured rocks are a wonder and a riddle, the silent evidence of
foot-falls so remote that not even an echo has come down to us through
the centuries.

Such are the valley of Sin-yal-min and the Lake of the Flathead where
the Selish hunted. But their real home, the seat of their fathers,
was the Bitter Root Valley, where one branch of the tribe, headed by
Charlot, the son of Victor, lived until the recent exodus. Therefore,
the Bitter Root Valley was particularly dear to the hearts of these
Indians. It was there the bond between the kindred tribes, the Nez
Percés and the Selish, was broken; there the pioneer Fathers came to
build the first Mission and plant the first Cross among these docile
children of the wood. It was there they clung together like frightened
sheep until they were driven forth to seek new homes in the Valley of
the Jocko, which was to be merely a station in their enforced retreat.

Eastward and southward from the Bitter Root, the Jocko and the range
of Sin-yal-min in the contested country, is a cañon called the Hell
Gate, because within its narrow limits, the Blackfeet wreaked vengeance
upon their less warlike foes. Flowing through the cañon is a river,
_In-mis-sou-let-ka_, corrupted into Missoula, which bears one of the
most beautiful of the Selish legends.

       *       *       *       *       *

Coyote was taking his way through a pass in the mountains during the
ancient days, when there came to him, out of the closed lip of silence,
the echo of a sound. He stopped to listen, in doubt if it were the
singing of waters or human voices that he heard, and as he listened the
echo grew into a reality and the strains of wondrous, weirdly sweet
music greeted his ear. He followed the illusive melody, attracted as by
magic, and at last he saw upon the flower-sown green a circle of young
women, dancing around and around, hand clasped in hand, forming a chain
and singing as they danced. They beckoned to Coyote and called unto him,
saying:

"Thou art beautiful, O Warrior! and strong as is the sun. Come dance
with us and we will sing to thee."

Coyote, like one who walks in his sleep, obeyed them and joined the
enchanted circle. Then he perceived that as they danced and sang they
drew him closer and closer to a great river that lashed itself into a
blind, white fury of foam upon the rocks. Coyote became afraid like a
woman. He noted with dread the water-weed in the maidens' hair and the
evil beauty of their eyes. He strove to break away but he was powerless
to resist them and he felt himself drawn nearer and nearer the roaring
torrent, until at last the waters closed over him in whirlpools and he
knew no more.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Fox, who was wise and crafty, passed along the shore and there he
found, among the water-weeds and grasses the lifeless body of Coyote
which had been cast up by the waters, even as they had engulfed him.
The Fox was grieved for he loved Coyote, so he bent over the corpse and
brought it back to life. Coyote opened his eyes and saw his friend, but
the chill of the water was in his blood and he was numb. Then above the
roar of the river, echoed the magical measure of a weird-sweet song
and through a green glade came the dancers who had lured Coyote to his
death. He rose at the sound of the bewitching melody and strained
forward to listen.

"It was they who led me to the river," he cried.

"Aye, truly. They are the water Sirens and thou must destroy them,"
replied the Fox.

At those words Coyote's heart became inflamed with ire; he grew strong
with purpose and crept forward, noiseless as a snake, unobserved by the
water-maidens.

They were dancing like a flock of white butterflies upon a stretch of
grass yellowed and seared by the heat of the sun. Swiftly and silently
Coyote set fire to the grass, imprisoning them in a ring of flame. They
saw the wall of fire leap up around them and their singing was changed
to cries. They turned hither and thither and sought to fly to the water
but the way was barred by the hot red-gold embrace of the fire.

When the flames had passed, Coyote went to the spot where the Sirens
had danced, and there upon the blackened ground he found a heap of
great, white shells. He took these, the remains of the water-maidens,
and cast them into the river, saying as he did so:

"I call thee _In-mis-sou-let-ka_ and thou shalt forever bear that name!"

Thus it was that the river flowing through the Hell Gate came by the
title of In-mis-sou-let-ka, which men render into English by the
inadequate words of "_The River of Awe_."

       *       *       *       *       *

Through the length and breadth of the country are story-bearing
land-marks. There is a rock in the Jocko, small of size but of weight so
mighty that no Indian, however strong, can move it; there is a mountain
which roars and growls like an angry monster; there is a cliff where a
brave of the legendary age of heroes battled hand to hand with a grizzly
bear, and a thousand other spots, each hallowed by a memory. So, through
peak and lowland, rivers and forests one can find the faery-spell of
romance, lending the commonest stone individuality and interest. And the
most prosaic pilgrim wandering along haunted streams, cooling in the
shadow of storied woods and upon the shores of enchanted lakes, must
feel the spell of poesy upon him; must look with altered vision upon the
whispering trees, listen with quickened hearing to the articulate murmur
of the rivers, knowing for a time at least, the subtle fellowship with
the woodland which is in the heart of the Indian.

Such is the legended land of the Selish, a land fit for gentle, poetic
folk to dwell in, a land worthy for brave and devoted men to lay down
their lives to save.


III

Within the Bitter Root Valley dwelt Charlot, _Slem-Hak-Kah_, "Little
Claw of a Grizzly Bear," son of the great chief Victor, "The Lodge
Pole," and therefore by hereditary right Head Chief of the Selish tribe.
That valley is perhaps the most favoured land of the region. The snow
melts earlier within its mountain-bound heart, the blizzard drives less
fiercely over its slopes and the Spring comes there sooner, sprinkling
the grass with the rose stars of the Bitter Root. Under the guidance
of the missionary fathers the Indians learned to till the soil and the
bounty of their toil was sufficient, for the rich earth yielded fine
crops of grain and fruit. The Indians who sowed and plowed their small
garden-spots, and the kindly fathers who watched over their prosperity,
little dreamed that in the free gift of the earth and the mild beauty of
the land lay the cause which should wreak the red man's ruin. This land
was dear to the hearts of the people. Victor, their brave guardian, had
saved it for them at the treaty of the Hell Gate when they were called
upon to give up part of their territory to the increasing demands of
the whites. Those of the dominant race kept coming into the Bitter Root
and they were welcomed by the Indians. Thus, bit by bit the valley was
taken up, its fame spread and it became a region so desirable that the
government determined to move the Selish tribe out of the land of their
fathers.

Charlot was a courageous and honest man, a leader worthy of his trust.
It was he who met the Nez Percés as they descended into the Bitter Root,
headed by Chief Joseph, hot with the lust for the white man's scalp.
There are few more dramatic incidents in western history than Charlot's
visit to Chief Joseph on the LoLo trail and the ultimatum which he
delivered to the leader of the Nez Percé hosts.

He rode forth accompanied by Joe La Mousse and a small war-party,
carrying with him a little white boy. About his arm he had tied a snowy
handkerchief in token of the peaceful character of his errand. When the
two Chiefs, Charlot and Joseph faced each other, Charlot spoke these
words, slowly, defiantly as one who has made a great decision:

"Joseph, I have something to say to you. It will be in a few words.

"You know I am not afraid of you.

"You know I can whip you.

"If you are going through the valley you must not hurt any of the
whites. If you do you will have me and my people to fight.

"You may camp at my place to-night but to-morrow you must pass on."

And it was as Charlot decreed. Joseph the brave, intractable warrior who
did battle with the army of the United States and kept the cleverest
of our generals guessing at his strategies, bent to the iron will of
Charlot. The Nez Percés passed peacefully through the valley and never a
soul was harmed.

In the long, cruel struggle that followed, when Chief Joseph and his
braves struck terror to the settlers, leaving death and ruin in their
path, Charlot remained staunch and true. Indeed, the boast of the Selish
is that they, as a nation, were never guilty of taking a white man's
life.

Meantime, while they lived in peace and plenty, the fates had sealed
their doom. There is no use reiterating the long, painful story of the
treaty between the Selish and the government, ceding to the latter the
land where the tribal ancestors lived and died. Charlot declared he did
not sign away the birth-right of his people and he was an honourable
man. He and his friends went farther and said that his mark was forged.
On the other hand some of those who were witnesses for the United
States maintain that the name Charlot was written like that of Arlee
and others, with a blank space left for the mark, or signature of each
Chief. They further state that Charlot never affixed his mark to the
document nor was it forged as he asserted to the end. This is at best
mere evasion. One of two things happened: a fraudulent signature was
put upon the face of the treaty to deceive the government, or Charlot,
as Head Chief, was overridden and ignored. Whatever the means employed
the outcome was the same. It was an unhappy day for the Indians. They
had no recourse but to submit, so most of them headed by Arlee, the War
Chief, struck their tipis, abandoned the toil-won fields where they had
laboured so long and so patiently, left the shadow of the Cross where
they were baptized, and went forth into the Jocko to begin again the
struggle which should never be more than a beginning.

[Illustration: JOE LA MOUSSE]

But Charlot the royal-blooded, son of a long line of fighting chiefs,
was not to be moved by the master-hand like a pawn in a game of chess.
He haughtily refused to leave the Bitter Root Valley, telling his
people that those of them who wished to go should follow Arlee, but he
with a few of the faithful, would lie down to his repose in the land
of his fathers beneath peaks that mingle with the sky. With impassive
dignity he and a party of his loyal band went to Washington at the
bidding of the Great Father to listen to the justice of the white man's
claim. Charlot proudly declined to accept pension and authority bought
at the price of his exile. He wished only the "poor privilege" of
dwelling in the valley where his fathers had dwelt; of resting at last,
where they had lain so long. He wanted neither money nor land,--simply
permission to live in the home of his childhood, his manhood and
old age. He added that he would never be taken alive to the Jocko
Reservation. The Powers saw no merit in the sentiment of the old Chief.
He had dared to oppose their will and they determined to break his
spirit. He might remain in the Bitter Root the All-Wise decreed, but in
remaining he relinquished every right. More crushing to him than poverty
and exile was the final blow to his pride. In a sense he was King of
his tribe. The title of Great Chief descended from father to son, even
as the crowns of empires are handed down. The War Chiefs, on the other
hand, were elected to command the warriors for a year and at the end of
their service they became simple braves again. The government, ignoring
the canons of the Selish, put Charlot aside, and Arlee, the Red Night,
last of the War Chiefs, took precedence over him and became Head Chief
of his nation. Charlot was stripped of his title, his honours, his
privileges of land grant and pension; in other words, he was reduced
from Great Chief to pauper.

Thus Charlot, who with his braves had defied his kinsfolk, the Nez
Percés, to protect the weak colony of settlers in their Bitter Root home
was driven forth by these same strangers within his gates, and he, the
bravest and best of his kind, shorn of the dignities his forebears and
he, himself, had won;--robbed, cast out, was held up to contumely as an
unruly savage and spurned by the people his mercy had spared.

From the Bitter Root, the poor wanderers took their way into the Jocko,
a region also fair, where some of their tribe already dwelt, and made
for themselves new homes. They accepted the change uncomplainingly and
set to work to sow and reap in this adopted land.

Charlot and his band of nearly two hundred lingered in the Bitter Root
until 1891, when driven by hunger and suffering they followed their
tribesmen into the Jocko. He had said he would never be _taken alive_
to the new reservation, nor was he. Clad in his war dress, mounted on
his best horse, surrounded by his young men in full war regalia, he rode
into exile, proud, unbending as a triumphant Chief entering dominions
won by conquest. No expression of pain crossed his bronze-stern face;
no hint of humility or subjection softened the majesty of his mien. He
and his braves were met by the Selish who had gone before, with great
ostentation and ceremony. Charlot never forgot nor forgave. He had been
cast out, betrayed, but not conquered.

The Selish have learned to love the soft, yellow-green of the Jocko
hills, the free sweep of its prairies, where sun flowers flow in a sea
of gold beneath the rushing tide of the summer wind, and the prettily
boisterous little Jocko River laughs and plays over its rocky bed
between a veritable jungle of trees and vines and flowers. In these
woods bordering the stream, the most luscious wild gooseberries,
strawberries and bright scarlet brew berries grow--this last, dear to
the Indian, is picked by the squaws and made into a sparkling draught.
There the trees are hung with dense tapestries of blossoming vines,
thick moss deadens the footstep and birds call shrilly from the
twilight of the trees. But the Jocko and Sin-yal-min are beautiful and
fertile, and wherever there is beauty and fertility there comes the
Master saying:

"_This is mine by right of might! Go forth again O Indian! There are
lean hills and deserts left for thee!_"

And the Indian, grown used to such things, folds his tipi and takes his
way into the charity of the lessening wilderness.

Not long ago a strange thing came to pass. One evening the sun set
in a passion of red and gold. The tide of light pulsed through the
skies, the air throbbed and shimmered with it, and every lake and pool
reflected its ruddy splendour until they seemed to be filled with
blood. The Indians gazed at the spectacle in silent awe. Groups of them
on horseback, dark figures silhouetted against the bright sky, stared
curiously at the awful glory of the heavens and earth, whispered in
low tones together and were afraid. Was the Great Spirit revealing
something to his children? Some there were who thought that the crimson
banners in the West foretold a disaster and verily it was true. The end
was near. The sun was setting forever upon their freedom. Once more the
children of the old time would be driven to another camping ground where
they might halt for a little space and rest their weary heads before
they take up the march upon their endless retreat.


IV

During the Summer at the time when the sun reached his greatest
strength, according to the ancient custom, the Selish gathered together
to dance. In this celebration is embodied the spirit of the people,
their pride, their hates and loves. But this dance had a peculiar
significance. It was, perhaps, the last that the tribe will celebrate.
Another year the white man will occupy the land, and the free, roving
life and its habits will be gone. It was a scene never to be forgotten.
Overhead a sky deeply azure at its zenith which mellowed toward the West
into a tide of ruddy gold flowing between the blue heavens and the green
earth; far, far away, dim, amethyst mountains dreaming in the haze;
and through that rose-gold flood of light, sharply outlined against
the intense blue above and the tender green below, silent figures on
horseback, gay with blankets, beads and buckskins, rode out of the filmy
distance into the splendour of the setting sun, and noiselessly took
their places around the musicians on the grass.

There were among them the most distinguished men of the tribe. Joe La
Mousse, once a warrior of fame, grown to an honored old age, watched
the younger generation with the simple dignity which becomes one of his
years and rank. He possessed the richest war dress of all, strung with
elks' teeth and resplendent with the feathers of the war-eagle. It was
he, who with Charlot, met the Nez Percés and repudiated their bloody
campaign; he, whose valiant ancestor, Ignace La Mousse, the Iroquois,
helped to make glorious the name of his adopted people. _François_ and
_Kai-Kai-She_, the judge, both honoured patriarchs, and Chief Antoine
Moise, _Callup-Squal-She_, "Crane with a ring around his neck," who
followed Charlot to Washington on his mission of protest, moved and
mingled in the bright patchwork of groups upon the green. There was
none more imbued with the spirit of festivity than old François with
white hair falling to his bowed shoulders. These and many more there
were whose prime had known happier days. Chief Moise's wife, a handsome
squaw, rode in with her lord, and conspicuous among the women was a
slim wisp of a girl with an oval face, buckskin-colored complexion, and
great, dusky, twilight eyes. A pale gray-green blanket was wrapped
about her head and body, hanging to her moccasined feet. She was the
wife of Michel Kaiser, the young leader of the braves. But towering
above the rest of the assembly, regal to the point of austerity, was a
man aged but still erect, as though his strength of pride would never
let his shoulders stoop beneath the conquering years. He wore his
blanket folded closely around him and fanned himself with an eagle's
wing, the emblem of the warrior. One eye was hidden beneath a white film
which had shut out its sight forever, but the other, coal-black and
piercing, met the stranger gaze for gaze, never flinching, never turning
aside. It was Charlot. Though an exile, his head was still unbent, his
spirit unbroken.

Sometimes we see in the aged, the placid melancholy which comes with
the foreknowledge of death, so in the serenely sad faces of the aged
Indians, we recognize that greater melancholy which is born of the
foreshadowing of racial death. They cherish, too, a more personal grief
in that they shall live to see the passing of the old life. Patiently
they submitted to the expulsion from the Bitter Root, but now in the
darkness of gathering years once more they must strike their tipis to
make room for the invading hosts. The setting sun streamed through the
leaves and touched the venerable faces with false youth. Wagon and
pony discharged their human loads who sat passively, listening to the
admonition of the tom-tom and the chant:

    "_Come, O! ye people! Come and dance!_"

After this preliminary measure had lasted hours, not an Indian professed
to know whether the people would be moved to dance or not. A race
characteristic is that impulse must quicken them to action. It was
strange how the tidings had spread. The tipis and lodges are scattered
over many miles, but the Indians kept coming as though called up by
magic from their hiding places in the hills.

Beneath a clump of cottonwood trees around the tom-tom, a drum made of
deer hide stretched over a hollowed section of green tree, sat the four
musicians beating the time of the chant with sticks bound in strips of
cloth. Of these players one was blind, another aged, and the remaining
two, in holiday attire, with painted lips and cheeks, were braves. One
of these, seated a trifle higher than his companions, leaned indolently
over the tom-tom plying his sticks with careless grace. He possessed a
peculiar magnetism which marked him a leader. Occasionally his whole
body thrilled with sudden animation, his voice rose into a strident cry,
then he relapsed into the languid posture and the bee-like drone. Of all
that gathering he was the one perfect, full-blood specimen of a brave in
the height of his prime. The dandy, Victor Vanderberg, was handsomer
perhaps, and little Jerome had the beauty of a head of Raphael, but this
Michel Kaiser was a type apart. His face and slim, nimble hands were the
colour of bronze. His nose curved sharply as a hawk's beak, his mouth
was compressed in a hard, cold line over his white teeth, his cheek
bones were high and prominent, his brows straight, sable strokes above
small, bright-black eyes that gleamed keen as arrow darts. His hair was
made into two thick braids wrapped around with brown fur, his arms were
decorated with bracelets and from his neck hung string upon string of
beads falling to his waist. It was he who with suppressed energy flung
back his head as he gave the shrill cry and quickened the beat of the
tom-tom until louder and louder, faster and faster swelled the chant:

"_Come, O! ye people! Come and dance!_"

Then out into the open on the green stepped a girl-child scarcely three
years of age, who threw herself into rhythmic motion, swaying her small
body to the time of the music and bearing in her quavering treble the
burden of the chant. The impressive faces of the spectators melted into
smiles. She was the pet of the tribe, the orphan granddaughter of Joe La
Mousse and his venerable wife. Loving hands had made for her a war dress
which she wore with the grave complaisance of one favoured above her
peers. She scorned the sedate dances of the squaws and chose the quicker
action of the war dance, and she would not yield her possession of the
field without a struggle which showed that the spirit of her fighting
fathers still lived in her.

Suddenly a brave painted grotesquely, dressed in splendid colours with
a curious contrivance fastened about his waist and standing out behind
like a tail, bounded into the ring, his hurrying feet beating to the
tintinnabulation of sleigh bells attached to his legs. Michel Kaiser and
the young man who sat beside him at the tom-tom gave up their places
to others, and after disappearing for a moment came forth freed from
encumbering blankets, transformed with paint and ornament. A fourth
dancer joined them and the awe-begetting war dance began. The movement
was one of restrained force. With bent heads and bodies inclined
forward, one arm hanging limp and the other resting easily at the back,
they tripped along until a war-whoop like an electric shock, sent them
springing into the air with faces turned upward and clenched fists
uplifted toward the sky.

It was now that Michel stood revealed in all his physical beauty. In
colour and form he was like a perfectly wrought bronze statue. He was
tall and slender. His arms and legs, metal-hard, were fleet and strong
and his every motion expressed agility and grace. He was clad in the
full war-dress of the Selish, somewhat the same as that which his
ancestors had worn before the coming of the white man. Upon his head
was a bonnet of skunk tails that quivered with the slightest motion
of his sinewy body. He wore, besides, a shirt, long, fringed buckskin
leggins and beaded moccasins. He was decorated with broad anklets and
little bells that tinkled as he moved. Of the four dancers Michel sprang
highest, swung in most perfect rhythm, spent in that wild carnival most
energy and force. Supple and lean as a panther he curvetted and darted;
light as the wind his moccasined feet skimmed over the green, scarcely
seeming to crush a spear of grass. As he went through that terrible
pantomime practiced by his fathers before they set out to kill or die,
the fire flashing in his lynx-eyes, his slim arm poised over his head,
his whole willow-lithe body swaying to the impulse of the war-lust,
it was easy to fancy how that play might become a reality and he who
danced to perpetuate an ancient form might turn relentless demon if the
intoxication of the war-path once kindled in his veins.

[Illustration: ABRAHAM ISAAC AND MICHEL KAISER]

This war dance explained many things. It was a portrayal of the glorious
deeds of the warriors, a recitation of victorious achievement, a picture
of battle, of striking the body of the fallen enemy--one of the great
tests of valor. The act of striking was considered a far more gallant
feat than the taking of a scalp. After a foe was shot and had fallen,
a brave seeking distinction, dashed forth from his own band into the
open field and under the deadly rain of the enemy's arrows, struck with
his hand the body of the dead or wounded warrior. In doing this he not
only courted the desperate danger of that present moment, but brought
upon his head the relentless vengeance of the family, the followers and
the tribe of the fallen foe,--vengeance of a kind that can wait for
years without growing cold. By such inspiring examples the young men
were stirred to emulation. The dance showed, too, how in the past
the storm-clouds of war gathered slowly until, with lightning flash
and thunder-blast, the warriors lashed themselves to the white-heat
of frenzy at which they mocked death. The whole thing seemed to be a
marshalling of the passions, a blood-fire as irresistible and sweeping
as those floods of flame which lay the forests low.

The warriors ceased their mad career. The sweat streamed from their
brows and down their cheeks as they sat beneath the shade trees in
repose. Still the tom-tom beat and the chant continued:

"_Come, O! ye people! Come and dance!_"

They needed no urging now. What did they care for vespers and sermons
when the ghostly voices of warrior-ancestors, of forest dwellers and
huntsmen came echoing from the lips of the past? Their spirit was
aroused and the festival would last until the passion was quenched and
their veins were cooled.

The next dance was started by a squaw. It was called the "choosing
dance," from the fact that either a man or a woman chose a partner for
the figure. The ceremony of invitation was simple. The one who desired
to invite another, grasped the individual's arm and said briefly:

"Dance!"

The couples formed two circles around the tom-tom, one within the other,
then slowly the two rings moved 'round and 'round, with a kind of short,
springing step, droning the never-varying chant. At the end of the
dance the one who had chosen his partner presented him with a gift. In
some cases a horse or a cow was bestowed and not infrequently blankets
and the most cherished bead-work belts and hat-bands. Custom makes the
acceptance of these favours compulsory. Even the alien visitors were
asked to take part and the Indians laughed like pleased children to
welcome them to the dance. One very old squaw, Mrs. "Nine Pipes," took
her blanket from her body and her 'kerchief from her head to give
to her white partner, and a brave, having chosen a pale-faced lady
for the figure, and being depleted in fortune by his generosity at a
former festival, borrowed fifty cents from a richer companion to bestow
upon her. It was all done in the best of faith and friendliness, with
child-like good will and pleasure in the doing.

When the next number was called, those who had been honoured with
invitations and gifts returned the compliment. After this was done,
the Master of the Dance, Michel Kaiser, stepped into the center of the
circle, saying in the deep gutturals of the Selish tongue, with all the
pomp of one who makes a proclamation, something which may be broadly
rendered into these English words:

"This brave, Jerome, chose for his partner, Mary, and gave to her a belt
of beads, and Mary chose for her partner, Jerome, and gave to him a
silken scarf."

Around the circumference of the great ring he moved, crying aloud the
names of the braves and maids who had joined together in the dance, and
holding up to view the presents they had exchanged.

