92 * * * * * "Oh, Ranger!" 



remembered how to prepare it for drying, and all through the night 

 the Indians worked on that buffalo, cutting the meat into small pieces 

 and pounding it into thin sheets which they hung on a line to dry. The 

 next day it looked from a distance as if the Indians had put out a big 

 washing, as the buffalo meat occupied many long lines strung between 

 the trees. The Indians would not eat the meat in the park. They said 

 they were going to take it back to the reservation with the hide and head 

 and there have a big dance. 



The national park pageants, most of which were developed by the 

 late Garnet Holme, former pageant master of the National Park Service, 

 preserve much of our Indian lore. Tenaya, a pageant of Yosemite 

 named after the Indian chief who ruled Yosemite Valley when the white 

 men came, pictures the wresting of the famous valley from the Indians. 

 Ursa of the Redwoods enacts the legends of the giant redwoods in 

 Sequoia National Park. Casa Grande pictures the ceremonies by which 

 the desert Indians of Arizona and New Mexico sent their prayers to 

 the rain gods. In all of these out-of-door dramas, Mr. Holme has 

 delved into history and attempted to preserve the legends and the true 

 stories of the Indians as nearly as can be done. Another fine pageant 

 is The Masque of the Absaroka, presented by the people of Bozeman, 

 Montana, preserving legends of the Crows. The National Park Serv 

 ice has encouraged these pageants as a means of reviving the pictur 

 esque and interesting Indian ceremonies, one of the first features of 

 Indian life to disappear when the native adopts the white man's mode 

 of living. 



The region that is now Rocky Mountain Park was a favorite hunting 

 ground of Arapahoe and Cheyenne Indians. They visited this country 

 at all times of the year, but the higher elevations only in the summer 

 and fall. Indian names were bestowed on many features of the park 

 territory, and translations of them were used a long time ago by the 

 whites, but unfortunately nearly all have vanished now. Battles were 

 fought in what is now park territory, according to evidence revealed by 

 rock piles and other apparently human interference with natural condi 

 tions that cannot be traced to white settlers. The Rocky Mountain Park 

 region, especially the Estes Park open country, must have been a para 

 dise for Indian hunting at certain times of the year, and one can imagine 

 today great villages of tepees amid the red and yellow aspen leaves 

 of autumn when the deer and elk come down from the higher areas with 

 the first storms. 



West of the Rockies, doubtless, Shoshones, Utes, and other tribes 

 of Wyoming and Utah perhaps came to hunt in what is now the Grand 

 Lake region of Rocky Mountain Park and perhaps in these remote re- 



