Plains Indian Studies - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

54 SMITHSONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO ANTHROPOLOGY
ering his body with white clay and putting a
white downy eagle feather in his hair, the man
could travel like a spirit, running as fast as the
wind; and by breaking pieces of wild sage and
carrying them with him, the pieces would turn
into arrows during battle.
Later, when the man returned home, the doctors
were meeting in the Doctors' Lodge, performing
the sleight-of-hand taught them by various
animals. The warrior who had been blessed by
the scalped man entered and performed his newly
learned marvels. His feats surprised the doctors
and spectators, who now thought he was endowed
with power. While the Doctors' Lodge ceremony
was still in progress, the enemy, among whom
was an invincible warrior, attacked the Pawnee
village. When it appeared that the Pawnees
would be overcome, the man with the scalped
man's medicine left the lodge and used his powers:
as fast as the wind, he charged into the enemy
and killed many warriors, including the seemingly
invincible one. Subsequently, he became a
noted doctor and warrior who lived for a long
time. Finally, though, when something told him
that his benefactor, the scalped man, had died,
he himself no longer wished to live and so committed
suicide.
Another Pawnee story, which is recorded in
truncated form (Dorsey, 1904b:210-212), accounts
for certain features of the Buffalo-Doctors'
Lodge: why it contained a buffalo-skull altar;
why its doctors daubed their heads with white
clay, so that their hair appeared as if they had
been scalped; and why they offered smoke to a
being who dwelt in the south, a being seen by the
man who maintained the lodge.
One day this man was going along the Republican
River and saw a buffalo that suddenly
turned into a man. The appearance of the buffalo
and its transformation occurred over several days,
and the man finally decided to follow it. The
buffalo led him to a cave, in which there was a
buffalo-skull altar. While the man prayed to the
skull, a scalped man came up to him. The man
told him that he had belonged to the buffalo, a
statement which derives from the Pawnee belief
that every child (through the medium of one of
its parents), while still in the mother's womb, is
brought under the power of an animal. Later in
his life, the doctors are able to identify which
animal is his guardian by his actions when he is
ill. In this story, the scalped man is referring to
the buffalo as having been his guardian while he
was alive, and after being scalped he had stayed
with a buffalo, which had given him certain
powers and this skull for an altar. Now, the
scalped man said he would teach this man his
secrets: how to doctor and how to have success in
war. After learning these things, the man returned
home and sponsored a Buffalo-Doctors' Lodge
dance, during the performance of which he demonstrated
great power. The participants, following
his lead, offered smoke to the buffalo skull on
the altar and to the scalped man who dwelt in
the south. Several days after the dance, the participants
formed into four war parties, each of
which went in a different direction. Soon they all
returned with numerous horses, and consequently
attributed their successes to the power given by
the scalped man.
A final illustration of this set of stories is an
Arikara version of a similar Pawnee tale (Weltfish,
1937:238-240). In this story a lost hunter
was accosted by seven tshunuxu', each of whom
was deformed in a different way. One had no ear,
another no nose, another no leg, etc., and each
was named according to his missing body part.
When they went off, the hunter followed them to
their cave, where they were expecting him. The
leader told him that they had been killed in a
battle, but Night had revived and blessed them
with certain powers. He told the hunter that
nothing was difficult for them except obtaining
tobacco, which both the spirits and gods like to
smoke. Since they were unable to obtain it themselves,
they always asked humans for it as a gift
offering. If the hunter would provide them with
tobacco, they would teach him their powers: to
use certain medicines to heal and to know the
ways of the warpath and hunting. The scalped
men then taught him their mysteries and medicine
songs. Later, after forbidding him to reveal