1920.] Lowie, Crow Tobacco Society. 119 



This rattle was formerly carried in the dance of the Otter chapter and 

 once formed part of the same medicine bundle that contained the sacred 

 otter of the planting procession. The contents of the bundle were sub- 

 sequently divided between two owners. Gray-bull's wife had kept the 

 rattle in order to attain old age, and several years later when she had 

 died her husband remarked casually that her death might have been due 

 to her selling it to me. 



WEASEL CHAPTER AND CRAZY DOGS. 



The Weasels form one of the largest chapters, of which the Crazy 

 Dogs are regarded as an offshoot. In 1914 the Weasels, Crazy Dogs, and 

 Wolverenes all joined in the planting. My principal informant for the 

 Weasels was Muskrat, who had been Mixer, an intelligent and well- 

 informed but inordinately conceited old woman. Old people resented 

 her exercising the duties of Mixer after selling the privilege. She herself 

 told me that she had sold only a share of the privilege. Her statements 

 were challenged on several points by other Indians, more particularly 

 her occasional pretensions to having founded the chapter, which in fact 

 are contradictory to her own data. The truth of the matter presumably 

 is that she revived the chapter when it had been reduced in numbers. 

 That the Weasels were organized before Muskrat's day was attested 

 by Strikes-both-ways, the oldest Indian on the reservation. Nevertheless 

 Muskrat's narrative, apart from attempts at self-aggrandizement, rings 

 true: even if she has appropriated some one else's visions, the incidents 

 she recites may be taken as typical of such experiences. 



According to one of Muskrat 's accounts, there was a man named 

 Old-man-doing-foolish-things (bart wdrihisa-isd'ke) who founded the 

 Weasel branch, though the following vision, which she attributes to him, 

 has no apparent connection with this chapter. He went to fast on 

 Cloud's Peak and met two white men. "Here," said they, "take this," 

 and they placed one little human being in each of his hands. Both were 

 white and wore trousers. Awaking he found them and brought them 

 back to camp. His visitants said, "We give you these in order that 

 you may see visions of every kind." The pygmies told him, "If your 

 wife is ever unfaithful, we'll tell you about it." He kept them wrapped 

 up. They told him that whenever they embraced each other it would 

 be an indication that his wife had been with another man. Every day 

 he examined them until one day he actually found them embracing each 

 other. His wife was afraid whenever he opened his bundle. This bundle 



UNIVERSITY OF 



