“ There is no need to rehearse the chants of the Manitous when ice binds the rivers, and snow blankets the land! When new life dawns with the grass blades in the spring, then we will need to refresh our memories; not now, while the gods sleep like bears.”
“Silence, old partner! You do not know everything! Even now there comes one seeking the knowledge of the path our brethren and fellows have trod before us. Listen!”
The lodge was hushed with the heavy silence of the Wisconsin forest in midwinter. Then came the crunch and squeak of approaching snowshoes slipping over the crusted drifts. ”

“ I can still see a terrible looking old grandmother standing up before me, holding up a bone awl. I was never so frightened in my life. You have seen how it is done at the sun dance, where some old woman cries out, “I quilled a robe, all with these hands. So I have the power to do this.” Just like a warrior recounting a coup.
My real mother never reproved me, but when I began to run about, my older mother did not like to have me meddling with her things. Often she would make threats to me in a kind of song, as—“There is a coyote outside. Come coyote, and eat up this naughty baby.” ”

“ In Mexico, before the steel-clad soldiers of Cortes landed at Vera Cruz, there was a civilization that ran back into a twilight of the 238 gods. Centuries of accumulating art and ceremony had enriched the first crude thoughts of savages coming out of desert camps to abide in houses of mud and stone, amid maize stalks and squash vines. Cities and indeed, empires, had risen, flourished and fallen. There had come into being those slaves to the ideal of ritual whom we call priests, and those slaves to the ideal of political grandeur whom we call kings. ”

“ The People of the Lake had begun to feel themselves wiser and more important than their simple forest neighbors. Often one of them would come back from the metropolis with new and smart-cut clothes, plenty of gin, and some household finery with which to decorate the shelves and tables of the board houses which they had erected on the lake shore, but above all, with glowing accounts of the great and busy city where everything could be had that a Montagnais might covet in his most prodigal dreams. ”

“ However, there has been no change in Tom. He knows, as firmly as he knows his own name, that when the rumble of thunder is heard from the mountain, it is because the Thunder-bird is leaving his house on the peak, flapping his wings heavily, as he makes off for the sea to prey upon the whales. He knows also that when those that are not blind like himself tell him that there has been a flash of lightning, it is because the Thunder-bird has dropped the belt wound about his middle. This belt is the lightning serpent, zig-zagging down to the earth or coiling in a flash around a cedar tree. ”

“ There was a young Crow maiden named Beaver-woman who was as good-looking as any girl the Crows had ever known. She was neither too tall nor too short, her waist was slim, and her nose was as straight as a nose can be. She made the finest moccasins in all the tribe and knew how to embroider them with the prettiest quill designs. Throughout the camp there was no one for whom she did not have a kind word. The young men respected her for they knew she would not romp with them as some girls did, and those older ones who had been on the war-path were eager to take her to wife. ”

“ There stands to this day in Cuernavaca a graven bowlder bearing a shield, a sheaf of arrows and a record in hieroglyphs of the fatal hour when the painted warriors of Tenochtitlan swept down upon Quauhnahuac. Then the City of Flowers withered before a rain of flint and a wind of flame. And among the men and women carried away as slaves or more honorable sacrifice was Five-eagle. ”

“ Then one day, unexpectedly, his despair was lifted. He had been on a fruitless hunting trip with the factor, and the two were approaching the post at the close of a rainy day. They were walking through a dense wood. Both were drenched to the skin, and Pierre was nearly exhausted. Suddenly, odd fancies crossed his mind. Weird tales of childhood, retold round many a winter camp fire, surged in memory and would not down. At dark, the forest was peopled with mysterious beings. The Windigo were about then—cadaverous shapes with glaring eyes, and feeders on human flesh. ”

“ In the old days the whole house might be burned down, and tales are told of how the mourning survivors would move off to another spot to build them a new house. In all likelihood there will be performed immediately after Tom’s death a ceremony intended to comfort the family of the deceased and to induce Tom’s spirit to leave the house and its vicinity. Tom’s soul will have left his body in the shape of a tiny shadow-like double of himself, through the crown of his head, to assume eventually the form of a full-fledged ghost. ”

