152 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



a bird said, " He is our friend, he always fed us. We can not allow 

 our friend to die. We must restore him." Then the wolf came 

 up to the body and said, " Here is our friend, he always gave us 

 food in time of famine. We called him our father, now we are 

 orphans. It is our duty to give him life again. Let each one of 

 us look in our medicine packets and take out the most potent 

 ingredient. Then let us compound a medicine and give it." Then 

 the owl said, "A living man must have a scalp." 



So the animals made a wonderful medicine and in its preparation 

 some gave their own lives and mixed them with the medicine 

 roots. Now when the medicine was made all of it was contained 

 in the bowl of an acorn. So they poured it down the throat of the 

 man, and the bear feeling over the body found a warm spot over his 

 heart. Then the bear hugged him close in his hairy arms and 

 kept him warm. The crow had flown away for the scalp but 

 could not find it ; then the white heron went but while flying over 

 a bean field thought herself hungry and stopped to eat and when 

 filled was too heavy to rise again. Then the pigeon hawk, the 

 swiftest of the birds, said that he would go and surely find it. By 

 this time the enemy had become aware that the animals were 

 holding a council over the chief whom they had slain and so 

 they carefully guarded the scalp which they stretched upon a hoop 

 and swung on a thong over the smoke hole of a lodge. The pigeon 

 hawk, impatient at delay, shot upward into the air and flying in 

 wide circles discovered the scalp dangling over the fire drying in 

 the hot smoke. Hovering over the lodge, for a moment he dropped 

 down and snatching the scalp shot back upwards into the clouds, 

 faster and further than the arrows that pursued him swift from 

 the strong bows of the angered enemy. Back he flew, his speed 

 undiminished by his long flight, and placed the scalp in the midst 

 of the council. It was smoky and dried and would not fit the 

 head of the man. Then a big crow (buzzard) emptied his stomach 

 on it to clean it of smoke and make it stick fast and Shadahgeah 

 plucked a feather from his wing and dipped it in the pool of dew 

 that rests in the hollow on his back and sprinkled the water upon 

 it. The dew came down in round drops and refreshed the dry 

 scalp as it does a withered leaf. The man had begun to faintly 

 breathe when the animals placed the scalp back in his head and 

 they saw that truly he would revive. Then the man felt a warm 

 liquid trickling down his throat and with his eyes yet shut he began to 

 talk the language of the birds and animals. And they sang a 

 wonderful song and he listened and remembered every word of the 



