430 THE MOUNTAIN CHANT. 
cumference. Large quantities of this dry wood were also brought and 
placed outside the space allotted to the corral, to replenish the fires 
when needed. 
117. In the afternoon there were no ceremonies in the medicine lodge. 
The gacali and his assistants took a half holiday, and not without de- 
serving it, for they had wrought well for three days and they had a long 
day’s work and a long night’s work still before them. A large number of 
people had by this time assembled, and from time to time more arrived. 
Throughout the sparse grove which surrounded us, little temporary 
corrals and huts of boughs were going up in every direction. In more 
secret spots in the rugged walls of a canon, about half a mile from the 
medicine lodge, other shelters were erected, where visiting performers 
were to prepare themselves on the last night. Many young men were 
busy in the afternoon cutting down the trees and lopping off the 
branches which were to form the great corral (the ilnasjin, the dark 
circle of branches) on the next day. Some of the visiting women were 
busy grinding meal and attending to different household duties; others 
played cards or engaged in the more aboriginal pastime of az¢ileil, a 
game played with three sticks and forty stones, the latter for counters. 
118. The friends of the sick woman prepared the alkan, a great corn 
cake baked in the earth, the manufacture of which gave evidence of 
the antiquity of the process. The batter was mixed in one large hole 
in the ground lined with fresh sheepskin. It was baked in another 
hole in which a fire had been burning for many hours, until the sur- 
rounding earth was well heated. The fire was removed ; the hole lined 
with corn husks; the batter ladled in and covered with more corn- 
husks; hot earth and hot coals were spread over all. The cake was 
not dug up until the following day, and was designed chiefly for the 
special entertainment of those who were at work in the medicine lodge. 
119. NINTH DAY (UNTIL SUNSET). On Tuesday (October 28) the 
work in the lodge consisted in preparing certain properties to be used 
in the ceremonies of the night. These were the wands to be used in the 
first dance, the katso-yisgan or great plumed arrows, and the trees 
which the dancers pretended to swallow. 
120. The wand of the nahikai was made by paring down a straight 
slender stick of aromatic sumac, about three feet long, to the general 
thickness of less than half an inch, but leaving a head or button at one 
end. <A ring was fashioned from a transverse slice of some hollow or 
pithy plant, so that it would slide freely up and down the slender wand, 
but would not pass over the head. Eagle down was secured to the 
wooden head and also to the ring. In the dance (paragraph 129) the 
eagle down on the stick is burned off in the fire while the ring is held 
in the palm of the hand. When the time comes for the wand to grow 
white again, as the name nahikai expresses it, the.ring is allowed to: 
leave the palm and slide to the other end of the stick. 
121. The great plumed arrows were deceptions somewhat similar in 
character to the wands. One-half of the arrow was made of a slender 

