316 THE ORIGIN OF MEDICINE CEREMONIES OR POWER. 
The bird turned back intoaman. Then the man told the boy that he was 
going to tell him something wonderful; that he must keep the downy 
feather, for as long as he kept it his spirit would be with him. The boy 
awoke and he lay awake for a long time, thinking of what he had dreamed. 
In the morning he went out and there upon the lodge was his stick with 
the scalp and feather. After a time the boy threw away the scalp, but 
the feather he kept, for he knew that it was not that of an eagle but of a 
crane. As he grew up he carried the feather with him. 
One time while on a buffalo hunt, the boy hung the feather near his 
tipi. He dreamed again of seeing the manand hesaid: ‘‘My son, let us 
go through thick timber near here; I want to talk to you. Take me 
to the timber. Place the feather upon some limb and go on through the 
timber.’’ The boy awoke, and did not wait to eat, but went out of the 
tipi, took down the feather, and went intothe timber. He left the feather 
as he was told to do in his dream. He went on into the timber, and as 
he came to a pond hesaw a man coming through the reeds and brush, who 
every once in a while turned into a crane, then back into a man. The 
boy said, ‘‘This is wonderful! I wonder what it is.’’ He stopped and 
looked and saw that it was the man he had seen in his dream. 
This mysterious being came close to the boy and said, ‘‘My son, we 
will now go into the timber.’’ They went into the timber to a place that 
seemed to have been cleared for a purpose. At the west was the altar. 
There stood a large bird, with downy feathers on the top of its head. The 
bird was dead. In the east was an unknown animal. Another bird was 
in the south, known as,Bird-That-Never-Moves. The boy was seated at 
the west behind the bird. The man then began to teach the boy a cere- 
mony, and then he taught him some sleight-of-hand tricks. For several 
days they sat together, and the mysterious man told the boy that the 
people had gone on; that they had given him up as dead. Then he told 
him to go on home. 
The boy started for home and carried with him the things that were 
given him by the mysterious man. The boy did not seem to get tired, 
but ran faster every day. One night he saw the camp, and so he went 
on, walking very slowly. He heard a man crying upon a high hill, and 
went to the hill and saw that the man was his father. He slowed his 
steps until he was close, and then he said, ‘‘ Father, stop crying; 1 am 
here.’’ His father looked and saw his son standing before him. He 
tried to put his arms around the boy, but the boy told his father not to 
touch him for a while. They went on down to the camp, and there close 
to the village was his mother, crying. The father told the boy to wait | 
while he went and told his wife that her son had come back. The man 
