MICHELSON. ] ORIGIN OF THE WHITE BUFFALO DANCE. iba lig 
He went away to where they lived. It looked very differently. 
The previous (dwelling) did not look so. It did not look the least bit 
as before. He walked on. When he arrived yonder where they 
lived, the wickiups were everywhere. It is said they were not set 
as they were before. 
Then it is said he entered one: a woman was sitting with her back 
toward him. Later on indeed she looked at him. She looked at 
him very hard. It seemed to him as if it was his mother. 
Then it is said he was addressed: ‘‘Why! this looks just ike my 
son,’ she said. ‘‘ You might be my son,” he was told. 
“T don’t know,” he told her. ‘You look almost the way my 
mother looks,” he said to her. 
She sat there with blackened cheeks, for she was fasting. 
Then it is said, ‘“‘This is what happened to me in the past. The 
one I was living with, died long time ago, because he had a knowledge 
of some eyil thing, that was why a disease killed him. That is why 
these town-lodges look so, because many people died,” (she said). 
“QO, yes, and this is what happened to me. It is my father to 
whom you refer. I am glad that he died, because my father had 
knowledge of an evil thing. ‘Do not accept it from him,’ I formerly 
told you. So I am very proud of whatever you may have done, 
(provided) you have not taken it from him,” (he said). 
“OQ, gracious! My son has now come. I did not ever accept it 
from him. Just what you told me, my son, was what I did. The 
reason I am fasting is because the grizzly bear is furious where you 
live. ‘My son must have been killed’ is-what I thought. That is 
why Iam fasting. Many times men went over there. But they were 
far from reaching your dwelling. In winter time, it would be lying 
unconcernedly on the snow. Even when it was extremely cold, it 
would be sitting outside unconcernedly all the time. And in summer 
time when it was very hot, it sat unconcernedly all the time. We had 
already thought you dead. I declare! Behold! I saw you right 
here. It is a good thing that you chanced not to see it (the bear),”’ 
she said to her son. 
“T did not see anyone. Just as I went out, that wickiup of mine 
crumbled over. And there was grass all about my dwelling. Where 
my fire was, there was no sign of it, there was also grass init. 'That’s 
how it is.”’ 
“That was the reason we thought you were dead and why some 
said: ‘That was your son formerly, he has changed to it (the grizzly 
bear),’ that is how I have been continually frightened by their words. 
For I have been constantly frightened by their words. Unfortu- 
nately, when I painted myself (i. e., blackened my face), I in no way 
had a vision of you. Every time I lay down, ‘I wonder how my son 
is,’ I would think, and I would even weep when I thought of you. 
