380 THE ORIGIN OF MEDICINE CEREMONIES OR POWER. 
100. THE MAN WHO MARRIED A DEER-* 
A long time ago when the Skidi lived near what is now Fremont, 
Nebraska, one young man went out upon a hunt. He went over the 
hills and finally came to a place that is called Pahuk, where he stopped 
to rest. In the afternoon he went into a swampy place in a dogwood 
thicket, and there sat down toeat. While he was sitting there he thought 
he heard somebody coming. He looked in the direction from which he 
had come and there he saw a woman coming. He recognized the woman 
as one whom he liked, and when she came near he went up to her and took 
her into the thicket. The man gave the woman something to eat, and 
after they had eaten the woman jumped up and hugged the man. 
The man finally lay with her. When they arose, the woman became a 
black-tail Deer and ran off. The man knew at once that he had been 
deceived by the Deer. He was angry at himself, and he determined 
that he would kill the Deer. He shot at it several times, but each time 
as he shot the Deer it would shake itself and the bullets would drop to 
the ground. The man then tried to go back to his home, but the Deer 
followed him until he finally gave up trying to go. He followed the Deer 
to a swampy place until at last they came to a big thicket. Here the 
- Deer stopped and turned into a woman and told the man that he would 
have to live with her. The man stayed with the woman and the woman 
finally transformed him into a Deer. 
They wandered over the country for several years until one day the 
woman gave birth to two young fawns. Always, in the meantime, the 
woman had been teaching the man the wonderful ways of the black-tail 
Deer. The man was able to transform himself into a Deer at any time, 
and then change to aman. After an absence from home of about three 
years, the woman asked him if he would like to return to his people. 
The man said that he would. Then the woman told him that she was 
going to take him back to his people; so she led the way and the man and 
the fawns followed. When they approached the village, the woman 
told the man that the people were having their yearly medicine-men’s 
ceremony; that he must go straight to the medicine-lodge and let the 
people know that he had returned; that she could not enter the village 
for a time, but that when the medicine-men had consented to let him 
enter their lodge he must return to her and the fawns. The man went 
1Told by Buffalo, Skidi. Like a similar story, it teaches the people, especially 
the young men, to be careful of strange women they may encounter while upon the 
prairie. Such women, according to the tale, are most likely black-tailed deer 
which have transformed themselves into women, and the influence of these deer 
upon men who cohabit with them is so great that they often become crazed and die. 
