MICHELSON. ] WHITE TINY-HOOF SACRED PACK, 245 
If that spit of theirs were stepped on, their life would be taken 
back by the manitous. They would stop doing what they had done. 
What had been thought of them when they sat there during the gens 
festival, it is said that would be taken back by the manitou. They 
would not be blessed in the way that had been planned for them. 
They would only go in there to sit for naught. They would be 
ruined by that one who might happen to step on (their spit). 
Then again, if one who was menstruating should step on it, that 
indeed is very terrible. It is said that they would die if their spit 
should be stepped on. They would not be alive long. Yet it is said 
the one who had stepped on it would die too in a little while. 
It is said that was what they did when they sat through for the 
first time during the gens festival of the White Buffalo without 
stirrmg from their seat. Indeed, though, that is the only one time 
the rules were so hard. From then on they were not afraid of any- 
thing. They did the things they usually did in their lives, it is said 
Yet, it is said, those who first sit through the clan feast are treated 
carefully. It is said those who do that are talked about. They are 
indeed thought of as possessing in some way the nature of a manitou, 
after they have sat through during the gens festival. It is said they 
would say this of those who did this: ‘‘The manitous probably know 
them.” 
The young men who sit through are indeed more loved by their 
relatives. It is said the men who had sons or the men who had 
grandsons (if they did this) would be very proud. Those young 
men would then be made to fast severely that winter, it is said, when 
they sat through like that. Their fathers or grandfathers were the 
ones who made them fast, when they sat through the gens festival of 
the War gens when the White Buffalo sacred pack was worshipped. 
It is said that whenever there was to be a gens festival the men 
would swim beforehand. They would wash their skin. It is said 
they did this so that when they sat to worship their skins might be 
clean. Indeed they would go down to wash their skins before the 
sun arose. Then some would bathe in the evening. That is what 
those did who thought in their hearts, “I shall sit through.” Those 
who thought in their hearts, ‘I am going to sit through as long as 
the gens festival goes on,”’ they would do that. Now they do not do 
that. They are even now spoken of as ones who sit to smoke.? They 
are not spoken of as ones who sit to worship. 
Again, those who sit where the gens festival is, indeed do surely 
smoke. Indeed they do as they wish to do. They even sleep there. 
They only do a little of what had to be done. Now they do not do 
what they used to do at all when the members of the War gens 
celebrated their gens festival. 
3 Indian singular, but the sense is plural. 