The next in order was a dance of the chase by the four young men who had
performed the war dance. In this the hunter and the beast he pursued
were impersonated and the pantomime carried out every detail of the
fleeing prey and the crafty huntsmen who relentlessly drove him to earth.

The fourth measure was the scalp dance given by the squaws, a rite
anciently practiced by the female members of families whose lords had
returned victorious from battle, bearing as trophies the scalps of
enemies they had slain. It was considered an indignity and a matter of
just reproach to her husband or brother, if a squaw were unable to take
part in this dance. The scalps captured in war were first displayed
outside the lodges of the warriors whose spoil they were, and after a
time, when they began to mortify or "break down," as the Indians say,
the triumphant squaws gathered them together, threw them into the dust
and stamped on them, heaping upon them every insult and in the weird
ceremony of that ghoulish dance, consigning them to eternal darkness,
for no brave without his scalp could enter the Happy Hunting Ground. The
chant changed in this figure. The voices of the women rose in a piercing
falsetto, broken by a rapid utterance of the single syllable "la, la"
repeated an incredible length of time. The effect was singularly savage
and strange, emphasizing the barbarous joy of the vengeful women. As the
war dance was the call to battle, this was the aftermath.

In pleasing contrast to this cruel rite was the marriage dance,
celebrated by both belles and braves. The young squaws, in their gayest
attire, ornamented with the best samples of their bead work and painted
bright vermillion about the lips and cheeks, formed a chain around
the tom-tom, singing shrilly. Then a brave with a party of his friends
stepped within the circle, bearing in his hand a stick, generally a
small branch of pine or other native tree. He approached the object
of his love and laid the branch on her shoulder. If she rejected his
suit she pushed the branch aside and he, with his followers, retired
in humiliation and chagrin. It often happened that more than one youth
desired the hand of the same maiden, and the place of the rejected lover
was taken immediately by a rival who made his prayer. If the maid looked
with favor upon him she inclined her head, laying her cheek upon the
branch. This was at once the betrothal and the marriage. At the close of
the festivities the lover bore her to his lodge and they were considered
man and wife.

       *       *       *       *       *

The sun set mellow rose behind the hills which swam in seas of
deepening blue. Twilight unfolded shadows that climbed from the valleys
to the peaks and touched them with deadening gray chill, until the warm
glow died in the bosom of the night. Still the tom-tom beat, the chant
rose and fell, the dancers wheeled on madly, singing as they danced. The
darkness thickened. The stars wrote midnight in the sky. Papooses had
fallen asleep and women sat mute and tired with watching. By the flare
of a camp fire, running in uneven lights over the hurrying figures,
one might see four braves leaping and swaying in the war dance. The
night wore on. A heavy silence was upon the hills which echoed back the
war cry, the tom-tom's throb and the chant. One, then another, then a
third dropped out. Still the quivering, sweat-burnished bronze body of
Michel writhed and twisted, bent and sprang. The lines of his face had
hardened, the vermillion ran down his cheeks in rivulets, as of blood,
and the corners of his mouth were drawn like the curves of a bow. The
camp fire glowed low. The gray of the dawn came up out of the East with
a little shuddering wind and the faint stars burned out. The tom-tom
pulsed slower, the chant was broken. Suddenly a wild cry thrilled
through the pallid morn. The figure of Michel darted upward like a
rocket in a final brilliant gush of life, then fell senseless upon the
ground.

The embers grayed to ashes. The last spark was dead. The dance was done.
The mists of morning rolled up from the valleys and unfurled their pale
shrouds along the peaks, and the Indians, mere shadow-shapes, like
phantoms in a dream, stole silently away and vanished with the night.




_ENCHANTED WATERS_




CHAPTER II

ENCHANTED WATERS


I

There is a lake in the cloistered fastnesses of Sin-yal-min, named by
the Jesuit priests St. Mary's, but called by the Indians the Waters
of the Forgiven. It is a small body of water overshadowed by abrupt
mountains, fed by a beautiful fall and for some reason, impossible
to explain, it is haunted by an atmosphere at once ghostly and sad.
So potent is this intangible dread, this fear of something unseen,
this melancholy begotten of a cause unknown, that every visitor is
conscious of it. Most of all, the Indians, impressionable and fanciful
as children, feel the weird spell and cherish a legend of it as nebulous
as the mists that flutter in pale wraith-shapes across its enchanted
depths.

The story goes that once, long ago, someone was killed upon the lake and
the troubled spirit returns to haunt the scene of its mortal passing,
but the murderer, smitten with remorse and repenting of his crime was
finally forgiven by the Great Spirit, and the lake became known as the
Waters of the Forgiven. The shadow of that crime has never lifted and
it broods forever over the lake's dark face and upon the mountains that
hold it in their cup of stone. There the echo is multiplied. If one
calls aloud, a chorus of fantastic, mocking voices takes up the sound
and it goes crying through the solitude like lost souls in Purgatory.
The Waters of the Forgiven exhale their eternal sigh, their pensive
gloom, even when the sun rides high in the blue, but to feel the
fullness of its spectral melancholy, one must seek it out in the secrecy
of night. Then, as the mellow moon rises over the mountain tops laying
the pale fingers of its rays suggestively on rock and tree, touching
them with magical illusion and transforming them to goblin shapes, one
palpitates with strange fear, is impressed with impending disaster.
As the moonlight flows in misty streams, sealing ravine and lake-deep
in shadow the more intense for the contrast of white, discriminating
light that runs quicksilver-like upon the ripples of the water and the
quivering needles of the pine, the silence is broken by dismal howls. It
is the lean, gray timber wolves. Their mournful cry is flung back again
by the ghostly pack that no eye sees and no foot can track. Mountain
lions yell shrilly and are answered by distant ones of their kind and
inevitably that other lesser cry comes back again and again as though
the phantom chorus could never forget nor leave off the burden of that
lament. Out of the pregnant darkness into the spectral moonlight shadowy
creatures come to the shore to drink. The deer, the bear, sometimes the
mountain lion and the elk stalk forth and quench their thirst. These
things are strange enough, savage enough to inspire fear, but it is
not they, nor the grisly mountains that create the terror which is a
phantasm, the dread which is not of flesh nor earth.

No Indian, however brave, pitches his tipi by this lake nor crosses its
waters, for among the tangle of weeds in its black, mysterious bosom,
water sirens are believed to dwell. Ever watchful of human prey they
gaze upward from their mossy couches and if a boatman venture out in
his frail canoe, they rise, entwining their strangling, white arms
about him, pressing him with kisses poisonous as the serpent's sting,
breathing upon him their blighting, deadly-sweet breath that dulls his
senses into the oblivion of eternal sleep.


II

The Jocko or Spotted Lakes are enchanted waters also. They lie high up
in the crown of the continent--the main range of the Rocky Mountains.
To reach them the traveller needs patience and strength of body and
soul, for the trail is long and tortuous, winding along the rim of
sickening-steep ravines, across treacherous swamps, amid mighty forests
to great altitudes. There are three lakes in this group, one above the
other, the last being sometimes called the Clearwater Lake because it is
within the borders of that terrible wilderness whose savage fastnesses
have claimed their prey of lost wanderers.

The first lake is inexpressibly ghostly. The flanks of the mountains
rise sheer and frown down on murky waters, leaving scarcely any shore,
and around their margin, gray-white drift-wood lies scattered like
unburied bones. It is a spectral spot, unearthly, colourless as a
moth, preyed upon by a lamentable sadness which broods unbroken in the
solitude. There the fox-fire kindles in the darkness, the owl wheels in
his midnight flight and pale shades of mist unwind their shroud-like
scarfs. It is a pool of the dead, a region of lost hopes and throttling
despair.

From this lake the trail bears upward through dense jungles and
morasses, venomously beautiful with huge, brilliantly coloured flowers
growing to the height of a man. Their scarlet and yellow disks exhale
an overpowering fragrance, insidious, almost narcotic in its strength.
Beneath rank stalk and leaf, rearing blossom and entangling vine,
creeping things with mortal sting dwell in the dank, sultry-sweet
shadow. One is dazzled with the colour and the scent; charmed and
repelled; tempted on into treacherous sinkholes by a wild extravagance
of beauty too wanton to be good.

At length the second lake unfolds itself from the living screen of tree
and wooded steep. A point of land, stained blood-red, juts out into the
water and over it tumbles and cascades a foam-whitened fall. This stain
of crimson is a thick-spun carpet of Indian Paint Brush interwoven with
lush grass. The mountains show traces of orange and green, apparently a
mineral wash hinting of undiscovered treasure.

Looking into the depths of the lake one is impressed with its freckled
appearance. A blotch of milky white, then one of dull yellow mottles
the water and even as one watches, a shadow darkens the surface,
concentrating, scattering in kaleidoscopic variety, then disappearing as
mysteriously as it came. There is no cloud in the sky, nor overhanging
tree, nor passing bird to cause that shade without substance. At first
it seems inexplicable and the Indians, finding no natural reason for its
being, believe it to be the forms of water sirens gliding to and fro.
On this account, here as at the Waters of the Forgiven no Indian dares
to come alone and even with human company he fears the sirens' spell.
For as the victim sleeps they come, drawing closer and breathing his
breath until he dies. If one watches patiently he may see that the dark
shadows are made by shoals of fish, gathering and dispersing, and in so
doing, accentuating and lessening the sable spots. The lake is as uneven
in temperature as it is in colour. It has hot pools and icy shallows,
so it is probably fed by springs as well as by the torrent which falls
from the peaks. A strong, sulphurous odour taints the air; the water is
unpleasant to the taste and the sedgy weeds which grow about the shores
are stained. And as the waters recede during the summer heat, along
the banks, in uneven streaks a mineral deposit traces their retreat.
Towards the end of July or August a curious thing may be seen in this
Lake of the Jocko. A current eddies around and around in a gigantic
whirlpool, transforming it into a mighty funnel with an underground
vent. At a considerable distance below a stream bursts forth from the
mountain side with terrific energy of pressure and plunges downward in a
foaming torrent. It is the Jocko River,--the gentle, merry-voiced Jocko
of the prairie which winds its course among lines of friendly trees and
blossoms. Who would guess that it drew its nurture from the Lake of the
Jocko, siren-haunted, poison-breathed, which careful Indians avoid as a
region of the accursed? Still it is so and the menace of that mysterious
lake becomes the blessing of the plains.

       *       *       *       *       *

Such are the Waters of the Forgiven and the Jocko, secure in their
solitude, guarded more potently by their spell of evil than by wall of
stone or armed hosts, holding within their deep, dark bosoms the charm
of the water sirens whose sad, sweet song quavers in the music of fall
and stream, whose pallid, white faces flash lily-like from the depths,
whose entangling tresses spread in flowing masses of sedgy green.

And of the strange things which have happened on those shores, of the
braves lured to the death-sleep on couches of moss and pillows of lily
pad, scarcely an echo shrills down from the white-shrouded peaks to give
warning to the adventurers who would seek out the awful beauty of those
Enchanted Waters.




_LAKE ANGUS McDONALD_




CHAPTER III

LAKE ANGUS McDONALD AND THE MAN FOR WHOM IT WAS NAMED


Within the range of Sin-yal-min, which rises abruptly from the valley of
the Flathead to altitudes of perpetual snow, in a ravine sunk deep into
the heart of the mountains, is Lake Angus McDonald. Though but a few
miles distant the bells of Saint Ignatius Mission gather the children of
the soil to prayer, no hand has marred the untamed beauty of this lake
and its surrounding mountain steeps where the eagle builds his nest in
security and the mountain goat and bighorn sheep play unmolested and
unafraid.

The prospect is a magnificent one as the roadway uncoils its irregular,
tawny length from rolling hills into the level sea of green where only
a year or two ago the buffalo grazed in peace. Beyond, the jagged
summits of Sin-yal-min toss their crests against the sky, their own
impalpable blue a shade more intense than the summer heavens, their
silvered pinnacles one with the drifting cloud. A delicate, shimmering
thread like the gossamer tissue of a spider's web spins its length from
the ethereal brow of the mountains to the lifted arms of the foothills
below. The yellow road runs through the valley, passes the emerald patch
around the Mission and thence onward to blue shadows of peaks where
gorges flow like purple seas and distant trees are points of azure. The
swelling foothills bear one up, the valley melts away far beneath and
sweet-breathed woods sigh their balsam on the breeze. The pass becomes
more difficult, the growth thickens. Among the trees broad-leafed
thimble berry, brew berry and goose berry blossom and bear; wild
clematis builds pyramids of green and white over the bushes; syringa
bursts into pale-starred flower, and a shrub, feathery, delicate, sends
forth long, tender stems which break into an intangible mist of bloom.

Suddenly out of the tangled forests, a sheet of water, smooth and clear,
appears, spreading its quicksilver depths among peaks that still bear
their burden of the glacial age. And in the polished mirror of those
waters is reflected the perfect image of its mountain crown. First, the
purplish green of timbered slopes, then the naked, beetling crags and
deep crevasse with its heart of ice. A heavy silence broods here, broken
only by the wildly lonesome cry of the raven quavering in lessening
undulations of tone through the recesses of the crags. Two Indians near
the shore flit away among the leaves, timid as deer in their native
haunts. Such is Lake Angus McDonald, and yonder, presiding over all,
shouldering its perpetual burden of ice, is McDonald's Peak. Strangely
beautiful are these living monuments to the name and fame of a man, and
one naturally asks who was this Angus McDonald that his memory should
endure in the eternal mountains within the crystal cup of this snow-fed
lake?

The question is worth the answering. Angus McDonald was a Highland
Scotchman, sent out into the western wilderness by the Hudson Bay
Company. There must have lurked in his robust blood the mastering love
of freedom and adventure which led the scions of the House of McDonald
to such strange and varied destinies; which made such characters in the
Scottish hills as Rob Roy and clothed the kilted clans with a romantic
colour totally wanting in their stolid brethren of the Lowlands. In any
event, it is certain that Angus McDonald, once within the magic of the
wild, flung aside the ties that bound him to the outer world and became
in dress, in manner of life and in heart, an Indian. He took unto
himself an Indian wife, begot sons who were Indians in colour and form
and like his adopted people, he hunted upon the heights, moved his tipi
from valley to mountain as capricious notion prompted, and finally made
for himself and his family a home in the valley of Sin-yal-min not far
below that lake and peak which do honor to his memory. Physically he was
a man of towering stature, standing over six feet in his moccasins; his
shoulders were broad and he was very erect. His leonine head was clad
with a heavy shock of hair, and his beard, during his later years, snow
white, hung to his waist. His complexion was ruddy, his eyes, clear,
blue and penetrating. A picturesque figure he must have been, clad in
full buckskin leggins and shirt with a blanket wrapped around him. He
was known among the Indians and whites through the length and breadth of
the country about, and no more strange or striking character quickened
the adventure-bearing epoch which we call the Early Days.

As he was free to the point of lightness in his nature, trampling down
and discarding every shackle of conventionality, he was likewise bound
but nominally by the Christian creed. He believed in reincarnation and
his one desire was that in the hereafter, when his soul should be sent
to tenant the new body, he might be re-born in the form of a wild,
white horse, with proud, arched neck and earth-scorning hoofs, dashing
wind-swift over the broad prairies into the sheltering hills.

So it seems fitting that McDonald's Peak and Lake should remain untamed
even as their namesake; that the eddying whirlpool of life should pass
them by and that in their embrace the native creatures should live and
range as of yore. And may it be that within those shadowy gorges, remote
from the sight and hearing of man, a wild, white horse goes bounding
through the night?




_SOME INDIAN MISSIONS_




CHAPTER IV

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS OF THE NORTHWEST


More than a century after the Spanish Francescans planted the Cross upon
the Pacific shores, the French, Belgian and Italian Jesuits or _robes
noires_, took their way into the Northwestern wilderness in response
to a cry from the people who lived within its solitudes. Civilization
follows the highways of intercourse with the outer world, so the Western
coast had passed through the struggle of its beginnings and entered
into a period of prosperity and peace, while that territory with the
Rocky Mountains as its general center, was still as primeval as when the
galleons of Juan de Fuca sailed into Puget Sound.

The mellowness of old romance, the warmth of Latin colour, hang over
the Missions of California. The pilgrim lingers reverently in their
cloistered recesses, breathing the scent of orange blossoms, reposing
in the shade of palm and pepper trees. With the song of the sea in his
ears and its sapphire glint in his eye he re-lives the olden days,
weaves for himself out of imagination's threads, a picture as harmonious
in its tones of faded rose and gray as an ancient tapestry. How much
the architectural beauty of these Missions has brought them within the
affectionate regard of the people it is hard to say, but undoubtedly it
has had an influence. The graceful lines of arch and pillar, the low,
broad sweep of roof and corridor, the delicate, yellowish-white of the
adobe outlined against a sky of royal blue, stir the sleeping sense
of beauty in our hearts and make us pause to worship at such favoured
shrines.

It is for precisely the opposite reason that we are drawn to the
Missions of the Northwest. Austere, ascetic in form, they make their
appeal because of their unadorned simplicity. They were originally the
plainest structures of logs, added to as occasion demanded and always
constructed of such homely materials as the surrounding country could
yield. Hands unaccustomed to other labours than telling the rosary or
making the sign of the Cross, hewed forest trees and wrought in wood
the symbol of their teaching. No wonder, then, that the buildings were
small and crude, but their lack of grandeur was the best testimony
to the sacrifice and noble purpose of which they were the emblems.
Overlooked, isolated they stand, passed by and all but unknown. Yet they
are monuments of heroic achievement and devotion; brave men risked their
lives willingly to lay these foundation stones of the faith; bitter
struggles were fought and won in their consecrated shadows and upon them
is the glamour of thrilling episode.

During the seventeenth century a little band of French missionaries of
the order of St. Ignatius journeyed from their native France to Canadian
territory with the purpose of spreading the word of God amongst the
savages of that benighted land. One of them, Father Ignace Jogues,
became the apostle of the Iroquois and died at their hands, a martyr.
Strangely enough, his teachings lived after him and were preserved in a
measure, at least, by those who had murdered him because of the message
he brought.

Years afterwards, about 1815, a small party of Iroquois took their
way from the Mission of Caughnawaga, in the neighbourhood of Sault
St. Louis, on the banks of the Saint Lawrence River, and proceeded,
probably in quest of furs, into the little known and perilous ascents
of the Rocky Mountains. This party was headed by one Ignace La Mousse,
his given name being by a curious coincidence, the same as that of the
martyred disciple of the Gospel. He was a man of lordly stature and
puissance indomitable. Upon their wanderings they came to _Spetlemen_,
"the place of the Bitter Root," a mild, fair valley where dwelt a folk
kindly in their natures, who called themselves the Selish. These people
welcomed the Iroquois, made them at home in their lodges and shared with
them the sports of the chase until the visiting Indians were visitors no
more and claimed no other land than this.

From the lips of Old Ignace, as he was known, the Selish heard of a
mysterious faith symbolized by a Cross, a greater medicine than that of
any of the tribes, and of pale-faced, sable-robed priests, who, in the
olden time, taught that faith and died happily in the teaching.

The Selish practiced a simple, spontaneous kind of paganism. They
believed in a Good and Evil Spirit who were constantly at war. These two
powers were symbolized by light and darkness and their heroic battle
was pictured in the alternate triumph of day and night. If buffalo came
in plenty, if elk and moose were slain and the season's yield were rich,
then, according to their notion, the Good Spirit was in the ascendency;
but if, on the other hand, Winter rode down from the mountains while
their larder was low, if fish would not bite and game could not be
caught, the influence of the Evil Spirit prevailed. They believed also,
in a future existence, happy or miserable according to the merit or
demerit of the soul during its mortal life. The worthy shade passed
into eternal Summer time, to a land watered by fair streams and green
with meadows; in these streams were countless fishes and in the meadows
bands of wild horses and endless herds of the beloved buffalo. There the
spirit, united with its family, would ride through all eternity, hunting
amongst the ghostly flocks in the Summer sun of happy souls. But those
who had violated the tenets of the tribe, who had been liars, cowards
or otherwise dishonourable, and those negative offenders who had been
lacking in love for their wives, husbands and children, had sealed for
themselves a bitter fate. These outcasts went to an arctic region of
everlasting snow where false fires were kindled to torment their frozen
limbs with the mocking promise of warmth. Phantom streams offered their
parched lips drink, but as they hastened to the banks to quench their
thirst, the elusive waters were ever farther and farther away. So ever
and anon, through the years that never seemed to die, the shades were
doomed to hurry onward through the night and cold of Winter that knows
no Spring, in misery as dark as the shadow engulfing them. The Lands
of Good and Evil were separated by savage woods, inhabited by hungry
wolves, lithe wild cats and serpents coiled to strike. The wretched
sinner in his prison of ice, might after a period of penance, short or
long, according to the measure of his offense, expiate his sins and join
his brethren in the Happy Hunting Ground.

Besides this general belief held in common by the tribe, they cherished
countless myths such as those of the creation and many lesser fanciful
legends which formed a part of their religion.

Although these Indians were sincere in this simple, half-poetical
mythology, they listened very willingly, like eager children, to Old
Ignace, and from him learned to make the sacred sign and repeat the
white man's prayer. After knowing something of their mysticism it is
not surprising that the greater mysticism of the Catholic Church should
appeal to them; that once having heard the story of a faith much in
accord with many of their elementary, pre-conceived ideas, they should
pursue it tirelessly until they gained that which they most desired.

Time upon time at the councils, the chiefs discussed a means of
getting a Black Robe to come to them. At last, in a mighty assembly,
Old Ignace arose and proposed that a delegation be sent to St. Louis
to pray that an apostle of the church might come to shed the light
of the new faith upon the darkness of the Western Woods. A stir of
approval ran through the attentive people, for it was a great and daring
thing to think of. But who would go? The journey of about two thousand
miles lay over barriers of mountains, rushing torrents, virgin forests
where the sun never shone, and worst of all, penetrated the country of
their hereditary enemies, the Sioux. In spite of these perils, in the
breathless quiet of expectation that had hushed the tribe, four braves
came forward and volunteered to undertake the quest.

The knights of the olden days, who went forth sheathed in armour, in
goodly cavalcades, to the land of the Saracen in search of the Holy
Grail, have gathered about their memory the white light of heroism,
but if their daring and that of these four were weighed impartially,
the Indians would rise higher in the scale of glory. Alone, afoot,
armed only with such weapons as their skill could contrive, they
started out in the Spring of 1831, and in spite of the death that
lurked around them, reached their journey's end with the Autumn. The
tragical aftermath of that heroic adventure followed quickly. The
dangers overcome, the goal won, they failed. Not one among them could
speak a word of French or English. They sought out General Clark who had
penetrated into their lands, but what brought them from across the Rocky
Mountains, through the teeth of perdition to St. Louis, not even he
could guess. Picture the tragedy of being within reach of the treasure
and unable to point it out! Through General Clark the four emissaries
were conducted to the Catholic Church. Monseigneur, the Bishop,
was absent--he whom they had travelled six moons to see. Very soon
thereafter, two of the number fell ill as a result of exposure. In their
sickness, doomed to die in a strange land far, far from the pleasant
glades of their native valley, they made the sign of the Cross and other
feeble gestures which some priests who visited them interpreted rightly
to be an appeal for baptism and the last rites of the church. The
priests accordingly gave them the consolation they prayed for and placed
in the hands of each a little crucifix. So rigidly did they press these
symbols to their breasts, that they retained them even in death. Still
in their final agonies not one word could they tell of that mission for
which they were even then yielding up their lives. They died christened
Narcisse and Paul and were buried in a Catholic cemetery in the City of
St. Louis.

