ARGUMENT

In the morning of the world, while his tribe

makes its camp for the night in a grove, Red

Cloud, the first man of men, and the first man

of the Nishinam, save in war, sings of the duty

of life, which duty is to make life more abundant.

The Shaman, or medicine man, sings of

foreboding and prophecy. The War Chief, who

commands in war, sings that war is the only

way to life. This Red Cloud denies, affirming

that the way of life is the way of the acorn-

planter, and that whoso slays one man slays

the planter of many acorns. Red Cloud wins

the Shaman and the people to his contention.

After the passage of thousands of years, again

in the grove appear the Nishinam. In Red

Cloud, the War Chief, the Shaman, and the

Dew-Woman are repeated the eternal figures

of the philosopher, the soldier, the priest, and

the woman—types ever realizing themselves

afresh in the social adventures of man. Red

Cloud recognizes the wrecked explorers as

planters and life-makers, and is for treating

them with kindness. But the War Chief and

the idea of war are dominant The Shaman

joins with the war party, and is privy to the

massacre of the explorers.

A hundred years pass, when, on their seasonal

migration, the Nishinam camp for the night in

the grove. They still live, and the war formula

for life seems vindicated, despite the imminence

of the superior life-makers, the whites, who are

flooding into California from north, south, east,

and west—the English, the Americans, the

Spaniards, and the Russians. The massacre by

the white men follows, and Red Cloud, dying,

recognizes the white men as brother acorn-planters,

the possessors of the superior life-formula

of which he had always been a protagonist.

In the Epilogue, or Apotheosis, occur the

celebration of the death of war and the triumph

of the acorn-planters.