Then she put her arms around him, and hugged him, and said to him, “Oh, my son, my son, you have come back to me.” She cried, she was so glad.
Then they talked together. He gave her a piece of meat—a piece of fresh buffalo meat—though they had had no fresh meat in the village for six months. He said to his mother, “I am really alive, though I was killed. The Nahu´rac (animals) took pity on me, and have made me alive again. And now I am going off; but do not cry about me any more.” Then he went away.
The next morning, when his mother awoke, she found by her side the piece of fresh meat, and she began to cook it on the coals. The people wondered where she got the fresh meat, and asked her about it, but she would not tell them where she got it, for her son had told her to say nothing. They asked her again where she got it, and she told them she found it in her bed.
After a long time her son came again in the night, and went into the lodge, and spoke to his mother, saying, “Mother, I am here again.” She awoke, and rejoiced that he had come back. He said to her, “My mother, I know that you are poor. You are blind on account of me, because you have cried so much. Now, my mother, there is standing by the side of your daughter’s bed, water in a wooden bowl. After I have left you to-night, go over there, and put your face down deep into the water, and open your eyes in the water, and then you will see.” Before he left her he gave her some ka´wis.[8]
[8] Chopped buffalo meat tied up in the small intestine.
After he had gone, she did as he had told her. She got up, and feeling her way along with her hands, crept into the place where her daughter slept. There she felt the wooden bowl with water in it, and she put her face deep down into the water, and opened her eyes in it, and when she took her face out of the water, and opened her eyes again, she could see. Then she was glad. Everybody wondered how the mother’s eyes had been cured, but she told no one, except only her oldest son.
After a long time Pa-hu-ka´-tawa came down again to see his mother. He said to her, “Mother, I am going up to see my oldest brother.” He went to see his brother in the night. His brother was expecting him, for his mother had warned him. Pa-hu-ka´-tawa said, “Now, my brother, I think you have heard that I come all the time to see our mother. I wish that you would put up your lodge outside the camp, so that I can come and see you often. I want to talk to you, and tell you my thoughts and all my troubles. I am a spirit.” His brother answered him that he would do as he had asked, and the first night after the lodge had been set up outside the camp, Pa-hu-ka´-tawa came down, and said to his brother, “To-morrow night I want you to select the two bravest men in the tribe, and let them go about through the camp, and call all the chiefs and all the bravest warriors in the tribe, and let them gather at your home. Do not build any fire in the lodge. Let it all be dark, for I am coming down in the night to see them.”
When the next night came, the chiefs and the braves gathered at the lodge just about dark. They made no fire, but sat there waiting for Pa-hu-ka´-tawa to come down. After a while he came down to the lodge, and came in where they were sitting. When they were all silent, he came in, and every step he made it seemed that sparks of fire were flying out from him. He went and stood before his brother, and said to him, “I am in everything; in the grass, the water, the trees. I am a part of all these things. I know every thought of yours, and if you only whispered, I would hear it. I know everything, and about everything, even about the ocean which is so far off, and where the water is salt.
“There are two dances that I like, in which there are songs sung about me.” Then he sang these songs and told them how to dance these dances.[9] He said, “Dance these dances and sing about me, calling me by name.”
[9] These dances afterward were practiced in two of the secret societies.