572 
ANTHROPOLOGY: A. C. FLETCHER 
What time I will, then suddenly, 
A man lies dead, a gruesome thing; 
What time I will, then only then, 
Reddened and stark, a man lies dead; 
What time I will, then only then, 
A man lies dead, a gruesome thing. 
The word meaning Mark like a shadow' used in the preceding song 
to indicate the lock of hair cut from the boy's head as a symbol of his 
life and offered to Wakonda, is in this song applied to the man, who 
'like a shadow dark' 'shall lie' when his life has been taken by the god. 
The use of the word bears out the meaning of the act that accom- 
panied the singing of the previous song, that, by giving the lock of hair, 
the life of the giver was placed in the keeping of the Thunder as repre- 
senting Wakonda. This song shows that the god intends to do as he 
wills with the life that has been offered him. There are other cere- 
monial songs which iterate the belief that a man dies only when 
Wakonda so decrees. 
These two rites which connected the life of the child with that of the 
tribe also initiated the indirect religious teaching as given to Indian 
children. Of course the little ones who passed through these rites were 
too young to understand their meaning but the vague memory of the 
dramatic acts was augmented as year by year the ceremonies were 
repeated. The cover of the sacred tent where these rites took place 
was alw^ays turned up from the ground, thus exposing the frame work 
of poles, through which all that took place within the tent was easily 
seen and the songs heard by the crowd of old and young people that 
gathered to witness the ceremonies. 
In a like indirect manner the children acquired familiarity with the 
composite character of the tribal organization, which was primarily 
religious in character and to which the poHtical system was subsidiary. 
Mention was made in the previous article, already referred to, of the 
custom of the father cutting his son's hair in an established manner, 
one that was meant to typify the sacred symbol of his village (gens). 
This custom of so cutting a boy's hair was kept up from the time the 
child passed through the rites that made him a member of the tribe, 
until the period of his second dentition. As the children played together, 
because of the queerly cropped head of their companions, they came to 
know to which village (gens) each playmate belonged. They also 
became accustomed to the use of symbols and to know what the symbolic 
cut of a boy's hair represented, whether it indicated an animal, a bird, 
