XII
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF CIVILIZATION



I
Earliest Recollections

I: Hadakah, "The Pitiful Last"

WHAT boy would not be an Indian
for a while when he thinks of the
freest life in the world? This life
was mine. Every day there was
a real hunt. There was real game.
Occasionally there was a medicine
dance away off in the woods where no one could
disturb us, in which the boys impersonated their
elders, Brave Bull, Standing Elk, High Hawk,
Medicine Bear, and the rest. They painted and
imitated their fathers and grandfathers to the
minutest detail, and accurately too, because they
had seen the real thing all their lives.

We were not only good mimics but we were
close students of nature. We studied the habits
of animals just as you study your books. We
watched the men of our people and represented
them in our play; then learned to emulate them in