Jesse did so with a smile and produced the black, glassy-looking arrowhead which he had found at the Beaverhead Rock over to the northward, many days before.
“We are a few miles west of the Yellowstone Park here,” said Uncle Dick. “We will have quite a party in our car with all the luggage, but they are used to seeing cars in the Park with bundles tied all over the running boards. Now I move you that we go over to Yellowstone and go into the Park as far as the forks of the Gibbon and the Madison, and leave our stuff there for our camp, with Con to take charge of it and make camp. Then we can go on up the Gibbon and on to the Beaver Meadows, where the great black cliff is that is known through all this country as the Obsidian Cliff. I shall show you there, Jesse, the whole face of a mountain of this same black glass, as you call it. And that mountain, as sure as you live, was known by all the Indians for hundreds of miles around here. It was just like the great Red Pipestone quarries of Minnesota.
“Now you begin to see something about exploring and getting across country. You found that arrowhead on the hunting ground of the Shoshonis and the Bannacks. Those people hunted clear down across the lower end of what is now Montana, down the Red Rock River, the way we came by rail; and over the Raynolds Pass, where you boys were; and over the Targhee Pass, and up the Madison and the Gibbon, to this place where they get the heads for their arrows.
“How did they know? Who found it first? Nobody can answer those questions. But one great truth about white explorations on this Continent you must know—there was not one great pass, not one great river, not one great natural scenic feature, which was not known to one or more Indian tribes centuries before the white men came. So after all, we as explorers are not so much. Frémont was not much of an explorer, much as you reverence him. Even Lewis and Clark had been preceded in all this country by the Indian girl and her people. And those people had been every place that we have been—and even as far as Yellowstone Park and into its interior as far as the Obsidian Cliff. There is no doubt or question about that, although it is quite true that obsidian was found in other volcanic regions of different parts of the West.
“Jesse, your arrowhead has been a long way from home! Are you going to take it back? Has it served its purpose in teaching you something about your own country?”
Jesse sat silent for a time, then, “Uncle Dick,” said he, at last, “I am going to take my arrowhead back. When we get to that rock you tell about, I am going to put it down right at the foot, just the way it is, with other pieces like those the Indians took away.”
“Good!” said Uncle Dick. “The little sentiment won’t hurt you, anyhow. I suppose your arrowhead will remain there undiscovered for a thousand years. The tourists who come there now in their touring cars look at that black-faced rock about half a second and whiz by. They want to make the next lunch station.”
“That’s no lie,” said Billy Williams. “Folks nowadays don’t know how to travel.”
They concluded their packing arrangements, rolling their bed rolls tight and storing them along the hood of the car and on the running boards, where Con had fixed up a little rack to carry the extra baggage. Saying good-by to their hospitable friends, the two parties now separated.