4 Field Columbian Museum — Anthropology, Vol. IX 



The Cheyenne still have two of the original sacred arrows, 

 and the sticks, or wooden part of these arrows, have never been 

 renewed. They still have three more times to renew them, accord- 

 ing to the prophecy. Only the Prophet and the Arrow- Keepers 

 know the kind of wood that is used in the arrows. Some sixty or 

 seventy years ago, the medicine-arrow keeper, by carelessness, made 

 a mistake in performing the ceremony just before an attack was made 

 upon a Pawnee camp. He did not correct the mistake, and the 

 result was that they did not affect the camp, and although they 

 slaughtered the bravest of the Pawnee warriors, an old-time Pawnee 

 warrior captured the four sacred arrows from the Cheyenne.* A long 



Fig. i. The Medicine-Arrows. 



time afterward the Pawnee restored two of the arrows to the Chey- 

 enne.'and kept the other two original arrows. When the Pawnee 

 would not return the other two arrows, the Prophet and the 

 Arrow-keeper who lost the arrows made two in imitation of the two 

 withheld by the Pawnee. The imitation arrows are about three 

 inches longer, and a quarter of an inch wider, than the original arrows. 

 (See Fig. i .) This Prophet made these arrows to complete the set, 

 so that their ritual would be the same as before. The Pawnee 

 have now the "man-arrows," and our medicine-men claim that the 

 Pawnee tribe is dying off because they do not know how to treat these 

 arrows in the way the original Prophet taught the Cheyenne. The 

 arrows still in possession of the Cheyenne are the two original "buffalo- 

 arrows," and two "man-arrows" that were made by a later Prophet. 

 What the original Prophet taught was written on some hard and 

 strong skin, in Indian picture-writing. This writing was done by 



•See "How the Pawn** captured the Cheyenne Medicine-Arrows." Am. Anth. (N. S.» Vol. 5. 

 pp 644-65* 



