“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, and the fire become our servants.

“’Then we speak great swelling words:  How great and wise we are!  There is none like us in the air, in the wood, or in the water!

“’But the words are false.  Our pride is like that of a partridge drumming on his log in the wood before the fox leaps upon him.  Our sight is like that of the mole burrowing under the ground.  Our wisdom is like a drop of dew upon the grass.  Our ignorance is like the great water which no eye can measure.

“’Our life is like a bird coming out of the dark, fluttering for a heart-beat in the tepee and then going forth into the dark again.  No one can tell us whence it comes or whither it goes.  I have asked the wise men, and they cannot answer; I have listened to the voice of the trees and wind and water, but I do not know their tongue; I have questioned the sun and the moon and the stars, but they are silent.

“’But to-day, in the silence before the darkness gives place to light, I seemed to hear a still small voice within my breast, saying to me:  “Wo, the questioner, rise up like the stag from his lair; away, alone, to the mountain of the sun.  There thou shalt find that which thou seekest.”

“’I go, but if I fall by the trail another will take it up.  If I find the answer I will return.’

“Waiting for none, Wo left the council of his tribe and went his way toward the mountain of the sun.  For six days he made his way through the trackless woods, guided by the sun by day and the stars by night.  On the seventh he came to the great mountain—­the mountain of the sun—­on whose top, according to the tradition of his tribe, the sun rested each night.  All day long he climbed, saying to himself:  ’I will sleep to-night in the tepee of the sun and he will tell me whence I come and whither I go.’