RELIGION Wl> I EREMONH 3. 105 



Medicine Bundles. 



In anthropological literature it is the custom to use 

 the term medicine in a technical sense, meaning any- 

 thing that manifests the divine element. Among the 

 Blackfoot, Arapaho, Crow, Kiowa, Hidatsa, and Man- 

 dan especially and to varying extent among the other 

 tribes of the Plains, the men made extraordinary use 

 of these charms or amulets, which were after all little 

 medicine bundles. A man rarely went to war or en- 

 gaged in any serious undertaking without carrying and 

 appealing to one or more of these small bundles. They 

 usually originated as just stated, in the dreams or 

 visions of so-called medicinemen who gave them out 

 for fees. With them were often one or more songs 

 and a formula of some kind. Examples of these may 

 be seen in the Museum's Blackfoot collections, where 

 they seem most highly developed. 



In addition to these many small individual and more 

 or less personal medicines, many tribes have more 

 pretentious bundles of sacred objects which are seldom 

 opened and never used except in connection with 

 certain solemn ceremonies. We refer to such as the 

 war bundles of the Osage and Pawnee, the medicine 

 arrows of the Cheyenne, the sacred pipe and the wheel 

 of the Arapaho, the "taimay" image of the Kiowa, the 

 Okipa drums of the Mandan, and the buffalo calf pipe 

 of the Dakota. In addition to these very famous ones, 

 there are numerous similar ones owned by individuals, 

 especially among the Blackfoot, Crow, Sarsi, Gros 