The two survivors, nameless shadows, flitted back into the wild and
were lost forever in the darkness. No tidings of them ever reached the
waiting tribe, so they, too, sacrificed themselves to a fruitless cause.

After these things had happened a Canadian, familiar with the Indians,
informed the good fathers who these children of the forest were and of
their devotion to a Faith, the merest glimmering of which had penetrated
to their remote and isolated valley. Then a priest of the Cathedral
offered to go with one companion to these zealous Indians when the
Spring should make possible the desperate trip.

Meantime, the Selish waited long and anxiously for word from their
delegation. Michel Insula, or Red Feather, "Little Chief and Great
Warrior," small of stature but mighty of spirit, always distinguished
by the red feather he wore, hearing that some missionaries were
travelling westward, fought his way through the hostile country and
arrived at the Green River Rendezvous where Indians, trappers and some
Protestant ministers were assembled. Insula was dissatisfied with the
ministers because they had wives, wore no black gowns such as Old Ignace
described, and carried no crucifix. The symbolism of the Catholic Church
had impressed him deeply and he would have no other faith, so he and his
band returned to their people to tell them that the _robes noires_ were
not yet come and their brave messengers had perished with their mission
unfulfilled.

They were resolute men, these Indians, and never faltering, they
determined to send another party upon the same sacred quest. This time
Old Ignace, he who had first broached the adventure to the council,
arose among the chiefs and warriors and offered to go. He took with him
his two young sons. The Summer was already well spent, but he and the
lads started out undaunted, and after a terrible period of ceaseless
travelling, smitten with cold and hunger, they reached St. Louis, and
Ignace more favoured than the preceding delegation, made known the wants
of his adopted tribe to the Bishop, who listened to him kindly and
promised to send a priest among his people.

Ignace and his sons returned safely to the Bitter Root Valley and
brought the glad tidings to the Selish. But eighteen moons waxed and
waned and though the watchful eyes of the Indians scanned the East,
never a pale-faced father in robes of black came out of the land of the
sunrise.

The chiefs took counsel again. A third time they determined to make
their appeal. Once more Ignace La Mousse led the way and in his charge
were three Selish and one Nez Percé brave. They fell in with a little
party of white people near Fort Laramie, and uniting forces for greater
safety, took up the march together. They journeyed onward unmolested
until they came to Ash Hollow in the land of the warlike Sioux. In that
fateful place three hundred of the hostile tribe surrounded them. The
Sioux, wishing only the scalps of the Selish and Nez Percé, ordered the
white men and Old Ignace who was dressed in the garb of civilization, to
stand apart. The whites obeyed, but Ignace La Mousse, scorning favour
or mercy at the enemy's hands, joined his adopted tribal brethren and
fought with them until they all lay dead upon the plains. So ended the
third expedition.

Once more news of the bloody death of their heroes reached the Selish.
A fourth and last party volunteered to undertake that which now seemed
a hopeless charge. Two Iroquois, Young Ignace La Mousse, so called
to distinguish him from the elder of the name, whose memory was held
honourable by the tribe, and Pierre Gaucher, "Left Handed Peter," set
out, joining a party of the Hudson Bay Fur Company's men and making the
trip in canoes. They finished the journey in safety and obtained from
Monseigneur, the Bishop, the pledge that in the Spring he would send a
missionary to the Valley of the Bitter Root. Young Ignace waited at the
mouth of Bear River through the Winter in order to be ready to guide
the priest to the Selish with the coming of the Spring. Pierre Gaucher
returned hot-footed, in triumph, conveying to the tribe the glad tidings
that their prayer had been answered; that the Great Black Robe was
sending them a disciple to preach the Holy Word. At last, after eight
years of waiting, the Selish were to have granted them their hearts'
desire. From out of the East the pale-faced, black robed father would
come bearing with him the Cross illuminated by the rising sun, casting
the benediction of its shadow upon the people and their land.

When the Selish learned from Pierre Gaucher that the _robe noire_ was
in reality travelling towards their country even then, the Great Chief
assembled his braves and it was decided that the tribe should march
forward to meet and welcome their missionary. Accordingly they started
in good season and on their way met groups of Kalispehlms, Nez Percés
and Pend d'Oreilles, who joined them, swelling their number to about
sixteen hundred souls. The ever increasing cavalcade moved on over pass
and valley, peak and ford, clad in rich furs, war-eagle feathers and
buckskins bright with beads--a gaily coloured column filing through the
woods. Finally, in the Pierre Hole Valley they came upon him who was
henceforth to be their teacher and guide, Father de Smet, whose memory
is held in reverence by the Indians of the present generation.

There was great rejoicing among the Selish, the Nez Percés, the Pend
d'Oreilles and the Kalispehlms. They burst into wild shouts of delight,
swarming around the pale priest, shaking his hand and bowing down
before him. They conducted him to the lodge of the Great Chief, called
the "Big Face," whom Father de Smet has described as one "who had the
appearance of a patriarch." The Chief made Father de Smet welcome in
these words:

"'This day the Great Spirit has accomplished our wishes and our hearts
are swelled with joy. Our desire to be instructed was so great that four
times had we deputed our people to the Great Black Robe in St. Louis to
obtain priests. Now, Father, speak and we will comply with all that you
will tell us. Show us the way we have to take to go to the home of the
Great Spirit.'"

Thus spake the Big Face, Chief of all the Selish, and there before the
assembled peoples of the kindred tribes, he offered to the priest his
hereditary honours as ruler. His renunciation was sincere, but Father de
Smet replied that he had come merely to teach, not to govern them.

That night in the deepening shadow, the children of the forest gathered
together around their new leader and chanted a song of praise. Strange
music swelling from untutored lips and awakening hearts into the wild
silence which had echoed only the howl of native beasts and the war cry
of battle and death! Yet even in that hymn of thanksgiving there was an
undertone of unconscious sadness. It was the beginning of a new epoch.
The old, poetical wood-myth and paganism were gone; the free range
over mountain and plain in the exhilarating chase would slowly give
place to the pursuits of husbandry. And this new, shapeless compound of
civilization and religion was bringing with its blessings, a burden of
obligation and pain. The Indians did not know, the priest himself could
not understand, that he was the channel through which these simple,
happy folk should embark upon dangerous, devouring seas.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: LAKE McDONALD FROM McDONALD CREEK]

Father De Smet was a Belgian and he had spent some time with the
Pottowatamies, in Kansas. He understood the Indians well and what was
most important, he loved them. He remained among the Selish long enough
to be assured of their docile nature and sincerity of purpose, then
returned to St. Louis to urge the establishment of a permanent mission
and to ask for assistance to carry on his work. Monseigneur, the Bishop,
listened favourably to his appeal and consequently, in the Spring of
1841, Father De Smet, reinforced with two Italian priests, three lay
brothers and some other man, started for the Rocky Mountains. The Selish
had promised to meet the party at a given place at the base of the Wind
River Mountains, on the first day of July. The Indians waited until
they were driven by hunger to hunt in more likely fields. The Fathers,
learning of this, sent a messenger to recall them, and they hastened
back to greet their apostle and his followers. And of that little band
there were Charles and François, the sons of Old Ignace, the Iroquois,
Simon, the oldest of the tribe, and Young Ignace of great fame, who, we
are told, journeyed for four long days and nights having neither food
nor drink, in his haste to make good his promise to meet the _robes
noires_.

So far was the season advanced that the Selish had started on their
buffalo hunt. Therefore, the priests whose supplies were exhausted,
with their Indian friends, went on to Fort Hall, procured provisions
there, and then proceeded to the Beaverhead River to join the tribe.
The priests stayed only a few days among the Indians who were absorbed
in the chase, and again took up their journey with the Bitter Root
valley as the chosen place of permanent rest. There they had determined
to build the Mission, "the house of the Great Spirit," and there the
Selish promised to join them after the hunt was over in the Fall. Along
the course of the Hell Gate River they took their way and at last came
safely within the green refuge of the valley to lay down their burden
and build their church. They selected a fair spot near the present site
of Stevensville and laboured long to fashion the pioneer home of the
Faith which they called The Mission of St. Mary's. The good priests
went farther still and re-named the valley, the river watering it and
the highest peak, St. Mary's, so anxious were they in their zeal to
eradicate every trace of the old, pagan beliefs of their converts, even
to the names of the valleys, lakes and hills!

The element of incongruity and pity in this, the zealous fathers did
not appreciate. That a jagged, beetling crest, the home of the thunder
cloud, the womb whence issues glacier and roaring stream, fit to be
Jove's dwelling, should bear the mild title of St. Mary's, did not
shock their notions of the eternal fitness of things. Happily, the
valley with its rose-starred brocade of flowers, is still the Bitter
Root and a re-awakening interest is calling the old names from their
long oblivion to take their places once again, vesting peak and stream
and grassy vale with a significance of meaning totally wanting in the
artificial foreign titles forced on them by those who neither knew nor
cared for their tradition and sentiment. And even the ancient gods and
spirits are no longer despised as evils antagonistic to the salvation
of the soul. Lafcadio Hearn expressed pity for the cast-off Shinto
gods whose places were usurped by the deities of the Buddhist creed.
Likewise, the best Christian amongst us, if he looks beneath the surface
into the heart of things, must be conscious of a vague regret for the
quaint, mythical lore which cast its glamour over the wilderness; for
the poor, vanished phantoms of the wood and the gods who have fallen
from their thrones. Sometimes in the remotest mountain solitudes we
dare to acknowledge thoughts we would not harbour elsewhere. Under the
pensive appeal of the still forests, the heaven-reaching peaks and
stream-songs, we wonder if upon the heights, in deep-bosomed caverns,
those sad exiles dwell, casting over the cloistered groves a subtle
melancholy, evasive as the shadow of a cloud, fleeting as the sigh of
the Summer wind.

But the good fathers of St. Mary's had no such thought for the ancient
paganism and its symbols. They were busy planting the Cross, building a
chapel, the best that their strength and skill could erect, and other
structures necessary for their protection and comfort. It was a labour
of love, as much a religious rite as the saying of the Mass, and verily,
the ring of the hammers must have seemed in the ears of those devoted
men, endless _aves_ and _pater nosters_. Finally the work was done. A
comfortable log cabin, large enough to hold nearly the assembled tribe,
stood in the valley, and when the Indians returned from the hunt, they
were joyful in this, their reward, for all those brave attempts to bring
the Light into the Wilderness.

The Mission completed, Father De Smet travelled to Fort Colville in
Washington, a journey of more than three hundred miles, to procure
seeds and roots, and on his way he stopped among the Kalispehlms, the
Pend d'Oreilles and the Coeur d'Alenes, all of whom welcomed him and
listened attentively to the message he brought. He took back to his
Selish charges at St. Mary's "a few bushels of oats, wheat and potatoes"
which he and his brethren sowed. The Indians, like children, watched
with wonder, the planting, sprouting, ripening and reaping of the crop,
a thing hitherto unknown to them, though husbandry on a small scale had
been practiced at an earlier date by some of the Eastern tribes.

But however truly the Indians loved their new teachers, the _robes
noires_, and however sincerely they accepted the tenets of their
faith, they still persisted in buffalo hunts, which twice a year took
them into the contested country, and upon these expeditions, fired
with excitement, alive with all the heritage of passion inspired by
the chase, the war path and the intoxication of glory handed down
to them through an ancestry so ancient as to be lost in the dimness
of beginnings, they forgot for a time, at least, the life of order,
industry and religion they had pledged themselves to lead. Therefore,
one of the new priests, Father Point, accompanied them on the hunt, but
in the abandon of those days when every sense was strained to find the
prey, and every nerve was as tense as the bow-string 'ere it speeds the
arrow to its mark, it was impossible to preach to them the gentle word
of Christianity, so the Fathers gave up these attempts and remained at
the Mission awaiting the return of their straying converts, a situation
which was to result sadly for St. Mary's. Meantime the work was growing.
The Pend d'Oreilles and Coeur d'Alenes had asked for missionary
priests and Father De Smet needed more helpers in the new land.

From St. Mary's, the Mother Mission, Father Point and Brother Huet
went forth to minister to the Coeur d'Alenes, where they established
the Mission of the Sacred Heart. A third Mission, St. Ignatius, was
founded amongst the Kalispehlms on the Pend d'Oreille River. With these
two offshoots from the parent stem of St. Mary's, it was necessary for
Father De Smet to seek re-inforcement abroad, but before he sailed he
started westward three new recruits from St. Louis.

It must have been an inspiring sight when this humble priest, fresh
from the western woods, the scent of the pines exhaling from him, the
breadth of vast distances in his vision, the simplicity of the Indians'
racial childhood reflected in his own nature, stood before his August
Holiness, Pope Gregory XVI., in the grandeur of the Vatican at Rome,
and there, amidst the pomp and ostentation, the wealth and luxury of
the headwaters of that Church which sends its streams to the utmost
corners of the earth, pled the cause of the lowly Indian. More imposing
still, it must have been, when His Holiness arose from his throne and
embraced this apostle from the great, New World. The Pope sought to
make the priest a bishop, but Father De Smet chose to remain as he was,
and certainly in the eyes of unprejudiced laymen, he gained in simple
dignity more than he foreswore in ecclesiastical honors.

This trip of Father De Smet to Europe has a peculiar interest in that
it was the means of bringing into the West, besides numbers of pioneer
Sisters, and clergy, a man so beloved, so revered that his name--Father
Ravalli--is known by Catholic and Protestant, Indian and White alike,
through the whole of the Rocky Mountain region. Those who knew the
gentle old man loved him not only for his spirituality, but for his
human sweetness. He possessed that breadth of sympathy which sheds mercy
on good and bad equally, commiserating the fallen, pitying the weak.
He was a native of Ferrara, Italy, and at a very early age decided to
become a missionary priest. That he might be most useful materially
as well as religiously, he fitted himself for his work. He graduated
in _belles lettres_, philosophy, the natural sciences, and became a
teacher in these branches of learning, in several cities of Italy.
Under a skilled physician of Rome he studied medicine; in a mechanic's
shop he learned the use of tools; finally, in a studio, he practiced
the rudiments of art which he always loved. So he came to the Indians
bringing with him great human kindliness, and the knowledge of crafts
and homely pursuits that made their lives more easy and independent.
It was he who devised the first crude mill, the means of giving the
people flour and bread, he who by a hundred ingenious devices lightened
the burden of their toil. But most of all was his practice of medicine
a mercy. To stricken infancy or old age he was alike attentive; to
dying Christians he bent with ready ear and alleviating touch, or
as compassionately eased the last throes of highwaymen, heretic or
murderer. Over the bleak, snowy passes of the mountains, heedless of
hardship or danger, he hurried in answer to the appeal of the sick,
no matter who they were or where they dwelt. And though often those
who went before or came after him were robbed, he was never molested.
The most desperate of the "road agents" respected him and suffered
him to pass in peace on his way. Gently brave, like the good bishop in
_Les Miserables_, his very trustfulness was his safeguard. Perhaps as
striking an example of his forethought as we can find is the fact that
he trained a squaw to give intelligent care to women in the throes of
childbirth. There is no record of the mothers and babes spared thus, but
there were many, and even the letter of the monkish law never stayed his
helping hand or curbed his humane devotion. The more ascetic brethren
who lived in colder spiritual altitudes, looked doubtfully upon Father
Ravalli's impartial ministry; the more astute financiers who held the
keys to the Church's coffers, frowned upon his unrewarded toil, and
there comes a whisper through the years that there were times when he
was an object of charity because he never asked reward for the surcease
of suffering his patient vigils brought.

He travelled from one to another of the Northwestern missions and even
to Santa Clara, California, but he is known best and loved most as the
Apostle of the Selish at St. Mary's. Indeed, looking back through the
perspective of time at the plain, little Mission crowned as with an
aureole, one figure stands out clearly among the pious priests, who, in
turn, presided at its altar, and this figure is Father Ravalli.

His grave, marked by a shaft of stone, is within the shadow of the
church in the valley of the Bitter Root, and it was fitting he should
lie down to rest where he had laboured so long and lovingly. A
generation hence, when the hallowed places of the West become shrines
about which pilgrims shall gather reverently, this mountain-tomb of
the gentle old priest will be visited and written of. Meantime, he
sleeps as sweetly for the solitude, and those whose lives he made more
beautiful by his presence think of him at peace as they turn their eyes
heavenward to the infinite rosary of the stars.

In spite of the progress of the beneficent work and the fresh blood that
had infused new strength into the cause, dark days were to cast their
shadow upon the little Mission of St. Mary's. No power could restrain
the Selish from the chase, and during their absence twice a year, the
colony left behind, consisting only of the priest and those too aged
or sick to follow the tribe, were menaced by the Blackfeet and Bannock
Indians. The old feud was fanned red hot by the Selish killing two
Blackfeet warriors who invaded the very boundaries of the Mission with
hostile intent. The threats from the Blackfeet became more terrible.
They lurked in the thick timber and brush around the stockade which
enclosed the Mission, and, finally, while the tribe was absent on a
buffalo hunt, a rumour reached the anxious watchers that the hostiles
would descend in a great war party upon the defenseless community. And
indeed, they were roused by war whoop and savage yell to see swarming
around their weak barricade, the dreaded enemy. Father Ravalli was in
charge of the Mission at that time and he and his companions prepared
themselves for the death which seemed inevitable. But the Blackfeet,
probably seeing that only a man stricken with years, two young boys and
a few aged women and little children were all of their hated foe who
remained at St. Mary's, retreated to the brush. One of the two boys
ventured to the gate to make sure the Blackfeet were gone and was shot
dead. This tragical incident and the more awful menace it carried with
it to those who were left at the mercy of the invading tribes, and
another reason we shall now consider, led to the temporary abandonment
of St. Mary's.

In those early days, the missions being the only habitations within many
hundreds of miles, became the refuge and abiding place during bitter
weather, of French-Canadian and mixed breed trappers, who in milder
seasons ranged over the mountains and plains in pursuit of furs. These
half-savage men were undoubtedly a picturesque part of the old, woodland
life and their uncouth figures lent animation and colour to the quiet
monotone of the religious communities. In the first quarter of the last
century we find mention of French-Canadians employed by the Missouri Fur
Company, appearing on New Year's Eve, clad in bison robes, painted like
Indians, dancing _La Gignolee_ to the music of tinkling bells fastened
to their dress, for gifts of meat and drink. These trappers were, in
the day of St. Mary's Mission, a licentious, roistering band with easy
morals, consciences long since gone to sleep, who did not hesitate to
debauch the Indians, and who feared neither man nor devil. They went
to St. Mary's as to other shrines, and under the pretext of practicing
their religion, lived on the missionaries' scanty stores and filled
the idle hours with illicit pastimes. It is said that they became
revengeful because of the coolness of their reception by the priests,
and maliciously set about to poison the Selish against the beloved
_robes noires_. However this may be, whether the wayward, capricious
children strayed or not, it is certain that they would not sacrifice the
buffalo hunt for priest nor promise of salvation, so the Mission was
dismantled and leased; its poor effects packed and the Apostles of the
Faith started out again to seek refuge in new fields. At Hell's Gate,
the inferno of the Blackfeet, they parted; Father Ravalli to wend his
way to the Mission of the Sacred Heart among the Coeur d'Alenes; the
rest, under the escort and protection of Victor, the Lodge Pole, Great
Chief of the Selish and father of Charlot, followed the Coriacan defile
to the Jocko River and finally arrived at St. Ignatius, the Mission of
the Kalispehlms.

For a time we leave St. Mary's in the sad oblivion of desertion, while
those who had tended its altar, poor pilgrims, toiled over diverse
trails toward different destinations.

It is not necessary to follow the varying fortunes of the few, small
missions in the Northwestern wilderness, included then within the vast
territory called Oregon. Each has its pathetic story of privation and
danger, which may be found complete and detailed in ecclesiastical
histories written by priests of the order.

We shall pass on to the Mission of St. Ignatius, whither the party from
St. Mary's sought refuge, which, in the course of time absorbed some
of the lesser institutions and became, as we shall see, the religious
center of several tribes. The Mission of St. Ignatius was the same
founded by Father Point on the banks of the Pend d'Oreille River
among the Kalispehlms in the year 1844. The original location proved
undesirable, so ten years later the Mission was moved to a site chosen
by the advice of Alexander, Chief of the tribe. A wonderful revelation
it must have been when the Indian guide, leading the priests through a
pass in the mountains, the secret of his people, showed them the vast
sea of flowing green--the valley of Sin-yal-min--barred to the East
by the range of the same name. There ever-changing shades of violet
and lights of gold altered the mien of these mountains whose jagged
peaks showed white with snow, from whose deep bosoms burst a water-fall
plunging from mighty altitudes into the emerald bowl of the valley.
This was veritably a kingdom in itself, and no white man had trodden
the thick embroidery of wild flowers and grass. It had been a gathering
place for many tribes. Within its luxuriantly fruitful limits, berries
and roots grew in plenty and game abounded in the neighbouring hills.

In the very palm of Sin-yal-min the new Mission of St. Ignatius was
builded. There could scarcely have been a more ideal spot for church
and school, forming the nucleus of an agricultural community. There
gathered parties of the upper and lower Kalisphelms, upper Kootenais,
Flat Bowes, Pend d'Oreilles and Selish, to pitch their tipis in the
shadow of the Mission Cross. Many of these Indians made for themselves
little farms where they laboured and lived. Entire families of Selish
moved from the Bitter Root valley to be near the _robes noires_ they
loved. St. Ignatius possessed an advantage that bound the Indians to
it by permanent ties and that was its schools. Four pioneer Sisters
travelling into the Rocky Mountain region under the guidance of two
priests and two laymen, from their home mission in Montreal, founded
at St. Ignatius the first girls' school among the Indians of the
territory. Not long thereafter the priests established a similar school
for boys, where they taught not only the French and English languages
and the rudiments of a simple education, but also such handicrafts as
seemed most necessary to the development of industry. In saddle-making
particularly, the boys excelled, and wonderful specimens of leather
work have gone forth from the Mission shops. Thus, largely through
its practical industry St. Ignatius grew into a powerful institution.
Building after building was added to the group until a beautiful village
sprang up, half hidden among clumps of trees and generous vines. On
the outskirts of this community rows of tiny, low, thatch-roofed log
cabins were built by the Indians to shelter them when they assembled
to celebrate such feasts as Christmas, Good Friday and that of St.
Ignatius, their patron Saint.

The fates favoured St. Ignatius. In the year of its removal the
Hell's Gate treaty was signed wherein the bounds of the reservation
were re-adjusted, making the new mission the center of that rich
dominion. The treaty of the Hell Gate, participated in by the Selish,
the Pend d'Oreilles and some of the Kootenais, was the same, it may
be remembered, wherein Victor, the father of Charlot, insisted upon
retaining possession of the Bitter Root Valley "above the LoLo Fork" for
himself and his people, unless after a fair survey by the United States,
the President should deem it best to move the tribe to the Jocko. This
agreement was entered into in 1855. Seventeen years went by. The Indians
declare that no survey was ever made during that time nor were they
furnished with school teachers, skilled artisans and agriculturalists
to instruct them, as had been promised on the part of the government.
Summarily the Selish were called upon to sign a second agreement, the
Garfield treaty, which deprived them of their ancestral home and drove
them forth to share the Jocko Reservation in common with the allied
tribes. This was at once an impetus to the fortunes of St. Ignatius and
a mortal blow to St. Mary's.

