day of travel. The
hills, the sky, the very light of the noonday sun gathered to themselves a
new atmosphere and spread it like a mantle over this travelling host.
Tired feet now press the highest dome of the hills. It had been a
westward climb. Full in their faces, as though to canonize the moment,
the god of day had wrought cloud and sky into a miracle of sunset,
transmuting by living fire the brown grasses into burnished gold--the
fading sage into a silver glow, and the gleam of the distant river into
the red of wine. The scene transfixed them. Gladiators of other days
became helpless children. During the solemn suspense of this tragic
moment, waiting in confused and wondering silence, their faces lighted
with the ominous sunset sheen, one great chief uttered speech for all:
"Brothers, the West, the West! We alone have the key to the West, and we
must bravely unlock the portals; we can buy no lamp that will banish the
night. We have always kept our time by the sun. When we pass through the
gates of this dying day, we shall pass into a sunless land, and for us
there shall be no more time, a forever-land of annihilating darkness."

For one wistful moment they looked and waited, then the hill upbore them
no longer. They filed down the narrow, barren ridge, lined on either hand
by sullen and impassable gulfs. Their eagle feathers fluttered from
war-bonnet and coup stick, encarnadined by the sun's red rays. Steeper
and more rugged became the path until they were confronted by the sharp
edge of the bluff. There was danger in the untrodden descent. It was a
pathway of struggle.

Once in the valley

They said farewell forever.
Thus departed the Great Chieftains,
In the purple mists of evening.

[The Sunset of a Dying Race]

The Sunset of a Dying Race

The Indian composes music for every emotion of his soul. He has a song
for the Great Mystery; for the animals of the chase; for the maiden he
woos; for the rippling river. His prayers are breathed in song. His
whole life is an expression in music. These songs are treasured down
through the ages, and old age teaches youth the import of the melody so
that nothing is lost, nothing forgotten. Haydn wrote his "Creation,"
Beethoven his "Symphonies," Mendelssohn his "Songs Without Words," Handel
gave the world his "Dead March in Saul," Mozart was commissioned by Count
Walsegg to pour his great sou