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ems which break into an intangible mist of bloom.

Suddenly out of the tangled forests, a sheet of water, smooth and clear, appears, spreading its quicksilver depths among peaks that still bear their burden of the glacial age. And in the polished mirror of those waters is reflected the perfect image of its mountain crown. First, the purplish green of timbered slopes, then the naked, beetling crags and deep crevasse with its heart of ice. A heavy silence broods here, broken only by the wildly lonesome cry of the raven quavering in lessening undulations of tone through the recesses of the crags. Two Indians near the shore flit away among the leaves, timid as deer in their native haunts. Such is Lake Angus McDonald, and yonder, presiding over all, shouldering its perpetual burden of ice, is McDonald's Peak. Strangely beautiful are these living monuments to the name and fame of a man, and one naturally asks who was this Angus McDonald that his memory should endure in the eternal mountains within the crystal cup of this snow-fed lake?

The question is worth the answering. Angus McDonald was a Highland Scotchman, sent out into the western wilderness by the Hudson Bay Company. There must have lurked in his robust blood the mastering love of freedom and adventure which led the scions of the House of McDonald to such strange and varied destinies; which made such characters in the Scottish hills as Rob Roy and clothed the kilted clans with a romantic colour totally wanting in their stolid brethren of the Lowlands. In any event, it is certain that Angus McDonald, once within the magic of the wild, flung aside the ties that bound him to the outer world and became in dress, in manner of life and in heart, an Indian. He took unto himself an Indian wife, begot sons who were Indians in colour and form and like his adopted people, he hunted upon the heights, moved his tipi from valley to mountain as capricious notion prompted, and finally made for himself and his family a home in the valley of Sin-yal-min not far below that lake and peak which do honor to his memory. Physically he was a man of towering stature, standing over six feet in his moccasins; his shoulders were broad and he was very erect. His leonine head was clad with a heavy shock of hair, and his beard, during his later years, snow white, hung to his waist. His complexion was ruddy, his eyes, clear, blue and penetrating. A picturesque figure he must have been, clad in full buckskin leggins and shirt with a blanket wrapped around him. He was known among the Indians and whites through the length and breadth of the country about, and no more strange or striking character quickened the adventure-bearing epoch which we call the Early Days.

As he was free to the point of lightness in his nature, trampling down and discarding every shackle of conventionality, he was likewise bound but nominally by the Christian creed. He believed in reincarnation and his one desire was that in the hereafter, when his soul should be sent to tenant the new body, he might be re-born in the form of a wild, white horse, with proud, arched neck and earth-scorning hoofs, dashing wind-swift over the broad prairies into the sheltering hills.

So it seems fitting that McDonald's Peak and Lake should remain untamed even as their namesake; that the eddying whirlpool of life should pass them by and that in their embrace the native creatures should live and range as of yore. And may it be that within those shadowy gorges, remote from the sight and hearing of man, a wild, white horse goes bounding through the night?

SOME INDIAN MISSIONS OF THE NORTHWEST

The mellowness of old romance, the warmth of Latin colour, hang over the Missions of California. The pilgrim lingers reverently in their cloistered recesses, breathing the scent of orange blossoms, reposing in the shade of palm and pepper trees. With the song of the sea in his ears and its sapphire glint in his eye he re-lives the olden days, weaves for himself out of imagination's threads, a picture as harmonious in its tones of faded rose and gray as an ancient tapestry. How much the architectural beauty of these Missions has brought them within the affectionate regard of the people it is hard to say, but undoubtedly it has had an influence. The graceful lines of arch and pillar, the low, broad sweep of roof and corridor, the delicate, yellowish-white of the adobe outlined against a sky of royal blue, stir the sleeping sense of beauty in our hearts and make us pause to worship at such favoured shrines.