That pioneer shrine, abandoned on account of the depredations of the
Blackfeet, remained dark and silent for sixteen years. The Selish
mourned the loss of their friends and teachers, the _robes noires_. In
spite of the absence of the church's influence, save such intermittent
inspiration as the occasional visit of a priest, the Selish prayed and
waited. And surely, poor, impulsive children that they were, if they
had been misled by tale-bearing, mixed breed trappers, their digression
was dearly expiated. During those sixteen years they remained faithful
to the cause which four delegations of their number had braved danger,
privation and death to win.

In the meantime the West was changing. The first stern, ascetic days
were passing when the best of men's characters was called into active
existence to cope with immediate hardship; when every nerve rang true,
tuned to the highest bravery and that magnificent indifference to death
which makes heroes. The cry of gold ran through the length and breadth
of the land and the headlong rush of adventurers, good and bad, from the
four corners of the earth, all bent on wealth, changed the spirit of the
western world. In that mad stampede, men, spurred by the lust of gain,
pushed and crowded each other, and with such competition, who thought
of or cared for the Indian? His day was done; the accomplishment of his
ruin was merely a matter of years. Moreover, the lower element of the
reckless, pillaging crew of gold seekers brought with it the vices of
civilization--drink and the game.

Change the ideal which inspires a deed and the deed itself is changed.
That first, stern West which taught men not to fear by surrounding them
with danger, made heroes of them because they had braved the unknown
for some noble purpose, religion, the simple love of Nature or another
reason as good; but in these altered conditions where debauching gain
was the one object of their quest, though they spurned death as the
pathfinders had done, their bravery sank to bravado and dare-deviltry
because their purpose was sordid.

With this invasion of the wilderness the whole aspect of the mission
work underwent a change. The masked man on horseback stalked the trails;
the bizarre glamour of the dance hall flaunted its coarse gaiety in the
mushroom camps' thronged streets; the saloon and gaming house brought
temptation to the Indian, and generally he fell. It was also true that
in more than one instance the precedent of bloodshed was set by brigand
whites, sowing the seeds which were later to bear a red harvest of war.

So, when St. Mary's opened her doors in 1869, it was upon a period of
transition. If the placid image of Our Lady, looking through half
closed eyelids, could have seen and understood the metamorphosis what
a shock would have smitten her sainted soul! The painted, war-bent
Blackfeet were gone far back into their fastnesses, but here and there,
thick and fast, came the white settler, peaceful, cold, inevitable,
overwhelming, bringing ruin to the old life and its people--the
beginning of the end. And that calm, just Mother of Mankind would have
seen the timid shadow-shapes of the Selish melting into the gathering
twilight, at once welcoming the stranger to the land and relinquishing
it to him, retiring step by step before the great, white inundation. It
is useless to prolong the story. The climax had to come, and come it
did, swiftly, cruelly, with a dark hint of treachery that we, of the
superior race are too willing to excuse and condone. By the Garfield
Treaty, which, by a curious anomaly, never very lucidly explained,
bears the sign of Charlot, son of Victor, hereditary chief of the
Selish, that he, a man in his sane senses swears he never signed, the
tribe renounced all claim to the land of their fathers and consented to
betake themselves to the Jocko reservation. During the twenty-two years
of the existence of St. Mary's as an Indian Mission, after its second
opening, the fathers, among them Father Ravalli, watched over and tended
their decreasing charge. The numbers of the red hosts dwindled; the
falling off of the people through new and unnatural conditions thinned
their ranks, but surer still, was the admixture of the white strain, so
corrupting in most cases to the unfortunate in whom the two race strains
commingle. But in spite of the Garfield Treaty, notwithstanding the
exodus of the main body of the Selish, St. Mary's faithful to the end,
drew to her little altar the last, failing remnant of the tribe--the
splendidly defiant Charlot and his band. At last, in 1891, they accepted
the inevitable and rode away to the land of their exile resigning to
the conquering race their blood-right to the Bitter Root. This was the
death of St. Mary's. It remained standing, a church of the whites, but
an Indian mission no more. In looking back through the years, their
mercies and their cruelties, it is a sorrowfully sweet thing to remember
that Father Ravalli, guardian spirit of the Selish, lay down to rest
before the ultimate change, the final expulsion, while the first light
of the wilderness from the altar of St. Mary's still shone, however
faintly, to show the way.

The sequel of St. Ignatius is, happily, less pathetic in its unfolding.
The life that ebbed from St. Mary's flowed amply into the newer
Mission's growing strength and to-day it stands, substantial and
prosperous in the valley of Sin-yal-min. Though the same tragedy is
about to be enacted, the expulsion, less summary, leaving to the
individual Indian his garden patch, St. Ignatius remains a beacon to
the dusky hosts, poor frightened children who cling to this last hope,
promising as it does a happiness born of suffering, an ultimate reward
which not even the white man can take away. A handsome new church,
frescoed by an Italian brother, does service instead of the old chapel,
venerable with age that hides behind the sheltering trees. In front of
the modern church stands the great, wooden Cross erected by the early
fathers, which the Indians kneel to kiss before they go to Mass. And
to the right, covered with wild grass, and that neglect of which such
vagrant growths are the emblem, is the old cemetery where so many weary
pilgrims who travelled long and painfully over difficult trails, have
sought peace past the power of dreams to disturb.

Here, as we have seen, upon feast days the Indians come, the scattered
bands gathering from mountain and valley, clad in gala attire. Their
ranks are thinning fast. The once populous nation of the Selish is
shrunk to between three and four hundred souls, still the little village
often holds a thousand Indians all told, from the different neighbouring
tribes. And sometimes, bands from far away, distinguished by diversified
language, curious basketry and articles of handicraft, come as
spectators to the feasts.

Until a few years ago these religious festivals were preceded by solemn
rites of expiation. A kind of open air court was held, the chiefs
sitting in judgment upon all offenders and acting in the capacity of
judges. The whole tribe assembled to watch with impassive gravity the
austere spectacle of the accusation, sentence and chastisement of those
who had broken the law. All malefactors were either brought before
the chiefs, or spurred by conscience, they came forward voluntarily,
confessed their guilt and prayed to be expurgated of sin through the
sting of the lash. When the accusations and confessions were finished,
the multitude dropped upon their knees and prayed. Then those arraigned
were examined and such of them as the chiefs decreed guilty, were
sentenced and immediately suffered the penalty. A blanket was spread
upon the earth and the offender lay on this, his back exposed to the
raw-hide lash which marked in welt-raising strokes the degree of his
transgression. Even while he smarted, never wincing under this ordeal,
the spectators at the bidding of the chiefs, prayed once again for
the culprit's reformation and forgiveness. Such was the practice of
the Selish handed down from the earliest days. The time and place of
the chastisement were regulated in these later years by the Catholic
festivals, but public punishment with the lash was a custom of the
tribe before the missionaries penetrated the West. The confession, the
judgment and the whipping they believed to be a complete expiation;
having suffered, the sin-soiled were made clean, and thus purified, they
met and mingled with the best of their brethren on equal terms, without
further reproach. This was a simple and summary form of justice, suited
to the people whom it controlled,--was in fact the natural outgrowth of
their moral and ethical code--and it is a pity that the ancient law,
together with much besides that was desirable in the pristine life of
the Indian, has been stamped out beneath the master's iron heel.

One cannot take leave of the missions of the Northwest without looking
back upon Father De Smet, their founder, and the work which he began.
Through his devotion missions were established among many different
nations, even the unyielding Blackfeet falling under the spell of
gentleness. And he who lived most of his life either in the wilderness
or labouring elsewhere for what he believed to be the salvation of its
benighted children, died at last at St. Louis in 1873, after meditative
and reminiscent years spent in recording his travels and his triumphs.

There are some subtle questions crying out of the silence which are not
to be pushed back unspoken, even though we can find no answer to their
riddle. How far have the missionaries succeeded? If completely, why does
the Christian Indian still dance to the Sun? And did those Fathers in
their errand of mercy blindly pass to the people they would fain have
saved from annihilation the fate they strove to spare them from? Who can
say?

The Indians were probably in their racial infancy when the maturer ranks
marched in and absorbed, or otherwise destroyed them. It would seem that
with them it is a case of arrested development. If left to themselves,
through centuries they might have brought forth a civilization
diametrically opposite to our own. That they never could nor can
assimilate or profit by our social and educational methods has been
sufficiently proved. Their race instincts are essentially as foreign to
ours as those of the Hindu, and their evolution must have necessarily
proceeded along totally different lines. The Indians were decreed to
work out their own salvation or die, and the latter thing has come to
pass. One might go on painting mental pictures of what would have been
the result if the free, forest-born red race had thrived and grown into
maturity. Certainly in their decadence, their spirit-broken second
childhood, we find the germ of an original moral sense, of tradition and
poetry, even of religion, which might have borne rich fruit.

The Oriental is to us an enigma, and we recognize in his makeup psychic
qualities but slightly hinted of in ourselves. So in the Indian we
must acknowledge a race of distinct and separate values that we can
never wholly know or understand. The races are products of countless
centuries begotten of habit and environment; we cannot put aside these
growth-accumulations builded like the rings of the pine, nor can we take
that which the Creator made and re-create it to suit our finite ends.
Therefore, instead of helping the Indian we are merely killing him,
kindly perhaps, with comforts, colleges and sacraments, but none the
less surely striking at his life.

And though they are still amongst us, picturesque figures which we value
chiefly as relics of a gaily-coloured past, the Indians are the mystery
of our continent. They speak to us, they smile at us, they sit within
our churches and use our tongue, but for all that they remain forever
strangers. What pagan beliefs vibrating through the chain of unrecorded
ancestry, what hates, loves, aspirations and bitter griefs, separate
from our comprehension as the poles, thrill out of the darkness of
yesterday and die unspoken, unformed, beneath those calm, bronze brows?
They are a problem to be studied, never solved; a riddle one with the
Sphinx, the Cliff Dwellers and the Aztec ruins. For, after all is said,
what do even the good Fathers, with candle, crucifix and creed, know of
their primal souls, of the unsounded depths of their hearts?




_THE PEOPLE OF THE LEAVES_


[Illustration: FRANCOIS]




CHAPTER V

THE PEOPLE OF THE LEAVES


Among the early Canadian French the Sioux were known as the _Gens des
Feuilles_, or People of the Leaves. This poetical title seems very
obscure in its meaning, at first, but it may have originated in a legend
of the Creation which is as follows:

In the ultimate Beginning, the Great Spirit made the world. Under his
potent, life-giving heat the seeds within the soil burst into bloom
and the earth was peopled with trees--trees of many kinds and forms,
the regal pine and cedar in evergreen beauty and the other hosts whose
leaves bud with the Spring, change with the Autumn and die with the
Winter's snow. These trees were all possessed of souls and some of them
yearned to be free. The Great Spirit, from his throne in the blue
skies, penetrating the slightest shadow of a leaf, divining the least
unfolding of a bud with his all-seeing, omnipotently sensitive beams
radiating like nerves from his golden heart, perceived the sorrow of the
sighing forests and mourned with tears of rain at their discontent. Then
he knew that a world of trees, however beautiful, was not complete and
he loosed the souls from their prisons of bark and limb and re-created
them in the form of Indians, who lived in the shelter of the woods, knit
to them by the eternal kinship of primal soul-source--verily the People
of the Leaves.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is not strange that among a nation which adored the sun, the chief
ceremony should have been the Sun Dance, at once a propitiatory offering
to the Great Spirit and a public test of metal before a young man could
become a brave. The custom was an ancient one, as ancient, perhaps, as
the legend of the leaves, and in the accounts of the earliest explorers
and missionaries we read of this dance to the sun; of the physical
heroism which was the fruit of the torture and filled the ranks of
soldiery with men Spartan in fine scorn of pain and contempt of death.
It is interesting to trace similar practices in races widely separate
in origin, habits and beliefs, and it seems curious that this rite of
initiation into the honourable host of the braves, however dissimilar in
outer form, was not totally unlike in spirit the test of knighthood for
the hallowed circle of the Table Round.

The festival of the Sun Dance was celebrated every year in the month
of July, when the omnipotent orb reached his greatest strength, is,
indeed, still celebrated, but without the torture which was its reason
for being. A pole was driven deep and solid in the ground and from
the top, somewhat after the manner of a May-pole, long, stout thongs
depended. After incantations by the Medicine Men, the youths desiring
to distinguish themselves came forward in the presence of the assembled
multitude, to receive the torture which should condemn them as squaw men
or entitle them to fold their blankets as braves.

With a scalping knife the skin was slit over each breast and raised so
a thong from the pole could pass beneath and be fastened to the strip
of flesh. When all were bound thus, the dance began to the time of a
tom-tom and the chant. Goaded by pride into a kind of frenzy the novices
danced faster, more wildly, leaping higher, bending lower, until they
tore the cords loose from their bleeding bosoms and were free. If,
during the ordeal, one fainted or yielded in any way to the agony, he
was disgraced before his tribe, cast out as a white-hearted squaw man
until the next year's festival, when he might try to wipe out the stain
and enter the band of the brave. If, on the other hand, all the young
men bore the torture without flinching, their spirits rising superior to
all bodily pain, they were received as warriors and earned the right to
wear the medicine bag. Often one of greater puissance than his fellows
wished further to distinguish himself by a test extraordinary and
submitted to a second torture more heroic than the first. He suffered
the skin over his shoulder blades to be slit as his breast had been and
through these gashes thongs were drawn and fastened as before, but this
time the ends were attached to a sacred bison's skull, kept for the
purpose, which the brave dragged over rough, rocky ground and through
underbrush, until his strained flesh gave way and freed him of his
burden. This feat entitled him to additional honors and he was respected
and held worthy by the great men of the tribe.

After the torture, when a youth was declared a brave he retired to the
wilderness, there in solitude to await the message of the Great Spirit
which would reveal to him his medicine, or charm.

This "making medicine" as it was called, was a rite of most solemn
sacredness and secrecy and therefore shrouded in mystery. From the
lips of one who, in days past, when the ancient customs were rigidly
preserved, followed and watched a newly made brave, the ensuing
narrative was gleaned.

After dark the young Indian took his way cautiously far off into silent,
unpeopled places where sharp escarpments cut like cameos against the
sky. There, poised upon the cliffs, his slim figure silhouetted against
the moonlit clouds, he remained rigid as a statue through long hours,
waiting for the Voice from Above by whose revelation he should learn
wherein his power lay. Then lifting his arms towards the heavens he made
strange signs to the watchful stars. So he remained 'till dawn paled
from the East, when, having received his message, he went forth to seek
the animal which should hereafter be his manitou, or guardian spirit.
Sometimes it was the bison, the elk, the beaver, the weasel or other
beast of his native wild. Into his bag he put a tooth or claw and some
fur of the chosen creature, with herbs which might be propitious. Such
was his charm, his medicine-bag, the source of his valour and safety, to
be worn sleeping and waking, in peace and in war; to be guarded with his
life and to go with him in death back to the Great Spirit by whom it was
ordained.

If a warrior lost his medicine-bag in battle, he became an outcast among
his people and his disgrace was not to be wiped out until he slew and
took from an enemy's body the medicine-bag which replaced his own and
thus retrieved his honour.

Of all the quaint ceremonies connected with the old wood-worship and
sun-worship, combining the idea of Beginning and End, of pre-existence
and after-existence, none are more interesting than the rites attending
the burial of the dead. As the Indians sprang from the forest trees,
according to the myth of the leaves, lived in the shadow of the pleasant
woods, so at last, they were received into the strong, embracing
branches that tossed over them in wild gestures when the Great Spirit
spoke in anger from the sky; that tempered the Summer's heat into
cooling shadow for their repose; that shed their gift of crimson leaves
upon the Indians' devoted heads even as they, themselves, must shed the
garb of flesh before the blast of death. Or, sometimes, the dead were
exalted upon a naked rock, rising above earth's levels toward the sun.
Wherever his resting place might be, the dead man sat upright, if a
brave, dressed in his full war regalia, surrounded by his most prized
possessions and if he owned a horse, it was shot so its shade might
bear his spirit on the long, dark, devious way to the Happy Hunting
Ground. No mournful ghost who met his death in darkness could ever bask
in the celestial light of endless Summer-time; he was doomed to become
a phantom living in perpetual night. That is the reason none but forced
battles were fought after dark; the bravest of the braves feared the
curse of everlasting shadow. They believed, too, that no warrior who
lost his scalp could enter the fields of the glorious; hence the taking
of an enemy's scalp at once killed and damned him. The suicide was
likewise barred from Paradise.

       *       *       *       *       *

Years ago, when the feuds of the hostile tribes still broke into the red
vengeance of the war-path, the Sioux and Cheyennes did battle with the
Gros Ventres at Squaw Butte, and by some mischance a medicine man of the
Sioux, not engaged in the combat, whose generalship lay in marshalling
the manitous to the aid of his people, was killed. A traveller,
journeying alone in the mountains, found him high upon a cliff with
his blanket and war dress tumbling about his bleaching bones, his
medicine-bag and all the emblems of his magic preserved intact. In the
bag was a grizzly bear's claw, an elk's tooth, and among other trinkets,
a small, smooth brass button of the kind worn by the rivermen trading
up and down the Missouri River between the East and the savage West.
It would be interesting to trace the migrations and transfiguration of
that little button from its existence as an humble article of dress to
the dignity of a charm in the medicine-bag of the old magician on that
isolated cliff. And the Master of Magic himself; he of prophetic powers
and knowledge born of intercourse with the gods; there he sat, an arrow
through his skull, his blind, eyeless sockets uplifted to the sun, his
necromancy unavailing, his wisdom but a dream! In that remote home which
his devoted tribesmen chose for him, no irreverent hand had disturbed
his watch, and he is probably still sitting, sitting with blind eyes
toward the sun while eagles circle overhead and gray wolves howl to the
moon. The years pass on unheeded, the face of the land has changed,
is changing, will change, and the rustling, swirling leaves of Autumn
fall thick and fast. Mayhap, after all, the old Magic Master, keeping
his eternal vigil, may see from beyond the flesh the thinning woods and
the dead leaves dropping from the trees; hear their weary rustle--poor
ghosts, as they flutter before the wintry wind. And among the lessening
trees, also driven by the Northern blast, does he see also, a gaunt and
silent troop of phantoms--mere Autumn leaves--whirling away before the
Storm?




_THE PASSING BUFFALO_




CHAPTER VI

THE PASSING BUFFALO


I

It was summertime in the mountains--that short, passionate burst of
warm life between the long seasons of the snow. The world lay panting
in the white light of the sun, over gorge and pine-clad hill floated
streamers of haze, and along the ground slanted thin, blue shadows.
The sky pulsed in ether waves and the distant peaks, azure also, with
traceries of silver, were as dim as the memory of a dream. In this
untrodden wilderness the passing years have left no record save in the
gradual growth of forest trees, and in its rugged beauty it is the
same as a century ago. Therefore time itself seems arrested, and it is
scarcely strange to come upon a buffalo skull naked and bleached by sun
and rain, and close by, half hidden in the loose rocks, an arrow head of
pure, black obsidian.

This, then, was once the scene of a brave chase when wind-swift Indians
pursued mad, hurtling herds over mountain slope and plain. These empty
fastnesses thrilled to the shock of thousands of beating hoofs, these
hills flung back the echo to the brooding silence as the black tide
flowed on, pressed by deadly huntsmen armed with barb and bow. And even
then, far over the horizon, unseen by hunted and hunters, silent as the
shadow of a cloud, inevitable as destiny, came the White Race, moving
swifter than either one, driving them unawares toward the great abyss
where they should vanish forever into the Happy Hunting Ground, lighted
by perpetual Summer and peopled by immortal herds and tribes.


II

In such a remote and deserted place as this, no great effort of the
imagination is needed to call up the shades of those who once inhabited
it, to react their part in the tragedy of progress. Let us fancy that a
riper, richer glow is upon the mountains, that the white light of the
sun has deepened into an amber flood which quivers between the arch of
lapis-lazuli sky and the warm, balsam-scented earth that sighs forth
the life of the woods. Already the trees not of the evergreen kind are
hung with bewilderingly gorgeous leaves of scarlet, russet-brown and
yellowing green; the haze has grown denser and its ghostly presence
insinuates itself among the very needles of the pines. It is Autumn.
The gush of life has reached its climax and is ebbing. High on the
steepled mountains is a wreath of filmy white that trails low in the
ravines. It seems as fragile as a bridal veil, but it is the foreword
of Winter which will soon descend with driving blast and piping gale,
lancing sleet and enshrouding snow to chill the last red ember-glow of
the brilliant autumnal days. It was at this time that the Indian's blood
ran hot with longing for the hunt. Lodges were abandoned and only those
too weak to stand the hardship of the march were left behind. Chiefs
and braves, women and children struck out for the haunts of the buffalo
where the fat herds grazed before the impending cold.

These children of the forest sought their prey with the woodcraft handed
down from old to young through unnumbered generations. Indeed, it was
necessary for them to outwit the game by strategy in the early days
before the wealthy and progressive Nez Percé Kayuses, who were first to
break the wild horses of the western plains, brought the domesticated
pony among them. In passing, it is interesting to know that the term
"cayuse" applied to all Indian horses, had its origin with this tribe,
since the chief article of trade of the Kayuses was the horse, the
horse of Indian commerce became known as a "cayuse." The Selish used
the method of the stockade. After the march into the buffalo country,
they camped in a spot where they could easily fashion an enclosed park
by means of barricades built among the trees. A great council of the
chiefs and warriors was held and this august body appointed a company
of braves to guard the camp and prevent any person from leaving its
boundaries lest in so doing the wily buffalo should become alarmed and
quit the neighbouring hills. The council proclaimed anew the ancient
laws of the chase, and then began the building of the pen. This was a
kind of communal work in which the entire tribe engaged, and as all
contributed labor so all should benefit alike from its fruits. There
within the mock park, whose pleasant green fringe of trees was in
reality a prison wall, would be trapped and killed the food for the
sterile winter months, when, but for that bounty, starvation would stalk
gaunt among them and lay the strongest warrior as low as a new born
babe or the feebly old who totter on the threshold of death. The place
chosen for the pen was a level glade and the enclosure was built with
a single opening facing a cleft in the surrounding hills. From this
opening, an avenue also cunningly fenced and gradually widening towards
the hills, was constructed, so that the animals driven thither, could
escape neither to the right nor the left, but must needs plunge into the
imprisoning park.

Next came the election of the Master of Ceremonies, the Lord of the
Pen. He was a man seasoned with experience, mighty with the knowledge
of occult things--one of the _Wah-Kon_, Medicine Men or jugglers, who
possessed the power of communicating with the Great Spirit. This high
functionary determined the crucial moment when the hunt should begin,
and when the buffalo, roused from the inertia of grazing, should be
driven into the snare. In the center of the clearing he posted the
"medicine-mast," made potent by three charms, "a streamer of scarlet
cloth two or three yards long, a piece of tobacco and a buffalo horn,"
which were supposed to entice the animals to their doom. It was he who,
in the early dawn, aroused the sleeping camp with the beating of his
drum and the chanting of incantations; who conferred with the great
Manitous of the buffalo to divine when the time for the chase had come.

Under the Grand Master were four swift runners who penetrated into the
surrounding country to find where the buffalo were browsing and to
assist by material observation the promptings of the spirits of the
hunt. They were provided by the Grand Master with a _Wah-Kon_ ball of
skin stuffed with hair, and when the herds were found in a favourable
spot and the wind blew from the direction of the animals to the pen, one
of the runners, breathless with haste, bearing in his hand the magic
ball, appeared before the Grand Master and proclaimed the joyful news.
There was a mighty beating of the Grand Master's drum, and out of the
lodges ran the excited people, all bent with concentrated energy upon
the approaching sport. Every horseman mounted, and those less fortunate
armed themselves and took their positions in two lines extending from
the entrance to the enclosure toward the open, separating more widely as
the distance from the pen increased, thus forming a V shape with but a
narrow gateway where the lines converged.

