often deep and rapid, but a little later they shrank to a few narrow
trickles running over a bed of sand, and sometimes the water sank wholly
out of sight.

The animals of the prairie and the roots and berries that grew in the
bottoms and on the uplands gave the people their chief sustenance.

In such surroundings the boy Wikis was born and grew up. The people that he
knew well were those of his own camp. Once a year perhaps, for a few weeks,
he saw the larger population of a great camp, but for the most part half a
dozen families of the tribe, with the buffalo, the deer, the wolves, and
the smaller animals and birds, were the companions with whom he lived and
from whom he learned life's lessons.

The incidents of this simple story are true.

The life of those days and the teachings received by the boy or the girl
who was to take part in it have passed away and will not return.

_The Attack on the Camp._

It is the first thing that I can recollect, and comes back to me now
dimly--only as a dream. My mother used to tell me of it, and often to laugh
at me. She said I was then about five or six years old.

I must have been playing with other little boys near the lodge, and the
first thing that I remember is seeing people running to and fro, men
jumping on their horses, and women gathering up their children. I remember
how the men called to each other, and that some were shouting the war cry;
and then that they all rode away in the same direction. My mother rushed
out and caught me by the hand, and began to pull me toward the lodge, and
then she stopped and in a shrill, sweet voice began to sing; and other
women that were running about stopped too, and began to sing songs to
encourage their husbands and brothers and sons to fight bravely; for
enemies were attacking the camp.

I did not understand it at all, but I was excited and glad to hear the
noise, and to see people rushing about. Soon I could hear shooting at a
distance. Then presently I saw the men come riding back toward the camp;
and saw the enemy following them down toward the lodges, and that there
were many of these strangers, while our people were only a few. But still
my people kept stopping and turning and fighting. Now the noise was louder.
The women sang their strong heart songs more shrilly, and I could hear more
plainly the whoops of men, and the blowing of war whistles, and the reports
of guns.

Presently one of our men fell off his hors