It is for precisely the opposite reason that we are drawn to the Missions of the Northwest. Austere, ascetic in form, they make their appeal because of their unadorned simplicity. They were originally the plainest structures of logs, added to as occasion demanded and always constructed of such homely materials as the surrounding country could yield. Hands unaccustomed to other labours than telling the rosary or making the sign of the Cross, hewed forest trees and wrought in wood the symbol of their teaching. No wonder, then, that the buildings were small and crude, but their lack of grandeur was the best testimony to the sacrifice and noble purpose of which they were the emblems. Overlooked, isolated they stand, passed by and all but unknown. Yet they are monuments of heroic achievement and devotion; brave men risked their lives willingly to lay these foundation stones of the faith; bitter struggles were fought and won in their consecrated shadows and upon them is the glamour of thrilling episode.

During the seventeenth century a little band of French missionaries of the order of St. Ignatius journeyed from their native France to Canadian territory with the purpose of spreading the word of God amongst the savages of that benighted land. One of them, Father Ignace Jogues, became the apostle of the Iroquois and died at their hands, a martyr. Strangely enough, his teachings lived after him and were preserved in a measure, at least, by those who had murdered him because of the message he brought.

From the lips of Old Ignace, as he was known, the Selish heard of a mysterious faith symbolized by a Cross, a greater medicine than that of any of the tribes, and of pale-faced, sable-robed priests, who, in the olden time, taught that faith and died happily in the teaching.

The Selish practiced a simple, spontaneous kind of paganism. They believed in a Good and Evil Spirit who were constantly at war. These two powers were symbolized by light and darkness and their heroic battle was pictured in the alternate triumph of day and night. If buffalo came in plenty, if elk and moose were slain and the season's yield were rich, then, according to their notion, the Good Spirit was in the ascendency; but if, on the other hand, Winter rode down from the mountains while their larder was low, if fish would not bite and game could not be caught, the influence of the Evil Spirit prevailed. They believed also, in a future existence, happy or miserable according to the merit or demerit of the soul during its mortal life. The worthy shade passed into eternal Summer time, to a land watered by fair streams and green with meadows; in these streams were countless fishes and in the meadows bands of wild horses and endless herds of the beloved buffalo. There the spirit, united with its family, would ride through all eternity, hunting amongst the ghostly flocks in the Summer sun of happy souls. But those who had violated the tenets of the tribe, who had been liars, cowards or otherwise dishonourable, and those negative offenders who had been lacking in love for their wives, husbands and children, had sealed for themselves a bitter fate. These outcasts went to an arctic region of everlasting snow where false fires were kindled to torment their frozen limbs with the mocking promise of warmth. Phantom streams offered their parched lips drink, but as they hastened to the banks to quench their thirst, the elusive waters were ever farther and farther away. So ever and anon, through the years that never seemed to die, the shades were doomed to hurry onward through the night and cold of Winter that knows no Spring, in misery as dark as the shadow engulfing them. The Lands of Good and Evil were separated by savage woods, inhabited by hungry wolves, lithe wild cats and serpents coiled to strike. The wretched sinner in his prison of ice, might after a period of penance, short or long, according to the measure of his offense, expiate his sins and join his brethren in the Happy Hunting Ground.

Besides this general belief held in common by the tribe, they cherished countless myths such as those of the creation and many lesser fanciful legends which formed a part of their religion.

Although these Indians were sincere in this simple, half-poetical mythology, they listened very willingly, like eager children, to Old Ignace, and from him learned to make the sacred sign and repeat the white man's prayer. After knowing something of their mysticism it is not surprising that the greater mysticism of the Catholic Church should appeal to them; that once having heard the story of a faith much in accord with many of their elementary, pre-conceived ideas, they should pursue it tirelessly until they gained that which they most desired.

Time upon time at the councils, the chiefs discussed a means of getting a Black Robe to come to them. At last, in a mighty assembly, Old Ignace arose and proposed that a delegation be sent to St. Louis to pray that an apostle of the church might come to shed the light of the new faith upon the darkness of the Western Woods. A stir of approval ran through the attentive people, for it was a great and daring thing to think of. But who would go? The journey of about two thousand miles lay over barriers of mountains, rushing torrents, virgin forests where the sun never shone, and worst of all, penetrated the country of their hereditary enemies, the Sioux. In spite of these perils, in the breathless quiet of expectation that had hushed the tribe, four braves came forward and volunteered to undertake the quest.

