To the West that is passing; to the days that are no more and to the brave, free life of the Wilderness that lives only in the memory of those who mourn its loss...

The writing of this book has been primarily a labour of love, undertaken in the hope that through the harmonious mingling of Indian tradition and descriptions of the region—too little known—where the lessening tribes still dwell, there may be a fuller understanding both of the Indians and of the poetical West. A wealth of folk-lore will pass with the passing of the Flathead Reservation, therefore it is well to stop and listen before the light is quite vanished from the hill-tops, while still the

W HEN Lewis and Clark took their way through the Western wilderness in 1805, they came upon a fair valley, watered by pleasant streams, bounded by snowy mountain crests, and starred, in the Springtime, by a strangely beautiful flower with silvery-rose fringed petals called the Bitter Root, whence the valley took its name. In the mild enclosure of this land lived a gentle folk differing as much from the hostile people around them as the place of their nativity differed from the stern, mountainous

As heroic or disastrous events are celebrated in verbal chronicles it follows that the home of the Selish is storied ground. Before the pressure of civilization, encroaching in ever-narrowing circles upon the hunting-ground of the Indians, cramping and crowding them within a smaller space, driving them inch by inch to the confinement which is their death, the Selish wandered at will over a stretch of country beautiful alike in the reality of its landscape and in the richness of myth and legend w

Within the Bitter Root Valley dwelt Charlot, Slem-Hak-Kah , "Little Claw of a Grizzly Bear," son of the great chief Victor, "The Lodge Pole," and therefore by hereditary right Head Chief of the Selish tribe. That valley is perhaps the most favoured land of the region. The snow melts earlier within its mountain-bound heart, the blizzard drives less fiercely over its slopes and the Spring comes there sooner, sprinkling the grass with the rose stars of the Bitter Root. Under the guidance of the mis

During the Summer at the time when the sun reached his greatest strength, according to the ancient custom, the Selish gathered together to dance. In this celebration is embodied the spirit of the people, their pride, their hates and loves. But this dance had a peculiar significance. It was, perhaps, the last that the tribe will celebrate. Another year the white man will occupy the land, and the free, roving life and its habits will be gone. It was a scene never to be forgotten. Overhead a sky de

T HERE is a lake in the cloistered fastnesses of Sin-yal-min, named by the Jesuit priests St. Mary's, but called by the Indians the Waters of the Forgiven. It is a small body of water overshadowed by abrupt mountains, fed by a beautiful fall and for some reason, impossible to explain, it is haunted by an atmosphere at once ghostly and sad. So potent is this intangible dread, this fear of something unseen, this melancholy begotten of a cause unknown, that every visitor is conscious of it. Most of

The Jocko or Spotted Lakes are enchanted waters also. They lie high up in the crown of the continent—the main range of the Rocky Mountains. To reach them the traveller needs patience and strength of body and soul, for the trail is long and tortuous, winding along the rim of sickening-steep ravines, across treacherous swamps, amid mighty forests to great altitudes. There are three lakes in this group, one above the other, the last being sometimes called the Clearwater Lake because it is within th

W ITHIN the range of Sin-yal-min, which rises abruptly from the valley of the Flathead to altitudes of perpetual snow, in a ravine sunk deep into the heart of the mountains, is Lake Angus McDonald. Though but a few miles distant the bells of Saint Ignatius Mission gather the children of the soil to prayer, no hand has marred the untamed beauty of this lake and its surrounding mountain steeps where the eagle builds his nest in security and the mountain goat and bighorn sheep play unmolested and u

M ORE than a century after the Spanish Francescans planted the Cross upon the Pacific shores, the French, Belgian and Italian Jesuits or robes noires , took their way into the Northwestern wilderness in response to a cry from the people who lived within its solitudes. Civilization follows the highways of intercourse with the outer world, so the Western coast had passed through the struggle of its beginnings and entered into a period of prosperity and peace, while that territory with the Rocky Mo

A MONG the early Canadian French the Sioux were known as the Gens des Feuilles , or People of the Leaves. This poetical title seems very obscure in its meaning, at first, but it may have originated in a legend of the Creation which is as follows: In the ultimate Beginning, the Great Spirit made the world. Under his potent, life-giving heat the seeds within the soil burst into bloom and the earth was peopled with trees—trees of many kinds and forms, the regal pine and cedar in evergreen beauty an

