you shall be a great chief and your
people shall love you. If you do not listen, then I shall turn against
you. My name is "Reason."'

"As the 'person' spoke this last, he struck the ground with a stick he
carried, and the blow set the grass afire. I have always tried to know
that 'person.' I think I know him wherever he may be, and in any camp.
He has helped me all my life, and I shall never turn against
him--never."

That was the old chief's dream and now a word about the sweat-bath. A
small lodge is made of willows, by bending them and sticking the ends
in the ground. A completed sweat-lodge is shaped like an inverted
bowl, and in the centre is a small hole in the ground. The lodge is
covered with robes, bark, and dirt, or anything that will make it
reasonably tight. Then a fire is built outside and near the
sweat-lodge in which stones are heated. When the stones are ready, the
bather crawls inside the sweat-lodge, and an assistant rolls the hot
stones from the fire, and into the lodge. They are then rolled into
the hole in the lodge and sprinkled with water. One cannot imagine a
hotter vapor bath than this system produces, and when the bather has
satisfied himself inside, he darts from the sweat-lodge into the river,
winter or summer. This treatment killed thousands of Indians when the
smallpox was brought to them from Saint Louis, in the early days.

That night in the lodge War Eagle told a queer yarn. I shall modify it
somewhat, but in our own sacred history there is a similar tale, well
known to all. He said:

"Once, a long time ago, two 'thunders' were travelling in the air.
They came over a village of our people, and there stopped to look about.

"In this village there was one fine, painted lodge, and in it there was
an old man, an aged woman, and a beautiful young woman with wonderful
hair. Of course the 'thunders' could look through the lodge skin and
see all that was inside. One of them said to the other: 'Let us marry
that young woman, and never tell her about it.'

"'All right,' replied the other 'thunder.' 'I am willing, for she is
the finest young woman in all the village. She is good in her heart,
and she is honest.'

"So they married her, without telling her about it, and she became the
mother of twin boys. When these boys were born, they sat up and told
their mother and the other people that they were not people, but were
'thunders,' and that they would grow up quickly.