Bowers] HIDATSA SOCIAL AND CEREMONIAL ORGANIZATION 439 



Briefly, the Buffalo Woman sacred myth was as follows : 



One winter the people came up from Knife River to build a winter camp in 

 the timber below Elbowoods. Game was scarce and the people were obUged 

 to brmg garden produce from their summer village. Scouts could not find 

 buffaloes anywhere. The children had caves where they played at keeping house 

 and a strange boy who was rather dark-skinned with curly black hair invited 

 his play wife to go home with him. 



The girl went along to learn that the boy was in reaUty a buffalo named Calf 

 Wedge. He was living with his mother in a hide tipi in the heavy timber. They 

 had not been able to travel north with the herd for the mother had injured her 

 foot on a snag. The buifalo cow gave the girl meat to take to her parents and 

 they, in turn, made corn balls for the two buffaloes. The buffalo woman asked to 

 move to the girl's camp and her parents invited them in secretly and pulled out 

 the snag, for human beings could do almost anything. Buffalo woman described 

 the rites of building the temporary lodge for the Painted Red Stick ceremony. 

 Four days later the buffaloes appeared in great numbers. The people appointed 

 leaders who had the right to pray to the buffalo skulls and then the kill was made. 



The girl married the Buffalo Boy by rubbing her body with a buffalo skull 

 and in the spring Buffalo Woman and her son returned north with the other 

 buffaloes, leaving the girl with her own people. During the summer she gave birth to 

 a child in a buffalo wallow but her mother took her back to the village without 

 permitting her to see her child. Buffalo bulls came to the wallow, caused the 

 baby calf to grow to maturity by rolling him, and then took him to his father to 

 the north. He was called Spotted Calf because he was half human and half 

 buffalo. 



Four years later Spotted Calf was homesick for his mother's people so his 

 father. Calf Wedge, and his grandmother, Buffalo Woman, agreed to return with 

 him to help the people call the buffaloes. The three changed into humans, entered 

 the village, and built a lodge of their own on the south side of the village, for 

 buffaloes like ground corn.^^ Spotted Calf's mother joined them in the lodge. 

 After that, whenever the people were in want, Buffalo Woman or her descendants 

 would call the buffaloes, for they were buffaloes in spirit. 



The myth given above explains the origin of Buffalo Women 

 impersonators in the buffalo rites. While Buffalo Woman lived in the 

 village the following incidents traditionally occurred and led to the 

 establishment of the Imitating Buffalo ceremony: 



An old man named Grey-Old-Man, his wife named Red-Corn- Woman, and 

 their daughter lived in one lodge at Knife River with a rather poor young man 

 who was hunter for the family. Since the young man had no close relatives 

 and went around from lodge to lodge, he was taken in and treated kindly. He 

 requested one of the older women where he had formerly lived to take meat to 

 Red-Corn- Woman and inform her that he wanted to marry her daughter, White- 

 Corn- Woman. Grey-Old- Man thought that it would be a fine thing to have 

 such a good hunter as son-in-law, so the marriage was completed. 



The young man and his wife decided not to accompany the others into winter 

 camp farther upstream so he built two small eagle-trapping-type lodges facing 

 each other in the nearby timber so each couple would have its own lodge. 



Game became scarce during the winter and the young man ordered his wife 

 not to feed her parents. He also ordered her not to return to the summer village 



M Com is associated with the southern part of the village. 



