374 THE ORIGIN OF MEDICINE CEREMONIES OR POWER. 
97. THE BUFFALO GAME MEDICINE.’ 
In the early times a man lived among the people who knew about the 
trees and the herbs. He wandered about with the animals and they 
taught him many strange things. One night while he was sleeping out 
under the open sky some one touched him and he awoke. He looked 
around to see who it was, but did not see anyone. He looked up in the 
heavens and he saw, as if they were drawn there, two sticks lying side by 
side and a ring between them. They were stars and were in the west. 
He looked at them a long time, and wondered what they meant; for peo- 
ple had never seen anything like them before. 
He went to sleep again and a young man appeared to him and told 
him that it was he who had shown him the ring and sticks in heaven, 
and that he wanted him to make two sticks like them and to get the ring 
from the Buffalo cow. ‘‘You must throw the sticks through the ring 
and so try to catch the ring. Play with the sticks in the west part of 
your village, for the home of the buffalo is in the west. Never play in 
the east, for diseases are in the east. From the south comes death. 
From the north come enemies to your camp. Go make a bow from ash 
wood, take two dogwood sticks, shave them down and make arrows; 
sharpen them at one end, then hold them over the fire so that they will 
harden. You must then kill two young buffalo bulls; have the women 
tan them, and then cut them into long strips so that you can wind them 
around the body of the sticks which you shall prepare. Then go to the 
timber, and when you come to an ash tree sing this song: 
Some one said, 
“Sticks standing in the ground, 
Here they are standing, 
Yonder are they standing.”’ 
There coming, coming yonder. 
“Go through the timber until you come to a straight ash covered with 
something like soft feathers. It will be a peculiar stick. Darken the 
enemy’s sight by making a motion as if to cut at the bottom of the tree 
on the north side. Then make a motion on the east side, for you must 
cut the diseases. On the south side make the same motion to cut death. 
Then cut on the west side of the tree. Although you cut it, it shall have 
life. Light your pipe, give a few whiffs to the heavens to remind us, 
1 Told by Yellow-Bird, Chaui. While this story is somewhat similar to several 
others which relate to the ring and javelin, or buffalo game, it belongs to the medi- 
cine group, because the individual in the story was taught how to make the sticks, 
which in this case had their origiri from a constellation in the sky, and how to use 
them in sleight-of-hand performances in the medicine-man’s ceremony. 
