248 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 194 



his "brother," Guts, will get even. Here Different Wolf thinks of 

 Guts as a brother although actually the relationship is quite extended : 

 Man-With-Long-Hair and Different Wolf belong to the same clan, 

 the Prairie Chickens, and both came from Hidatsa village while Man- 

 With-Long-Hair and Guts had the same father; therefore they are 

 brothers, although Guts belonged to the Maxoxati clan. At any rate, 

 however extended the relation may be, an "older brother" comes to 

 the aid of Guts and directs him to stop his mourning, saying that he 

 has suffered long enough. Note that the obligations of brothers to 

 avenge the death of one of their number is expressed by cutting off the 

 head of one enemy and breaking it up. Four Dancers uses the kinship 

 term here in its broader meaning to include clan members and others 

 so classified. 



Four Dancers introduces the concept that, at this point, Bobtail 

 Bull begins to plan his life. This is not a unique situation, for, in 

 recording the biographies of various Hidatsas, the informant invari- 

 ably stated that "it was at this time he began to plan his life." We 

 see that he initiated his plan by fasting during the Sun Dance while 

 another was buying the rights from a father, but that the vision he 

 received was of his own father's Earthnaming bundle. Here we see 

 unfolding the tribal bundle purchase pattern: regardless of the cere- 

 mony being performed during fasting, it is of one's father's bimdle 

 rites that one normally dreams. When he tells the "fathers," including 

 his biological father, that when dreaming of the bundle, he was also 

 promised two enemies, Guts says that he will get three. His reputation 

 is not improved when BobtaU Bull successfully kills two instead of the 

 three enemies his father predicted he would get. 



We see that as Bobtail Bull's reputation grew, the number of older 

 men who came to his lodge to eat and smoke increased. Guts then 

 realized that although the bundle has supernatural powers, he has 

 not succeeded in controlling this power and is, therefore, avoided. 

 At this point he decides to relinquish the bundle to his son although 

 it was customary for one to keep this bundle untU his death. Closely 

 associated with his initiation into the bundle rites were his perform- 

 ances of the "Walking" ceremonies when his wives were ceremonially 

 "given" to the fathers. But the path to eminence was not an easy 

 one. While the old men were instructing Bobtail Bull in tribal lore, 

 the wives worked hard preparing feasts for the old men. It was 

 during this instruction that the first wife eloped with another man, 

 abandoning her children to the other women of the lodge. The 

 husband had the legal right to take her back or to destroy his rival's 

 or the rival's relatives' property, but to do that would bring the 

 ridicule of his joking relatives upon him. Although he could take 

 her back, the honorable thing to do was to pay no attention to the 



