278 THE HAKO, A PAWNEE CEREMONY [eth. ann. 2:2 



my heart has gone out to you. I liave done what has never been 

 done before, I have giveii you all tlie songs of this ceremony and 

 explaiiu^d them to you. I never thought that I, of all my people, 

 should be the one to give this aiieieiit ceremony to be preserved, and 

 I wonder over it as I sit here. 



I tliiuk over my long life with its nuiny experiences; of the great 

 numl)cr of Pawnees who have been with me in war, nearly all of 

 whom have been killed in battle. I have been severely wounded 

 many times — see this scar over my eye. I was with those who went 

 to the Rocky Mountains to the Cheyennes, when so many soldiers 

 were slain that their dead bodies lying there looked like a great blue 

 blanket spread over the ground. When T think of all the people of 

 my own tribe who have died during my lifetime and then of tho.se in 

 other tribes that have fallen by our hands, they are so many they make 

 a vast cover over Mother Earth. I once walked with these prostrate 

 forms. I did not fall but I passed on, wounded sometimes but not to 

 death, until I am here to-day doing this thing, singing these sacred 

 songs into that great pipe (the graphophone) and telling you of these 

 ancient rites of my people. It must be that I have lieen preserved 

 for this purpose, otherwise 1 should be lying back there among the 

 dead. 



