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.