MICHELSON. ] THE SINGING AROUND RITE. 597 
had been told by his grandfather. All summer he simply lived 
quietly. He hesitated to begin acting in accordance with his recent 
blessing. ‘Yet I was told ‘any time,’ he thought. Finally it was 
winter again. Then in the spring he killed a buffalo and set out 
the buffalo-hide where he had killed the buffalo.’ He merely went 
to view it repeatedly. After it was dry he tanned it the best he 
could. After he had prepared it he placed it yonder, somewhere 
near by. And then he prepared a stick. He made a drum like the 
drum of the one who had blessed him in his dream. As soon as he 
had made it, he likewise made a rattle. After he made it he plucked 
the feathers off a brown woodpecker and hung them on his rattle. 
After he had prepared it, the next day he went and shot a deer. 
After he brought it carrying it on his back he summoned two men. 
“Well, we shall cook this deer,” he said to them. 
They did not know why they should begin cooking it. They 
cooked it there in ignorance. ‘‘ Well, eventually it is cooked,” they 
said among themselves. ‘‘ Well, summon ten men and five women,” 
he said. They were summoned. After they had all come he said, 
“Well, you may serve (food) on a plate.’ After it had been served 
to each one of them, they said, “That is all.” Then he also said 
to one man, “ Now cry out at the top of your voice. And this is 
what you are to say,” he said to him, ‘‘‘‘au’, ‘au’, ‘au’, ‘au’,’ you 
will say,’”’ he said to him. Thereupon (the man) said, ‘Au’, ‘au’, 
‘au’, ‘au’,”’ so he said. Thereupon they began to eat. As soon as 
they had finished eating, (the one blessed) said to them, ‘“‘We have 
done an entirely different. thing for the first time. Whenever you 
hear this drum, you must go to it; (I tell you) in case some of you 
did not know it. They do not tell all as they are unwilling to walk 
around. That verily is what you are to do. Whenever they begin 
cooking we are to begin beating the drum so we shall have enough 
dancing,” he said to them. ‘And those of you who are men must 
make rattles to shake. But you must hang feathers to the rattles, 
and you must make the rattles small,” he said to them. “These, 
our women, must continue to sing as long as we shall continue to 
sing, they must hum. I am not doing this for no reason. Last 
winter I fasted going eight days (without food). That is why I 
know what to do. Verily I do not have knowledge to do it for 
myself alone, (but) for all of us, including women and children. We 
shall depend upon it if it is so. We shall not be afflicted with dis- 
ease if we are able to do it once in a while. And if any of you desire, 
you may bring anything for us to cook. As many of you as I have 
selected this day must gather here, at the drum, whenever disease 
shall come among us. We shall go around entering the middle of 
the wigwams of all, and we shall go in a circle beating the drum,” he 
