ld stop them.

"These and many other things men learned, but no one knew why it all was
or how it came to be. Men began to wonder--and that was the beginning of
the path which led to the Great Spirit.

"In the ages when men began to wonder there was born a boy whose name was
'Wo,' which meant in the language of his time 'Whence.' As he lay in his
mother's arms, she loved him and wondered, 'His body is of my body, but
from whence comes the life--the spirit which is like mine and yet not like
it?' And his father, seeing the wonder in the mother's eyes, said: 'Whence
came he from?' And there was no one to answer, and so they called him
'Wo,' to remind them that they knew not from whence he came.

"As Wo grew up, he was stronger and swifter of foot than any of his tribe.
He became a mighty hunter. He knew the ways of all the wild things, and
could read the signs of the season. As he grew older they made him a chief
and listened while he spoke at the council board, but Wo was not
satisfied. His name was a question, and questioning filled his mind.

"From whence did he come? Whither was he going? Why did the sun rise and
set? Why did life burst into leaf and flower with the coming of the
spring? Why did the child become a man and the man grow old and die?

"The mystery grew upon him as he pondered. In the morning he stood on a
mountain top and, stretching out his hands, cried: 'Whence?' At night he
cried to the moon: 'Whither?' He listened to the soughing of the trees and
the song of the brook and tried to learn their language. He peered eagerly
into the eyes of little children, and tried to read the mystery of life.
He listened at the still lips of the dead, waiting for them to tell him
whither they had gone.

"He went about among his fellows silent and absorbed, always looking for
the unseen and listening for the unspoken. He sat so long silent at the
council board that the 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, a