"My people sent me to get the White Man's Book of Heaven. You took me to where you allow your women to dance, as we do not ours; and the book was not there! You took me to where they worship the Great Spirit with candles, and the Book was not there! You showed me images of the Great Spirit and pictures of the Good Land beyond, but the Book was not among them to tell me the way. I am going back the long trail to my people in the dark land. You make my feet heavy with gifts, and my moccasins will grow old in carrying them, and yet the Book is not among them! When I tell my poor blind people, after one more snow, in the big Council, that I did not bring the Book, no word will be spoken by our old men or by our young braves. One by one they will rise up and go out in silence. My people will die in darkness, and they will go on a long path to other hunting-grounds. No white man will go with them, and no White Man's Book to make the way plain. I have no more words." Translated into English, doubtless the charm of the speech has been marred, and loses much of its terse and simple beauty. Those who doubt and sneer about a savage making such a speech do not know Indians. I have listened to Indian orators, and been charmed by their ease, eloquence, and wonderfully electrifying power, amid rugged surroundings. Indians have their orators and storytellers, and are as proud of them as ever cultivated people are of their Beechers, Phillipses, Douglases, and Depews; and their animal stories far excel those of "Uncle Remus." In long evenings under the summer skies, or winters by the wigwam fire, they gather, and listen spellbound to the weird stories--wild, visionary, and superstitious--of the present life, and of the happy hunting-ground to which all are urged to aspire. The Indian is a spiritualist, not an idolater. The medicine man is the great man of the tribe. When an Indian feels the call of the Spirit to become a medicine man, he goes off alone to the forest or to the mountains, or to some noted healing spring, fasts, prays, and seeks there for his power, through all the agencies of nature that surround him. Like Joan of Arc, he "hears voices" in the trees and from the rocks, the winds, the waters, the animals, and the birds. When he returns to his tribe and convinces the braves that he has received the Spirit, from that day he is entirely trusted. The greatest chief must consult him concerning every movement; whether it be the distant chase, change of location, or of war. He is Sir Oracle. [Illustration: STRANGE VISITORS IN OLD ST. LOUIS.]