The knights of the olden days, who went forth sheathed in armour, in goodly cavalcades, to the land of the Saracen in search of the Holy Grail, have gathered about their memory the white light of heroism, but if their daring and that of these four were weighed impartially, the Indians would rise higher in the scale of glory. Alone, afoot, armed only with such weapons as their skill could contrive, they started out in the Spring of 1831, and in spite of the death that lurked around them, reached their journey's end with the Autumn. The tragical aftermath of that heroic adventure followed quickly. The dangers overcome, the goal won, they failed. Not one among them could speak a word of French or English. They sought out General Clark who had penetrated into their lands, but what brought them from across the Rocky Mountains, through the teeth of perdition to St. Louis, not even he could guess. Picture the tragedy of being within reach of the treasure and unable to point it out! Through General Clark the four emissaries were conducted to the Catholic Church. Monseigneur, the Bishop, was absent--he whom they had travelled six moons to see. Very soon thereafter, two of the number fell ill as a result of exposure. In their sickness, doomed to die in a strange land far, far from the pleasant glades of their native valley, they made the sign of the Cross and other feeble gestures which some priests who visited them interpreted rightly to be an appeal for baptism and the last rites of the church. The priests accordingly gave them the consolation they prayed for and placed in the hands of each a little crucifix. So rigidly did they press these symbols to their breasts, that they retained them even in death. Still in their final agonies not one word could they tell of that mission for which they were even then yielding up their lives. They died christened Narcisse and Paul and were buried in a Catholic cemetery in the City of St. Louis.

The two survivors, nameless shadows, flitted back into the wild and were lost forever in the darkness. No tidings of them ever reached the waiting tribe, so they, too, sacrificed themselves to a fruitless cause.

After these things had happened a Canadian, familiar with the Indians, informed the good fathers who these children of the forest were and of their devotion to a Faith, the merest glimmering of which had penetrated to their remote and isolated valley. Then a priest of the Cathedral offered to go with one companion to these zealous Indians when the Spring should make possible the desperate trip.

They were resolute men, these Indians, and never faltering, they determined to send another party upon the same sacred quest. This time Old Ignace, he who had first broached the adventure to the council, arose among the chiefs and warriors and offered to go. He took with him his two young sons. The Summer was already well spent, but he and the lads started out undaunted, and after a terrible period of ceaseless travelling, smitten with cold and hunger, they reached St. Louis, and Ignace more favoured than the preceding delegation, made known the wants of his adopted tribe to the Bishop, who listened to him kindly and promised to send a priest among his people.

Ignace and his sons returned safely to the Bitter Root Valley and brought the glad tidings to the Selish. But eighteen moons waxed and waned and though the watchful eyes of the Indians scanned the East, never a pale-faced father in robes of black came out of the land of the sunrise.

The chiefs took counsel again. A third time they determined to make their appeal. Once more Ignace La Mousse led the way and in his charge were three Selish and one Nez Perc? brave. They fell in with a little party of white people near Fort Laramie, and uniting forces for greater safety, took up the march together. They journeyed onward unmolested until they came to Ash Hollow in the land of the warlike Sioux. In that fateful place three hundred of the hostile tribe surrounded them. The Sioux, wishing only the scalps of the Selish and Nez Perc?, ordered the white men and Old Ignace who was dressed in the garb of civilization, to stand apart. The whites obeyed, but Ignace La Mousse, scorning favour or mercy at the enemy's hands, joined his adopted tribal brethren and fought with them until they all lay dead upon the plains. So ended the third expedition.

