Long, long ago, before our fathers or grand-fathers were born, before the white people knew anything about the western half of North America, the Indians who told these stories lived on the Western plains.
To the west of their home rose high mountains, black with pine-trees on their lower slopes and capped with snow, but their tents were pitched on the rolling prairie. For a little while in spring this prairie was green and dotted with flowers, but for most of the year it stretched away brown and bare, north, east, and south, farther than one could see.