THE BEAR MEDICINE AND CEREMONY. 349 
you doctor, put the paint upon your person; put the feather upon your 
head. We want you to make a tipi and have it painted. Tell your 
husband to get many tanned buffalo hides, sew them together, and make 
a tipi. At the bottom of the tipi paint a yellow circle, on the middle of 
the tipi paint a black band, and above this paint red. On the west side 
put a picture of a cedar tree resting upon the black ground. The cedar 
tree will be the tree that you see on the side of my den. On each side 
of the tree in the center will be owls. They are two owls who are 
friendly to us, who come and guard our entrance. Take these two 
young Bears to your home. If you want to kill them when you get home, 
do so and make casks of their skins so that your children can crawl into 
them. The Bears will come back to us after they are killed.’’ 
The woman took the two young Bears and started to her home. 
The least one was very gentle; the other one was somewhat wild and 
did not like the woman. On the third night the wild Bear strayed off 
and never came back to the woman. The next morning the woman got 
up and took the little Bear in her arms, and when she became tired she 
put him down on the ground and he followed her. At last they came 
to the village. The Bear did not want to go into the village, for he was 
not used to the odor of people. The woman picked him up and carried 
him on her back into the village. It was noised around through the 
camp that the woman had come back and that she had a young Bear. 
People did not pay any attention to the story. In the night the woman 
had a dream. She saw the female Bear, who said to her, “‘Have the 
little Bear killed; do not be afraid; he will come back to me.”’ 
The next day the woman told one of her brothers to kill the little 
Bear, and he did so. The woman tanned the skin, then took the yellow 
paint and painted it on the inside. She then put the yellow-painted 
feather on the head of the bear skin. The bear skin was hung up on a 
pole outside of the lodge, so that the sun could cast its rays upon the 
skin. The skin was to hold the spirit of the Bears, so that the spirit 
would be present with the woman. Every time the woman was touched 
she made a grunting noise like that of a Bear. Every morning just as 
the sun came up in the east she was always sitting there with the yellow 
downy feather on her hair, painting with the yellow paint. She also had 
the bear hide. As the sun came up she would rise and go into the lodge, 
put her things in a bundle and hang them up. Her husband came home. 
- She did not tell him where she had been, nor did she tell him about the 
Bear. The man noticed that the woman made grunting sounds in the 
night and thought that she must have been with the Bears. The people 
were careful how they talked to her, for they knew that she acted like 
