e honor, being confided only to men of
courage and repute. They derive their authority from the old men and
chief warriors of the village, who elect them in councils occasionally
convened for the purpose, and thus can exercise a degree of authority
which no one else in the village would dare to assume. While very few
Ogallalla chiefs could venture without instant jeopardy of their lives
to strike or lay hands upon the meanest of their people, the "soldiers"
in the discharge of their appropriate functions, have full license to
make use of these and similar acts of coercion.

CHAPTER XVII

THE BLACK HILLS

We traveled eastward for two days, and then the gloomy ridges of the
Black Hills rose up before us. The village passed along for some miles
beneath their declivities, trailing out to a great length over the arid
prairie, or winding at times among small detached hills or distorted
shapes. Turning sharply to the left, we entered a wide defile of the
mountains, down the bottom of which a brook came winding, lined with
tall grass and dense copses, amid which were hidden many beaver dams and
lodges. We passed along between two lines of high precipices and rocks,
piled in utter disorder one upon another, and with scarcely a tree, a
bush, or a clump of grass to veil their nakedness. The restless Indian
boys were wandering along their edges and clambering up and down their
rugged sides, and sometimes a group of them would stand on the verge of
a cliff and look down on the array as it passed in review beneath them.
As we advanced, the passage grew more narrow; then it suddenly expanded
into a round grassy meadow, completely encompassed by mountains; and
here the families stopped as they came up in turn, and the camp rose
like magic.

The lodges were hardly erected when, with their usual precipitation, the
Indians set about accomplishing the object that had brought them there;
that is, the obtaining poles for supporting their new lodges. Half the
population, men, women and boys, mounted their horses and set out for
the interior of the mountains. As they rode at full gallop over the
shingly rocks and into the dark opening of the defile beyond, I thought
I had never read or dreamed of a more strange or picturesque cavalcade.
We passed between precipices more than a thousand feet high, sharp
and splintering at the tops, their sides beetling over the defile or
descending in abrupt declivities, bristling with black fir trees