THE FOSSIL GIANT MEDICINE-LODGE. 295 
around the thigh were several stars. Around the joint was carved the 
sun, and at another place the moon was carved. The man took the 
thigh bone home with him and placed it in a buffalo robe and hung it up 
in his tipi. 
Once in a while the keeper of the thigh bone had a dream of this man, 
and it taught him how to hold the ceremony and where to place the bone. 
Sometimes when this man was asleep he would hear singing. Then 
somebody would say: ‘‘Listen carefully to the song which you hear, for 
they are your songs. You must learn them and sing them in your cere- 
monies.’’ The man would listen, and after a while he got so that he could 
sing the songs himself. Several years afterwards he was told by the 
person he saw in the dream to have a ceremony. The man sat down in 
his lodge and invited several other medicine-men to sit down with him. 
He placed a young buffalo robe in front of the altar, and placed some 
‘calico upon the robe. He put the thigh bone upon the calico. When 
the other men entered, he seated them and began to sing about the 
thigh bone. Every time he mentioned the thigh bone in the song he spoke 
of it as a stone. The people began to call these people the Medicine- 
Stone-People. 
When I approached the altar in one of the ceremonies to pray to it, 
I saw the pictures upon the thigh. I also found out that instead of a 
stone it was a bone which we had before us. The man who was the keeper 
of the thigh bone became a very great man. He never rode on horse- 
back when upon the war-path, for he had the strength of a giant. He 
killed a buffalo with one shot from his bow and arrow and carried the 
meat upon his back. This man became a great medicine-man. In all 
his doctoring, instead of giving herbs and roots to the sick, he took the 
dust from the bone, gave it to the people, and it cured them. Many years 
ago the people were visited by a disease known as smallpox. It was 
very bad. All those people who went and touched the thigh bone did 
not get sick. All those who took sick and drank of tea made from the 
thigh bone became well. The people thought that this must be a won- 
derful stone, and they never knew what it was until some of the men 
gave it presents in order to come close to the owner and found out that 
it was a thigh bone instead of a stone. These medicine-men who be- 
longed to this society have all died. There were no descendants, and 
the whole ceremony and everything connected with it are lost. 
