We can see them from the top. This is their most sacred place
and there is doubtless something big going on."
They left the main trail and, dismounting, led their horses through
the scrubby woods, which were thick enough to give them cover without
impeding very materially their progress. Within a hundred yards of the
top they tied their horses in the thicket and climbed the slight ascent.
Crawling on hands and knees to the lip of the canyon, they looked down
upon a scene seldom witnessed by the eyes of white men. The canyon was
a long narrow valley, whose rocky sides, covered with underbrush, rose
some sixty feet from a little plain about fifty yards wide. The little
plain was filled with the Indian encampment. At one end a huge fire
blazed. At the other, and some fifty yards away, the lodges were set in
a semicircle, reaching from side to side of the canyon, and in front of
the lodges were a mass of Indian warriors, squatting on their hunkers,
beating time, some with tom-toms, others with their hands, to the
weirdly monotonous chant, that rose and fell in response to the
gesticulations of one who appeared to be their leader. In the centre of
the plain stood a post and round this two circles of dancers leaped
and swayed. In the outer circle the men, with clubs and rifles in their
hands, recited with pantomimic gestures their glorious deeds in the
war or in the chase.
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