r
reaching the spirit world, Bianki found himself on a vast prairie
covered with innumerable buffaloes and ponies. He went through the
herds (dotted lines) until he came to a large Kiowa camp, with its
ornament tepees. He met four young women who had died years before,
and asked about two of his brothers, also dead. He soon met them
coming into camp, with buffalo meat hanging from their saddles._]

[Illustration: _Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution_]

PREFACE

From the edge of the Darkening Land, where stand the mountains which
encircle the earth-plain, eastward toward the Sunland, lie the great
plains of America. Smooth and flat and green they stretch away,
hundreds of miles, rising from a dead level into a soft rolling of the
land, then into the long green waves of the prairies where rivers
flow, where the water ripples as it flows, and trees shade the banks
of the gleaming water.

Here, amidst the vast sweep of the plains which stretch away to the
horizon on every side, boundless, limitless, endless, lived the plains
Indians. Standing in the midst of this vast green plain on a soft May
morning, after the Thunder Gods have passed, when the sun is shining
in the soft blue above, and the sweet, rain-swept air is blown about
by the Four Winds which are always near to man, day and
night,--standing far out on the plains with no hint of the white man
or his work--one sees the earth somewhat as the Indian saw it and
wonders not at his reverence for the Mysterious One who dwelt
overhead, beyond the blue stone arch, and for the lesser powers which
came to him over the four paths guarded by the Four Winds. It was
Wakoda, the Mysterious One, who gave to man the sunshine, the clear
rippling water, the clear sky from which all storms, all clouds are
absent, the sky which is the symbol of peace. Through this sky sweeps
the eagle, the "Mother" of Indian songs, bearing upon her strong wings
the message of peace and calling to her nestlings as she flies. Little
wonder that to some tribes song was an integral part of their lives,
and that emotions too deep for words were expressed in song.

Other songs there were, with words, songs of the birds which fly
through that soft, tender blue:

All around the birds in flocks are flying;
Dipping, rising, circling, see them coming.
See, many birds are flocking here,
All about us now together coming.

[_Pawnee_]

The power to fly has always inspired In