CULIN] HOOP AND POLE: PAWNEE 469 
as making a ring of ash stick. which he wound with a string made of 
boiled buffalo hide, so that it looked like a spider’s web. The grand- 
mother rolled the ring and the boy shot it with arrows and killed 
buffalo. 
_.gtet” 
ee SITTIN 
eo ; 
Fig. 612. Ring and pole: diameter of ring, 5 inches; length of pole, 47 inches; Pawnee Indians, 
Oklahoma; ca’. no. 71682, Field Columbian Museum. 
Commenting on the above, Doctor Dorsey “ says: 
One of a number of ways for the magic production of «a buffalo common to the 
Plains tribes, the significance of this form resting in the fact that the ring rep- 
resented the spider-web, thus referring to the belief that the Spider-Woman con- 
trolled the buffalo and produced them from her web. 
The ring-and-javelin game, according to the Skidi, was originally played for 
the direct purpose of calling the buffalo, and I have a long account of its origin. 
According to this account the two sticks, represent young buffalo bulls, which 
turned into the gaming sticks, leaving first full instructions as to how they 
were to be treated, how the game was to be played, how the songs were to 
be sung, and how they were to be anointed with the buffalo fat. The ring, 
according to the story, was originally a buffalo cow, and those in the tribe 
to-day are said to be made from the skin of the vulva of the buffalo. For 
the two forms of this so-called buffalo game see figures [610 and 611 in this 
yaper |. 
paper : 
In the story ~ The Coyote Rescues a Maiden” the coyote is de- 
scribed as seeing buffalo playing with sticks and a ring: 
A lot of buffalo would line up on the south side of the playing ground. Coyote 
sat down at the north end of the playing ground. Two buffalo would rise up 
and take the sticks. one of them taking the ring, and as they ran to the north 
end, the one with the ring would throw it and both of them would throw their 
sticks at the ring to see if they could catch it. At the north end they picked 
up the sticks and the ring. and the one with the ring would throw it again 
toward the south end of the playing ground, and the two buffalo would throw 
the sticks at the ring to try to catch it. The two would sit down, and two 
other buffalo would rise and take up the sticks and ring, and they, too, would 
run down to the north end of the ground and throw the ring and sticks. They 
would shout at Coyote to get away. as they might hit him with the sticks. 
Coyote would rise and limp around, and then would sit down close to the end 
of the playing ground. 
Now, the ring with which they were playing was a girl who had 
been carried off by the buffalo and transformed by them. During the 
course of the game the ring rolled toward the Coyote and he took it 
in his mouth and ran away with it, and finally by the aid of the bad- 
ger, the fox, the crow, the hawk, and the blackbird the ring was car- 
ried back and transformed into a girl again in her brothers’ lodge. 
* Traditions of the Skidi 'awnee, p. 343, New York, 1904. *Tbid., p. 257. 
