Bowers] HIDATSA SOCIAL AND CEREMONIAL ORGANIZATION 269 



should stick to it. There are some bodies on scaffolds out there. 

 You might go to those scaffolds and hold onto the posts while fasting. 

 Perhaps that will help you." 



As far as Wolf Chief could recall, the dream of Big Cloud standing 

 on a hill downstream from the village was the first that he associated 

 with the supernatural. It is interesting to observe that in the 

 dream Wolf Chief saw his grandfather to the southeast, the direction 

 of the spirit villages. 



The incident at Shot in Nose Creek during the following summer 

 brings out the role of the joking relatives in group behavior. Here 

 we have a boy of 16 who has made little progress in fasting at a 

 time when his age-group was seen making serious efforts to secure 

 desirable visions, with the result that the father was being severely 

 criticized by certain relatives. While other boys were fasting or 

 serving as camp-tenders during military adventures, Wolf Chief slept 

 late, dressed well, and kept his eyes on the girls. Even his brothers 

 who normally should have disciplined him could do nothing with him. 

 If they tried to shame him, he merely smiled ; if they ducked him in 

 the river, he laughed about it. But the father's moral weight, though 

 slow in being asserted, finally broke down his son's indifference. 

 Both father and son felt the sting of their joking relatives. When 

 other young men were fasting while their fathers were singing their 

 sacred songs. Small Ankles could take no more criticism. Then he 

 scolded his son, saying, "You should not sit around here and do 

 nothing but eat all the time. You should follow the example of the 

 other young men and fast for a god so that you will be successful." 



Wolf Chief does not tell us what prompted Takes-the-Gun and 

 Moccasin Carrier, the father's clansmen, to come for him. His 

 joking relatives know, and it was from them that the writer secured 

 the information, that Wolf Chief's older brothers took robes to the 

 two "fathers" and informed them that they should take their younger 

 brother out. We see that they supervised his suffering, inserted 

 the thongs, and repeated their vision experiences while Small Anldes 

 remained in camp, opened his bundle, and sang his sacred songs. 

 We note that once the thongs were inserted. Wolf Chief was im- 

 mediately overcome with pain and that they removed the thongs 

 at once. Nevertheless, a beginning was made; frequently this was as 

 far as the "fathers" could go when the first suffering was undertaken. 



Even Wolf Chief was conscious of the fact that his record was in- 

 ferior to that of his brother. Red Basket, 6 years younger. While 

 recording the Wolf rites, he said of Red Basket, "He had been around 

 our father a great deal and knew many songs and stories about the 

 eagles. He was more interested in those things and braver than I 



