256 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 
its use and its many symbols, we should fail to do what our profession 
considers most important. By and by we were invited to call on The- 
Bear-One. This time we got the head-dress and wand upon similar terms. 
Then followed much visiting between us, but nothing seemed to open the 
way to the information we desired. He always got away from any dis- 
cussion that pointed that way. However, he gave us much important 
data about the ordinary affairs of life. One day he turned to us with, 
“Tet us make an agreement: you always do as I say, I always do as you 
say.”’ It is useless to try to describe the reaction to this remark. We 
stood facing each other with long unflinching gaze, each searching the 
other to the depths. On our part prudence, caution, reason all shouted, 
“No, never!”” Yet—so far we had failed to get a single important medi- 
cine bundle, nothing except these few things of his, information concerning 
them not at all; such a compact would get them all; but the price! At last 
we ventured, “To such requests as are reasonable to the minds of the asked.” 
Something like reproach and pain flashed across his face, but he clasped my 
hand and departed. On reflection the rashness of even this impressed us 
and we resolved not to call upon him for aid except in last resort. In late 
years he often spoke among his people of this compact as a bond that had 
never been broken. During the years he made three formal requests of us 
and we on our part two. One we turned down as impracticable, but made 
a fair return of another sort. 
In association with his robe and head-dress the visitor will see other 
objects, such as a drum, a whistle of human bone, and the skin of an albino 
magpie, in short his complete outfit as a medicine man. The information 
we secured in time: the dreams and visions he experienced, his fasting, 
how he learned his powers. This we cannot enter upon here. Suffice it 
to say that the spirit of the sun, the moon, the various stars, the earth, the 
water and much that pertains to each have some place in the formula of 
which the objects were, even to him, but crude symbols. He once charged 
me that if these objects should be rudely handled there would follow an 
annoying storm of rain and wind. Strangely enough, our workmen in the 
Museum have twice shifted these objects and in each case the city was swept 
by a severe storm within two days. Each time we notified our friend of 
the coincidence; happenings of which he frequently spoke with a pleasure 
that comes from a faith confirmed. 
He believed that he had the knowledge to control the weather and other 
of nature’s works. For many years he had been the leading one to keep the 
days fair during the annual sun dance ceremonies. One season a young 
medicine man talked about among his people that he would show his power 
at the sun dance and bring the rain in spite of our friend. When the day 
came the horizon was banked with clouds and mist hung upon the hillsides. 
