ished yet," he added
turning to Uncle Dick.

"Feel in your right-hand waistcoat pocket, Jesse," said the latter.

Jesse did so with a smile and produced the black, glassy-looking
arrowhead which he had found at the Beaverhead Rock over to the
northward, many days before.

"We are a few miles west of the Yellowstone Park here," said Uncle Dick.
"We will have quite a party in our car with all the luggage, but they
are used to seeing cars in the Park with bundles tied all over the
running boards. Now I move you that we go over to Yellowstone and go
into the Park as far as the forks of the Gibbon and the Madison, and
leave our stuff there for our camp, with Con to take charge of it and
make camp. Then we can go on up the Gibbon and on to the Beaver Meadows,
where the great black cliff is that is known through all this country as
the Obsidian Cliff. I shall show you there, Jesse, the whole face of a
mountain of this same black glass, as you call it. And that mountain, as
sure as you live, was known by all the Indians for hundreds of miles
around here. It was just like the great Red Pipestone quarries of
Minnesota.

"Now you begin to see something about exploring and getting across
country. You found that arrowhead on the hunting ground of the Shoshonis
and the Bannacks. Those people hunted clear down across the lower end of
what is now Montana, down the Red Rock River, the way we came by rail;
and over the Raynolds Pass, where you boys were; and over the Targhee
Pass, and up the Madison and the Gibbon, to this place where they get
the heads for their arrows.

"How did they know? Who found it first? Nobody can answer those
questions. But one great truth about white explorations on this
Continent you must know--there was not one great pass, not one great
river, not one great natural scenic feature, which was not known to one
or more Indian tribes centuries before the white men came. So after all,
we as explorers are not so much. Fremont was not much of an explorer,
much as you reverence him. Even Lewis and Clark had been preceded in all
this country by the Indian girl and her people. And those people had
been every place that we have been--and even as far as Yellowstone Park
and into its interior as far as the Obsidian Cliff. There is no doubt or
question about that, although it is quite true that obsidian was found
in other volcanic regions of different parts of the West.

"Jesse, your arrowhead has been a long way fro