OMAHA BOW AND ARROW MAKERS—-LA FLESCHE 489 
rain do not affect it. The elm and ironwood are cut green and hung 
over the lodge fire to season, which is a slow process. There is one 
danger which the bow maker carefully guards against, and that is 
a splitting by shrinkage. Experience had taught the men who loved 
to make bows that there is one winter month during which it is safe 
to cut green wood for making bows, and if I remember rightly it is 
the “ month of the return of the geese,” that is, February. 
The Osage and the Kansa had the best and the most costly bows. 
This remark does not refer to the making but to the quality of the 
wood. This wood was called by the Osage and Kansa, Mi™-dse-sta, 
smooth bow, and by the Omaha, Zho*-zi, yellowwood, the most 
serviceable of any of the bowwoods. The yellowwood was called by 
the French, bois d’arc, and was procured along the Arkansas River, 
for the tree did not grow in the regions north of Kansas. 
The bowstring or cord is made from the sinew taken from the 
muscles lying on either side of the spine of the buffalo. The bow 
maker’s art does not include the making of the bowstring. ‘There 
are men who are skilled in the making of bowstrings who are em- 
ployed to make them. The man whom I employed is still living at 
this writing, close to the age of 90 years. ‘This bowstring maker took 
five strands from a sinew that I had procured and soaked them in 
glue water over night. In the morning he squeezed the water out of 
the sinew, then spliced together the ends of the strands, using fresh 
glue, thus making one long strand. This he put in the sun to par- 
tially dry, just enough to give the glue strength to hold together the 
spliced parts of the sinew. The strand having dried to the desired 
consistency, the bowstring maker formed a little loop exactly 
in the middle for the upper nocks of the bow. He put this little 
loop over the small end of a slender pole which he had planted 
firmly in the ground for this purpose. He then grasped in each 
hand an end of a strand and swung the two strands simultaneously. 
With each swing he twisted the strands with his fingers. As the 
strands were thus twisted and swung, they twined around each other 
and by the movement of twisting and swinging the twist traveled 
toward the man until the string thus formed came to the man’s 
fingers, when he tied a knot in the finished cord. 
As the man strung the cord to the bow he said: “ That bow was 
made by E-shno”-hun-ga; I know the way he makes his bows. He 
is one of the best bow makers.” When the cord was put on the bow, 
the man gave it a few pulls and the bow responded with a resonant 
ring at each pull. The old man remarked, with a sigh: “This takes 
me back to my buffalo-hunting days.” 
The wood for making the arrow shaft was chosen with as great 
care as the wood used in making the bow. By long experience the 
arrow makers had found two kinds of wood to be serviceable. These 