Once more news of the bloody death of their heroes reached the Selish. A fourth and last party volunteered to undertake that which now seemed a hopeless charge. Two Iroquois, Young Ignace La Mousse, so called to distinguish him from the elder of the name, whose memory was held honourable by the tribe, and Pierre Gaucher, "Left Handed Peter," set out, joining a party of the Hudson Bay Fur Company's men and making the trip in canoes. They finished the journey in safety and obtained from Monseigneur, the Bishop, the pledge that in the Spring he would send a missionary to the Valley of the Bitter Root. Young Ignace waited at the mouth of Bear River through the Winter in order to be ready to guide the priest to the Selish with the coming of the Spring. Pierre Gaucher returned hot-footed, in triumph, conveying to the tribe the glad tidings that their prayer had been answered; that the Great Black Robe was sending them a disciple to preach the Holy Word. At last, after eight years of waiting, the Selish were to have granted them their hearts' desire. From out of the East the pale-faced, black robed father would come bearing with him the Cross illuminated by the rising sun, casting the benediction of its shadow upon the people and their land.

There was great rejoicing among the Selish, the Nez Perc?s, the Pend d'Oreilles and the Kalispehlms. They burst into wild shouts of delight, swarming around the pale priest, shaking his hand and bowing down before him. They conducted him to the lodge of the Great Chief, called the "Big Face," whom Father de Smet has described as one "who had the appearance of a patriarch." The Chief made Father de Smet welcome in these words:

"'This day the Great Spirit has accomplished our wishes and our hearts are swelled with joy. Our desire to be instructed was so great that four times had we deputed our people to the Great Black Robe in St. Louis to obtain priests. Now, Father, speak and we will comply with all that you will tell us. Show us the way we have to take to go to the home of the Great Spirit.'"

Thus spake the Big Face, Chief of all the Selish, and there before the assembled peoples of the kindred tribes, he offered to the priest his hereditary honours as ruler. His renunciation was sincere, but Father de Smet replied that he had come merely to teach, not to govern them.

That night in the deepening shadow, the children of the forest gathered together around their new leader and chanted a song of praise. Strange music swelling from untutored lips and awakening hearts into the wild silence which had echoed only the howl of native beasts and the war cry of battle and death! Yet even in that hymn of thanksgiving there was an undertone of unconscious sadness. It was the beginning of a new epoch. The old, poetical wood-myth and paganism were gone; the free range over mountain and plain in the exhilarating chase would slowly give place to the pursuits of husbandry. And this new, shapeless compound of civilization and religion was bringing with its blessings, a burden of obligation and pain. The Indians did not know, the priest himself could not understand, that he was the channel through which these simple, happy folk should embark upon dangerous, devouring seas.

So far was the season advanced that the Selish had started on their buffalo hunt. Therefore, the priests whose supplies were exhausted, with their Indian friends, went on to Fort Hall, procured provisions there, and then proceeded to the Beaverhead River to join the tribe. The priests stayed only a few days among the Indians who were absorbed in the chase, and again took up their journey with the Bitter Root valley as the chosen place of permanent rest. There they had determined to build the Mission, "the house of the Great Spirit," and there the Selish promised to join them after the hunt was over in the Fall. Along the course of the Hell Gate River they took their way and at last came safely within the green refuge of the valley to lay down their burden and build their church. They selected a fair spot near the present site of Stevensville and laboured long to fashion the pioneer home of the Faith which they called The Mission of St. Mary's. The good priests went farther still and re-named the valley, the river watering it and the highest peak, St. Mary's, so anxious were they in their zeal to eradicate every trace of the old, pagan beliefs of their converts, even to the names of the valleys, lakes and hills!

