72 
was obliged to tie a plug of tobacco to the stick and return it by the mes- 
senger; for its return without tobacco was an insult to the society punish- 
able by death through witchcraft (or poison?). 
The medes brought all their families to the assembly ground, for the 
celebration of the Grand Medicine Society meant festivities for the entire 
community, although only members might enter the lodge and behold its 
mysteries. The lodge that they built was a large, rectangular enclosure 
of stakes and boughs without a roof. It had an opening in each short side, 
guarded during the ceremonies by a doorkeeper; the eastern opening was 
the entrance, and the western the exit. A mat in the centre of the enclosure 
marked the seats of the candidate and his preceptor. Along its western 
edge was planted a line of four wooden images or dolls with upstanding 
feathers, and outside of that again four posts painted black, red, and 
green in no definite patterns. Facing the entrance, at the distance of a 
few yards, was a domed sweat-house for the candidate's purification. 
There he took a vapour bath on each of the four evenings preceding his 
initiation. On rare occasions he took all four baths in one day, but only 
if he were dangerously ill, and the medes wished to initiate him as quickly 
as possible in order to expedite his cure. 
On the evening before his initiation the preceptor and some of the 
principal priests visited the candidate in the sweat-house to show him the 
sacred images (at other times always guarded, with the invitation sticks, 
by an official keeper), and to open out before him their medicine-bags. 
Sometimes they performed conjuring tricks, e.g., transformed a stick 
into a snake. Then they conferred about the payment the candidate 
should make to the society, and arranged for one of the members, under 
the supervision of the messenger, to hang all the presents from the poles 
that stretched from side to side across the lodge. To the same priest or 
another they assigned the duty of seeing that nothing was removed dur- 
ing the early hours of the morning. Having completed all these arrange- 
ments they retired to their wigwams and slept. 
The day of initiation dawned. After breakfasting at home with his 
parents the candidate dressed in his finest clothes and withdrew to the 
sweat-house to await his preceptor and the leading priests. The other 
members of the society, wearing beaded dancing-bags suspended from 
beaded bandoliers, entered the medicine lodge to smoke and drum and 
sing until the ceremony opened. A few clouds, perhaps, appeared in the 
sky, and the leaders, marching near the lodge, beat the water-drum and 
chanted a song. If the clouds grew darker they chanted inside the lodge, 
pointing their medicine-bags at the sky; and if rain began to fall in spite 
of all their efforts they postponed the initiation until a day of fine 
weather. Given a clear sky, however, the leaders joined the candidate in 
the sweat-house and offered up smoke from their pipes to the manidos 
of the four cardinal points, to the Great Spirit above, and to Grandmother 
Earth beneath. Then for the last time the preceptor admonished his 
pupil before they made their ceremonial entry into the lodge. 
The candidate took the lead in the procession, carrying in his arms 
a number of small presents to supplement those that were hung up in the 
lodge during the night. His preceptor followed him, and behind the pre- 
ceptor came the other priests. One dropped out near the lodge to guard 
