prescribe for him; but these famous doctors, after exhausting
        all their art and cunning, were obliged to declare there was
        no hope for their chief; he would soon be gathered to his
        fathers unless the Great Spirit, in his love for his chosen
        people, would interfere.  To enlist his offices in behalf of
        their cherished dying leader, the oldest medicine-man, by virtue
        of seniority, ordered a sacrifice to be made as an offering
        of adoration and suppliance.

A large altar of pine logs was erected near the lodge of We-lo-lon-nan-nai, and a buffalo bull, freshly captured for the purpose, driven to the spot, killed, and his hide taken off.  The entire carcass was lifted with much ritualistic observance upon the altar, and then the whole tribe, in obedience to the order of the head medicine-man, prostrated themselves on the ground.  Touching a torch to the pile, and wrapping himself in the bloody skin of the animal, the medicine-man took a position about a hundred yards from the altar in an attitude of supplication, to commune with the Great Spirit.

Absolute silence reigned; not a sound broke the awful solemnity of the occasion, excepting the crackling of the fragrant pine limbs used as fuel, and the seething of the flesh as it melted under the heat.

When the altar and all its appliances had been burnt to ashes, the medicine-man gave the signal for the people to rise, and then announced the communication he had received from the Great Spirit.

“We-lo-lon-nan-nai will not die; he shall live long enough to rule over the Ute Nation; but he is very sick.  He must be carried to a spot which will be designated by the Great Spirit, where he will cause a Big Medicine to appear out of the ground.  It will not only cure the chief of the Utes this time, but it is for the sick and wounded of the nations for all time to come.  To-morrow, at sunrise, We-lo-lon-nan-nai must be escorted by a hundred warriors to where the Big Medicine is to appear, guided by the flight of an arrow to be shot from the bow of the youngest medicine-man in the tribe as often as the end of its flight is reached.  Day after day shall he shoot, until the arrow stands up in the earth, where is the place the Big Medicine is to be found, when We-lo-lon-nan-nai smokes the red-stone peace-pipe of the tribe.”

Arriving at the great canyon, where the arrow stood upright in the earth, and where only a cold stream of water flowed through its bottom, We-lo-lon-nan-nai sat himself down under the rocky ledge at the entrance to the mighty gap in the range, and, lighting his pipe, directed the smoke of the fragrant kin-nik-i-nik toward the heavens.  Suddenly there was a terrible convulsion of the earth, and immediately there burst forth fountains of hot water and mud mounds, where before there was not the sign