The element of incongruity and pity in this, the zealous fathers did not appreciate. That a jagged, beetling crest, the home of the thunder cloud, the womb whence issues glacier and roaring stream, fit to be Jove's dwelling, should bear the mild title of St. Mary's, did not shock their notions of the eternal fitness of things. Happily, the valley with its rose-starred brocade of flowers, is still the Bitter Root and a re-awakening interest is calling the old names from their long oblivion to take their places once again, vesting peak and stream and grassy vale with a significance of meaning totally wanting in the artificial foreign titles forced on them by those who neither knew nor cared for their tradition and sentiment. And even the ancient gods and spirits are no longer despised as evils antagonistic to the salvation of the soul. Lafcadio Hearn expressed pity for the cast-off Shinto gods whose places were usurped by the deities of the Buddhist creed. Likewise, the best Christian amongst us, if he looks beneath the surface into the heart of things, must be conscious of a vague regret for the quaint, mythical lore which cast its glamour over the wilderness; for the poor, vanished phantoms of the wood and the gods who have fallen from their thrones. Sometimes in the remotest mountain solitudes we dare to acknowledge thoughts we would not harbour elsewhere. Under the pensive appeal of the still forests, the heaven-reaching peaks and stream-songs, we wonder if upon the heights, in deep-bosomed caverns, those sad exiles dwell, casting over the cloistered groves a subtle melancholy, evasive as the shadow of a cloud, fleeting as the sigh of the Summer wind.

The Mission completed, Father De Smet travelled to Fort Colville in Washington, a journey of more than three hundred miles, to procure seeds and roots, and on his way he stopped among the Kalispehlms, the Pend d'Oreilles and the Coeur d'Alenes, all of whom welcomed him and listened attentively to the message he brought. He took back to his Selish charges at St. Mary's "a few bushels of oats, wheat and potatoes" which he and his brethren sowed. The Indians, like children, watched with wonder, the planting, sprouting, ripening and reaping of the crop, a thing hitherto unknown to them, though husbandry on a small scale had been practiced at an earlier date by some of the Eastern tribes.

From St. Mary's, the Mother Mission, Father Point and Brother Huet went forth to minister to the Coeur d'Alenes, where they established the Mission of the Sacred Heart. A third Mission, St. Ignatius, was founded amongst the Kalispehlms on the Pend d'Oreille River. With these two offshoots from the parent stem of St. Mary's, it was necessary for Father De Smet to seek re-inforcement abroad, but before he sailed he started westward three new recruits from St. Louis.

He travelled from one to another of the Northwestern missions and even to Santa Clara, California, but he is known best and loved most as the Apostle of the Selish at St. Mary's. Indeed, looking back through the perspective of time at the plain, little Mission crowned as with an aureole, one figure stands out clearly among the pious priests, who, in turn, presided at its altar, and this figure is Father Ravalli.

His grave, marked by a shaft of stone, is within the shadow of the church in the valley of the Bitter Root, and it was fitting he should lie down to rest where he had laboured so long and lovingly. A generation hence, when the hallowed places of the West become shrines about which pilgrims shall gather reverently, this mountain-tomb of the gentle old priest will be visited and written of. Meantime, he sleeps as sweetly for the solitude, and those whose lives he made more beautiful by his presence think of him at peace as they turn their eyes heavenward to the infinite rosary of the stars.

In spite of the progress of the beneficent work and the fresh blood that had infused new strength into the cause, dark days were to cast their shadow upon the little Mission of St. Mary's. No power could restrain the Selish from the chase, and during their absence twice a year, the colony left behind, consisting only of the priest and those too aged or sick to follow the tribe, were menaced by the Blackfeet and Bannock Indians. The old feud was fanned red hot by the Selish killing two Blackfeet warriors who invaded the very boundaries of the Mission with hostile intent. The threats from the Blackfeet became more terrible. They lurked in the thick timber and brush around the stockade which enclosed the Mission, and, finally, while the tribe was absent on a buffalo hunt, a rumour reached the anxious watchers that the hostiles would descend in a great war party upon the defenseless community. And indeed, they were roused by war whoop and savage yell to see swarming around their weak barricade, the dreaded enemy. Father Ravalli was in charge of the Mission at that time and he and his companions prepared themselves for the death which seemed inevitable. But the Blackfeet, probably seeing that only a man stricken with years, two young boys and a few aged women and little children were all of their hated foe who remained at St. Mary's, retreated to the brush. One of the two boys ventured to the gate to make sure the Blackfeet were gone and was shot dead. This tragical incident and the more awful menace it carried with it to those who were left at the mercy of the invading tribes, and another reason we shall now consider, led to the temporary abandonment of St. Mary's.

