146 Field Columbian Museum — Anthropology, Vol, V. 



buffalo ; we shall have food and robes and moccasins and ropes and 

 everything else," they said. And they went back to report that they 

 had found the buffalo in plenty. They w^ent into the cave again where 

 they had come out, going back now. Where the running stream had 

 been when they came, they found a being lying across the passage. , His 

 body filled it to the top. "Who can it be lying in our way? What 

 shall we do ?" they said to-each other. They built a fire against the body 

 and kept it up. As it burned the fat flowed, running down from the 

 body into the fire. They kept up the fire until at last they had burned the 

 body in two. "Ya, my friends, it cooks well ; it must be good to eat," 

 said one of them. "Don't ! my friend ; leave it ; it is a powerful thing," 

 his companions said to him. "It must surely be good to eat. See how 

 white its meat is. I think I shall try it," said the one. They urged him 

 not to eat it, but he insisted. "Well, then, it is you who are doing it," 

 his friends told him; and he ate of it. "It is good; it tastes well. Eat 

 of it, my friends." he said; but he could not persuade them to touch 

 it. After he had eaten they started again, passing through the body 

 that they had burned in two. At last they got out of the cave again. At 

 night they camped. In the morning the legs of the young man who 

 had eate^n of the owner of the waters had begun to turn white. "What 

 did we tell you," his brothers said to him. They went on again home- 

 ward, and at night made another camp. They blamed the young man 

 for having eaten of the animal, and he was ashamed. In the morning 

 his entire body had turned white. 'It is your own fault! We warned 

 you, but you allowed yourself to eat of it," his friends said. They 

 went on again, and camped in another place. Next morning the young 

 man was completely white and in shape was like the one he had eaten. 

 He was a hiintcabiit. They went on once more and traveled far. When 

 they came to a spring, the young man who had become a hiintcabiit said 

 to his brother : "Now, my friend, throw me in the water here. When- 

 ever you go by this place, when you are at war, tie pieces of cloth 

 above this spring. Then you will return with good black paint (vic- 

 tory)." Then his younger brother threw him into the spring. He 

 disappeared in the water amidst flashes of light. Whenever his brother 

 passed by the spring, when he was at war, he left something near it, 

 and he always returned victoriously.' — K. 



» Cf. J. O. Dorsey, Contr. N. A. Ethn., VI, 322; Grinnell, Pawnee Hero Stories, 171. 



