In the evening, Small Ankle came and cut him loose. “You have suffered enough, my son,” he said; “I think the gods will now pity you and give you a dream!”
He took my uncle home and gave him something to eat and drink; then he laid the boy tenderly upon a pile of buffalo skins, before his own medicines.
For a long time, my uncle could not sleep for the pain from his wounds. A little before daylight, he fell into a troubled dream. He heard a man outside, walking around the earth lodge. The man was singing a mystery song; now and then he paused and cried, “You have done well, Strong Bull!”
Small Ankle was very happy when my uncle awoke and told him his dream. He knew that one of the gods had now come to his son to protect him and help him; and he called the boy by his new name, Strong Bull, that the god had given him.
Buffalo Skulls.
Other men had different dreams. My grandfather once told me of a man who had a vision of four buffalo skulls that became alive.
Many years ago when our villages were on Knife River a man named Bush went out to find his god. He sought a vision from the buffalo spirits; and he thought to make himself suffer so that the spirits might pity him. He tied four buffalo skulls in a train, one behind another, and as Bush walked he dragged the train of skulls behind him.
He made his way painfully up the Missouri, mourning and crying to the gods. The banks of the Missouri are much cut up by ravines, and Bush suffered greatly as he dragged the heavy skulls over this rough country.
Fifty miles north of the villages, he came to the Little Missouri, a shallow stream, but subject to sudden freshets; he found the river flooded, and rising.