For a time we leave St. Mary's in the sad oblivion of desertion, while those who had tended its altar, poor pilgrims, toiled over diverse trails toward different destinations.

It is not necessary to follow the varying fortunes of the few, small missions in the Northwestern wilderness, included then within the vast territory called Oregon. Each has its pathetic story of privation and danger, which may be found complete and detailed in ecclesiastical histories written by priests of the order.

We shall pass on to the Mission of St. Ignatius, whither the party from St. Mary's sought refuge, which, in the course of time absorbed some of the lesser institutions and became, as we shall see, the religious center of several tribes. The Mission of St. Ignatius was the same founded by Father Point on the banks of the Pend d'Oreille River among the Kalispehlms in the year 1844. The original location proved undesirable, so ten years later the Mission was moved to a site chosen by the advice of Alexander, Chief of the tribe. A wonderful revelation it must have been when the Indian guide, leading the priests through a pass in the mountains, the secret of his people, showed them the vast sea of flowing green--the valley of Sin-yal-min--barred to the East by the range of the same name. There ever-changing shades of violet and lights of gold altered the mien of these mountains whose jagged peaks showed white with snow, from whose deep bosoms burst a water-fall plunging from mighty altitudes into the emerald bowl of the valley. This was veritably a kingdom in itself, and no white man had trodden the thick embroidery of wild flowers and grass. It had been a gathering place for many tribes. Within its luxuriantly fruitful limits, berries and roots grew in plenty and game abounded in the neighbouring hills.

The fates favoured St. Ignatius. In the year of its removal the Hell's Gate treaty was signed wherein the bounds of the reservation were re-adjusted, making the new mission the center of that rich dominion. The treaty of the Hell Gate, participated in by the Selish, the Pend d'Oreilles and some of the Kootenais, was the same, it may be remembered, wherein Victor, the father of Charlot, insisted upon retaining possession of the Bitter Root Valley "above the LoLo Fork" for himself and his people, unless after a fair survey by the United States, the President should deem it best to move the tribe to the Jocko. This agreement was entered into in 1855. Seventeen years went by. The Indians declare that no survey was ever made during that time nor were they furnished with school teachers, skilled artisans and agriculturalists to instruct them, as had been promised on the part of the government. Summarily the Selish were called upon to sign a second agreement, the Garfield treaty, which deprived them of their ancestral home and drove them forth to share the Jocko Reservation in common with the allied tribes. This was at once an impetus to the fortunes of St. Ignatius and a mortal blow to St. Mary's.

In the meantime the West was changing. The first stern, ascetic days were passing when the best of men's characters was called into active existence to cope with immediate hardship; when every nerve rang true, tuned to the highest bravery and that magnificent indifference to death which makes heroes. The cry of gold ran through the length and breadth of the land and the headlong rush of adventurers, good and bad, from the four corners of the earth, all bent on wealth, changed the spirit of the western world. In that mad stampede, men, spurred by the lust of gain, pushed and crowded each other, and with such competition, who thought of or cared for the Indian? His day was done; the accomplishment of his ruin was merely a matter of years. Moreover, the lower element of the reckless, pillaging crew of gold seekers brought with it the vices of civilization--drink and the game.

Change the ideal which inspires a deed and the deed itself is changed. That first, stern West which taught men not to fear by surrounding them with danger, made heroes of them because they had braved the unknown for some noble purpose, religion, the simple love of Nature or another reason as good; but in these altered conditions where debauching gain was the one object of their quest, though they spurned death as the pathfinders had done, their bravery sank to bravado and dare-deviltry because their purpose was sordid.

With this invasion of the wilderness the whole aspect of the mission work underwent a change. The masked man on horseback stalked the trails; the bizarre glamour of the dance hall flaunted its coarse gaiety in the mushroom camps' thronged streets; the saloon and gaming house brought temptation to the Indian, and generally he fell. It was also true that in more than one instance the precedent of bloodshed was set by brigand whites, sowing the seeds which were later to bear a red harvest of war.