I T was summertime in the mountains—that short, passionate burst of warm life between the long seasons of the snow. The world lay panting in the white light of the sun, over gorge and pine-clad hill floated streamers of haze, and along the ground slanted thin, blue shadows. The sky pulsed in ether waves and the distant peaks, azure also, with traceries of silver, were as dim as the memory of a dream. In this untrodden wilderness the passing years have left no record save in the gradual growth of

In such a remote and deserted place as this, no great effort of the imagination is needed to call up the shades of those who once inhabited it, to react their part in the tragedy of progress. Let us fancy that a riper, richer glow is upon the mountains, that the white light of the sun has deepened into an amber flood which quivers between the arch of lapis-lazuli sky and the warm, balsam-scented earth that sighs forth the life of the woods. Already the trees not of the evergreen kind are hung wi

Although the meat of the buffalo was the Indians' chief article of food, this was by no means the only bond between the red man and the aboriginal herds of the plains. Besides the almost innumerable utilitarian purposes for which the different parts of the animals were used, there was scarcely a phase of life or a ceremony in which they did not figure. In the dance, a rite of the first importance, in the practice of the Wah-Kon , or medicine, in the legends of the creation and the after-death, t

When the first explorers penetrated the fastnesses of the New World the buffalo was lord of the continent. Coronado on his march northward from Mexico saw hordes of these unknown beasts which a chronicler of 1600 described naïvely as "crooked-backed oxen." The mighty herds roamed through the blue grass of Kentucky, the Carolinas, that region now the state of New York, and probably every favorable portion of North America. Very gradually they were pushed farther and farther westward to the vicini

The sun set red behind the mountains. The shadows stole down, gray and mystical as ghosts. From afar the coyote's dolorous cry plained through the silence and the owl hooted dismally as he awakened at the approach of night. There in the pallid dusk lay the bleached skull and the arrowhead of black obsidian, mute reliques of the past. The royal buffalo is no more, the hunter that hurled the bolt is gone. We may find the inferior offspring of the one in city parks, of the other on ever-lessening r

I N the northern part of Montana, towards the Canadian border, the Main Range of the Rocky Mountains has been rent and carved by glacial action during ages gone by, until the peaks, like tusks, stand separate and distinct in a mighty, serrated line. No one of these reaches so great a height as Shasta, Rainier or Hood, but here the huge, horned spine rises almost sheer from the sweep of tawny prairie, and not one, but hosts of pinnacles, sharp as lances, stand clean cut against the sky. Approachi

O F all the trails in the McDonald country, there is none more travelled, or more worthy of the toil than that which leads to the Piegan glacier. From the moment we stand in expectant readiness in the little clearing behind the log cabins comprising the hotel, a new phase of existence has begun for us. So strange are the place and the conditions that it seems we must have stepped back fifty years or more, into that West whose glamour lives in story and song. Strong, tanned, sinewy guides who wea

P ERHAPS the most sublime sweep of view within the entire Range is gained from the summit of Mount Lincoln. To accomplish this ascent it is necessary to leave the tortuous "switch-back" trail in full view of Gunsight Pass and strike out over a trackless mass of shattered rock, upward toward the peak. The way is steep and difficult, the footing slippery and insecure. The muscles strain to quivering tension, the breath comes in gusty sighs and still the mighty heap of dull rose and green rock rear

T HE trail to Avalanche Basin starts from the shores of Lake McDonald and plunges almost immediately into forests mysterious with primeval grandeur. Perhaps their denseness is the reason for the wealth of rank-growing weed and shrub that forms one vast screen beneath the spreading branches of pine, tamarack and kingly cedar trees. Whether this is the cause or not, the trail is richer in vegetation than any other that lays open the secrets of the forest's heart. Tall, juicy-stalked bear-weed, dev

A FTER the Summer's ripe maturity has vanished with the first autumnal storm, there steals over the world a magical Presence. It has no place in the almanac; it comes with a flooding of amber light and a deepening of amethyst haze; it plays like a passing smile on the face of the universe and like one, vanishes with the stern rebuff of the wintry blast. What jugglery the sun and earth and the four winds of heaven have wrought no mortal man can tell, but certainly by some divine alchemy the deade