“ Seldom could I bring down a deer. The neighbors grew tired of providing meat for me and my family.
Whispering-leaves did her part to perfection; everything she made or produced was of the very best, which made me feel my shortcomings all the more. And she would not let me touch the garden—the only thing I knew anything about. “Garden work is not manly,” she would say. “I will not endure hearing the neighbors talk about my mate doing woman’s work. How would you feel if you saw me going out of the village with a long bow on my shoulder? Or burning out a log for a canoe? ”

“ One fine morning the two men set out in a canoe, struggling up-stream against the powerful current. Now and then they landed to shoot some partridges, and one day MacDonald killed a moose. Otherwise there was little to relieve the monotony of the journey. From morning till night, not a soul crossed their path. With MacDonald lapsing into his wonted silence, hours would pass without a sound but the splashing of the paddles and the quaint, plaintive notes of Pierre’s Red River melodies. Once in a while an abandoned site, with tent poles standing, suggested former human occupation. ”

“ Sinyella rose in his place among the watching families. “My own land, hear me. Let all of us remain alive always. I want to live well always. Ground, hear me.” He prayed to the rocks, the ground, the creek: he told the young men to work hard, to dance well, not to be quarrelsome, as chiefs always spoke in the lull between the dances. Paiya, the best singer, again took up his place, facing the pole; Panamida, with the drum, stepped beside him; quickly others formed the circle with them. ”

“ Have you ever wilfully imprisoned your present spiritual being in the emotional matrix of an age that is dead? In the hall where the glum old faces of your ancestors stare out from dull frames upon your unimagined new life, have you ever paused to gaze back into those dim presentments, and to think how impossible to-day would be the quest of the Pilgrims, or of the Crusaders? ”

“ His uncle bade him put out his tongue and through the end of it, he thrust a sharp stone awl. Waiting priests caught the blood on little balls of cotton and these were borne off to the sanctuary of Itzamna as an earnest of his faith and purification. At sunset a small fiber cord with thorns caught in it every few inches was passed through the still open wound, cruelly lacerating the flesh, and fresh blood drawn to offer to the god in renewed proof of his constancy of purpose. ”

“ The sanctuary was dark save only for such fitful light as came from a brazier of burning incense and two small windows not more than eight inches square, one at either end of the long narrow room. As the curtain fell behind him, the boy stooped to a shallow platter by the door, selected from it a small, round ball of incense, the gum of the copal tree, painted a brilliant peacock blue for ceremonial use, and advanced to the brazier. In the half light, a wooden image some eight feet high could be distinguished standing on a stone platform against the back wall. ”

“ Lanso leaves his creekside home, worms his way among the slender cotton-woods, and emerging on the race course, drops into a dogged trot through the deep sand. The race course—but that is a place for a mad, scrambling dash; perched with brothers, and sisters too, on the bare back of father’s horse. What need to run afoot: foot races come at dance time, and that will have to wait until the harvest is in. ”

“ Priests are dispatched to prepare for the ceremony in the portico of the famous Pyramid Temple, hardly a stone’s throw from the Ball Court. The sacrificial stone is ready to receive its offering, and Taxcal is a youth without a blemish, as demanded by the gods. Resistless, he allows himself to be arrayed in the magnificent robes of sacrifice. He is regaled with incense from vases of burning copal, and is almost buried in flowers. Pages follow him in the procession of priests as they wind their way up the hundred steps of the pyramid. ”

“ Well, I too am strong. If you are a man, I can help you. If you are faint-hearted, I am powerless.”
“Father,” said Takes-the-pipe, “make me great; make me greater than other men, and if I die what matters it?”
“My son, there are many chiefs in camp; of your kind there shall be but one. Tell me, have you ever seen the whole world?” Without waiting for an answer, the bear lifted him up. Mountains and streams and prairies and camps came into his vision. The berries were ripe and the Crow camp loomed in sight and the Tobacco society were harvesting the precious seed. ”

“ Nothing came to one who did not undergo considerable hardship in training. This Tom learned early in life. If he wished to be a successful fisherman, or a hunter of sea mammals, or a land hunter, he had to retire at certain seasons to secret places in the woods, known only to the respective families that frequented them. Here, for days on end, he would bathe, rub himself down with hemlock branches until the skin tingled with pain, pray to the Sky Chief for long life and success, and, most important of all, carry out secret, magical performances based on the principle of imitation. ”

