MICHELSON. ] ORIGIN OF THE WHITE BUFFALO DANCE. 159 
That was why this happened to us,” he told the people. “That is 
how powerful he is. Even when we only smell him, we die; if we 
saw him very plainly we would fall right down as soon as we saw him; 
that would surely happen to us,” he told them. 
Then it is said those who died were buried one by one. Then he 
placed in readiness the medicine in the white buffalo sacred pack. 
“The people who shall live in the future, if something happens to 
them, shall take this and boilit. It will truly cure them, and nothing 
will happen to them. ‘That is the benefit they will soon derive from 
this sacred pack. Surely the people who are to live shall continually 
derive benefit from it; they will not fail to be benefited by it, they will 
derive benefit from it. You, of course, have already derived benefit 
from it many times. This is the thing which always cures you, not 
myself. At this time this is the thing that made you well. That is 
why I tell these fellow-clansmen ' of mine to remember very firmly 
what Isay to them. That is why I tell them so, though they all have 
learned the songs,” he said to them. 
“They have indeed pleased me by doing that,” he told them. 
“This is the first time I put the medicine in here with it. Now indeed 
for the first time it is placed with it. It is good which I have here, 
it is not bad. If it was bad something would happen to me, by 
putting it in here,’’ he said to the people. ‘So any one of our gens 
will not be ignorant of it, I shall instruct these, who are of my gens, 
in this our medicine,” he said to them. 
When once he stopped speaking, their chief approached him. 
“Boy, tell me about that medicine,” so the chief said. 
“All right,” he was told. ‘Very likely you merely want to know 
aboutit. You are not of ourgens. Hven if you doctor yourself with 
it, it will have no results. Only my fellow-clansmen “ are they for 
whom it will be efficacious,” the chief was told. “I just only want to 
know about it, is why I ask you, that [ might be ready to tell them, 
should they forget,” so he said. 
Then he was taken aside to be instructed how it was. After he was 
told, he gave thanks. “All my different relatives; whose medicine 
you are,” he said to that medicine. 
Then it is said he went in the rear to give instructions about that 
medicine to his fellow-clansmen.” All of them went along to be 
shown that medicine. Even the children were taken along. All of 
them were given bundles of it. The medicine was in little bundles. 
65 A convenient if not strictly accurate translation. 
