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straited appearance, and it rises 625 feet, almost perpendicular from its base. Its summit is so entirely inaccessible that the energetic explorer, standing at its base, could only look upward in despair of ever planting his foot on the top. The width of the summit from north to south is 386 feet, and the width at the base is 796 feet. The rock is coarsely porphyritic sanidin trachyte of greenish color. In the mass it has a crystal-like structure on a grand scale, which from a short distance gives the column the appearance of a fascicle of gigantic fibers. From the base, which is considerably broader than the body of the peak, each fiber-like crystal or column rises in bold curve to the bottom of the vertical obelisk which it then follows to the summit.

The columns have generally a rectangular or rhombic section, but are sometimes triangular or hexagonal. With exception of an occasional fracture each column or crystal continues to the very summit. The sides are of various dimensions but average from two to four feet at the base. They diminish upward in the same ratio with the total column. Careful examination at the base shows that the columnar structure is not continuous below the portion of the peak exposed to view. The columns differ somewhat in size and position from those characteristic of bassalt. The latter commonly referred to contraction in cooling occasionally combined perhaps with a concretionary action, and they are always formed perpendicular to a surface of cooling. In a dike they are perpendicular to the walls, and in an overflow to the atmospheric surface. They are rarely of any great length, and frequently they extend but part of the way through the bed, ending irregularly in a structuréless mass. Here we have columns over six hundred feet in length, rising perpendicularly from a seemingly massive base. It is exceedingly difficult to account for this as a result of cooling by comparison with any known bassaltic phenonema; and indeed Bear Lodge in its shape and structure appears not to have been repeated elsewhere by nature but stands alone unique and mysterious.

The time will come when the Mato Tepee will be set aside as a national park and the Devil's Tower visited by the seeker of nature's grand designs.

CHAPTER X.

MATO-PAHA (BEAR BUTTE.)

To the Indian approaching from the east and southeast this remarkable uplift presents the figure of a huge bear, hence the name. This isolated and significant Butte rises. about 1,200 feet above the surrounding prairie on a point five miles northeast from Fort Meade and about eight miles from the main hills. Its elevation above the sea, from careful observations by United States officers at Fort Meade, is 4603 feet. It is an outburst of trachyte and the sedimentary formation are much altered at its base. Its southern and western, as also the northern flanks, are very abrupt and nearly inaccessible to human beings, but it can readily be ascended on its eastern buttresses. The name of Bear Butte has sometimes been given to the uplift but that is not correct. When I first visited the top of the Butte, in September, 1883, I found a number of pine trees, dwarf indeed, but quite old. Many of them had stones grown into the forks and this growth showed in two cases an age of over forty years. Red Cloud, whom I asked for an explanation about these stones, said that they were put there for various purposes. Indians ascending the Butte in years gone by would place stones in the branches and thus "make their homestead claim; " another band would come and jump the claim" by putting new stones above those there already. Some stones were put there to worship, and others as sacrifices for the dead. What might be called "between the shoulders" of the Butte served evidently as a watch tower and a signal station. Numerous places shows that fires were kept burning there for a long

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time. I was also told that a number of Indian chiefs found here their resting place. Bear Butte played an important part in Indian folk lore as seen on former pages. The Mandans are said to have made annual pilgrimages to the place as long as they were allowed to do so. their religious festivals is called "Mee-nee-ro-ka-ha-sha," which means" sinking down or settling of the waters." Nu-mahk-muck-a-nah was the only man saved from a big flood; he landed his big canoe on a high mountain in the

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West, and every year the Mandans must make some sacrifices of edged tools to the water and visit the high mountain, for if this be not done there will be another big flood and no one will be saved, as it was with such tools that the big canoe was made with. The time for the annual pilgrimage and sacrifice was at the full expanse of the willow leaf in spring.

According to their tradition a bird let out from the canoe returned and brought a willow bough. This bird was the mourning or turtle dove; hence it is considered a medicine bird and to kill it is a crime.

CHAPTER XI.

THE INDIANS.

By nature they are decent and modest, unassuming and inoffensive, and all history proves them to have been found friendly and hospitable on the first approach of the white people to their villages in all parts of the American continent. Columbus wrote back to Ferdinand and Isabella on coming in contact with the aboriginals for the first time: "I swear to your majesties that there is not a better people in the world than these; more affectionate, affable, or mild. They love their neighbors as themselves, and they always speak smilingly." The Sioux were celebrated for their hospitality and goodness toward strangers, and more particularly toward the whites. Anything that a white man would ask them was granted, if it were possible to do so. They knew nothing about intrigue, and supposed that every person who came to their country was a friend.

Father Hennepin, who was the first white man who ever visited the upper parts of the Mississippi, speaks of the Sioux as patterns to the civilized part of creation. Indeed, he speaks of them in raptures, as if they were really his own ancestors. Everything good that a man could say of another set of men Father Hennepin said of the Sioux. But how different are they to-day? How this alteration has taken place, or what occasioned it, can be attributed only to their great intercourse with those whom we call civilized people. To-day you can not see much of the genuine Indian in them. You see nothing of the Indian independence, nor of their enterprising character as hunters or warriors, nor do you see the robust, stout, able-bodied people that they were before the pale-face came in contact with them.

Hear what the chivalrous and heroic General Custer, an authority among military men, has to say of his estimate of the Indian character. He knew the Indian well in

peace and war. He had made them the object of an intelligent and closely and keenly observant study. He was one of the most conspicuous victims of Indian warfare. Though the General is classed as among the most effective “Indian fighters," and came to his early death at their hands in a fearful massacre, he was a man of humane and kindly heart. In his "Life on the Plains," referring to the romantic, gentle, and winning view which Cooper and other romancers have given of the Indian, as so misleading and wholly fanciful, he says: "The Indian, when we were compelled to meet with him, in his native village, on the war-path, and when raiding upon our frontier settlements and lines and travel, forfeits his claim to the noble red man. We see him as he is, and so far as all knowledge goes, as he ever has been,-a savage in every sense of the word; no worse, perhaps, than his white brother would be similiarly born and bred, but one whose cruel and ferocious nature far exceeds that of any wild beast of the forest or desert. That this is true, no one who has been brought into intimate contact with the wild tribes will deny.

"Perhaps there are some who, as members of peacecommissions, or as wandering agents of some benevolent society, may have visited those tribes, or attended with them at councils held for some pacific purpose, and who by passing through the villages of the Indian while at peace may imagine their opportunities for judging of the Indian nature all that could be desired; but the Indian, while he can seldom be accused of indulging in a great variety of wardrobe, can be said to have a character capable of adapting itself to almost every occasion. He has one character-perhaps his most serviceable one-which he preserves carefully, and only airs it when making his appeal to the Government or its agents, for arms, amunitions, and license to employ them. This character is invariably paraded, and often with telling effect, when the motive is a peaceful one. Prominent chiefs invited to visit Washington invariably don this character, and in their talks"

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