MOONET] THE TAIME 241 



been liauded down in his family, the keeper being consequently always 

 of part Arapaho blood. 



The jiresent guardian is a woman, lOmaii, who succeeded to the office 

 on the death of Taimete, " 7ai'»(e-mau," in ISD-i; she is the ninth suc- 

 cessive guardian, the Arapaho being the first. The fifth keeper, Anso- 

 giani, " Long Foot," or Anso'te, held it forty years — from before the 

 Osage massacre until his death in the winter of 1870-71. Assuming 

 that the combined terms of the first four guardians equaled in time the 

 combined terms of the last four — i. e., about sixty or sixty-five years, or 

 from about 1830 to 181t-l — we would have 1770 as the approximate date 

 when the Kiowa obtained the present taime image. As previously 

 stated, they already had the ceremony and an equivalent image of 

 buckskin. Of the two iaime images, both of which were of the same 

 shape and material, one, the "man," was small, only a few inches in 

 length, while the other, the " woman," was much larger. It is believed 

 among the Kiowa that the Crows still have the originals which they 

 stole from the Arapaho. 



Long afterward, after the Kiowa had confederated with the Co- 

 manche, the latter had a fight with the Blackfeet, in which they killed 

 a warrior and captured his medicine. The Comanche captor, so the 

 stor3' goes, kept the medicine one night in his tipi, but it kept up a 

 strange noise, which so frightened him that the next day he gave it to 

 a Kiowa, who pulled off a long "tooth" attached to it, and thenceforth 

 it was silent. Learning afterward that it was a part of the fame 

 medicine, he gave it to the taime keeper, who put it with the other 

 images. It is said to have been nearly similar in appearance to the 

 smaller image. 



The complete taime medicine thus consisted of three decorated stone 

 images, a large one or "woman," a smaller one called a "man," and a 

 third one closely resembling the second. They were kept in a rawhide 

 case known as the talme-bttmhi'i, shaped somewhat like a kidney 

 (see figure, summer 18.j5), and painted with taliue symbols, the large 

 image being in one end of the case and the two smaller ones at the 

 other; some say that the third image was kept in a separate box by a 

 relative of the taime priest. The smaller images, like the ark of the 

 covenant, were sometimes carried to war, the box being slung from the 

 shoulders of the man who carried it, and consequently were finally 

 captured by the Ute. The large image, the "woman" taime, was 

 never taken from the main home camp. 



The taime has been twice captured by enemies, first by the Osage 

 in 1833, and again by the Ute in 1SC8. In the first instance the Osage 

 surprised the Kiowa camp and captured all the images with the bag, 

 killing the wife of the taime priest as she was trying to loosen it from 

 its fastenings, but returned it two years later, after peace had been 

 made between the two tribes (see the calendar, 1833 and 183.5). In 



