Fig. 341.
Fig. 341, 1784-’85.—“The-Oglala-took-the-cedar winter.” During a great feast an Oglala declared he was wakan and could draw a cedar tree out of the ground. He had previously fastened the middle of a stick to the lower end of a cedar with a piece of the elastic ligament from the neck of the buffalo and then planted the tree with the stick crosswise beneath it. He went to this tree, dug away a little earth from around it and pulled it partly out of the ground and let it spring back again, saying “the cedar I drew from the earth has gone home again.” After he had gone some young men dug up the tree and exposed the shallow trick.
Fig. 342.
Fig. 342, 1785-’86.—“The-Cheyennes-killed-Shadow’s-father winter.” The umbrella signifies, shadow; the arrow which touches it, attacked; the three marks under the arrow (not shown in the copy), Cheyenne; the blood-stained arrow in the man’s body, killed. Shadow’s name and the umbrella in the figure intimate that he was the first Dakota to carry an umbrella. The advantages of the umbrella were soon recognized by them, and the first they obtained from the whites were highly prized. It is now considered an indispensable article in a Sioux outfit. They formerly wore a wreath of green leaves or carried green boughs, to shade them from the sun. The marks used for Cheyenne stand for the scars on their arms or stripes on their sleeves, which also gave rise to the gesture-sign for this tribe, see Fig. [495], infra.
Fig. 343.
Fig. 343, 1786-’87.—“Iron-Head-Band-killed-on-warpath winter.” They formerly carried burdens on their backs, hung from a band passed across the forehead. This man had a band of iron which is shown on his head. So said the interpreter, but probably the band was not of the metal iron. The word so translated has a double meaning and is connected with religious ideas of water, spirit, and the color blue.
