DORSEY.] BUSIIOTTER ON THE SUN DANCE. 451 



George Bushotter, a Teton. As lie did not furnish liis description of 

 the diiuce in a single text, but in several, wliich were written on dif- 

 ferent occasions, it devolved on the present writer to undertake an 

 arrangement of the material after translating it. The accompanying 

 illustrations were made by I\Ir. Bushotter. 



§ 144. Object of the sun dance. — The Dakota name for the sun dance 

 is ''Wi M'a"-yarig watci-pi (Wi waijyaijg wacipi), literally, " Sun look- 

 ing-at they-dance." The following are assigned as the reasons for cele- 

 brating this dance: During any winter when the people suffer from 

 famine or an epidemic, or when they wish to kill any enemy, or they 

 desire horses or an abundance of fruits and vegetables during the 

 coming summer, different Indians pray mentally to the sun, and each 

 one says, " Well, I will pray to Wakantanka early in the summer." 

 Throughout the winter all those men who have made such vows take 

 frequent baths in sweat lodges. Each of these devotees or candidates 

 invites persons to a feast, on which occasion he joins his guests in 

 drinking great quantities of various kinds of herb teas. Then the 

 host notifies the guests of his vow, and from that time forward the 

 people treat him with great respect. 



§145. Ixules observed by households. — The members of the households 

 of the devotees always abstain from loud talking and from bad acts of 

 various kinds. The following rules must be observed in tlie lodge of 

 each devotee : A piece of the soil is cut off between the back of the lodge 

 and the fireplace, and when virgin earth is reached vermilion is scat- 

 tered over the exposed place. When the men smoke their pipes and 

 have burned out all of the tobacco in their pipe bowls, they must not 

 throw away the ashes as they would common refuse; they must be 

 careful to empty the ashes on the exposed earth at the back of the 

 lodge. No one ventures to step on that virgin earth, and not even a 

 hand is ever stretched toward it. Only the man who expects to par- 

 ticipate in the sun dance can empty the ashes there, and after so doing 

 lie returns each pipe to its owner. 



J 146. The " U-ma-ne." — " The mellowed earth space, U-ma-ue 

 in Dakota, aud called by some iieciiliar names in other tribes, 

 has never been absent from any religions exercise I have yet 

 seen or learned of from the Indians. It represents the unap- 

 propriated life or power of the earth, hence man may obtain 

 it. The square or oblong, with the four lines standing out, is 

 invariably interpreted to mean the earth or land with the four 

 winds standing toward it. The cross, whether diagonal or up- 

 right, always symbolizes the four winds or four quarters." ' *''°- 189— The 'Uma-ue" 



Myinbol. 



Miss Fletcher uses this term, "U-ma-ne," to de- 

 note two things: the mellowed earth space (probably answering to the 

 u-je-^i of the Omaha aud Ponka) and the symbol of the earth and the 

 four winds made within that mellowed earth space. A sketch of the 

 latter symbol is shown in Fig. 189. (See §§ 112, 155, etc. ; also Contr. 

 K A. Ethu., Yol. VI,— 471-475.) 



,5,^ -. __ ■ 



' Miss Fletcher, in Kept. Peabody Muaeuni, vol. in, p. 284, note. 



