172 THE WINNEBAGO TRIBE [eth. axn. 37 



that are in your possession. You will indeed never be embarrassed. 

 You will know just wherein liis ailment lies. As you have obtained 

 your power with great effort, therefore what you say will be so. If 

 you say he will live, he will live. If the relatives of the patient 

 make you good payments, you may perform what you are accustomed 

 to in your treatment of people. Then you can ask your medicine to 

 put forth its strength for you and it will do so. If you make good 

 offerings of tobacco to the plants and if you make feasts in their 

 honor, if, indeed, you make much of your medicine, if you talk to it as 

 though it were a human being, then when you ask it to put forth its 

 strength it will do so. The payments that you receive you can take 

 with a good conscience and your children will wear them and will be 

 strengthened thereby. So be very diligent in the care you bestow 

 upon them. The medicines were placed here by Earthmaker for a 

 good purpose. We are to use them to heal ourselves. For that 

 purpose Earthmaker gave them to us. If anyone tries to obtain 

 the life sustainers — that is, the medicines — and inflicts suffering upon 

 himself in order to obtain them, our grandmother will know about 

 it. So whatever you spend upon it, be it in labor or in goods, she 

 wiU know about it. All that you gave in obtaining your medicines 

 she will know. They will be returned to you. The people will 

 thus be providing themselves with sometliing for the future. The 

 people always look forward to the future and for all possible happen- 

 ings they will have some medicine provided. You must try to ob- 

 tain some of the medicines that most people possess. If you want 

 paint-medicine, make yourself pitiable. If your paint-medicine 

 overcomes your enemy and you keep it in your home, you will never 

 be wanting in wealth. The most valued possessions of the people 

 will be given to you. The people will love you and the paint-medi- 

 cine will be the cause of it. Whatever ^-ou receive will be in conse- 

 quence of the possession of the paint-medicine. The paint-medicine 

 is made of the blood of the Water-spirits, and therefore it is holy. 

 People used to fast and thirst themselves to death and a Water-spirit 

 would appear to them and bestow his blessings upon them. What- 

 ever he told them would come true. The Earthmaker put the 

 Water-spirit in charge of these tilings so that he would bless the 

 people with them. That was his purpose. 



Some people who wished to find good medicines obtained the 

 race medicine. Try and learn of it. Others had gambUng medicine, 

 and still others again had hunting medicine. There are medicines 

 for very purpose. 



There is a courting medicine and a medicine to prevent married 

 people from wisliing to separate, and there is a medicine for making 

 one rich. 