The sequel of St. Ignatius is, happily, less pathetic in its unfolding. The life that ebbed from St. Mary's flowed amply into the newer Mission's growing strength and to-day it stands, substantial and prosperous in the valley of Sin-yal-min. Though the same tragedy is about to be enacted, the expulsion, less summary, leaving to the individual Indian his garden patch, St. Ignatius remains a beacon to the dusky hosts, poor frightened children who cling to this last hope, promising as it does a happiness born of suffering, an ultimate reward which not even the white man can take away. A handsome new church, frescoed by an Italian brother, does service instead of the old chapel, venerable with age that hides behind the sheltering trees. In front of the modern church stands the great, wooden Cross erected by the early fathers, which the Indians kneel to kiss before they go to Mass. And to the right, covered with wild grass, and that neglect of which such vagrant growths are the emblem, is the old cemetery where so many weary pilgrims who travelled long and painfully over difficult trails, have sought peace past the power of dreams to disturb.

Here, as we have seen, upon feast days the Indians come, the scattered bands gathering from mountain and valley, clad in gala attire. Their ranks are thinning fast. The once populous nation of the Selish is shrunk to between three and four hundred souls, still the little village often holds a thousand Indians all told, from the different neighbouring tribes. And sometimes, bands from far away, distinguished by diversified language, curious basketry and articles of handicraft, come as spectators to the feasts.

Until a few years ago these religious festivals were preceded by solemn rites of expiation. A kind of open air court was held, the chiefs sitting in judgment upon all offenders and acting in the capacity of judges. The whole tribe assembled to watch with impassive gravity the austere spectacle of the accusation, sentence and chastisement of those who had broken the law. All malefactors were either brought before the chiefs, or spurred by conscience, they came forward voluntarily, confessed their guilt and prayed to be expurgated of sin through the sting of the lash. When the accusations and confessions were finished, the multitude dropped upon their knees and prayed. Then those arraigned were examined and such of them as the chiefs decreed guilty, were sentenced and immediately suffered the penalty. A blanket was spread upon the earth and the offender lay on this, his back exposed to the raw-hide lash which marked in welt-raising strokes the degree of his transgression. Even while he smarted, never wincing under this ordeal, the spectators at the bidding of the chiefs, prayed once again for the culprit's reformation and forgiveness. Such was the practice of the Selish handed down from the earliest days. The time and place of the chastisement were regulated in these later years by the Catholic festivals, but public punishment with the lash was a custom of the tribe before the missionaries penetrated the West. The confession, the judgment and the whipping they believed to be a complete expiation; having suffered, the sin-soiled were made clean, and thus purified, they met and mingled with the best of their brethren on equal terms, without further reproach. This was a simple and summary form of justice, suited to the people whom it controlled,--was in fact the natural outgrowth of their moral and ethical code--and it is a pity that the ancient law, together with much besides that was desirable in the pristine life of the Indian, has been stamped out beneath the master's iron heel.

One cannot take leave of the missions of the Northwest without looking back upon Father De Smet, their founder, and the work which he began. Through his devotion missions were established among many different nations, even the unyielding Blackfeet falling under the spell of gentleness. And he who lived most of his life either in the wilderness or labouring elsewhere for what he believed to be the salvation of its benighted children, died at last at St. Louis in 1873, after meditative and reminiscent years spent in recording his travels and his triumphs.

There are some subtle questions crying out of the silence which are not to be pushed back unspoken, even though we can find no answer to their riddle. How far have the missionaries succeeded? If completely, why does the Christian Indian still dance to the Sun? And did those Fathers in their errand of mercy blindly pass to the people they would fain have saved from annihilation the fate they strove to spare them from? Who can say?