Then through the silent, human barricade rode the bravest of the braves,
astride the fleetest horse and he went unarmed, always against the wind,
enveloped in a buffalo skin which hung down over his mount. All was
quiet. Only the light Autumn wind flowing through the trees carried the
curious, crisp, cropping noise of thousands of iron-strong jaws tearing
the lush, green grass. And as the rider came upon the crest of the hill
and looked at the panorama of waving verdure peopled by multitudes of
bison stretching far away across the meadows and over the rolling ground
beyond, it must have been a sight to quicken the pulses and stir the
blood. Suddenly there sounded a prolonged and distressing cry--the cry
of a buffalo calf which wailed shrilly for a moment, then ceased. It
came from the brave alone in the open, shrouded in the buffalo hide.

There was a movement in the herd. Every heavily maned head rose, and
quivering nostrils snuffed the running wind. At first the buffalo
advanced slowly, as if in doubt; gradually their pace quickened to a
trot, a gallop, then lo! the whole vast band came hurtling and lurching
in its furious career like the swells of a tempestuous, black sea,
breaking into angry waves at every shock. And from those deep throats
came a mighty roar, ponderous and resonant as the thunder of the surf.

Still the cry of the calf reverberated and re-echoed, and the single
horseman crouching beneath his masquerade, led the herd on and on,
eluding their onslaught, luring them forward between the lines of his
companions who stood silent, trembling with eagerness for the sport.
Then pell-mell the mounted hunters rushed out from cover and the wide
extremes of the V shaped line closed in so that the horsemen were behind
the herd. This done, the wind blowing toward the corral, took the scent
of the Indians to the buffalo. Pandemonium reigned. Men, women and
children on foot, leaped out from their hiding places with demoniac
yells, brandishing spears, hurling stones and shooting arrows from
their bows. The stampeded animals, surrounded save for the one loophole
ahead, plunged into the pen. The chase was over and the slaughter began.
The tribe would live well that Winter-time!

       *       *       *       *       *

Among the Omawhaws of the first part of the last century, the hunt
was preceded by much preparation and ceremony. Generally by the month
of June their stores of jerked buffalo meat were well-nigh exhausted,
and the little crops of maize, pumpkins, beans and water-melons, with
the yield of the small hunting parties pursuing beaver, otter, elk,
deer and other game, were scarcely sufficient to fill the wants of
the tribe. So, after the harvesting and trading were done, the chiefs
called a council and ordered a feast to be held in the lodge of one of
the most distinguished of their number, to which all hunters, warriors
and chiefs should be invited. Accordingly the squaws of the chosen host
were commanded by him to make ready the choicest maize and the plumpest
dog for the ceremonial board. When all was in readiness the host called
two or three venerable criers to his lodge. He smoked the calumet with
them, then whispered that they should go through the village proclaiming
the feast and bidding the guests whom he named. He instructed the
criers to "speak in a loud voice and tell them to bring their bowls and
spoons." They sallied forth singing among the lodges, calling to the
distinguished personages to come to the banquet. After these summons
the criers went back to the lodge of the host, quickly followed by the
guests who were seated according to their rank. The ceremony of smoking
was performed first, then the Head Chief arose, thanked his braves for
coming and explained to them the object of the assembly, which was the
selection of a hunting ground and the appointment of a time to start.
After him the others spoke, each giving his opinion frankly, but always
careful to be respectful of the opinions of others.

Neither squaws nor children were suffered to be present. The criers
tended the kettle and when the speech-making was done, one dipped out
a ladle of soup, held it toward the North, South, East and West, and
cast it into the ashes of the fire. He also flung a bit of the best
part of the meat into the flame as a sacrifice to _Wahconda_, the Great
Spirit. The guests then received their portions, the excellence of which
depended upon their rank. The feast closed as it began, with the smoking
of the calumet and at its conclusion the criers went forth again,
chanting loud songs in praise of the generosity of the host, enumerating
the chiefs and warriors who partook of his bounty, finally proclaiming
the decision of the council and announcing the time and place of the
hunt. This was an occasion of great rejoicing. The squaws at once began
to mend the clothing and the weapons of their lords and pack their
goods; and the young braves, gay with paint and bright raiment, beguiled
the hours with gaming and dancing in the presence of the chiefs.

When the day of the journey arrived the whole community departed,
the chiefs and wealthy warriors on horseback, the poorer folk afoot.
Sometimes the quest of the buffalo was prolonged over weary weeks, and a
meager diet of _Pomme blanche_ or ground-apple, was insufficient to stay
the pangs of hunger that assailed the tribe. The hunters preceded the
main body, carefully reconnoitering the country for bison or foes. When
at length herds were discovered, the hunters threw up their robes as a
signal, the tribe halted and the advance party returned to report. They
were received with pomp and dignity by the chiefs and medicine men who
sat before the people solemnly smoking and offering articulate thanks to
_Wahconda_. In a low voice the hunters informed the dignitaries of the
presence of buffalo. These mighty personages, in turn, questioned the
huntsmen as to the numbers and respective distances of the herds, and
they replied by illustrating with small sticks the relative positions of
the bands.

An old man of high standing then addressed the people, telling them that
the coveted game at length was nigh, and that on the morrow they would
be rewarded for the long fast and fatigue.

That night a council was held and a corps of stout warriors elected to
keep order. These officers painted themselves black, wore the _crow_ and
were armed with war-clubs in order that they might enforce the mandates
of the council and preserve due decorum among the excited tribe folk.

Early in the morning the hunters on horseback, carrying only bows and
arrows and the warriors provided with war-clubs, led by the pipe-bearer
who bore the sacred calumet, advanced on foot. Once in view of the
splendid, living masses covering the green plains as with a giant sable
robe, they halted for the pipe-bearer, the representative of the Magi,
to perform the propitiatory rite of smoking. He lighted his calumet of
red, baked clay, bowed his head in silence, then held the stem in the
direction of the herds. After this he smoked, exhaling the aromatic
clouds towards the buffalo, the heavens, the earth and the four points
of the compass, called by them the "sunrise, sunset, cold country and
warm country," or by the collective term of the "four winds." At the
completion of this ceremony the head chief gave the signal and the
huntsmen charged upon their prey.

From this point their methods were somewhat the same as those of the
Selish, except that instead of building a stockade, they, themselves,
enclosed the herd in a living circle, pressing closer and closer upon
it until the killing was complete. This surrounding hunt was called
_Ta-wan-a-sa_.

The chase was the grand event, the test of horsemanship, of archery, of
fine game-craft and often the opportunity for glory on the war-path as
well--for where the buffalo abounded there lurked the hidden enemy, also
seeking the coveted herds, and an encounter meant battle to the death.
Both ponies and hunters were trained to the ultimate perfection of skill
and the favoured buffalo horse served no other purpose than to bear
his master in the chase. As the cavalcade descended upon the startled
game, the rider caressed his faithful steed, called him "father,"
"brother," "uncle," conjured him not to fear the angry beasts yet not
to be too bold lest he be hurt by goring horns and stamping hoofs, and
urged him with honeyed speech to the full fruit of his strength and
cunning. And the horse, responding, flew with wingéd stride, unguided
by reins to the edge of the compact, fleeing band, never hesitating,
never halting until the shoulder of the animal pursued, was exposed to
the death-dealing shot. It was just behind the shoulder blade that the
huntsman sought to strike. The inclination of his body in one direction
or another was sufficient to send the horse speeding after fresh prey.

The hunters, themselves, scorned danger and knew not fear. If they were
uncertain how deep the arrow had penetrated they rode close to the
infuriated brute to examine the nature of the shot, and if necessary
to shoot again. And even though in the grand _melée_, a single animal
was often pierced with many arrows, there were seldom quarrels as to
whom the quarry belonged, so nicely could they reckon the value of the
different shots and determine which had dealt the most speedy death.

Onward and onward they sped, circling and advancing at once, like a
whirlwind on the face of the prairie. At length, the darting riders
were seen more and more vividly as they compressed their line about the
routed band, until finally, only a heap of carcasses lay where the herd
had been. Then the tribe came upon the scene. The squaws cut and packed
the meat. If a hunter were unfortunate and killed no game, he helped
dissect the buffalo of a lucky rival. On completion of his task he stuck
his knife in the portion of the meat he desired and it was given to him
as compensation for his labor.

Someone, either by order of the chief or of his own free will, presented
his kill to the Medicine for a feast. There was great revelry and joy,
dancing and eating of marrow bones, to celebrate the aftermath of the
royal sport.


III

Although the meat of the buffalo was the Indians' chief article of
food, this was by no means the only bond between the red man and
the aboriginal herds of the plains. Besides the almost innumerable
utilitarian purposes for which the different parts of the animals were
used, there was scarcely a phase of life or a ceremony in which they
did not figure. In the dance, a rite of the first importance, in the
practice of the _Wah-Kon_, or medicine, in the legends of the creation
and the after-death, the buffalo had his place. Such lore might make a
quaint and curious volume, but we shall consider only the more striking
uses and traditions of the bison in their relation to the life of the
early West.

The buffalo was, in truth, the great political factor among the tribes;
nearly all of the bitter warfare between nation and nation was for no
other purpose than to maintain or gain the right to hunt in favourable
fields. Thus the Judith Basin, the region of the Musselshell and many
other haunts of the herds, became also battle fields of bloodshed and
death. Not only did the bison cause hostilities among the nations, but
they were likewise the reason of internal strife. It is said that the
Assiniboines, or Sioux of the Mountains, separated from the main body of
the tribe on account of a dispute between the wives of two rival chiefs,
each of whom persisted in having for her portion the entire heart of a
fine bison slain in the chase. This was the beginning of a feud which
split the nation into independent, antagonistic tribes.

The utmost economy was generally observed by the early Indians in the
use of the buffalo. Each part of the animal served some particular
purpose. The tongue, the hump and the marrow bones of the thighs were
considered the greatest delicacies. The animals killed for meat were
almost always cows, for the flesh of buffalo bulls could be eaten only
during the months of May and June.

Among the Omawhaws of nearly two centuries ago, all the meat save the
hump and chosen parts reserved for immediate use, was cut into "large,
thin slices" and either dried by the heat of the sun or "jerked over
a slow fire on a low scaffold." After being thoroughly cured it was
compressed into "quadrangular packages" of a convenient size to carry on
a pack saddle. The small intestines were carefully cleaned and turned
inside out to preserve the outer coating of fat, then dried and woven
into a kind of mat. These mats were packed into parcels of the same
shape and size as the meat. Even the muscular coating of the stomach was
preserved. The large intestines were stuffed with flesh and used without
delay. The vertebrae were pulverized with a stone axe after which the
crushed bone was boiled. The very rich grease that arose to the surface
was skimmed and preserved in bladders for future use. The stomach and
bladder were filled with this and other sorts of fat, or converted into
water bottles. All of the cured meat was _cached_, in French-Canadian
phrase, until hunger drove the Indians to draw upon these stores.

The pemmican of song and history was a kind of hash made by toasting
buffalo meat, then pulverizing it to a fine consistency with a stone
hammer. Mr. James Mooney in the _Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau
of Ethnology_, describes the process as follows; "In the old times a
hole was dug in the ground and a buffalo hide was staked over so as to
form a skin dish, into which the meat was thrown to be pounded. The hide
was that from the neck of the buffalo, the toughest part of the skin,
the same used for shields, and the only part which would stand the wear
and tear of the hammers. In the meantime the marrow bones are split
up and boiled in water until all the grease and oil comes to the top,
when it is skimmed off and poured over the pounded beef. As soon as the
mixture cools, it is sewed up into skin bags (not the ordinary painted
parfléche cases) and laid away until needed. It was sometimes buried or
otherwise cached. Pemmican thus prepared will keep indefinitely. When
prepared for immediate use, it is usually sweetened with sugar, mesquite
pods, or some wild fruit mixed and beaten up with it in the pounding.
It is extremely nourishing, and has a very agreeable taste to one
accustomed to it. On the march it was to the prairie Indian what parched
corn was to the hunter of the timber tribes, and has been found so
valuable as a condensed nutriment that it is extensively used by arctic
travellers and explorers. A similar preparation is used upon the pampas
of South America and in the desert region of South Africa, while the
canned beef of commerce is an adaptation from the Indian idea. The name
comes from the Cree language, and indicates something mixed with grease
or fat. (Lacombe.)"

Among the Sioux at Pine Ridge and Rosebud, in the ceremony of the Ghost
Dance, pemmican was celebrated in the sacred songs. Mr. Mooney gives the
translation of one of them:

    _"Give me my knife,_
    _Give me my knife,_
    _I shall hang up the meat to dry--Ye'ye'!_
    _I shall hang up the meat to dry--Ye'ye'!_
    _Says grandmother--Yo'yo'!_
    _Says grandmother--Yo'yo'!_
    _When it is dry I shall make pemmican,_
    _When it is dry I shall make pemmican,_
    _Says grandmother--Yo'yo'!_
    _Says grandmother--Yo'yo'!"_

       *       *       *       *       *

Though at first the main object for which the buffalo was hunted was the
flesh, next in importance and afterwards foremost, was the hide made
into the buffalo robe of commerce. Since these robes played such an
important part in the early traffic and were partly responsible for the
annihilation of the bison, it is worth while to consider how they were
procured and treated. The skins to be dressed were taken in the early
Spring while the fur was long, thick and luxuriant. Those obtained in
the Autumn called "Summer skins" were used only in the making of lodges,
clothing, and for other domestic purposes. To the squaws was assigned
the preparation of the hides as well as the cutting and curing of the
meat. Immediately after the hunt while in the "green" state the skins
were stretched and dried. After this, they were taken to the village and
subjected to a process of curing which was carried on during the leisure
of the women. The hide was nearly always cut down the center of the back
so that it could be more easily manipulated. The two parts were then
spread upon the ground and scraped with a tool like an adze until every
particle of flesh was removed. In this way all unnecessary thickness was
obviated and the hide was made light and pliable. When the skin had been
reduced to the proper thinness a dressing made of the liver and brains
of the animal were spread over it. This mixture was allowed to dry and
the same process was repeated save that in the second instance while the
hide was wet it was stretched in a frame, carefully scraped with pumice
stone, sharp-edged rocks or a kind of hoe, until it was dry. To make it
as flexible as possible, it was then drawn back and forth over twisted
sinew. The parts were sewed together with sinew and the buffalo robe was
ready for the trader's hands.

As early as 1819 these robes were in great demand and one trader
reported that in a single year he shipped fifteen thousand to St. Louis.

In the everyday life of the Indians the products of the buffalo yielded
nearly every comfort and necessity. The hides were used not only for
robes and portable lodges which furnished shelter on the march, but they
were made into battle shields; upon their tanned surface the primitive
artist traced his painted record of the chase, the fray, or the mystic
medicine. They were laid upon the earth for the young braves to play
their endless games of chance upon, and the wounded were taken from the
field on stretchers of buffalo hides swung between a pair of ponies.
From them two kinds of boats were made. One, described by James in his
account of the journey of his party in 1819-20 is as follows:

"Our heavy baggage was ferried across in a portable canoe, consisting
of a single bison hide, which we carried constantly with us. Its
construction was extremely simple; the margin of the hide being pierced
with several small holes, admits a cord, by which it is drawn into the
form of a shallow basin. This is placed upon the water, and is kept
sufficiently distended by the baggage which it receives; it is then
towed or pushed across. A canoe of this kind will carry from four to
five hundred pounds."

The second variety, known as a "bull-boat," was made of willows woven
into a round basket and lined with buffalo hide.

The grease of these beasts was used to anoint the Indians' bodies and to
season the maize or corn.

From the horns were made spoons, sometimes holding half a pint, and
often ornamented upon the handles with curious carving.

The shoulder blade fastened to a stick served for a hoe or a plow.

From the hide of unborn buffalo calves bags were made to contain the
war-paint of braves.

It would be at once possible and profitable to continue enumerating the
practical uses of the buffalo, but far more interesting than these facts
were the ceremonies, superstitions and traditions in which they were
bound up.

Perhaps, first among the rites in sacred significance and solemn dignity
was the smoking of the calumet. This was supposed to be not only an
expression of peace among men and nations, but a propitiatory offering
to the Manitous, or guardian spirits, and to the Master of Life.

According to Colonel Mallory in the _Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau
of Ethnology_, the Sioux believed that this supreme emblem of good will
was brought to them by a white buffalo cow, in the old days when the
different bands of the nation were torn with internal strife. During
this period of hostility a beautiful white buffalo cow appeared, bearing
a pipe and four grains of corn, each of a different colour. From the
milk which dripped from her body, sprang the living corn, so from the
beginning the grain and the buffalo meat were decreed to be the food
of the Indians. She gave to the rival factions, the pipe which was the
sacred calumet, instructing them that it was the symbol of peace among
men and he who smoked it with his fellows, by that act sealed the bond
of brotherhood. After staying for awhile among the grateful people, and
teaching them to call her "Grandmother," which is a term of affectionate
reverence among the Indians, she led them to plentiful herds of her own
kind and vanished into the spiritland whence she came.

The odour of the buffalo was believed to be agreeable to the Great
Spirit so that the tobacco or kinnikinick of the calumet was flavoured
with animal's excrement in order that the aroma wafted upward might be
most pleasing. This custom of flavouring the pipe with the scent of the
buffalo was carefully observed by the Pawnee Loups of the olden time,
a tribe which claimed descent from the ancient Mexicans, in the awful
ceremonies preceding a human sacrifice to Venus, the "Great Star." Upon
this austere occasion four great buffalo skulls were placed within the
lodge where the celebration was held and they were offered the sacred
_nawishkaro_ or calumet. The bodies of their chiefs or those who died
gloriously in war were robed in buffalo skins, furnished with food and
weapons, and placed sitting upright, in a little lodge near a route
of travel or a camp in order that the passers by might see that they
had met their death with honour. The Pawnees also used bison skulls as
signals, and we find in James' _Travels_ this interesting account:

"At a little distance in front of the entrance of this breastwork, was
a semi-circular row of sixteen bison skulls, with their noses pointing
down the river. Near the center of the circle which this row would
describe if continued, was another skull marked with a number of red
lines.

"Our interpreter informed us that this arrangement of skulls and other
marks here discovered, were designed to communicate the following
information, namely, that the camp had been occupied by a war party of
the Pawnee Loup Indians, who had lately come from an excursion against
the Cumancias, Tetans or some of the Western tribes. The number of red
lines traced on the painted skull indicated the number of the party to
have been thirty-six; the position in which the skulls were placed, that
they were on their return to their own country. Two small rods stuck
in the ground, with a few hairs tied in two parcels to the end of each
signified that four scalps had been taken."

There are many other similar instances recorded by different adventurers
who braved the early West, yet this was but one of numerous uses of
buffalo skulls and heads. Among the Aricaras upon each lodge was a
trophy of the war path or the chase composed of strangely painted
buffalo heads topped with all kinds of weapons.

There was a curious belief among the Minitarees that the bones of the
buffalo killed in the chase became rehabilitated with flesh and lived
again, to be hunted the following year. In support of this superstition
they had a legend that once upon a time on a great hunt a boy of the
tribe was lost. His people gave him up for dead but the succeeding
season a huge bison was slain and when the body was opened the boy
stepped out alive and well. He related to his dumbfounded companions,
how the year before, he had become separated from them as he pursued a
splendid bull. He felled his game with an arrow, but so far had he gone
that it was too late to overtake and rejoin the tribe before nightfall.
Therefore, he cut into the bison's body, removed a portion of the
intestines and feeling the keen frost of evening upon his unsheltered
body, sought warmth within the carcass. But, lo! when the boy awakened
the buffalo was whole again and he was a prisoner within his whilom prey!

The Gros Ventres, in the day of Lewis and Clark, thought that if the
head of the slain buffalo were treated well, the living herd would come
in plentiful numbers to yield an abundance of meat.

Of the many bands into which the Omawhaw nation was divided there were
two, the _Ta-pa-eta-je_ and the _Ta-sin-da_, bison tail, which had the
buffalo for their medicine. The first of these were sworn to abstain
from touching buffalo heads, and the second were forbidden the flesh
of the calves until the young animals were more than one year old. If
these vows were broken by a member of the band and the sacred pledge
so violated, a judgment such as blindness, white hair or disease was
believed to be sent upon the offender. Even should one innocently
transgress the law, a visitation of sickness was accounted his condign
portion and not only he but his family were included in the wrath and
punishment of the outraged Manitous.

The Crow Indians, Up-sa-ro-ka, or Absaroka, used the buffalo as a part
of their great medicine. An early traveller, Dougherty, describes an
extraordinary "arrangement of the magi." In his own words, "the upper
portion of a cottonwood tree was emplanted with its base in the earth,
and around it was a sweat house, the upper part of the top of the tree
arising through the roof. A _gray_ bison skin, extended with oziers on
the inside so as to exhibit a natural appearance, was suspended above
the house, and on the branches were attached several pairs of children's
moccasins and leggings, and from one limb of the tree, a very large fan
made of war-eagles' feathers was dependent."

This leads to an interesting superstition of the Indians, which was
that any variation in the usual colour of the buffalo was caused by the
special interference of the Master of Life, and a beast so distinguished
from his kind was venerated religiously, much as the ancient Egyptians
worshipped the sacred bull. Once a "grayish-white" bison was seen and
upon another occasion a calf with white forefeet and a white frontal
mark. An early traveller once saw in an Indian lodge, the head of a
buffalo perfectly preserved, which was marked by a white star. The man
to whom it belonged treasured it as his medicine, nor would he part with
it at any price.

"'The herds come every season,' he said, 'into the vicinity to seek
their white-faced companion!'"

Maximilian, in his _Travels in North America_, gives an interesting
description of the martial and sacred significance of the robes of white
buffalo cows among the Mandans and Minitarees. He says that the brave
who has never possessed this emblem is without honour, and the merest
youth who has obtained it ranks above the most venerable patriarch who
has never owned the precious hide. Indeed, "of all the distinctions
of any man the white buffalo hide" was supreme. As the white buffalo
were extremely rare it was seldom a hunter killed one for himself. The
robes were brought by other tribes, often from far distant parts of the
country, to the Mandans who traded from ten to fifteen horses for a
perfect specimen. It was necessary for the hide to be that of a young
cow not more than two years old, and it had to be cured "with the horns,
nose, hoofs and tail" complete, In Maximilian's words: "The Mandans
have peculiar ceremonies at the dedication of the hide. As soon as they
have obtained it they engage an eminent medicine man, who must throw it
over him; he then walks around the village in the apparent direction
of the sun's course, and sings a medicine song. When the owner, after
collecting articles of value for three or four years, desires to offer
his treasure to the lord of life, or to the first man, he rolls it up,
after adding some wormwood or a head of maize, and the skin then remains
suspended on a high pole till it rots away. At the time of my visit
there was such an offering at _Mih-Tutta-Hang-Kush_, near the stages for
the dead without the village. Sometimes, when the ceremony of dedication
is finished, the hide is cut into small strips, and the members of the
family wear parts of it tied over the head, or across the forehead,
when they are in full dress. If a Mandan kills a young white buffalo
cow it is accounted to him as more than an exploit, or having killed an
enemy. He does not cut up the animal himself, but employs another man,
to whom he gives a horse for his trouble. He alone who has killed such
an animal is allowed to wear a narrow strip of the skin in his ears.
The whole robe is not ornamented, being esteemed superior to any other
dress, however fine. The traders have, sometimes, sold such hides to the
Indians, who gave them as many as sixty other robes in exchange. Buffalo
skins with white spots are likewise highly valued by the Mandans; but
there is a race of these animals with very soft, silky hair, which has a
beautiful gold lustre when in the sunshine; these are, likewise, highly
prized."

