270 THE ORIGIN OF MEDICINE CEREMONIES OR POWER. 
animals are afraid of it. Come in where the animals are and they will see 
you. When you go in you must cry and bemeek. Ask the animals to 
help you and they will do so.”’ The stranger arose and went with the 
messenger into the lodge. All the animals arose and walked around the 
fire. Then all was dark and the man could not see what was going on. 
When he could see he found himself lying on his back at the south 
and inside of the lodge. He arose and began to cry, and as he cried 
he talked. When he stopped crying he was told to stand west of the 
fireplace. He looked on the ground and saw several things that looked 
like pieces of ice. The man came and said: ‘‘These things were taken 
from your stomach by the animals. You will now take them into your 
mouth. As you receive them in your mouth stamp your feet, then they 
will go down into your stomach again. You are now to possess power 
to mesmerize and to throw things into people’s stomachs.” The man 
took one of the things and put it into the stranger’s mouth. He 
dropped one at a time into his mouth and told him to stamp his feet. 
The man did so, and as each was dropped the thing seemed to melt away 
in his mouth, and as he stamped his feet on the ground the thing disap- 
peared and returned to his stomach. When this was done the man at 
the entrance told the stranger that he now had power the same as all of 
the animals had. 
The stranger was then given a seat near the entrance. He looked 
around and saw all kinds of animals sitting around the circle. One of 
the men at the entrance was a scalped man; the other who had talked to 
the stranger gave him an account of his life. He said: ‘‘In my youth 
I knew nothing; my mind was not good and I used to run at random 
through the village. Once in a while I knew what I was doing, but one 
time when I seemed to be out of my head some strange being came to me 
in a snowstorm and led me away, and by some mysterious agency took 
me into the animals’ lodge. The animals cared for me and cured me. 
Before my birth my father killed a black-tail deer, so that when I was 
born I always acted crazy. Now that I am well I always want to stay 
with the animals and wait upon them.’’ The strange man was kept 
in the lodge for several nights and was taught sleight-of-hand perform- 
ances. He was told, among many other things, that when he should 
build the animals’ medicine-lodge he should kill several snipe and cranes 
and take their skins to hang inside the lodge. 
When the animals had taught him all of their powers they told him 
that he must go out and bring in the stone. The man went out and 
brought in the stone and set it upon the west side of the lodge right in front 
of the leading animals who were known as the Big-Medicine-Animals. 