The Indians were probably in their racial infancy when the maturer ranks marched in and absorbed, or otherwise destroyed them. It would seem that with them it is a case of arrested development. If left to themselves, through centuries they might have brought forth a civilization diametrically opposite to our own. That they never could nor can assimilate or profit by our social and educational methods has been sufficiently proved. Their race instincts are essentially as foreign to ours as those of the Hindu, and their evolution must have necessarily proceeded along totally different lines. The Indians were decreed to work out their own salvation or die, and the latter thing has come to pass. One might go on painting mental pictures of what would have been the result if the free, forest-born red race had thrived and grown into maturity. Certainly in their decadence, their spirit-broken second childhood, we find the germ of an original moral sense, of tradition and poetry, even of religion, which might have borne rich fruit.

The Oriental is to us an enigma, and we recognize in his makeup psychic qualities but slightly hinted of in ourselves. So in the Indian we must acknowledge a race of distinct and separate values that we can never wholly know or understand. The races are products of countless centuries begotten of habit and environment; we cannot put aside these growth-accumulations builded like the rings of the pine, nor can we take that which the Creator made and re-create it to suit our finite ends. Therefore, instead of helping the Indian we are merely killing him, kindly perhaps, with comforts, colleges and sacraments, but none the less surely striking at his life.

And though they are still amongst us, picturesque figures which we value chiefly as relics of a gaily-coloured past, the Indians are the mystery of our continent. They speak to us, they smile at us, they sit within our churches and use our tongue, but for all that they remain forever strangers. What pagan beliefs vibrating through the chain of unrecorded ancestry, what hates, loves, aspirations and bitter griefs, separate from our comprehension as the poles, thrill out of the darkness of yesterday and die unspoken, unformed, beneath those calm, bronze brows? They are a problem to be studied, never solved; a riddle one with the Sphinx, the Cliff Dwellers and the Aztec ruins. For, after all is said, what do even the good Fathers, with candle, crucifix and creed, know of their primal souls, of the unsounded depths of their hearts?

THE PEOPLE OF THE LEAVES

In the ultimate Beginning, the Great Spirit made the world. Under his potent, life-giving heat the seeds within the soil burst into bloom and the earth was peopled with trees--trees of many kinds and forms, the regal pine and cedar in evergreen beauty and the other hosts whose leaves bud with the Spring, change with the Autumn and die with the Winter's snow. These trees were all possessed of souls and some of them yearned to be free. The Great Spirit, from his throne in the blue skies, penetrating the slightest shadow of a leaf, divining the least unfolding of a bud with his all-seeing, omnipotently sensitive beams radiating like nerves from his golden heart, perceived the sorrow of the sighing forests and mourned with tears of rain at their discontent. Then he knew that a world of trees, however beautiful, was not complete and he loosed the souls from their prisons of bark and limb and re-created them in the form of Indians, who lived in the shelter of the woods, knit to them by the eternal kinship of primal soul-source--verily the People of the Leaves.

It is not strange that among a nation which adored the sun, the chief ceremony should have been the Sun Dance, at once a propitiatory offering to the Great Spirit and a public test of metal before a young man could become a brave. The custom was an ancient one, as ancient, perhaps, as the legend of the leaves, and in the accounts of the earliest explorers and missionaries we read of this dance to the sun; of the physical heroism which was the fruit of the torture and filled the ranks of soldiery with men Spartan in fine scorn of pain and contempt of death. It is interesting to trace similar practices in races widely separate in origin, habits and beliefs, and it seems curious that this rite of initiation into the honourable host of the braves, however dissimilar in outer form, was not totally unlike in spirit the test of knighthood for the hallowed circle of the Table Round.

The festival of the Sun Dance was celebrated every year in the month of July, when the omnipotent orb reached his greatest strength, is, indeed, still celebrated, but without the torture which was its reason for being. A pole was driven deep and solid in the ground and from the top, somewhat after the manner of a May-pole, long, stout thongs depended. After incantations by the Medicine Men, the youths desiring to distinguish themselves came forward in the presence of the assembled multitude, to receive the torture which should condemn them as squaw men or entitle them to fold their blankets as braves.

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