There are numerous myths of a white buffalo cow, who at will, assumed
the form of a beautiful maiden.

The Sioux in common with the Aricaras and the Minitarees observed the
custom of fasting before going to war or upon the hunt. They had a
"medicine lodge," where a buffalo robe was spread and a red painted post
was planted. Upon the top of the lodge was tied a buffalo calf skin
holding various sacred objects. After preliminary rites they tortured
themselves, one favorite method being to make a gash under their
shoulder blades, run cords through the wounds and drag two large bison
heads to a hill about a mile distant from their village, where they
danced until they fell fainting with exhaustion.

Some of the tribes performed the _Ta-nuguh-wat-che_, or bison dance.
The participants were painted black, wore a head dress made of the skin
of a buffalo head which was cut after the fashion of a cap. It was
adjusted in a manner to resemble a live animal, and extending from this
head dress, over the half-naked and blackened bodies of the dancers,
depended a long strip of hide from the back of the buffalo which hung
down like a tail.

The Omawhaws believed that the Great Wahconda appeared sometimes in the
shape of a bison bull and they, like other tribes, cherished legends of
a fabulous age when animals spoke together, did battle and possessed
intelligence equal to that of men. The following myth of the bison bull,
the ant and the tortoise, related by James, is an interesting example of
these fables:

Once upon a time an ant, a tortoise and a buffalo bull formed themselves
into a war party and determined to attack the village of an enemy in
the vicinity. They decided in council that the tortoise being sluggish
and slow of movement, should start in advance and the ant and bull
should time their departure so as to overtake him on the way. This plan
was adopted and the awkward tortoise floundered forth on his hostile
mission alone. In due time the bison bull took the ant upon his back,
lest on account of his minuteness he be lost, and together they set out
for the enemy's country. At length they came to a treacherous bog where
they found the poor tortoise struggling vainly to free himself. This
caused the ant and the bull much merriment as they crossed safely to
solid ground. But the tortoise, scorning to ask the aid of his brothers
in war, replied cheerfully to their taunts and insisted that he would
meet them at the hostile village.

The ant and the bison advanced with noise and bravado and the watchful
enemy perceiving them, issued from their lodges and wounded both,
driving them to headlong, inglorious retreat.

Finally the tortoise with sore travail, reached his destination to find
his companions flown, and because he could not flee also, he fell into
the hands of the foe--a prisoner. These cruel people decided to put him
to death at once. They threatened him with slow roasting in red coals
of fire, with boiling and many awful tortures, but the astute tortoise
expressed his willingness to suffer any of these penalties. Therefore
the enemy consulted together again and held over his head the fate of
drowning. Against this he protested with such frenzied vehemence that
his captors immediately executed the sentence, and bearing him to a deep
part of the river which flowed through their country, flung him in. Thus
restored to his native element he plunged to the bottom of the stream,
then arose to the surface to see his enemies gaping from the bank in
expectation of his agony. He grabbed several of them, dragged them
down and killed them, and appeared once more triumphantly displaying
their scalps to the bewildered multitude of thwarted warriors who were
helpless to avenge their brethren. The tortoise, satisfied with his
achievement, returned to his home where he found the ant and the bull
prone upon the floor of the lodge, wounded, humbled and fordone.

       *       *       *       *       *

Finally, the Minitarees and other tribes had a curious legend of their
origin. They believed that their forefathers once dwelt in dark,
subterranean caverns, beyond a great, swift-running river. Two youths
disappeared from amongst them and after a short absence returned to
proclaim that they had found a land lighted by an orb which warmed
the earth to fecundity, where deep waters shimmered crystal white and
countless herds of bison covered grass and flower-decked plains. So the
youths led the people up out of the primal darkness into the pleasant
valleys where they dwelt evermore. And as the bison were celebrated in
this child-like tradition of the Beginning, so likewise, did they figure
in the primitive conception of the hereafter. That region of Summer
where the good Indian should find repose, was pictured as an ideal
country, fair with verdure and rich with herds of buffalo which the good
spirits would go seeking through the golden vistas of eternity.


IV

When the first explorers penetrated the fastnesses of the New World the
buffalo was lord of the continent. Coronado on his march northward from
Mexico saw hordes of these unknown beasts which a chronicler of 1600
described naïvely as "crooked-backed oxen." The mighty herds roamed
through the blue grass of Kentucky, the Carolinas, that region now
the state of New York, and probably every favorable portion of North
America. Very gradually they were pushed farther and farther westward
to the vicinity of the Rocky Mountains, which was for many years their
refuge and retreat. In 1819 the official expedition sent by John C.
Calhoun to examine the Rocky Mountains, their tribes, animal and plant
life, found the buffalo reduced in numbers, though in the wild stretches
of country lying South along the Arkansas, they were seen in countless
hordes. The report says:

"During these few days past, the bisons have occurred in vast and almost
continuous herds, and in such infinite numbers as seemed to indicate the
great bend of the Arkansas as their chief and general rendezvous."

The account continues to narrate how the scent of the white men borne
to the farthest animal, a distance of two miles, started the multitudes
speeding away, and yet so limitless were those millions, that, day
after day, they flowed past like a sea until their presence became as
a part of the landscape, and by night their thunderous bellow echoed
through the savage wastes.

In Bradbury's _Travels_ there is a description of a fight among buffalo
bulls. He says:

"On my return to the boats, as the wind had in some degree abated, we
proceeded and had not gone more than five or six miles before we were
surprised by a dull, hollow sound, the cause of which we could not
possibly imagine. It seemed to be one or two miles below us; but as our
descent was rapid, it increased every moment in loudness, and before we
had proceeded far, our ears were able to catch some distinct tones, like
the bellowing of buffaloes. When opposite to the place from whence it
proceeded, we landed, ascended the bank, and entered a small skirting
of trees and shrubs, that separated the river from an extensive plain.
On gaining a view of it, such a scene opened to us as will fall to the
lot of few travellers to witness. This plain was literally covered
with buffaloes as far as we could see, and we soon discovered that
it consisted in part of females. The males were fighting in every
direction, with a fury which I have never seen paralleled, each having
singled out his antagonist. We judged that the number must have amounted
to some thousands, and that there were many hundreds of these battles
going on at the same time, some not eighty yards from us. The noise
occasioned by the trampling and bellowing was far beyond description."

At that time the bison paths were like well trodden roadways and served
as such to the explorers. These paths always led by most direct routes
to fresh water, and therefore were of the greatest assistance to
travellers unacquainted with the undiscovered lands.

Such were the legions of the plains even when the East had refused them
shelter. And although it was roughly estimated that the tribes dwelling
along the Missouri River killed yearly 100,000 for food, saddle covers
and clothes, this did not appreciably lessen their hosts. Not until the
white tide flowed faster and faster over the wilds was the doom of the
buffalo sounded, together with that of the forests which sheltered them,
and the Indians who were at once their foes and their friends.

Then the destruction was swift beyond belief. The royal game which
Coronado saw in 1585, which Lewis and Clark in their adventurous journey
into the unknown West encountered at every turn, was nearly gone. They
endured in such numbers that as late as 1840 Father De Smet said:

"The scene realized in some sort the ancient tradition of the holy
scriptures, speaking of the vast pastoral countries of the Orient, and
of the cattle upon a thousand hills."

It was inconceivable to the Indians that civilization should wreak
such utter desolation. They could not comprehend the passing of the
mighty herds any more than they could appreciate the destruction of
the forests or their own decline. They did not know that the railroad
which traversed the highway of the plains between the East and West ran
through miles upon miles of country whitened with buffalo bones; that
veritably the prairies which had been the pasture of the herds were
now become their graveyard--a graveyard of unburied dead. They did not
know that armies of workingmen and settlers had drawn upon the buffalo
for food and warmth, that the beasts had been harried and hunted North,
South, East and West, sometimes legitimately, but too often in cruel,
wanton sport, until, at last, it became an evident fact that they were
visibly nearing their end. A kind of stampede possessed the terrified
beasts. Their old haunts were usurped. Where the fostering forests had
given them shelter, towns arose. Baffled and dismayed they fled, hither
and thither, only to crash headlong within the range of the huntsman's
gun. So they charged at random, ever pressed closer and closer to bay by
the encroaching life which was their death.

About the year of 1883 it was known that the last thinned and vagrant
remnant of the buffalo was virtually gone. Maddened into desperate
bewilderment they had done an unprecedented thing. Instead of going
northward as their habit had been since man first observed their kind,
they turned and fled South. This was their end. The half-breeds of the
Red River, the Sioux of the Missouri, and most relentless of all, the
white hide-hunter, beset the wild, retreating band. Their greed spared
neither beast that tottered with age, nor calf fresh from its mother's
womb. All fell prey to the mastering greed of the lords of the great
free land.

Upon the shores of the Cannonball River, so-called from the heaps of
round stones upon its banks, on the edge of the Dakotas, the buffalo
made their last stand. Driven to bay they stood and fell together, the
latest offspring of a vanished race.

But the poor Indian, he who had shared the freedom of the continent
with his horned friend, could not yet understand that the buffalo were
gone--gone as the sheltering woods were going, even as he, himself, must
go. Evolution is cruel as well as beneficent and there is a pang for
each poor, lesser existence crushed out in the race, as there is joy
in the survival of the strongest and best. And those who are superior
to-day must themselves be superseded to-morrow and fall into the abysmal
yesterday, mere stepping stones toward the Infinite. The Indians,
knowing none of these things, became troubled and perplexed. In vain
they sought the herds on their old-time hunting grounds, but only stark,
bleached bones were there and they went back to their lodges, hungry,
gaunt and wan.

In years past the buffalo had disappeared at intervals to unknown
pastures, then returned multiplied and reinforced. Was it not possible
that they had gone upon such a journey, perhaps to the ultimate North
where the Old Man dwelt, to seek refuge in a mighty polar cave under
his benign protection? So from their meager stores the Indians offered
sacrifices of horses and other of their most valued possessions, to the
Old Man, that he might drive the buffalo back to the deserted pasture
lands near the Rocky Mountains.

"They are tired," said Long Tree of the Sioux, "with much running. They
have had no rest. They have been chased and chased over the rocks and
gravel of the prairie and their feet are sore, worn down, like those of
a tender-footed horse. When the buffalo have rested and their feet have
grown out again, they will return to us in larger numbers, stronger,
with better robes and fatter than they ever were."

Still the years passed and the buffalo came not, and some there were
who said that if the Old Man, the Great Spirit of the North, loved
his children of the forest, he would not have left them to suffer so
painfully and long.

Then out of dumb despair came sudden hope; out of the bitter silence
sounded a Voice and a prophet came "preaching through the wilderness,"
even as John the Baptist had come, centuries ago, bringing a message of
peace and the promise of salvation. This prophet was _Wovoka_, founder
of the Ghost Dance religion, who arose in "the land of the setting sun,"
in the shadow of the Sierras. He told the wrapt people that when "the
sun died" he went to heaven where he saw God, the spirits of those long
dead and vast herds of revivified buffalo feeding in the pastures of the
skies. Heaven would not be perfect to the Indian without the buffalo,
and the red man, less jealous than ourselves of his paradise, was
willing to share the bliss of immortality with his old-time companions
of the plains. The tenets of the new creed were gentle, teaching peace,
truth, honesty and universal brotherhood. Under the thrall of the Ghost
Dance, devotees dropped to earth insensible and had visions of the
spirit-world. Wovoka prophesied that at the appointed time the ghostly
legions, led by a spirit captain, would descend from heaven, striking
down the unbelievers and restoring to the Indians and the buffalo
dominion over the earth.

With the awful desperation of a last hope the Indians leaped high into
the Night surrounding them to grasp at a star--a star, alas! which
proved to be but a will-o'-the-wisp set over a quagmire of death.
Nothing seemed impossible to their excited fancy. Had not the white race
killed the Christ upon a Cross of torture, and would he not come to
earth again as an Indian, to gather his children together in everlasting
happiness when the grass should be green with the Spring? Meantime they
must dance, dance through the weary days and nights in order that the
prophesy might be fulfilled.

An alarm spread through the country. What meant this frenzied dance of
circling, whirling mystics who strained with wide eyes to look beyond
the skies? An order came that the dance must cease. This decree was but
human, the one which bade them dance they believed to be divine. And
dance they did, wildly, madly, to the sharp time of musketry until the
hurrying feet were stilled and the dancers lay cold and stark on the
field of Wounded Knee.

In all the annals of the Indians' tragic tale there is nothing more
pitiful than this Dance of Death. The poor victims, together with the
last hope of a despairing race, were buried at Wounded Knee, and the
white man wrought his will.

Slowly and steadily the woods were laid low, inevitably the Indians
retreated farther and farther back, closer pressed, routed as the
buffalo had been. All hope of the return of the beloved herds left their
hearts and they knew at last that they would find them only in those
Elysian fields of perpetual summertime--the Happy Hunting Ground.


V

The sun set red behind the mountains. The shadows stole down, gray
and mystical as ghosts. From afar the coyote's dolorous cry plained
through the silence and the owl hooted dismally as he awakened at the
approach of night. There in the pallid dusk lay the bleached skull
and the arrowhead of black obsidian, mute reliques of the past. The
royal buffalo is no more, the hunter that hurled the bolt is gone. We
may find the inferior offspring of the one in city parks, of the other
on ever-lessening reservations, but degeneracy is more pitiful than
death, and the old, free herds that ranged the continent are past as the
fleet-footed, strong-hearted tribes have vanished from the plains.

So the story of the two fallen races is told eloquently by this whitened
skull on the hillside and the jet-black arrow head flung by the stilled
red hand.




_LAKE McDONALD & ITS TRAIL_




CHAPTER VII

LAKE McDONALD AND ITS TRAIL


In the northern part of Montana, towards the Canadian border, the Main
Range of the Rocky Mountains has been rent and carved by glacial action
during ages gone by, until the peaks, like tusks, stand separate and
distinct in a mighty, serrated line. No one of these reaches so great a
height as Shasta, Rainier or Hood, but here the huge, horned spine rises
almost sheer from the sweep of tawny prairie, and not one, but hosts of
pinnacles, sharp as lances, stand clean cut against the sky. Approaching
the range from the East, in the saffron glow of sunset, one might fancy
it was wrought of amethyst, so intense and pure is the colour, so clear
and true the minutest detail of the grandly sculptured outline. Within
the ice-locked barriers of those heights live glaciers still grind
their passages through channels of stone; down in shadowy ravines,
voiceful with silver-tongued falls, lie fair lakes in the embrace of
over-shadowing altitudes. The largest of these lakes, McDonald, is the
heart of a vast and marvelous country, the center of many trails.

The road to Lake McDonald winds along the shores of the Flathead River
for half a mile or more, skirting the swift current now churned into
white foam by rapids, then calm and transparent, revealing the least
stone and tress of moss in its bed, in shades of limpid emerald. Leaving
the river, the way lies through dense forests of pine and tamarack,
cedar and spruce, and so closely do the spreading boughs interlace that
the sun falls but slightly, in quivering, pale gold splashes upon the
pads of moss and the fragrant damp mold which bursts into brilliant
orange-coloured fungus and viciously bright toadstools. Each fallen
log, each boulder wrested from its place and hurled down by glacier
or avalanche, is dressed in a faery garb of moss and tiny, fragrant
shell-pink bells called twinflowers, because two blossoms, perfect
twins, always hang pendent from a single stem as slender as spun
glass, and these small bells scent the air with an odour as sweet as
heliotrope. Within the forest dim with perpetual twilight, one feels the
vastness of great spaces, the silence of great solitudes.

Suddenly there bursts upon one, with all the up-bearing exhilaration of
a first sight of the sea, a scene which, once engraved upon the heart,
will remain forever. The trees part like a curtain drawn aside and the
distance opens magnificently. The intense blue of the cloudless sky
arches overhead, the royal waters of the lake flow blue and green with
the colours of a peacock's tail or the variegated beauty of an abalone
shell; sweeping upward from the shores are tall, timbered hills, so
thickly sown with pine that each tree seems but a spear of grass and the
whole forest but a lawn, and towering beyond, yet seeming very near in
the pure, white light, is a host of peaks silvered with the benediction
of the clouds--the deathless snow. The haze that tints their base is of
a shade one sometimes finds in violets, in amethysts, in dreams. Indeed,
these mountains seem to descend from heaven to earth rather than to soar
from earth towards heaven, so great is their sublimity.

As one floats away on the lake the view changes. New vistas open and
close, new peaks appear above and beyond as though their legion would
never come to an end. Straight ahead two irregular, rugged mountains
with roots of stone emplanted in the water, rise like a mighty portal,
and between the two, seeming to bridge them, is a ridge called the
"Garden Wall." The detail of the more immediate steeps grows distinct
and we see from their naked crests down their timbered sides, deep
furrows, the tracks of avalanches which have rushed from the snow fields
of Winter, uprooting trees and crushing them in the fury of the mad
descent. A long, comparatively level stretch, not unlike a gun sight
set among the bristling, craggy summits, is the "Gunsight Pass," the
difficult way to the Great St. Mary's Lakes, the Blackfeet Glacier and
the wonderful, remote region on the Eastern slope of the range. Huge,
white patches mark glaciers and snow fields, for it is within these same
mountains that the Piegan (Sperry) and many others lie. And as we drift
on and on across the smooth expanse of water, the magic of it steals
upon our souls. For there is about the lake a charm apart from the
beauty of the waters and the glory of the peaks; of spirit rather than
substance; of soul-essence rather than earthly form. That mysterious
force, whatever it may be, rising from the water and the forest
solitudes and descending from the mountain tops, flows into our veins
with the amber sunshine and we feel the sweeping uplift of altitudes
heaven-aspiring that take us back through infinite ages to the Source
which is Nature and God.

[Illustration: GLACIER CAMP]

The good old captain of the little craft weaves fact and fancy into
wonderful yarns as he steers his launch straight for the long,
purplish-green point which is the landing. To him no ocean greyhound is
more seaworthy than his boat, and he likes to tell of timid tender-feet
entreating him to keep to shore when the lake was tumultuous with storm,
and how he, spurning danger, guided them all safely through the trough
of the waves. He keeps a little log wherein each passenger is asked to
write his name. The poor old man has a maimed hand, his eyes are filmy
with years and his gums are all but toothless, but it would seem that
nature has compensated him for his afflictions by concentrating his
whole strength in his tongue. He knows each landmark well, and gravely
points out to the credulous traveller, the highest mountain in the
world; calls attention to the 18,000 fathoms of lake depth whence no
drowned man ever rises, and other marvels, each the greatest of its kind
upon the circumference of the globe. There came a day soon after when
the lake chafed beneath a lashing gale and the little craft and her
gallant captain were dumped ingloriously upon the beach. But accidents
happen to the best of seamen, and the launch, after a furious expulsion
of steam, and much hiccoughing, was dragged once more into her place
upon the wave.

Although there is evidence that Lake McDonald was long ago frequented
by some of the Indian tribes, it was not known to the world until
comparatively recent times. There are two stories of its discovery and
naming, both of which have a foundation of truth. The first is that Sir
John McDonald, the famous Canadian politician, riding across the border
with a party, cut a trail through the pathless woods and happening to
penetrate to the lake, blazed his name upon a tree to commemorate the
event, thus linking his fame with the newly found natural treasure. The
old trail remains--probably the virgin way into the wilderness. The
second story--which is from the lips of Duncan McDonald, son of Angus,
runs thus: He and a little band of Selish were crossing from their own
land of the Jocko into the country of the Blackfeet which lies East
of the Main Range, to recover some ponies stolen by the latter tribe,
when they came in view of this lake hitherto unknown to them. Duncan
McDonald, who was the leader or _partizan_, as the French-Canadians say,
blazed the name "McDonald" upon some pines along the shore. It matters
little who was actually the first to set foot on these unpeopled banks,
but it is a strange coincidence that the two pathfinders should have
borne the same name.

The purplish-green point draws nearer, log cabins appear among the
trees, each one decorated with a bear skin hung near its door. This
is a fur trading center as well as a resort of nature lovers, and
upon the broad porch of the club house is a heap of pelts of silver
tip, black and brown bear, mountain lion and lynx, and from the walls
within, bighorn sheep and mountain goats' heads peer down. The trappers
themselves, quaint, old hunters of the wilderness, come out of their
retreats to trade. But even now their day is passing. With the advent
of outside life these characters, scarcely less shy than the game they
seek, move farther back into uncontaminated solitudes. They are the
last, lingering fragment of that old West which is so nearly a sad,
sweet memory, a loving regret.

Each hour of the day traces its lapse in light and shadow on the lake,
until the sunset flowing in a copper tide, draws aureoles of golden
cloud over the white-browed peaks, transforming their huge and rugged
bulk into luminous light-giving bodies of faded roses and lavender.
As the evening wanes the mountains burn out in ashes of roses, still
lightened here and there upon their ultimate heights, with a glow as
faint as the memory of a dead love, and the living halo of the clouds
deepens into coral crowns. Then the lake becomes a vast opal, kindling
with fires that flash and die in the growing dusk.

The dark forests that cloak the lake shores, are threaded with trails
each leading to some treasure store of Nature far off in the secrecy
of the hills. One of great beauty starts from the head of the lake,
beneath the shadow of the mountains, and overhangs the boisterous,
rock-rent torrent of McDonald's Creek. The narrow way is padded thick
with pine needles ground into sweet, brown powder which deadens the
least intrusive footfall, as though the whole wood were harkening to
the singing of the waters through the silence of the trees. Along the
trail are mosses of multitudinous kinds. The delicate star moss unfolds
its feathery points of green; a strange variety with thick, mottled
leaves grows like a full blown rose around decayed trees, and a small,
pale, gray-green trumpet-shaped moss rears hosts of elfin horns. Only
a skilled botanist could classify these rich carpets which Nature has
spread over the dead royalty of her forests, so that even in their death
there is resurrection; even in their decay, new life. Bluebells and
twinflowers, those delicate faery-bells of pink, sweet grass, pigeon
berry and many another blossom beautiful in its strangeness, weave their
colour into gay patterns on the green; blend their fragrance with the
balsam sweetness of the woods. And all around, the stately pine trees
grow bearded with long, gray moss which marks their antiquity and
foretells their doom. The stream below, flowing between steep banks
that it has cut during centuries of ceaseless washing, raises its song
to a roar as it flings its swift current over a parapet of stone in a
banner of shimmering, white foam. Above, the water breaks in whirling
rapids and farther still is another fall. Towering in the distance is an
exalted peak, the father of this stream, whose snowy gift pours down its
perennial blessing into the clear tide of the lake.

So it is, the streams that issue from the glaciers yield their pure
tribute to Lake McDonald, and all the trails, uncoiling their devious
and dizzy ways over the mountains, bring us back to these shores. And
every time that we return it breaks upon us with renewed freshness of
mood. It may be ridden by a wind that lashes it into running waves
of purple and wine colour, marked with the white foot-prints of the
gale. It may be still as the first thought of love, holding in its
broad mirror the bending sky and mountains peering into its secrecy. It
may be ephemeral with mist that dims the mountains into pale, shadowy
ghosts; or it may be like a voluptuous beauty glittering with jewels
and clad in robes of silken sheen; again, it may be Quakerish in its
pallid monotone. The changing cycle of the day and night each brings its
different gift of beauty, and likewise, the passing seasons deck the
mountains and the waters with a glory all their own, until, with martial
hosts of cloud, with banners streaming silver and emblazoned with
lightning-gleam, Winter spreads its garment of white upon the mystery of
the wild. Perhaps the lake is never so exquisite as then. At least it
seems so, as with closed eyes and passive soul, a memory undimmed arises
out of the past.

