Bowers] HIDATSA SOCIAL AND CEREMONIAL ORGANIZATION 247 



Medora and taught him how to bring the rain. Later, when the gardens dried up, 

 he brought rains for the women at Fort Buford. 



Another time he fasted above the spring near Percy Baker's place at the grave 

 of a Crow Indian. Whenever anyone went there, this Crow would send a high 

 wind and frighten the faster away. This time the wind came but he was not 

 afraid. Then the wind went down and someone stood on the hill and sang a 

 sacred song. He had never seen the Crow but he thought the person standing 

 there must have been the Crow whose grave was nearby. 



He would stay out fasting for 7 days at a time but he did not put on the public 

 ceremonies. In his sacred bundle he had two dresses made of hides and painted 

 yellow. This was what he saw when the buffaloes took him to Porcupine Butte. 

 When he was old he gave them to his sons to use for calling the rains. 



He was always successful in leading war parties; that is the way he became 

 the war chief and the people respected him. 



The above narrative further elucidates the relationship of military 

 adventures to village behavior. Although Four Dancers spoke of the 

 right of the owner of the Earthnaming bundle to pray to aU of the 

 gods collectively, there were specific gods and associated rites over 

 which the bundle owner had no definite authority. In the ritual, the 

 gods were believed to assemble and come to the village as a group to 

 bring good luck to the giver of the ceremony. One should note that 

 while Guts' own sons performed those rites controlled by their father, 

 Charging Eagle, the stepson, received visions of the Mandan Four 

 Bear's, his own father's bundle even though the father had died nearly 

 a quarter of a century earlier. 



We see Guts checking up on his sons to see if they had performed 

 bravely and lu-ging them to participate in the battles. When they 

 perform bravely, he brings out his rattles from the Earthnaming 

 bundle and sings the victory songs, thus identifying their bravery 

 with his sacred bundle. Again the sons show bravery, when the enemy 

 build a fort in the heavy timber to protect themselves, by volunteering 

 to go into the brush when others have had bad luck. Associating 

 their good fortune on numerous occasions with the supernatural 

 powers of the bundle, we find them daring each other to "catch a 

 Sioux" and, while distinguishing themselves for unusual bravery, they 

 are killed. Had they succeeded in their mission, not only would 

 Sitting Owl and Never-Runs-Away have been highly respected, but 

 Guts would have succeeded in removing much of the mistrust and 

 lack of confidence the people had for him. His reputation would then 

 have been as great as Poor Wolf's, the rival bundle owner from 

 Awaxawi village. 



Guts' self-torture was greater than that normally practiced by a 

 war leader losing young men in battle, but this was probably due to 

 both the loss of prestige and of his sons; normally a war leader did 

 not take his own sons to war. The dream by Different Wolf, in which 

 five squash change into five enemy heads, is interpreted to mean that 



