When the young man was troubled and knew not which course he should pursue, he went up to this hill alone, and so laid hold upon Fate that it fain communed with him.  He held up his hands at night to the stars, very far above him, and asked that they should witness him and be merciful, for that he was small and weak, and knew not why things should be as they were.  He called upon the spirits of the great dead about him to witness the sincerity of his prayer.  He placed offerings to the Dream People.  He prayed to the sun as it rose, and besought it of its strength to strengthen him.

Sometimes when a young man had gone up alone from the village to this hill to pray, there were seen at night more forms than one walking upon the summit of the hill, and sometimes voices were heard.  Then it was known that the young man had seen his “dream,” and that they had held a council.

Very many men had thus prayed upon the summit of the Hill of Dreams in the days gone by.  Its top was strewn with offerings.  It was a sacred place.  Sometimes the stone cairns did not withstand the wolves, but none the less the place was consecrate.  Hither they bore the great dead.  It was upon the Hill of Dreams that his people buried White Calf, the last great leader of the Plains tribes, who fell in the combat with the not less savage giant who came with the white men to hunt in the country near the Hill of Dreams.  Since that time the power of the Plains tribes had waned, and they had scattered and passed away.  The swarming white men—­Visigoths, Vandals—­had found out this spot for centuries held mysteriously dear to the first peoples of that country.  They tore open the graves, scattered the childlike emblems, picked to pieces the little packages of furs and claws, jibing at the “medicine” which in its time had meant so much to the man who had left it there.

The Visigoths and Vandals laughed and smote upon their thighs as they thus destroyed the feeble records of a faith gone by.  Yet with what more enduring and with how dissimilar a faith did they replace that at which they mocked?  White but parallels red.  Our ways depart not widely from the ways of those whom we supplanted, our religion is little more than theirs, our tokens of faith but little different from theirs.  We still wonder, we still beseech, we still grope, and continually we implore.  On the eminences of our lives the solitary still keep vigil.  In the air about us there still are Voices as of old, there still are visions wistfully besought.  Now, as then, dwarfed, blighted, wandering humanity prays, lifting up its hands to something above its narrow, circumscribing world.  Now, as then, the answer is sometimes given to a few for all.  Now, as then, the solemn front of the Hill of Dreams still rises, dominating calmly the wide land, keeping watch always out over the plains for those who are to come, for that which is to be.  Warden of destiny, it well might smile at any temples we may build, at any fetiches that we may offer up!