It was brilliant October, very warm and hazy, and our cruel, treacherous land was indolently beautiful. The sky was without cloud—a whitish blue—and the plain, covered with tawny short grass on the uplands, and with purple and golden garments of blue-joint in the hollows, seemed to lift on every side like a gigantic bowl. My horse’s hoofs drummed on the dry sod as I hurried forward.
This is an inexorable land—a land in which man should be free to migrate like the larks or the buffalo. In the old days we never thought of living on these high, wind-swept spaces. They were merely our hunting grounds. Our winter camps were always beside the river, behind the deep banks, in the shelter of the oaks and cottonwoods. In those days the plain seemed less ferocious than now, when we are forced to cross it in all kinds of weather, poorly clothed. In the days of the buffalo we chose our time and place to migrate; now we were fastened to one spot like chained coyotes.
As I came to the hill which overlooked the wooded flat I saw a great many tepees set about the chief’s cabin, and I perceived also that the dance was going on. Occasionally a cry reached me, pulsing faintly through the hazy air. In some such way, perhaps, the white fisher folk of Galilee drew together to greet the coming of their Messiah. Was this Saviour of the west any more incredible than Christ?
So I mused as I rode slowly down the hill. What if it were all true? The white man who claims to know all things believes in his Bible and his Bible is full of miracles.
Soon I could hear the song. It was the sad song I had heard them sing in the chief’s tepee. It was in most violent opposition to the sunlit earth and the soft caressing wind, and reached my heart like the wail of a mourning woman. Soon I was near enough to hear the wistful words. It was all of entreaty:
“Our Father, we come.
We come to you weeping.
Take pity on us, O Father.
We are poor and weak,