“ What hurt me worst was seeing her treasured finery disappear bit by bit, doubtless traded for meat and for skins to make our moccasins and every-day garments. First it was the seed beads, then those of bone, then one string of shell beads after another until only the copper beads were left. Finally they too were missing when I came home one night. One day I had occasion to search beneath the sleeping benches for something and had to pull out the square basket in which she kept her treasures, her prettiest embroidered, festival attire. ”

“ Tom never devoted himself to unusual rigors in the acquirement of magical power. He contented himself with the normal routine enjoined upon those planning to seal, to spear salmon, to troll, to catch halibut with hooks, to spear cod with the aid of decoys, to accumulate wealth, to prepare for ritualistic performances, and to obtain enough shamanistic power to withstand the attempts of evil-minded people to bewitch him. He never ventured upon the more difficult and exhausting procedures required to make a successful whaler or hunter of sea lions. ”

“ With his spear he knocked down one warrior and counted coup on him. He rode up to Takes-the-pipe: “Though you fight all the people of the world, dress as I do and you need have no fear of death before you are a chief. That man I struck is a Piegan; you have seen his country, go there, I give him to you. As I am, so shall you be; arrows will not hurt you, bullets you can laugh at. You shall be like a rock. But one thing you must not do: never eat of any animal’s kidneys.”
When Takes-the-pipe got back to his people, he was very glad. ”

“ I felt very sad and spent most of the time sitting on a hill, meditating. One day, on coming to camp I heard the women and even old men wailing. I saw my mother before our door hacking her bare leg with her butchering knife. Then I knew what had happened. The camp crier began to shout out that a runner had come in from a distant camp to say that Old-beaver and all his party had been killed by the Crows. When I met my old grandmother, with blood streaming down her bare arms, the sight sickened me and I fled to the hilltop and meditated further. ”

“ I was particularly fond of a girl in the Small-robe band, but could not court her openly because that was my band by right of my father, though I lived with the band of my mother, the Fat-roasters. It is not good for a man to marry in his own band where most of his relatives live, but he can freely marry a woman of his mother’s band, if not too closely related to her. I could have joined my mother’s band, as my uncle urged, and then married the girl, but that seemed to me like evading my duty to uphold the honor of my father and to take revenge for his untimely death. ”

“ Now for two days this merry camp of Bacchus made the forests echo with songs and cries, some from the throats of the Men of the 97 Lake, growing louder each hour, others growing feebler each hour from the throat of Antoine. Had the People of the Interior been within hearing distance, they might have thought that a band of marauding enemies had engaged one another in warfare on their peaceful river. ”

“ And when his son had killed his first cottontail, Deaf-bull proudly called Sliding-beaver, a renowned Whistling-water, feasted him royally and had him walk through camp, leading Takes-the-pipe mounted on his horse and proclaiming his success in a laudatory chant.
One spring there was great excitement. The supply of meat was exhausted, yet the buffalo remained out of sight. Scouts were sent to scour the country in search of game, but in vain. At last Sharp-horn offered to lure the buffalo by magic. At the foot of a cliff he had the men build a corral. He summoned Deaf-bull to be his assistant. ”

“ For Pierre, his sullen, imperious master became the one and only subject of interest. He studied his habits and gestures and speech. He had set out eager to detect weakness, but his prying skepticism had changed to grudging admiration, and later to despondent amazement. He had begun by hating his wife’s abductor, and he came to hate with an ever intenser hatred the man who was without peer. It was not merely the giant’s strength or dauntless courage, it was the way he had with men. How he ordered about Casimir or Angus or Ramsay! A word was enough to quell rebellion. ”

“ The greatest feast of the Mexican year was the feast of Toxcatl, made in honor of Tezcatlipoca. It fell in the springtime when thirsty fields called for rain. Scarcely had one young warrior, chosen from the clean-limbed and accomplished prisoners of a sacred war, been sacrificed on the last day of his fictitious glory than another stepped into the empty rôle. And, as had been said, it was the fate of Five-eagle, after his arrival at the Aztecan capital, to be chosen as a fit candidate for this dramatic death. ”