said: “You can all go,” and they went.’ ” [Illustration: SUN DANCE OF BLACKFEET INDIANS] Canon Stocken told me next about Old Wolf Collar, the veteran who once was a mighty warrior, a great hunter of the buffalo, and the “medicine man” of paramount fame and influence in the tribe. “When he became a Christian, in March, 1899,” the missionary related, “Old Wolf Collar was nearly sixty years of age—older than any other man I had baptised. At that time, as I afterwards found, he had not given his whole heart to Christianity. He had been impressed by religion as the power that made white men lead good lives. He had become a Christian for the sake of material advantages. Well, one day I was trying to make my congregation see that if Christianity were anything at all to a man, it went right down into his inmost life, and he must cherish no evil thoughts and attempt to keep no secrets from God. That caught Old Wolf Collar; and he came to me in sorrow, bringing a collection of the charms that had been part and parcel of his former distinction as a medicine-man. At his conversion he had surrendered a number of such things into my hands, and I had not suspected that he was keeping some back. Full of penitence, he now said he did not know the religion of God was so searching. ‘I’ve still got these things,’ he said. ‘Take the whole business,’ and he handed me all those charms, some of which I afterwards sent to the museum at Banff, others going to England. Having unburdened his conscience in that way, the dear old fellow breathed more freely. ‘Now, go ahead,’ he said, ‘and tell me all the things you know about God.’ From that time Old Wolf Collar has been full of zeal. You will have heard that the one trouble with the Indians is that they are lazy. But Old Wolf Collar is not lazy. In those days we had Miss Collings with us, and at his eager request she taught him to play the auto-harp, and she taught him the syllabic system. I ought to tell you that these Indians had no literature of their own. They had to depend solely upon memory for their knowledge—a fact, by the way, that made the missionary’s responsibility a very heavy one, since, if there were any laxity on his part in presenting a truth, the consequent misconception in their minds went uncorrected by the printed Word. That danger has largely passed away with the dissemination of the syllabic system, whereby the Blackfoot language is reduced to terms that the hand can write and the eye can read.