THE WONDERFUL BOY WHO KILLED HIS FATHER. 307 
night and at once inquired for his son and was told that the boy had not 
comehome. A crier was sent through the camp to ask if anyone had seen 
the boy. No one had seen him. Some people said: ‘‘ We saw him follow 
his father.’’ A search was made, but the boy was not found. 
The man mourned for his son and pretended that he had met death 
by being thrown from his pony. Some men went and hunted over the 
ground where they had surrounded the buffalo. They did not find the 
boy and so they all gave him up for dead. 
On the night of their return to their permanent village the boy returned 
to his mother. He woke her up and told her to keep still and give no 
alarm; that he would stay with other people for a few days and then send 
for her. The mother felt of her boy and she was sure he was alive. The 
boy went to his uncle’s lodge and there he stayed. In the morning his 
uncle saw him and was glad. It was noised through the village that the 
-boy had returned. His father heard of it and sent for him, but the boy 
would not go to him. Again his father sent for him and offered him all 
his medicine bundles, but still the boy would not go to him. The father 
tried to get his wife to help him get his boy back, but the woman would 
not do anything, for she now suspected that her husband had killed their 
own child. 
The boy sent for his mother. His mother went, and the boy said, 
‘‘Mother, do you want me to tell you where I have been?’’ She said, 
“Yes, tell me all about it.’’ The boy said, ‘‘Mother, father and I ran 
after a buffalo cow, and I caught up with him as he killed it. After we 
had begun to skin it my father went up on the hill to look around for the 
enemy. The next thing I knew an arrow had gone through my body. 
I looked around, and there was my father. I fell over and died. Later 
I found myself in the animals’ lodge at Swimming-Mound, for our swans 
had taken me there. The animals took pity upon me and brought me 
tolife. Here are the scars upon my body where the arrow went through. 
The animals kept the arrow. They told me to come home. I want to 
kill my father.’’ The woman said, ‘‘ Kill him, for he did wrong.”’ 
The boy took from his bundle a bone from the sunfish, placed it in the 
palm of his left hand and blew his breath upon it, and the bone was gone. 
The boy said: ‘‘ Mother, father is struggling, for I sent that bone straight 
to his heart. Go now, mother, for he is dead. I will come home when 
he is buried.”” The man died, and everybody said the boy was right. 
The boy grew up and was a great medicine-man. He told of the animals’ 
lodge at Swimming-Mound. Men used to go there and cry, but they 
were never received by the animals. 