It is night in the dead of Winter. The silence of deep sleep and
isolation is on the world. The snow has fallen like a flock of white
birds and the air has cleared to the degree of scintillating brilliance
that mocks the diamond's flash. The full moon is beneath a cloud and
its veiled light, filtering through the vapor, shows dimly the shadowy
waters and the wan peaks fainting far away. Then the cloud passes. The
moon leaps into the heavens and a flood of white light illumines the
water, the sky and the mountains, transforming the whole into a faery
scene of arctic splendour. It is as though the last breath of life had
vanished in that chaste frozen atmosphere, and the earth had become a
Palace of Dreams.

And though that Palace of Dreams vanishes as dreams must, like a melting
snow crystal or a frosty sigh upon the night, there remains in our
hearts a yearning which shall bear us back to the reality of beauty
that rewards each pilgrim who returns to the deathless glory of the
mountain-married lake.




_ABOVE THE CLOUDS_




CHAPTER VIII

ABOVE THE CLOUDS


Of all the trails in the McDonald country, there is none more travelled,
or more worthy of the toil than that which leads to the Piegan glacier.
From the moment we stand in expectant readiness in the little clearing
behind the log cabins comprising the hotel, a new phase of existence has
begun for us. So strange are the place and the conditions that it seems
we must have stepped back fifty years or more, into that West whose
glamour lives in story and song. Strong, tanned, sinewy guides who wear
cartridge belts and six-shooters, load grunting pack-horses and "throw"
diamond-hitches in businesslike silence. When at last all is ready, the
riders mount the Indian ponies or "cayuses"--Allie Sand, the yellow cow
pony; Babe, the slumbrous; Bunchie, but recently subdued, and Baldy,
nicknamed "Foolish" because of the musical pack of kettles, camp stoves
and sundries that jingle and jump up and down upon his back, lightening
the way with merriment for those who follow. With a quickened beating
of the heart, the good cheer and Godspeed of friendly voices ringing in
our ears, we take leave of the last haunt of civilization and strike out
into the virgin solitude of heaven-aspiring peaks.

As the feeling of remoteness smites the spirit when we pass beyond
the railway station of Belton and follow in creaking wagons the
shadow-curtained road to the lake, so now it returns with stronger
impulse, calling to life new emotions begotten of the Wild. The
world-rush calms into the great stillness of untrodden places, the
world-voices sigh out in the murmuring breeze, the petty traffic of the
cities is forgotten in the soulful silence of the trees. And out of
this newly found affinity with the Nature forces, the love of adventure
thrills into being, together with the fine scorn of danger and the
resolve to do that which we set out to do no matter what the cost or the
peril. Here the "white feather" is the greatest badge of dishonour, and
he who fails through cowardice to win his goal is a man among men no
more. This spirit is the faint, far-off echo of the hero-bearing days of
the early West.

Our guide is a stocky, little man of soldierly bearing, clad in khaki
suit and cow-boy hat, whom his fellows call "Scotty." He is brown
with exposure, smoothly shaven, and his keen, blue eyes are slightly
contracted at the corners from the strain of peering through vast
distances--a characteristic of men who follow woodcraft and hunting.
He rides ahead silently but for a rebuke to the slumbrous "Babe," such
as, "Go on, you lazy coyote," or a familiar, half-caressing remark to
Bunchie, the ex-outlaw, who is his favourite. Indeed, he, like most men
who have ridden the range, has the habit of talking to the ponies as
though they knew and understood. And who can be sure they do not?

The forests begin as soon as the bit of clearing is passed, then
single file the little cavalcade moves on through huckleberry fields,
purplish-black with luscious, ripe berries, where bears come to feed
and fatten, where, also, thirsty wayfarers stop to eat the juicy fruit.
The pines clasp branches overhead in a lacy, broken roof whose pattern
of needle and burr shows in dark traceries against patches of blue sky
remote and far beyond. A thick, sweet shadow dappled now and again with
splashes of yellow sun tempers the air which presses its cool touch upon
our brows. On either hand a dense, even lawn of tender green fern and
mist-maiden covers the earth and through the silence sounds the merry
clamour of a stream. It ripples gaily along between wooded banks,
breaking into little crests of foam upon the rocks, showing through the
glassy medium of its waters, every stone and pebble of its speckled bed
polished and rounded by ceaseless flowing. The horses splash through
the creek and upon the opposite side begins anew the delicate lawn of
mist-maiden and fern, so freshly, tenderly green with the pale greenness
of things that live away from the sun, so ephemerally exquisite as to
embarrass coarse, mortal presence. It is a spot fit for fairies to dance
upon; fit for wood-nymphs and white hinds to make merry in; fit for the
flute-like melody of Pan to awake to dancing echoes as he calls the
forest sprites unto high revelry.

A forest ranger joins us. He is tramping to the Gunsight Pass with his
axe upon his shoulder and his kit upon his back, to repair the trail to
the Great St. Mary's Lakes.

The shades of brown and green, the shadow threaded with an occasional
strand of gold, are livened by crimson patches of Indian Paint Brush,
bluebells, white starry lilies called Queen's Cups, trembling feathers
of coral pink, sun-yellow and white syringa. Beneath the overhanging
verdure, around and upon the mossy rocks, the ever-present twinflowers
open their delicate petals and sweeten the air, and from clumps of
coarse grass rise cones of minute white blossoms, the bear-grass, one
of the most curious of the mountain flowers. This ranger knows the
common names of nearly all the plants, and at every turn new varieties
spring up. He stops to gather each kind of bloom until we have a great
bouquet--a _potpourri_ of all the floral beauty of the multitudes that
people our path.

The way is very fair, ministering to the senses; troops of new,
forest forms and colours pass before the eye, the mingled sweets of
the flowers, the pungent mould and balsam of spruce and pine breathe
sensuously into the nostrils, and the fingers of the wind caress and
soothe as they pass. Through the voiceful silence, sounds that are on
the borderland between fancy and reality, thrill for a moment, then are
lost in the grand chorus of trees and rushing rivers. A stream of volume
and velocity flowing through a deep gorge falls twice in its downward
rush. These two falls, the Wynona and Minneopa, flash great, white
plumes among steeps of green forest.

With sharp descent and stubborn climb, the trail, that seems the merest
thread, untangles its skein and leads, at length, into a small basin
partly enclosed within sheer, naked rock-walls, whence three delicate
silver streams trickle down and join the creek that waters a little
park. Beyond, the peaks loom up masterfully, sheathing their icy lances
in the clouds. High over the lip of the mighty rock-wall, rising like
the giant counterpart of an ancient battlement, lies the glacier. Up
that precipitous, overhanging parapet we must make our way, but where
the footing or how the ascent is to be won, fancy cannot fathom, for
it would seem no living thing save a mountain goat, a bighorn sheep
or an eagle could scale this stronghold of Nature. Across the basin,
where there is a gentler slope, the mountain side is dotted with groups
of tall, spire-like pines. The level meadow is grassy and shaded with
small spruce of the size of Christmas trees. And in this peaceful spot,
girt with grim, challenging steeps, the tinkle of the stream sounds
pastorally sweet, while the more distant and powerful roar of the three
tumbling streams chants a solemn undertone to the merry lilt.

Here the camp is made. A fire crackles gaily and our tents are
pitched beneath the trees. Suddenly a shadow falls,--dimly, almost
imperceptibly. The sun has gone. It is only six o'clock in mid-summer,
but so lofty are the barrier-heights that even now we are in a world of
shade,--shade of a strangely luminous kind, hinting of ruddy lights that
are obscured but not quenched. Through the quiet, echo the whistle of
the marmot, the metallic whirr of contentious squirrels going off like
small alarm clocks, and the mellow, drowsy note of bells ringing to the
rhythmic crop of browsing ponies. So the long beautiful twilight settles
over the mountains until the sounds are stilled save the tinkling bells
and the water-voices singing their ceaseless song. The forest sleeps.
Long, mystical fancy-bearing moments and tens of moments pass, and
something of awe closes down with the gloaming. Then through the dim,
monkish grey shadow pulses a red-gold stream of light that runs in long,
uneven streamers across the face of the grim, dark walls, transfiguring
them into radiant shapes of living golden-rose. In that effulgence
of glory, lost peaks gleam for a second out of the dusk and vanish
into nothingness again, snowy diadems flash into being and fade like
a dream. The life-blood of the day ebbs and flows, sending out long,
slender fingers to trace its fleeting message on the rocks, then with a
deepening, crimson glow it flickers and is fled. Night settles fast and
the flare of the camp fire, shedding its spark-spangles in brilliant
showers, reclaims one little spot from the devouring blackness. It is
a magical thing--this campfire, and the living ring around it is an
enchanted circle. Perhaps its warmth penetrates even to the heart,
or perhaps the bond of human fellowship asserts itself more strongly
when only the precarious, flamboyant fire-light, leaping and waning,
throwing forth a rain of sparks, or searing grey with sudden decline,
separates our little group from utter desolation. Whatever the charm may
be, it falls upon us all, and with eyes fixed on the ember-pictures or
raised to the starry skies, we listen to tales of the long ago and of
a present as unfamiliar as the past. The reserve of our guide is quite
broken and he tells in a low, reminiscent voice, of wonder-spots in the
range,--for he knows its every peak and gorge,--of the animals that
dwell in its solitary recesses and of how the Piegan Glacier got its
name.

The Piegan Indians are a branch of the Blackfeet tribe, and in the
early days they were almost as noted horse raiders as the Absarokes who
flourished near the Three Tetons, in the country of the Yellowstone.
Back and forth across the passes they came and went in their nefarious
traffic, secure from pursuit among the horns of these lonely heights.
The vicinity of the eternal ice-fields, probably this little basin
itself, sheltered the shadowy bands, and thus the glacier became known
by their name. Still, you may look in vain on the maps for Piegan
Glacier; you will find it called Sperry instead. The old name was
discarded for that of a Professor who spent some weeks exploring its
crevasses and under whose supervision a corps of college students spent
a part of one summer's vacation, building the glacier trail. Yet there
are those who love the old names as they love the traditions for which
they stand, and to them the glacier will forever bear the time-honoured
title of these Indians who have long since disappeared from its
solitudes.

As the hours pass we draw from our guide and story-teller something
of himself. Little by little, in fragmentary allusions and always
incidentally, during that even-tide and the days following, we learn
thus much of his life. He was born in those troublous days of Indian
fighting on the frontier, shortly after his father, an army officer,
was ordered out on campaign against the Sioux. When he was but a few
weeks old word came to his mother that her husband had been killed,
and she, sick and heart-broken, died, leaving besides this infant one
other boy. The two children were left to the care of the officers at
Fort Kehoe, but they were separated while both were so young that they
did not realize the parting nor remember each other. Our guide became
the ward of a lieutenant who had been a friend of his father. He played
among the soldiers and Indian scouts at the Fort until he came to the
age when he felt the desire to learn, then he went East to school,
afterwards to college, always returning in the summer to ride the range
or to lose himself in the mountains. And when the college days were done
that old cry of the West, that old craving for the life that knows no
restraint nor hindering bonds, beckoned him back inevitably as Fate.
Again and again he had gone forth on the world's highway, once to serve
in Cuba in the war with Spain, where in a yellow-fever hospital he met
for the first time his older brother, who even then was dying of the
pestilence, but always he returned to the freedom of the wilderness.
He is a type in himself, who belongs to the time of Lewis and Clark,
rather than to this century--a man who lives too late. And there is
about him, for all his carefree indifference to the world, something
of indefinable pathos. He is quite alone--he has no kinsfolk and few
friends. He is a man without a home but the forests, who has renounced
human companionship for the solitudes, without a love but the mountains,
to whom the greatest sorrow would be the knowledge that he might never
look upon them again.

       *       *       *       *       *

A cloud, heavy with rain, drifts across the sky, and big, cool drops
splash with a hissing noise in the fire, upon our upturned faces, upon
the warm, flower-sown earth which exhales, like incense, the odours
of sun-heated soil and summer shower. The bright flames deepen to a
blood-red glow and ashes gather like hoar frost on the cooling logs and
boughs. The circle around the fire disperses to seek the narcotic gift
breathed by the pines, sung as a lullaby by the voices of trees and
streams.

The start for the glacier is made while the day is young. Pack horses
and camp are left behind and with the guide leading the way, the
tortuous climb is begun. Sheer as those rock-walls seemed to be, there
is a footing for the careful ponies, as from narrow ledge to ledge
they turn and zigzag up the mountain-face; and naked as those steeps
appeared, they are animated with frisking conies and marmots, and hidden
among the stones are rarely exquisite flowers. Here the mountain lilies
grow, blossoms with brown eyes in each of their three white petals,
covered with soft, silvery fur which makes them seem of the texture
of velvet. These lilies are somewhat similar to the Mariposa lily of
the California Sierras. The ground-cedar, a minute and delicate plant;
strange varieties of fern and moss, and everchanging, unfamiliar
flowers appear as we ascend, until, wheeling dizzily hundreds of
feet above the basin upon the slight and slippery trail, with things
beneath dwarfed by distance into a pigmy world and things above looming
formidably, the increasing altitude shears the rocks and leaves them
bare and grim. The air grows sharp with icy chill, great billowy,
low-trailing clouds drag over the mountain-tops, down the ravines and
float in detached banners in free spaces below. Broad stretches of snow
lie ahead. The painstaking ponies pick their way across them, for it is
fifteen feet down to solid ground. Sluggish streams creep between banks
crusty with old ice, and pretty falls, broken into lacy meshes of foam,
cascade down a parapet of rock and baptize us as we pass. In this spot
the stone wall has been worn into a grotto where the water plays as in a
fountain. From every little fissure ferns dart their long green lances
and feathery fronds, and the rocks are grown over with moss.

From our eyrie we look down into a small lake called Peary's, sunk
within dark and desolate cliffs, shattered and ground down into
fantastic forms. It is but partly thawed and its cold, blue-green centre
is enclosed in opaque, greenish-white ice and drifts of snow. Indeed
snow is everywhere in broken drifts--in the furrowed mountain-combs
and along the level in smooth white stretches. Close to the margin of
the ice-sealed shores is a grotesque, sapless, scrubby vegetation,
as strange in its way as the brilliant-hued waters or the rocks that
impress us with huge antiquity and elemental crudeness, as though we
stood face to face with Earth's infancy, close in the wake of ebbing,
primeval seas. But for all the savage roughness and arctic chill this is
a scene to cherish and remember--the blue cup of heaven, flecked with a
thistledown of clouds, the black menace of shivered rock-crests, the
dazzle of the snow and the darkly beautiful waters that are neither blue
nor green yet seemingly of both colours, held fast in the circle of
cold, pale ice.

Above this lake, down an overhanging wall, are more little falls, indeed
the whole country is interlaced with them as though the life-blood of
the mountains flowed in silver veins upon the surface. Within the hollow
over the stone barrier lies Nansen's Lake, even more frigid in its
ice-sheath, more palely green in the little patch of water which the
sun has laid bare. And although the mountains soar tremendously, yet
ever and anon the course lies upward over the frowning brows, over the
very crowns of the Range, until the high peaks, stripped of atmospheric
illusion, stand stark and naked to the gaze. There is in this sudden
intimacy with the fellows of the clouds, the veiled lords of upper air,
an awe which we feel before powers incomprehensible.

At last the trail ceases; overhead are cliffs no horse could climb.
The guide ties the ponies, and with a stout rope clambers ahead up a
smoothly sculptured parapet. We follow him and find ourselves on a
bleak waste which leads to a small basin, strewn with great boulders
and lesser rocks, dark and of the colour of slate. Growing upon these
rock-heaps are masses of flowering moss starred by tiny pink buds and
blossoms, or white spattered with the crimson of heart's blood. And now
the guide begins to whistle--a long, plaintive note which is answered
presently by a similar sound and a shrill, infantile treble, cheeping,
cheeping among the stones. Then from the security of her home a
Ptarmigan, or Arctic Grouse, hops into the open with her family of five
chicks jumping on her patient back, and tumbling, the merest puff-balls,
at her feet. She chirps softly to them, proud and dignified in her
maternity, ever watchful of her pretty little brood. She is dressed in
Quakerish summer-garb of mottled grey, the feathers covering her to the
utmost extremity of her toes. Once the winter snows descend, these birds
become as white as the frigid regions which they inhabit. Ordinarily
they are very wild, but this little mother, knowing only friendliness
from human visitors, comes forth trustfully with her beloved young,
suffers them to be handled and caressed and she, herself, with wings
dropped in the semblance of a pretty courtesy, jumps into the hand of
the guide, and from that perch feeds daintily on the pink and white buds
of the moss, as fragilely lovely as the snowflakes to which they appear
strangely akin. Indeed, the bird, the flowers and the environing snow
all seem more of the cloud-land than of the earth.

But there is a sequel to the story of this little grouse, which is,
unhappily, a tragedy. Not long after she greeted us, giving an air of
friendliness to the forbidding, wind-swept rocks, a Tyrolese came
hunting through the mountains. He made his camp near the home of the
Ptarmigan and her little ones, and one day when the guide came calling
to her there was no answer but the empty whistling of the wind. He
called again and again; he searched among the crags and the rock-heaps,
then he came upon the ashes of a camp-fire and the mottled feathers
and silken down of the Ptarmigan and her chicks. She had been betrayed
at last by her trustfulness, and she and her brood had been cruelly
sacrificed to the blood-lust and appetite of that enemy of poor dumb
things--the man with the gun.

       *       *       *       *       *

From the mossy basin of the Ptarmigan we climb with ropes up a broken
escarpment and there upon the very lip of the glacier are blossoms so
unearthly in form and colour as to seem the merest ghosts of flowers.
One is a dark, ocean-blue bell and another an ashen-green thing furred
over with a beard as soft and colorless as a moth's wing. From
this eminence a stormy, wind-tossed little lake, the Gem, flashes
angrily-bright waters beneath snow splashed, wonderfully stratified
peaks, and there, through a gateway in the mountains, spreading out in
a vast plateau of white, lies the glacier, undulating in frozen waves
like a polar sea. Even under its shroud of snow one can trace its course
by the seams and wrinkles of a congealed current. It is flanked on all
sides by the savage, beetling peaks marshalled in endless ranks like
the spears and unsheathed lances of war-gods in their domain midway
between earth and heaven. Out across the death-white pallor of snow, in
the death-chill of the ice-fields, we strike out slowly, cautiously,
for the surface of the ice, now hidden by snow, is cleft by crevasses
even to the mountain's core, and a misstep, a fall into their depths
would be doom. Far away over the white stretches, a gaunt, spectral
coyote watches our painful progress. On and on we go by a tusk-like
peak, the "Little Matterhorn," and ever on to a point where the giant
panorama unfolds its mountain-multitudes, its barricaded lakes, and the
echo breaks into a chorus that peals out as though each separate crest
were possessed of a brazen tongue. These grimly naked heights, split and
rent with elemental shocks and the resistance to huge forces, are the
cradle of the lightning and the thunder-bolt, the citadel whence the
storm-hosts ride down on blackwinged clouds upon the world. And even now
phantom troops of clouds come gliding up out of the moist laps of the
valleys, out of lakes and streams, passing in shifting wraith-shapes
over the mountains, spreading their filmy scarfs across the sky until
the livid expanse of snow, showing colourlessly in the grey light,
brings to one a vivid picture of the ice-age, of a frozen world and the
cold, pitiless illumination of a burnt-out sun.

[Illustration: GEM LAKE]

Fine, pricking points of snow cut with the sharpness of needle-thrusts;
the wind whips through the bleak gaps in the Range and over the glacier,
gathering cold and speed as it comes. A chilling numbness deadens our
feet and hands. So, wind-buffeted, storm-driven, with the trumpeting
gale in our ears, we turn back from the kingdom where Winter is
unbroken, and descend through alternate shadow and sun into the blooming
beauty, into the golden Summer that swims in the world below, whence
snow and cold are only hinted of in a white-breasted, mountain-kissing
cloud.




_THE LITTLE SAINT MARY'S_




CHAPTER IX

THE LITTLE SAINT MARY'S


Perhaps the most sublime sweep of view within the entire Range is
gained from the summit of Mount Lincoln. To accomplish this ascent it
is necessary to leave the tortuous "switch-back" trail in full view of
Gunsight Pass and strike out over a trackless mass of shattered rock,
upward toward the peak. The way is steep and difficult, the footing
slippery and insecure. The muscles strain to quivering tension, the
breath comes in gusty sighs and still the mighty heap of dull rose and
green rock rears its jagged crest against the throbbing sky. But even
if the climb were tenfold longer and the goal tenfold harder to win, it
would be a faint-hearted seeker after the beautiful who would hesitate
to make the sacrifice of toil for the magnificent reward that awaits him.

The rugged pedestal of stone that crowns the peak, drops almost
precipitately three thousand six hundred feet, and directly below,
in a gorge formed by this and a second chain of lofty mountains, lie
two jade-green lakes, the Little Saint Mary's, joined by a slender,
far-leaping waterfall. So immense is the distance, that this fall,
spanning the seventeen hundred feet between the upper and lower lakes,
does not break the brooding quiet with the whisper of an echo. The
slim, white column parts upon the rocks into a diamond shape, and when,
happily, the sunshine catches in its spray, it becomes a tangle of
rainbows. But now, it unfolds its silver scarf silently, colourlessly
as a ghost, and the green lake, so far below, receives the pouring tide
with never a ripple to mar its smooth surface. The shadow gathers in the
gorge and along the mountains, the pines are darkly green and in sharp
contrast, the unmelted snow fields lie pale and gray-white to the very
rim of the lakes forming a setting as of old silver. After the first
shock of that sublimity has left the senses free of its thrall, a vast
panorama unfolds, dominated by the majesty of mountain-lords flanked and
crowded by range upon range of others, rising in lessening undulations
to the horizon's rim, as though a sea whose giant billows strove to
smite the sky in the throes of an awful storm, were suddenly transformed
to stone.

In the crushing might of these great spaces, peering over the brink
of the mountain top into the bosom of the smooth, still lakes as
coldly beautiful as an emerald's heart, that half-mad idea of
self-annihilation clutches at the mind. Perhaps it is the exhilarating
leap of the waterfall that tempts one, or perhaps the hypnotic charm
of the deep-set, jewel-bright pools, or perhaps some unguessed
secret of gravity which impels the tottering atom into the depths of
life-absorbing space. It is the same terrible, savage joy, the magnetism
of elemental force which we feel as we stand on the brink of the Grand
Cañon of the Yellowstone, with the glorious, brave call to death crying
from the water voices, while the whisper of life sounds sweetly from the
vocal winds of heaven.

And even as we gaze, the sun's light dies and the world is ashen pale.
Suddenly over the distant ranges, storm clouds come trooping in black
hosts. A heavy silence falls, broken now and again by the boom of
thunder and the frightened cry of shelter-seeking birds. Perched upon a
point of rock, silhouetted against the sky, a bighorn sheep watches the
gathering tempest, unmindful of the muttering thunder and the ominous
glow of lightning kindling in the sable-winged array. There is something
noble about him as he turns his crest upward to bear the onslaught of
the blast. The purple of the mountains overhanging the lake deepens
to black--the blue-black of a clear, night sky--and the snow filling
the ravines lies passionless and white as death. Beneath the driving
storm-banners, a luridly vivid light casts its reflection upon the earth
in a gilded path, revealing the smallest detail of valley and height
before the darkness wraps them in its mantle. The Kootenais for one
brief instant shine like towers of brass and a pallid mist overhanging
an arm of the remote Flathead Lake becomes a golden fleece, then the
garish glare passes and mystery and shadow settle down. Violet tongues
of lightning dart from the trailing clouds, the martial fifing of the
wind makes shrill music through the bleak cairns and empty wastes, and
great, splashes of rain fall fragrantly, refreshingly upon the warm
ground. But in all the tumult, the cold, jade-green lakes lie unshaken,
calm. So truly are they the mountains' brides, held securely in their
embrace of stone, that not even the wild riding of the gale nor the
shivering thunderbolt disturbs their untroubled depths, while their
champions, the peaks, in helmets of pale ice do battle with the elements.

