“It was like this. Maybe I am a young man and I think to myself that I want to be a chief sometime. I don’t say anything to anybody about this, but I know what I must do. First, I must be very brave. I have to kill an enemy, I have to count coup so many times, and I have to get a scalp. Nobody can say I was ever afraid. But that is only the beginning. I must never break any laws, I must be good to everybody in the hoop, so that afterwhile people notice this and talk about it until everybody is saying it. And that too is only the beginning, although it takes a long time. I must be very generous and always see that old people and the needy have meat. I do not do this once or twice. I keep on doing it until everybody notices and talks about it, and then I keep on doing it. “Maybe some old men and women are sitting around under a sun-shade made of boughs. They are talking about the old days when everything was better. And, afterwhile, one of them, who can see a little better than the others, squints at a hilltop, and says: ‘A horseback is coming over there, and he is bringing something. I wonder who it is.’ Then they all squint at the horseback coming, and when he is closer, another one says: ‘Why, that is Gray Bear’s son, Eagle Voice, and I think he is bringing some meat.’ Then they all cry out together, ‘_hi-yay!_’ Because people have been talking about me, and the old ones know I will come to them first with the tenderest pieces. But if I am somebody else, and a stingy fellow, then the old people will say, ‘_heh-heh-heh_,’ and look down their noses. And if that is what old people say about me, I am never going to be a _wichasha yatapika_, even if I have killed a hundred enemies. “After people have noticed these things for a long time, even the _wichasha yatapika_ begin to talk about me in their meetings, and at last they say: ‘This young Eagle Voice ought to be one of us.’ So they have a big feast and a ceremony at the center of the hoop, with all the people sitting around. And before they take me to be one of them, the people are asked to say any evil thing they may know about me. But all the people cry out together, ‘_hi-yay, hi-yay_,’ and not even a jealous one can say anything bad at all. So they make me a man whom all praise, and before all the people they teach me what I must do, and they say I do not belong to myself any more, but to the people. Then I take the pipe they offer and smoke it; and that is a sacred vow. “Now I am a _wichasha yatapika_, and I can be an _akichita_, or a councilor, or even a chief, if I keep on being brave enough and generous enough and good enough. It is hard to be any of these, but it is hardest of all to be a chief, because he must be _wachin tonka_ [great minded] standing above himself, as he stands above others.