The Blackfoot believes that his fathers have told him truly, when they told him that the people of his tribe, when released from the load of flesh, come to a steep mountain, up whose huge projecting sides they have to scramble. After many moons of unwearied labour, tired and exhausted, they reach the top, from which they behold the land of the dead. They see stretched out before them an extensive plain, interspersed with new tents, pitched by the sides of beautiful streams, the banks of which resound with the humming of bees and the music of birds, and are shaded from the summer sun by the ever-blooming tree with great white flowers. Some of the tents are pitched upon hills, some in valleys, some to meet the whispering breezes of the Month of Buds, and some the strengthening winds of the Harvest-Moon. While, from the top of the mountain they are absorbed in contemplation of this delightful scene, the inhabitants of the happy land discover them, and come singing and dancing along, clothed in new skins, to meet them, with the blanket of friendship widely spread to the winds (1). Those Indians who have led good lives approach with that fearless step and eye which the recollection of good deeds always inspires, and are received with every demonstration of joy common among Indians; but those who have embrued their hands in the blood of their countrymen, and betray, by their pale cheeks and trembling steps, that they expect and deserve punishment, and those whose foreheads have been in any way blackened by the smoke of the breath of the Spirit of Evil, are told to return whence they came, and without more words are pitched down the sides of the mountain. Women, whose hard hearts have made their feeble hands take the life to which they had given birth, quenching the little spark struck out from the half-burnt brand, never reach the mountain at all, but are compelled by the Master of all to hover around the seats of their crimes, with branches of the mountain pine tied to their legs. The melancholy sounds heard in the still summer evenings, and which ignorant white men think the screams of the goat-sucker, or the groans of the owl, are the moanings of these wicked and unhappy mothers, lamenting the unnatural murder of their helpless little ones. They are trying to recall them to life, that their doom may be revoked, and that they may be permitted to approach the mountain.