The deafening cannonade becomes fainter, the sword-thrust of lightning
strikes at other quarry, and the storm, with torn banners dragging low
down the mountain sides, like routed hosts in retreat, follow the wake
of the thunder, the lightning and the tempest-ridden wind. And as the
sun shines forth from the heavens a transformation beams like a blessing
from every crag and rock. Still wet with the summer rain, they take on
strangely beautiful hues of sparkling rose colour, and green like that
of the mother ocean, and the naked, glacier-ground escarpments reveal
the exquisite illuminations wrought in flowing, multi-colored bands, in
subtle shade and wordless rune, of the record book wherein is writ the
history of æons.

Through the dazzle of the sun the sea of mountains re-appears, a flowing
tide of purple billows growing more ethereally blue in the distance
until they seem but the azure shadow of heaven. And far beneath in the
deep, dark gorge, cool with perpetual shade, flanked by mighty mountain
walls, are the polished jade-green lakes and the fall, spinning its
endless silver skein into the untroubled waters below.




_TRACK OF THE AVALANCHE_




CHAPTER X

THE TRACK OF THE AVALANCHE


The trail to Avalanche Basin starts from the shores of Lake McDonald
and plunges almost immediately into forests mysterious with primeval
grandeur. Perhaps their denseness is the reason for the wealth of
rank-growing weed and shrub that forms one vast screen beneath the
spreading branches of pine, tamarack and kingly cedar trees. Whether
this is the cause or not, the trail is richer in vegetation than
any other that lays open the secrets of the forest's heart. Tall,
juicy-stalked bear-weed, devil's walking cane, prickly with venomous
thorns, slim, graceful stems of wild hollyhock crowned with pale,
lavender blossoms, and broad-leafed thimble berry, bearing fragile,
crapy-petalled flowers, weave their verdure into a tangled mass. An
occasional path crushed down freshly shows where a bear has lately been,
for these lavish brakes are a haunt of the three varieties that dwell
in the surrounding mountains--the black, the brown and the silver tip,
or grizzly. Strange sounds come up out of the silence, borne through
dim, dark vistas where shy things peep and dry twigs snap under careful,
stealthy tread. A woodpecker drums resonantly on the bole of a tree;
shrill, elfin music quavers with reedy sweetness from the security of
dense thickets. A haunting spell steals over the heart and turns the
mind to thoughts of sirens, water sprites, and Piping Pan, for in spite
of generations of culture, somewhat of that ancient worship of the Wild
is revived in us when we are in the virgin woods. The hypnotic charm of
the great silence and solitude possesses us and there comes a feeling
as of memory of half-forgotten things lived in a dream,--or was it
reality? The inarticulate voices of the past come calling in sylvan
melody out of the closed lips of the centuries, re-awakening the life of
our forebears and revealing to us a fleeting glimpse of something which
we cannot define or understand. In this spell of the wilderness we not
only feel the emotion of young world-life and race-childhood, but that
of our own more personal childhood when the pursuit of a butterfly or a
flower winged our feet and warmed our hearts. It may be the scent of a
familiar shrub, the flight of a bird, or even the shimmer of dew that
brings us afresh, for a moment, that gaily painted memory which the
years may dim but never quite obliterate.

The trail is dark with shadow,--the awe of the woods,--roofed with
boughs and so still that we seem to hear the breathing of the trees.
A sudden turn unfolds a little lake, bright with a living pattern of
lily-pads, bursting buds and golden water-lilies. Through a rift in
the pines the distant mountains appear; then the green tide of branches
flows together and there is nothing but silence and shadow and the
forest. The woods deepen. Low, bushy maples grow among the pines,
Colorado spruce sheds its silver sheen amidst the more somber foliage,
and towering high above the loftiest pines and tamaracks, of magnificent
circumference and sweep of limb, are the cedars, the Lords of the
Forest. Off to one side of the trail, among the thick-sown trees, is a
giant boulder completely covered with moss, a throne fit for Pan. The
pines around it are of goodly size, yet they sprang and grew, perhaps
centuries after that huge stone came hurtling downward in a great
avalanche, or was borne from the mountain tops by the slow progress of a
glacier.

Again the forest pageant changes. There are groves of pine stricken
with hoary age, bearded like patriarchs with long, pendent streamers
of colourless moss; then comes a young growth of pine, fore-doomed to
early death which already shows in the bronze of premature decay. It is
a beautiful spot, nevertheless, balsam-sweet and strewn with needles
that nurture violets of yellow and purple, twin flowers and Queen's Cups.

There is a sound like wind among the trees though not a branch stirs,
and presently there bursts into view a sight of wild, exhilarating
grandeur. A swift, tumultuous stream rushing down a steep, narrow
channel, clean-cut as a sabre stroke, dashes headlong into a
rainbow-ridden fall. The volume of water is churned into a passion of
swirling foam that flings its light mist heavenward to descend again in
rain. Ferny, mist-fed, moss-grown banks slope gently to the declivity
and over smooth, emerald cushions, lacy leaf and trailing boughs, tiny,
crystal drops, glinting prismatic hues, tremble and pass away. The air
is very sweet with a new and unfamiliar fragrance, and amidst the moss,
half hidden beneath grosser leaf and protruding root, is a flower, the
loveliest of all the lovely woodland host. It is a small, snowy blossom
of five petals and a golden heart, growing on a slender stem from a
cluster of glossy, earth-clinging leaves, and as though to hide its
chaste, shy beauty, the modest flower turns its face downward towards
the ground. Its scent is strong and heavy like that of the magnolia. The
guide, who travels the mountains over from the earliest budding to the
ultimate passing of the flowers, has never seen this stranger blossom
before, and we find it on no other trail. It was unknown, unnamed, so we
call it the Star of the Mountains and leave it blooming in the secrecy
of that elfin dell.

Above the thunder of the fall sounds a slight, shrill bird note and
through the clouds of spray darts a little brown bird, dipping almost
into the boiling current, rising upward with a graceful swell and a
wild, free lilt, perching finally on a tiny point of rock just over the
shock and roar of the flood. This strange little winged sprite is a
water-ouzel who makes her home and raises her young upon these insecure,
spray-drenched walls, with the water-challenge pealing its menace and
breathing its chill on her nest. She and her kind haunt the lonely
mountain creeks and rivers, seeking some fall or cataract that flings
its spray and sings its song to the silent, ice-imprisoned world. Once
the mating season is over and the young are fledged, each bird takes its
solitary flight and becomes a veritable spirit of the woodland streams.

The dense forests become broken and sheer cliffs rise to stupendous
heights. Upon their sharp and slender pinnacles wild goat and bighorn
sheep dwell, and in passing we see a goat so far away on those dizzy
steeps that he seems the merest patch of white. Through this gorge,
between the mountains, are deep hewn furrows where year after year,
century after century, the burden of ice from the peaks descends in
avalanches. In the Spring when the first thaw begins, a deafening roar
like a cannonade heralds the furious onslaught of ice and snow. At such
times the Avalanche Trail is a dangerous way to travel, and even now a
distant booming reminds us that the mountain forces are never idle, that
in their serenity there is force, in their mystery there is still the
energy of creation.

Through this narrow passage between overhanging crags, the trail
continues until, bearing upward, it suddenly crosses a pretty,
milky-hued stream, and thence to a hill-side overlooking a sheet of
water opaque and pearly white, in a setting of dark-browed woods. It
is Avalanche Lake. The water is perfectly calm, not a breath of air
rustles the slightest leaf, but there is no reflection of throbbing,
blue sky, of green woods or purple mountains--it does not thrill to the
passion of the Summer, flash back azure and gold and picture in its
responsive heart the glories of earth and heaven. Because of this, it is
different from all the other lakes of these mountains and the shell-like
whiteness of its surface, pallidly beautiful as a great pearl, has a
peculiar beauty none the less striking for its strangeness. The cause
of the milkiness of these waters seems at first without satisfactory
explanation, but as we examine them more closely we see that they are
charged with infinite multitudes of tiny air bubbles, and every stream
that feeds the lake, having fallen from enormous heights, is likewise
full of infinitesimal air beads. On the other hand, some contend that
the water, pouring down from the glacier is white with particles of
finely pulverized rock.

Pushing straight past the lake, through almost impenetrable thickets
of whipping willows that fight like live things to guard from vandal
footsteps what lies beyond, the journey reaches its climax in Avalanche
Basin. There, in that vast amphitheatre sculptured from the living rock
by glaciers, carved and scarred by innumerable avalanches descending
through the ages, overhung by the Piegan ice fields, six silver streams
leap the full height of the great rock walls. The falls seem to melt
away before they touch the reality of earth, veritable spirits, born of
the snowdrift and the sun; white ghosts spending themselves in spray to
reascend into the clouds.

[Illustration: ON THE TRAIL TO MT. LINCOLN]

A rich growth of green grass, coloured with broad splashes of Indian
Paint Brush, covers the sloping floor of the basin. Standing on its
extreme elevation upon a platform of rock, and thence overlooking the
country that lies ahead, the scene is one of uplifting majesty. Below,
within the sombre circle of the pines, is the lake, palely fair as a
white sea shell or a milk opal whose latent colours never quite shine
forth from its cloudy depths. Farther still, is the gorge, opening
like a gateway into the region of the avalanche, and farther still,
is Heaven's Peak, mingling with the cloudless sky. The strata on these
mountains laid bare as though but yesterday they were rent asunder, flow
in undulating ribbons of colour varying from red-violet to dull, antique
gold. But between the quivering sky of Summer and the warm, flower-sown
earth, is a ghostly tide of purple haze, an amethystine shadow which
touches every rock and tree and peak with magical illusion. And through
that veil, as through enchantment, each rock, each tree, each peak is
transfigured and for a brief hour is given a semblance of the divine.
The gorge is filled with flowing purple, the glorified gateway might be
Heaven's Gate, even as the dominant mountain, royal in the thickening
blue distance, is Heaven's Peak.

Here the sordid world seems to melt away; the sunshine has got into our
blood and the transfiguring haze has penetrated even to our hearts.
We seem so intimately a part of this mighty, primeval place where the
infinity of the past and the infinity of the future are married in one
great mystery, that we dare to listen for secrets of the one from the
chant of the falls; to lift the veil of circumventing blue and peer into
the other. So, standing upon that rock platform, from the reality of the
present we speed our souls into the ideality of Time's poles. Though the
song of the water-voices that have sung æons, rings in our ears, and the
living letter of the world-book is shown in the mountain's open page,
we may not know the portent of either message. And though we gaze with
seeking vision through the shadow into the ultimate blue above, the haze
draws its protecting garment thicker, closer about the treasure-house of
Nature, and the sun darts amber lances earthward to blind aspiring eyes.
So we pass humbly upon our way, the water-voices singing in our ears,
the arch of Heaven trailing its garment over earth, still guarding the
riddle of the future in its azure keep.




_INDIAN SUMMER_




CHAPTER XI

INDIAN SUMMER


After the Summer's ripe maturity has vanished with the first autumnal
storm, there steals over the world a magical Presence. It has no place
in the almanac; it comes with a flooding of amber light and a deepening
of amethyst haze; it plays like a passing smile on the face of the
universe and like one, vanishes with the stern rebuff of the wintry
blast. What jugglery the sun and earth and the four winds of heaven have
wrought no mortal man can tell, but certainly by some divine alchemy
the deadening blight is turned into gold, and upon the lap of the
world there lies, instead of the appointed Fall, a changeling season,
the faery-child of Nature, illusive, fleeting as a flock of yellow
butterflies, a shimmer of radiant wings--the Indian Summer!

The whole earth is under the spell of the mad, sweet witchery. The
forests are decked in a gay masquerade, too glorious to be real, and
our own sober senses are half-mastered by the delusion that the dead
Summer is come to life again. In open places where the fingers of the
sun still warm the moist ground, absent-minded bluebells, strawberries
and yellow violets bloom on forgetful that they should already be taking
their winter's rest. And it is strange with what pleasure we seize upon
these fragile blossom-friends; with what childish joy we caress their
pale petals so soon to be laid low. Yet in the warm air lurks a hidden
sting, the bittersweet of sun and frost; in the very effulgence of life
is the foreshadowing of death. Already on the heights streamers of cloud
gather, leaving in their wake the dazzle of fresh snow. And beneath
these low-streaming clouds, slanting earthward in broad, down-pouring
rays, is a pure white light upon the mountains. The light on the
mountains! What a revelation it is! The windows of heaven are flung open
and the celestial beams of Paradise illumine God's Cathedral Domes, the
peaks, for a brief space before sky-wrought vestments of snow cover the
altar of His Sanctuaries.

The trails of yesterday are barred. For prudence sake we must keep to
the low country or risk the fate of being "snowed in." Therefore we
choose the Kintla Road and Camas Creek, where a large band of moose
roams in the forest solitudes, hoping to reach Quartz Lakes near the
Canadian line before we shall be driven back by the cold. The pine-sweet
air fills us with the very spirit of the woods as we strike out over
the gilded trail through forests transfigured into a welter of gorgeous
hues, past deep-cleft ravines purple as the heart of a violet, to dim
lilac mountains that melt into the blue. What is it that is mystical,
spiritual, if you will, in this colour of violet? It is not like the
robust, tangible green of the trees, the definite reality of the
flowers' multi-coloured petals. We cannot lay our hands upon it any more
than we can grasp a sunbeam, for like hope deferred, it lies forever
beyond our reach. We see it unwind its royal haze through gorge and
forest; we watch it fade into pale lavender on the ultimate pinnacles
of the range, but if we follow it what do we find? Mere yawning cleft
or greenwood grove or jagged strata of dull rock. Where is the subtle
violet, the dim dream lavender? Fled as subtly as the shadow of a wing!
Perhaps it _is_ a shadow of the divine, the soul-essence common to man
and the flower at his feet, the dumb, stone mountains, the living air
and the heaven that embraces all in its enduring keep.

We pass into the deep, unbroken shadow of virgin woods where bushes burn
with crimson rosehips, the thimbleberry shines in its autumn garb of
yellow, the tamarack gleams golden among its somber brethren, the pines,
and strange, bright shrubs set us forever guessing. We emerge into a
billowing field of wild hay, fringed with trees, above which we can see
the metallic sharpness of the mountains. Shining over all impartially,
shedding its glory upon our souls, is the dominant sun whose broad rays
break into a mist of ruddy gold. Again we dip into eternal shadow, the
horses' hoofs sound with a dull cluck as they sink in and are lifted
from the soft mold. Often we are startled by the sudden whirr of wings
as frightened grouse fly to shelter. Fungus thrusts evil, flame-coloured
tongues from the damp, sweet soil and a marvelous variety of moss
and lichen trace their patterns on logs, tree stumps and upon the
wind-thrown forest trees that toss their gnarled roots high above our
heads in an agony of everlasting despair. We splash through Dutch Creek,
Camas Creek and many another, and as we pause to eat a frugal midday
meal on the banks of one of these, we find upon a trailing limb, a dying
butterfly. Poor little sprite of yesterday! Its bright wings palpitate
feebly and it suffers us to take it in our hands without making an
effort to escape. The last of its gay brethren, the blossom-lovers,
its hour is come and with its final strength it has fluttered to this
friendly leaf to die. So, very gently we put it back upon its chosen
resting place, leaving it to join ghostly bright winged flocks in the
sunshine of some immortal Arcady.

From a high ridge which falls away abruptly into a water-hewn declivity,
we look through broad, open vistas far below at the North Fork of
the Flathead River. The stream takes its way between banks of fine
gray pebbles, parting now over a sandy bar in slender green ribbons,
then uniting in one broad current, again separating to curl in white
foam-frills around a boulder or little island. Mild and limpid as the
river now appears there is evidence of its flood-tide fury in uprooted
trees and livid scars along its banks. Working silently and secretly
near the water's edge is a beaver. We can scarcely distinguish him as
he toils patiently, bringing to our minds the old Selish legend that
the beavers are a fallen tribe of Indians, doomed by the Great Spirit
to expiate an ancient wrong by constant labor in their present shape.
But some day after the appointed penance, the Indians believe that the
beavers will resume the form of men and come into their own again.

For two days we ride farther and farther into the wilderness, camping
by night and taking up the trail with the early dawn. And as we
penetrate deeper into the wild the pageant changes only to become
more sublime. Clumps of slenderly graceful silver poplars with gray,
satin-smooth boles and branches that burst into a shower of golden
leaves, shed glory upon our way. Dense woods of yellow pine whose giant
trunks hold all the shades of faded rose, and silvery-green Colorado
spruce overshadow us and once we find ourselves in a grove of yellow
tamarack hung with streamers of black moss. Years upon years ago a
forest fire whose fury was nearly spent had scorched these trees with
its hot breath, changing the feathery moss into flowing streamers of
black--veritable mourning weeds--which contrast sharply with the golden
foliage. Even now it is easy to fancy that the fire still burns and each
tall tamarack is a pillar of living flame.

The nights are no less wonderful than the days. The melon-coloured
harvest moon floats high in the blue-black heavens, touching the
priestly trees with its white rays. We sit beside our camp fire
listening to the crackle of dry twigs beneath a cautious tread, the
occasional whistle of a stag and the ominous note of an owl hooting
among the pines. Sometimes we fancy that green and amber eyes burn the
darkness, and we cling close, close to the primal birthright of the
race--the flaming brand--which raises its bright barrier now as in the
age of stone, between mankind and the predatory beasts of the wild. The
wooded hosts seem to press down with stifling persistence upon us and an
indefinable terror creeps into our hearts, the inherent fear of man, the
atom, of Nature, the fathomless, the unknown.

As these nights wear on and we lie upon our couches of fragrant cedar
boughs, up out of the gulf of silence the lean-flanked coyotes howl to
the moon, and later still, when the pale disc dips beneath the horizon
and the shrouded secrecy of before-dawn steals, like a timid ghost,
out of the Infinite, the trees find tongue and murmur together though
there is no wind and the stream sings with a music as of hidden bells.
Strange, elfin sounds, the merest echo of a whisper thrill out of the
quiet and sigh into silence again. A faint patter-patter as of falling
thistledown is heard constantly, insistently, inevitably. Can it be the
beat of gossamer wings, the trip of faery feet as the woodland sprites
hang the grass, the leaves, the finest-spun thread of cobweb with beads
of dew, and trim the dark pines, like Christmas trees, with tinsel frost?

Truly the pale morning light breaks upon a transformed and enchanted
world. Silver filigree adorns the most commonplace limb and twig. Each
pine needle twinkles with a gem giving forth rainbow-hued rays beneath
the first steel-cold beams of the sun. The thorn-apple, whose wine-red
branches are furred with a white beard, is etherealized into delicate
pastel shades of lavender and mauve by a film of hoar frost. Ragged
streamers of fantastic mist-shapes rise and float heavily through the
moist air, obscuring, then revealing stretches of stream-laced woods
and finally rolling away in lessening vapour into the lingering dusk
of ravines. There is a mighty scene-shifting of Nature in progress. The
night phantoms, the colourless dawn-shapes are hurried off, while the
sun, riding high in the deepening blue, touches stream and tree and peak
with the illumination of the new day.

As we wander about breathing the balsam sweetness of the pine-breath
of the new dawn, we make curiously interesting discoveries. By an
unfortunate accident we roll a hollow log over and uncover a squirrel's
winter larder of small pine cones, and at the same time we hear above
our heads, in trees so lofty that we cannot penetrate the dense
canopy of interlocked limb, the domestic troubles of a pair of these
contentious little forest folk. In high treble voices they quarrel and
dispute in a perfect hysteria of rage. Upon the damp trail near camp we
find large, cloven hoof prints too big for those of a deer, so probably
our mysterious visitor of the evening before was no less a personage
than a lordly moose.

We linger on heedlessly, much the same as the absent-minded flowers,
clinging as desperately to the woodland as the dying butterfly,
deceiving ourselves into the half-belief that Winter is far away. The
air is still warm and the light shines on the mountains. And that light
lures us on by its thrall to higher altitudes. Down the gorges the snow
gathers in deepening drifts and the utmost peaks are white as carven
ivory. Still we resolve to make one brave dash for the Quartz Lakes,
set one above the other in a chain among sheltering cañons and flanking
cliffs. Under the inspiration of the camp fire we discuss the morrow's
journey. How splendid it will be to race with the sun; to dare the
sudden blizzard that might cut off our retreat, for one brief glimpse of
that Upper World we have grown to love with a passion akin to madness.
But even as we speak a shadow falls, and looking upward we see that a
gray moth-wing of cloud hides the moon. Surely it is a passing vapour,
the merest mist-breath exhaled by the languid night. But no! darker and
heavier it unrolls. Wraith shapes glide out from the black mass until
the stars are dead and the deep blue dome of heaven is shrouded by an
impenetrable pall. That night the heavy rain drops beat a tattoo on the
tent and the mournful pines weep the sorrow of ages.

Undaunted we take up the trail, assuring ourselves that soon the fickle
weather will be fair again. Occasionally a patch of clear blue shows
through the broken flock of hurrying clouds and a wan sun ray steals
down for a moment to kiss the woods goodbye. The forests are already
drenched and each bough that strikes us pours upon us a little flood of
rain. The trees line up in somber walls and as the storm settles into a
steady downpour, between their dark fringes flows a narrow, ashen stream
of sky. Through the brooding shadow tamaracks kindle, silver poplars
huddle together with quivering aureoles of gold, and the austere dusk
beneath their boughs is lighted with yellow-leafed thimbleberry, glowing
like sunbeams. It seems as though the foliage of those receptive trees
and shrubs has absorbed the summer sun to give it forth again when the
world should be cloaked in shadow. So complete is the illusion that
oftentimes, as a shaft of light gleams through the tree tops, we cry
exultantly:

"The sun is shining!"

In another second we see that it is but the tamaracks burning like tall,
yellow candles through the autumnal gloom, shedding their blessed gift
of light to cheer us on our way.

When we gain the lower Quartz Lake, a deep green sheet of water bordered
by wooded shores, the heavy clouds drag low and a rainbow arches the
lake. We halt, uncertain, raising our eyes questioningly to the heights
beyond that frown blackly through the tattered tapestry of the clouds.
The mountains are angry! Very reluctantly, sorrowfully, we turn to
retrace our steps, thinking of future seasons of sun and warmth and
other quests of the sublime that shall end in triumph. At each gust the
shearing wind despoils the silver poplars of their crowns until the
naked branches leap wildly in a fantastic dance of death.

The changeling season, the faery-child of Nature has fled as
mysteriously as it came--fled like a flock of yellow butterflies into
some ethereal region to await its perennial resurrection. Dull Autumn
settles drab as a moth upon the saddened world and the light has died
from the mountains.




Transcriber's Notes:

Simple typographical errors were corrected.

Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

This book uses both "leggins" and "leggings".

Reference to page 90 in the List of Illustrations should be to page 116.

Page 206: "complete, In Maximilian's" is printed with a comma in the
book and unchanged here.







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