and my young man went and lay face down where his father had lain, and
shook with many strange noises while water came out of his eyes. When he
sat up at last and saw me blowing dust on the spear-cut in my side to
stop the bleeding, he gathered broad leaves, dipped them in pine gum,
and laid them on the cut. Then I blew dust on these, and seeing that I
was more comfortable, Taku-Wakin--that was what I learned to call
him--saluted with both hands to his head, palms outward. 'Friend,' he
said,--'for if you are not my friend I think I have not one other in the
world,--besides, I am too little to kill you,--I go to bury my father.'

"For three days I bathed my knee in the spring, and saw faces come to
peer about the edge of it and heard the beat of the village drums. The
third day my young man came, wearing his father's collar of bear's
teeth, with neither fire-stick nor food nor weapon upon him. "'Now I am
all the man my mother has,' he said; 'I must do what is necessary to
become a tribesman.'

"I did not know then what he meant, but it seems it was a custom."

All the Indians in the group that had gathered about the Mastodon,
nodded at this.

"It was so in my time," said the Mound-Builder. "When a youth has come
to the age where he is counted a man, he goes apart and neither eats nor
drinks until, in the shape of some living thing, the Great Mystery has
revealed itself to him.

"It was so he explained it to me," agreed Arrumpa; "and for three days
he ate and drank nothing, but walked by himself talking to his god.
Other times he would talk to me, scratching my hurts and taking the