238 CALENDAR HISTORY OF THE KIOWA [eth.ann.H 



little attention to the rain gods and seem to have no reverence for tlie 

 snake. Each shield order i>rays to some sijecial deity, and every man 

 has also his own personal "medicine," somewhat like the guardian 

 angel or patron saint of the Catholic system. There are also super- 

 natural heroes, of whom the Sunboy and 8indi are the greatest, with 

 ogres, dwarfs, water people, monsters, and all the other features of the 

 orthodox fairy book. 



OBJECTS OF RELIGIOUS VENERATION 



Their most sacred objects of religious veneration are the A'dalbedhya, 

 the Taime, the Gadombitsorihi, and the seni or peyote. Their great 

 tribal religious ceremony is the fc ado or sun dance. Their tribal 

 religion is that which centers around the a'dalbedhya and the taime. 

 The worship of the peyote, although now general, excepting among 

 the oldest men, is comparatively modern with the Kiowa, having been 

 adopted from the more southern tribes. These two systems are com- 

 patible and auxiliary to each other. In 1890 the new religion of the 

 ghost dance was introduced among the Kiowa. It is essentially dif- 

 ferent from the older Indian systems and antagonistic to them, being 

 based on the doctrine of one God, although it preaches a return to the 

 old Indian life. 



The A'dalbedhya (the word has some connection with ddal, "hair," 

 and scalp) is the eucharistic body of their supernatural hero teacher, 

 the Sun-boy, and has been known among them almost from tlie begin- 

 ning of their existence as a people. According to the myth, which 

 has close parallels in other tribes, a girl was one day playing with 

 some companions when she discovered a porcupine in the branches of 

 a tree. She climbed up to capture it, but as she climbed the tree grew, 

 carrying her with it, until it pierced the arch of the sky into the upper 

 world; here the porcupine took on his proper form as the Son of the 

 Sun ; they were married and had a son. Her husband had warned 

 her that, in her excursions in search of berries and roots, she must 

 never go near the f)lant called dzdn (pomme blanche, Psoralca esculenta) 

 if its top had been bitten oft" by a buft'alo. Like Eve, or Pandora, she 

 longed to test the pi'ohibition, so one day while digging food plants 

 she took hold of a pomme blanche which a buffalo liad already cropped 

 and pulled it up by the root, leaving a hole through which she saw 

 far below the earth, which she had forgotten since the day that she had 

 climbed the tree after the porcupine. Old memories awakened, and 

 full of an intense longing for her former home she took her child and 

 fastening a rope above the liole began letting herself down to the 

 earth. Her husband, returning from the hunt, discovered her absence 

 and the method of her escape, and throwing a stone after her through 

 the hole, before she had reached the end of the rope, struck her upon 

 the head and she fell to the ground dead. The child was uninjured, and 

 after staying some time beside the body of his mother he was found 



