e elders questioned him. To their questioning
he replied like one awakening from a dream:

"Our fathers since the beginning have trailed the beasts of the woods.
There is none so cunning as the fox, but we can trail him to his lair.
Though we are weaker than the great bear and buffalo, yet by our
wisdom we overcome them. The deer is more swift of foot, but by craft
we overtake him. We cannot fly like a bird, but we snare the winged
one with a hair. We have made ourselves many cunning inventions by
which the beasts, the trees, the wind, the water and the fire become
our servants.

"Then we speak great swelling words: 'How great and wise we are! There
is none like us in the air, in the wood, or in the water!'

"But the words are false. Our pride is like that of a partridge
drumming on his log in the wood before the fox leaps upon him. Our
sight is like that of the mole burrowing under the ground. Our wisdom
is like a drop of dew upon the grass. Our ignorance is like the great
water which no eye can measure.

"Our life is like a bird coming out of the dark, fluttering for a
heart-beat in the tepee and then going forth into the dark again. No
one can tell whence it comes or whither it goes. I have asked the wise
men and they cannot answer. I have listened to the voice of the trees
and wind and water, but I do not know their tongue; I have questioned
the sun and the moon and the stars, but they are silent.

"But to-day in the silence before the darkness gives place to light, I
seemed to hear a still small voice within my breast, saying to me,
'Wo, the {163} questioner, rise up like the stag from his lair; away,
alone, to the mountain of the sun. There thou shalt find that which
thou seekest.' I go, but if I fail by the trail another will take it
up. If I find the answer I will return."

Waiting for none, Wo left the council of his tribe and went his way
toward the mountain of the sun. For six days he made his way through
the trackless woods, guided by the sun by day and the stars by night.
On the seventh day he came to the great mountain--the mountain of the
sun, on whose top, according to the tradition of his tribe, the sun
rested each night. All day long he climbed saying to himself, "I will
sleep tonight in the teepee of the sun, and he will tell me whence I
come and whither I go."

But as he climbed the sun seemed to climb higher and higher; and, as
he neared the top, a cold cloud settled like a night bird on the