The Way of an Indian | Page 2

some even younger than
himself, had gone away to the Absaroke for glory and scalps, and
ponies and women--a war-party--the one thing to which an Indian
pulsed with his last drop. He had thought to go also, but his father had
discouraged him, and yesterday presented him with charcoal ashes in
his right hand, and two juicy buffalo ribs with his left. He had taken the
charcoal. His father said it was good--that it was not well for a young
man to go to the enemy with his shadow uncovered before the Bad
Gods.
Now his spirits raged within his tightened belly, and the fierce Indian
brooding had driven him to the rim-rock, where his soul rocked and
pounced within him. He looked at the land of his people, and he hated
all vehemently, with a rage that nothing stayed but his physical
strength.
Old Big Hair, his father, sitting in the shade of his tepee, looked out
across at his son on the far-off skyline, and he hid his head in his
blanket as he gazed into his medicine-pouch. "Keep the enemy and the
Bad Gods from my boy; he has no one to protect him but you, my
medicine."
Thus hour after hour there sat the motionless tyro, alone with his own
shadow on the hill. The shades of all living nature grew great and

greater with the declining sun. The young man saw it with satisfaction.
His heart swelled with brave thoughts, as his own extended itself down
the hillside--now twenty feet long--now sixty--until the western sun
was cut by the bluffs, when it went out altogether. The shadow of
White Otter had been eaten up by the shadow of the hill. He knew now
that he must go to the westward--to the western mountains, to the
Inyan-kara, where in the deep recesses lay the shadows which had
eaten his. They were calling him, and as the sun sank to rest, White
Otter rose slowly, drew his robe around him, and walked away from the
Chis-chis-chash camp.
The split sticks in Big Hair's lodge snapped and spit gleams of light on
the old warrior as he lay back on his resting-mat. He was talking to his
sacred symbols. "Though he sleeps very far off, though he sleeps even
on the other side, a spirit is what I use to keep him. Make the bellies of
animals full which would seek my son; make the wolf and the bear and
the panther go out of their way. Make the buffalo herds to split around
my son, Good God! Be strong to keep the Bad God back, and all his
demons--lull them to sleep while he passes; lull them with soft sounds."
And the Indian began a dolorous chanting, which he continued
throughout the night. The lodge-fires died down in the camp, but the
muffled intone came in a hollow sound from the interior of the tepee
until the spirit of silence was made more sure, and sleep came over the
bad and good together.
Across the gray-greens of the moonlit plains bobbed and flitted the dim
form of the seeker of God's help.
Now among the dark shadows of the pines, now in the gray sagebrush,
lost in the coulees, but ceaselessly on and on, wound this figure of the
night. The wolves sniffed along on the trail, but came no nearer.
All night long he pursued his way, his muscles playing tirelessly to the
demands of a mind as taut as bowstring.
Before the morning he had reached the Inyan-kara, a sacred place, and
begun to ascend its pine-clad slopes. It had repulsion for White Otter, it

was sacred--full of strange beings not to be approached except in the
spiritual way, which was his on this occasion, and thus he approached it.
To this place the shadows had retired, and he was pursuing them. He
was in mortal terror--every tree spoke out loud to him; the dark places
gave back groans, the night-winds swooped upon him, whispering their
terrible fears. The great underground wildcat meowed from the slopes,
the red-winged moon-birds shrilled across the sky, and the stone giants
from the cliffs rocked and sounded back to White Otter, until he cried
aloud:
"O Good God, come help me. I am White Otter. All the bad are thick
around me; they have stolen my shadow; now they will take me, and I
shall never go across to live in the shadow-land. Come to White Otter,
O Good God!"
A little brown bat whirled round and round the head of the
terror-stricken Indian, saying: "I am from God, White Otter. I am come
to you direct from God. I will take care of you. I have your shadow
under my wings. I can fly so fast and crooked that no