Between
the gorgeous buttes and rainbow-tinted ridges
there were narrow plains, broken here and there
by dry creeks or gulches, and these again were
clothed scantily with poplars and sad-colored
bull-berry bushes, while the bare spots were pur-
ple with the wild Dakota crocuses.
Upon the lowest of a series of natural ter-
races there stood on this May morning a young
Sioux girl, whose graceful movements were not
unlike those of a doe which chanced to be lurk-
ing in a neighboring gulch. On the upper plains,
not far away, were her young companions, all
busily employed with the wewoptay, as it was
called--the sharp-pointed stick with which the
Sioux women dig wild turnips. They were
gayly gossiping together, or each humming a
love-song as she worked, only Snana stood some-
what apart from the rest; in fact, concealed
by the crest of the ridge.
She had paused in her digging and stood fac-
ing the sun-kissed buttes. Above them in the
clear blue sky the father sun was traveling up-
ward as in haste, while to her receptive spirit
there appealed an awful, unknown force, the
silent speech of the Great Mystery, to which it
seemed to her the whole world must be listen-
ing!
"O Great Mystery! the father of earthly
things is coming to quicken us into life.
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