t came in the shape of a dream to a
very wise man of our nation.

There was among us, in the days that are gone, a priest who was much
beloved by his Master, and was taught by him to know the future as he
knew the present, and to see and speak truly of things unseen by other
eyes. He had been many years on the earth, and was now called
"Akkeewaisee," a name signifying his great age. That he might better
converse with, and worship his master he had taken up his abode in a
hollow hill, near the great village of the Dahcotahs. Thither the tribe
resorted, to be taught those things which were necessary to be known in
respect to the proper ordering of the hunt or the war expedition, to the
season at which the corn should be planted, or the gathering of the
tribe at the chosen waters of the salmon should take place. Having never
known any thing predicted by him prove false; having ordered, under his
guidance, all their hunting and war expeditions right, and never failed,
when relying on his presentiments, to go to the haunts of the salmon, at
the proper season, and to return from thence with full bellies and glad
hearts, they listened to the words of Akkeewaisee, the Aged, and
believed the tale which he told them of the Land of Spirits.

Akkeewaisee, the Aged, was sleeping on his bed of skins and soft grass,
when the Manitou of Dreams came to him, and led him out of the hollow
cave towards the Wanare-tebe, or dwelling-place of the souls of the
Dahcotahs, and their kindred tribes. Onward they travelled for many
suns, over lofty mountains, up whose rocky sides they were obliged to
scramble as a wild goat scrambles; now swimming deep rivers, now
threading mazy forests, now frozen in the regions of intense cold, and
now burnt in those of great heat, till at length they came to a very
high rock, the edge of which was as sharp as the sharpest knife.
Waiting, at its hither end, their turn to essay the dangerous test of
their good or bad deeds, the unerring trial of their guilt or purity,
stood many souls of Dahcotahs, and others whom Akkeewaisee had known on
the earth. He stood and beheld the punishment of the bad, and the
blessed escape of the good from the dreadful ordeal to which all alike
were subjected. He saw a Dahcotah attempt the dangerous passage who had
been too lazy to hunt, who had lain whole days stretched out upon his
mat, while his wife begged food of the husbands of other women, and his
children were clothed with ski