Bowers] HIDATSA SOCIAL AND CEREMONIAL ORGANIZATION 467 



Clan Bundle Ceremonies 

 WATERBUSTER CLAN BUNDLE 



There was only one sacred bundle (pi. 12) for these rites and it was 

 kept by a male of the Waterbuster clan at Awatixa village on the 

 Knife River where, according to traditions, the bundle rites were 

 instituted by two Eagle Men who came from a spring at the source 

 of the Missouri River. Pepper and Wilson (1908) recorded the 

 complete origin myth as related by Wolf Chief, son of the last holder 

 of the bundle. In this study of the same rites, the writer endeavored 

 to relate the bundle to the total tribal pattern. Hence, several points 

 not brought out by Pepper and Wilson are given in order to show the 

 position of the rites in the total ceremonial structure. (Fig. 12.) 



The following is a condensed account of the origin myth as related 

 by Wolf Chief: 



Up in the sky there are four eagle villages which were seen by Lodge Boy and 

 Spring Boy when Spring Boy was taken above to be tortured, and by Charred 

 Body who once lived above before he came down to found the village at Charred 

 Body Creek. They told the people that there was a hole in the sky immediately 

 above them; that 1 day's march to the west up there in the sky was the village of 

 the Speckled Eagle; the second village was of Bald Eagles; the third was of the 

 Barred-speckled Eagles; the last village was of the Calumet or Black-tipped 

 Eagles who lived 1 day's march west of the Barred-speckled Eagles and were 

 the children of the third village group. At the place where the Calumet Eagles 

 lived, the sky dipped down and met the earth at the highest points in the Rocky 

 Mountains. It was from this village that the Eagles who founded this ceremony 

 came. 



When Spring Boy was taken above to be tortured, Long Arm carried him west- 

 ward thi'ough the other three villages of eagles until he reached the village of the 

 eagles whose tail feathers were white with black tips. There the people tortured 

 Spring Boy.^" 



Long after Spring Boy was tortured and the Awatixa had moved to the Knife 

 River from farther downstream in the Painted Woods region, two eagles came out 

 of the spring where the sky and earth meet and talked of going to live with the 

 Indians. One eagle liked the Awatixa and decided to live in that village while 

 the other decided to go farther south and be born among the Siwaxuwa. No one 

 knows today who the Siwaxuwa were but they were nomads and did not stay in 

 one place very long. 



The two eagles selected villages to live in where they could be of great help to 

 the people. The eagle who wanted to live with the Awatixa came downstream to 

 the mouth of Knife River and entered the body of a woman where he knew every- 

 thing that happened even before he was born. It was not long after he was born 

 that he remembered his mission was to help the people by being their leader so he 

 carved out a wooden pipe. He thought that the people should have something 

 to use when they became ill so he selected the peppermint.^i 



*' See "The NaxpikE ceremony," for the details of Spring Boy's suffering. 



«' This is the native Interpretation of the plant. Pepper and Wilson identify it as one of the pennyroyals 

 that grow in moist places. 



