“‘At last,’ Monroe told me, ‘the day came for our departure, and I set out with the chiefs and medicine men at the head of the long procession. There were eight hundred lodges of the Piegans there, about eight thousand souls. They owned thousands of horses. Oh, but it was a grand sight to see that long column of riders and pack animals, and loose horses trooping over the plains. We traveled on southward all the long day, and about an hour or two before sundown we came to the rim of a valley through which flowed a cotton wood-bordered stream. We dismounted at the top of the hill, and spread our robes intending to sit there until the procession passed by into the bottom and put up the lodges. A medicine man produced a large stone pipe, filled it and attempted to light it with flint and steel and a bit of punk (rotten wood), but somehow he could get no spark. I motioned him to hand it to me, and drawing my sunglass from my pocket, I got the proper focus and set the tobacco afire, drawing several mouthfuls of smoke through the long stem. “‘As one man all those round about sprang to their feet and rushed toward me, shouting and gesticulating as if they had gone crazy. I also jumped up, terribly frightened, for I thought they were going to do me harm, perhaps kill me. The pipe was wrenched out of my grasp by the chief himself, who eagerly began to smoke and pray. He had drawn but a whiff or two when another seized it, and from him it was taken by still another. Others turned and harangued the passing column; men and women sprang from their horses and joined the group, mothers pressing close and rubbing their babes against me, praying earnestly meanwhile. I recognized a word that I had already learned--Natos--Sun--and suddenly the meaning of the commotion became clear; they thought that I was Great Medicine; that I had called upon the Sun himself to light the pipe, and that he had done so. The mere act of holding up my hand above the pipe was a supplication to their God. They had perhaps not noticed the glass, or if they had, had thought it some secret charm or amulet. At all events I had suddenly become a great personage, and from then on the utmost consideration and kindness was accorded to me.