THE MEDICINE-CHILD AND THE BEAVER MEDICINE. 253 
When the ceremonies were over, the people began to get ready to go 
hunting again, for it was in the winter time. They went hunting that 
winter and killed many buffalo, and in the spring they returned to their 
village to put in their corn; then they went hunting again. While they 
were hunting, it was rumored that the young medicine-man would have 
his medicine-man’s dance again. They killed many buffalo and dried 
meat for that purpose. Upon their return the young medicine-man 
called the men to his medicine-lodge again. For three days they had 
sleight-of-hand performances in the earth-lodge. On the third night the 
medicine-men were told that the next day they were to make preparation 
to go down to a certain pond that was close to the village; that the young 
medicine-man had given instructions that all the medicine-men should 
make their lodges around the pond; that they were to make a kind of 
beaver lodge in the center of the pond; that the medicine-men would go 
_down there on the fifth day and do their sleight-of-hand at the pond, so 
that the people would see them openly. The medicine-men went to the 
pond on the fourth night, and there they cut the willows, cottonwood, box 
elder, and elm, and made lodges around the pond, in the water. After 
that was done, the people made a great beaver lodge in the center of the 
pond. Just about daylight the young medicine-man took a cottonwood 
tree that they had brought from the timber and swam to the beaver 
lodge, and there he placed the tree in the center of the lodge. In the 
early morning the people heard yelling and shouting at the pond. They 
went down there, and they found the medicine-men hard at work. Then 
they commenced to exercise their magic powers and to perform sleight- 
of-hand tricks. Some of them took sharpened willow sticks, with the 
leaves at one end, and stuck the willows through the cheek of another 
man. Others took pieces from the cottonwood tree and swallowed them, 
and then they would pull them up again. At last, in the afternoon, the 
young medicine-man stood in the west with a dead loon, and he set the 
loon free in the west, and the loon flew around the pond and back to 
the man. The young medicine-man said: ‘‘Now the loon has gone 
around the pond, and all the medicine-men will now leave the pond. 
First bury your limbs and the things that we have been playing with in 
the water. We will now go to our lodge and eat; then we have done 
with our ceremony.’’ The medicine-men all went back to the lodge, ate, 
and were dismissed by the young medicine-man. 
| Years afterward this pond was visited by some men who gave pres- 
ents of robes, tobacco, beads, and feathers. They all saw that in the cen- 
ter of the pond where the young man had planted a tree there was an 
island. The young medicine-man lived to be an old man, and in his old 
