The Ascent of Chief Mountain 



of the mountain must have met him ; for, 

 though they waited many days, and searched 

 for him all around the base, he never came 

 back. And the Piegans, being a prairie tribe 

 and not over fond of the mountains at best, 

 thereafter avoided any close acquaintance with 

 their king. 



A story had come to them, however, from 

 the Flatheads across the range — a tribe whose 

 prowess they always respected in war, as they 

 believed in their truthfulness in peace — and 

 as the story related to their mountain, they 

 had treasured it among their own legends. 

 Still earlier, many years before even the oldest 

 Piegan was a boy, there had lived a great Flat- 

 head warrior, a man watched over by a spirit 

 so mighty that no peril of battle or of the hunt 

 could overcome him. When at last in his old 

 age he came to die, he told the young men his 

 long-kept secret. Many years before, as the 

 time approached for him to go off into the 

 forest and sleep his warrior sleep, in which he 

 hoped to see the vision which should be his 

 guide and protection through life, he had de- 

 cided to seek a spot and a spirit which had 

 never before been tried. So, carrying the 

 usual sacred bison skull for his pillow, he had 



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