176 Anthropological Papers American Museum of Natural History. [Vol. XXI, 



Tobacco of members who have not gone to the garden, hands it to them 

 and receives presents in return. Non-members sometimes give a horse 

 to the Mixers at this time in order to get a necklace of Tobacco or some 

 other medicine. 



Another informant said that when gathering Tobacco the members 

 take the very best food to the garden and give it to other people. After 

 picking the Tobacco they take it to an adoption lodge on the following 

 day and dance with it there. Then they clean their hands by rubbing 

 them on the ground, for otherwise if they touched their faces with their 

 hands sores would break out on them. 1 At the close of the dance there 

 is a special song, after which the dancers run home; the one who gets 

 home first will enjoy good luck. 



If some of the Tobacco is not yet full-sized or mature at the first 

 gathering, subsequent visits to the garden are made. After the last 

 crop of the season an adoption lodge is erected and the members dance 

 with the newly plucked Tobacco. Then the Tobacco stems and leaves 

 are plucked out, cut up fine, mixed with meat and ordinary tobacco, 

 and thrown into a creek. Gray-bull did not know why this was done 

 but suggested that since the Tobacco was mixed with water before the 

 planting it was natural to throw it into the water again after the harvest. 



Crane-bear speaks of four harvesting visits to the garden with a 

 dance after each one. After the fourth time the stems are thrown into 

 the water. If the Tobacco did not grow they believed they should die. 



ORIGIN TRADITIONS. 



Accounts of the evolution of the chapters have been given above. 

 Traditions relating to the origin of the society itself have been deferred 

 until now because several of them presuppose a knowledge of the cere- 

 monial. It is eminently characteristic of Crow culture that there should 

 be no one standard myth but a variety of in part discordant versions. 

 In some measure, to be sure, the difference is one of the interest on the 

 part of the myth-maker rather than an actual clash as to statements of 

 fact. Thus, some of the variants purport to explain merely how the 

 Tobacco came into the possession of the Crow, others describe at length 

 the institution of the society and certain ritualistic features as ordained 

 through supernatural communications. The latter, while rather tediou 

 reading, furnish valuable confirmation for some of the preceding account 8 

 of the Tobacco ceremony. 



1 Cran i -bear speaks of itching and pim^los. 



