After suns and moons of hesitancy and of longing for the counsel of the departed Lesser Spirit, the people were emboldened to send an embassy of priests and princes up the stairway of the mountain to the gate of heaven, with their petition to the Manitou. The last three steps of this vast stairway are still plainly seen just north of Cheyenne Mountain, and bear the modern names of Monte Rosa, Mount Grover, and Mount Cutler. Amid the prayers and sacrifices of the people these departed on their unprecedentedly presumptuous and hazardous mission to the Face of the Manitou, the gateway of heaven, and were never heard of more. Terrible was the punishment of their sacrilege in thus approaching the inapproachable. Violent storms enveloped the mountain to its very base in fire-riven folds of darkness. Great rocks came ruining down its precipitous sides, or fell from the clouds, and night succeeded night with no intervening comfort of light. The people fled in terror from their quaking homes, and scourges of bitter rain and biting hail drove them far out upon the plains. These tremendous convulsions threw them prostrate with fear with their faces in the dust. For dust, as though the mountain were ground to powder, filled the air, and has filled it many and many a time since in the region about the base of the peak, in commemoration of those days of reproof, when the stricken inhabitants of the earth realized that they were but as the dust of it, and were bowed in sack-cloth and ashes. At last when the anger of the Manitou was appeased the clouds of wrath rolled away, and the sun and moon and blue sky came once more. What was the bewilderment and awe of every beholder to see that the top of the sacred mountain had disappeared altogether, and no longer reached more than half way to the gate of heaven. Mortals should never again pass over that lofty stairway. The presumptuous ambassadors of the people had been hurled from the high threshold, and the top of the mountain cast upon them, like Ætna on Enceladus. It is a wonder that no Spanish priest has here woven in some fable of confusion of tongues and dispersion of races, but it comes later in the story.
Though with angry reproof, their prayer had been answered. For on the plain before them, at the foot of the great peak, rose their colossal Palladium, that very threshold stone of heaven, the topmost step of the stairway of spirits, the summit and crown of the old peak, still bearing upon it the Great Face of the Manitou. Never again were the people presumptuous in their religion; and never again was the Face concealed from them, however heavy the clouds upon the peak, except when the spirits were displeased with the nation.
To this day whoever looks from any point on the site of the old capital of the aborigines, where now stands the City of Colorado Springs, the city of refuge, can still see the calm, benignant features of the old god of these early Aztecs, on the side of Cameron's Cone, the old summit of the discrowned peak. The snows of winter hide its features for weeks at times; and when the noonday sun shines full in its face, the ancient superiority of the day-god is shown, for the features are then an indistinguishable mass of light and shadow. But through Spring, Summer, and Autumn, in the afternoon shade, or in the fullness of the morning light, it towers in the west like a clear vision. More majestic than the Zeus Otricoli, grander in design and proportions than the fabled dream of carven Athos, it stands as the most perfect, the sublimest of the sculptures with which unaided Nature or the skill of man has adorned the earth. One is slow to believe that Nature alone could so closely mimic the majesty of art, but it is impossible that Aztec hands could have wrought out such a colossal conception.
"'Twas Nature's will who sometimes undertakes
For the reproof of human vanity
Art to outstrip in her peculiar walk."
To one who would learn how step by step the savage mind groped onward, "through Nature up to Nature's God," it is clearer than all theological lectures.
For many generations the favored nation increased in strength and intelligence. But at length a barbarian host, apparently from the northeast, came pressing upon them with the sweeping onslaught of a herd of buffaloes, with the fierceness of mountain lions. It may likely have been this very invasion which furnished to the laureate Southey the material for his noblest epic, the story of Madoc and the Aztecas of the Missouri Valley. The religious people of the peak, relying upon their gods alone, fell back before them until their very sanctuary was oppressed and profaned.
It is true that in earlier times, when they were weaker in number and skill at war, such reliance had not been disregarded. For once a host of giants and of monsters had attacked them from the hostile north, before whom all resistance had seemed utterly vain. And then a great wonder had taken place. The Manitou had turned his mountain face, even as the face of an Ægis, upon the invading bands, and straightway each and all had changed to stone! It was a terrible sight indeed for future enemies to behold that gorgonized army of granite giants standing athwart all paths approaching from the north or northeast, no longer besiegers, but unwilling and silent defenders whom no foe had yet found courage to approach. And though flood and tempest have overthrown and buried many of them, yet by Austin Bluffs and still more in the strange, grim forms which give name to the world-famous Monument Park, the routed remnants of that ancient army may still be seen, some standing defiant with shield and club uplifted to meet the crash of Death's petrific mace, some crouching in eternized horror at their impending doom.
But though the present had living witnesses of the truth of this encouraging tradition, yet the children of the Manitou had no longer any right to expect such needless intervention, and finally, encouraged by supernatural signs they turned against their enemies and repulsed them from their shrines. But on the day after the battle the sun arose eclipsed, clouds veiled the hills, and a great flood rolled southward from the mountain valleys. When light was restored to them after a long tempest, lo, the air was filled with omens. As once before beasts and birds were passing southward in the path of the waters, winds were blowing and strange clouds drifting in the same direction. The scouts brought word of a mighty mustering of myriads of the enemy from the north. In the midnight sky auroral warriors, red with slaughter, danced the war dance and menaced them with destruction. And most terrible, most astounding of all, the Great Face which had hitherto turned lovingly and fully upon them, now looked away to the south! It, too, had been eclipsed and turned in a single day.
There was but one interpretation of the omens. Plainly they were to forsake their old kingdom, which had grown less and less fertile, and less able to support the increasing numbers of later generations. But all that was good should go with them. The changed face of the Manitou intimated that his watchful care would still follow them in their new home, nor would he look with favor upon the usurpers. The flood of water told that tides of fertility awaited them. The departure of birds and beasts in advance of their march showed that Nature was still their faithful steward. Yet they felt with sadness that because they had allowed sacrilegious invaders to violate the great sanctuary, they must henceforth be expelled from the immediate presence of the Manitou.