1920.] Lovrie, Crow Tobacco Society. 121 



dance, and they said, "Give her the weasel." So I got the weasel to dance with. 1 

 The second time I and one of my children got up, and someone then said, 'Give her 

 the whistle." Then both of us danced. 



At the first snowfall I rejoined the Tobacco dance. By that time I had gathered 

 plenty of weasels. This happened a considerable time after my original adoption 

 into the Tobacco society. 



Muskrat said that when she joined the society there were only 

 two chapters, the Horses and the Prairie-dogs, and that she was adopted 

 into the Horse chapter. The first part of this statement is certainly 

 erroneous (see p. 114). 



On another occasion Muskrat had a vision of how to mix. She used 

 a combination of onions, 'bear-food' (turnip), wild grapes, md-\-isacpite 

 ('black potato') weed, a black root, a mountain weed poisonous for 

 horses, cow chips, and the dirt from a mole hill. According to her, 

 there was a lapse of five years during which the chapter did not plant 

 for lack of a Mixer, but as a result of her vision planting was resumed. 

 In 1914 she mixed four ingredients, with water and tobacco, black 

 potato, bi'tsiri watsu9 ('cactus-berries') and bickcti-kice ('buffalo-eyes- 

 resembling'); on the following morning she added m&sare (mole dirt) 

 and manure. 



From Gray-bull's account it appears that Muskrat was by no means 

 the only Mixer, though she may have been the most prominent one. 

 He himself held the office for three years, mixing for some members of 

 the chapter; while other Mixers attended to the rest. At the end of 

 that period he sold the privilege. He says that each Mixer had a slightly 

 different method. He himself used chokecherries, the leaf of a box- 

 elder chewed by himself, a wild onion crushed between the fingers, the 

 roots of the wild lily, and cow chips all of these finely pulverized. 



In addition to being Mixer, Muskrat also acted as Painter, decorat- 

 ing the forehead and upper part of the face with red paint. At one time 

 she also owned the adoption lodge privilege, but she sold it. 



In 1914 Muskrat gave an essentially different account of her vision. 

 She then said that there had been a Weasel chapter consisting of an 

 old man, his wife, and a very few followers. After giving her a weasel, 

 they took the emblem away from her and for this reason she grieved and 

 went out to fast in the mountains. A cloud came up, so she went to the 

 rocks for shelter and lay down to sleep. A weasel appeared, went on her 



'.Before using weasels, the informant explained later, some held boughs of trees to dance with. 



