“‘Make me a medicine man like Spotted Elk.’
“He looked upon me and said:
“‘My son, you are too young.’
“Nevertheless I insisted, and he promised that, when I became sixteen years of age, he would help me to become like Spotted Elk. This pleased me.
“As I grew older I put away in my memory all the stories my father knew of our people. I listened always when the old men talked. I watched the medicine men as they smoked to the Great Spirits of the world. I crept near, and heard them cry to the Great Spirit overhead and to the Dark One who lives below the earth. I listened all the time, and by listening I grew wise as an old man.
“I knew all the wonderful stories of the coyote and of the rattlesnake. I knew what the eagle said to his mate, and I knew the power of the great bear who sits erect like a man. I was a hunter, but I followed the game to learn its ways. In those days we were buffalo eaters. We did not eat fish, nor fowl, nor rabbits, nor the meat of bear. Our women pounded wild cherries and made cakes of them, and of that we ate sometimes, but always we lived upon buffalo meat, and we were well and strong, not as we are now.
“I learned to make my own bows and also to make moccasins, though that was women’s work, and I did not sew beads or paint porcupine quills. I wanted to know all things—to tan hides, to draw pictures—all things.
“By and by time came when I was to become a medicine man. My father took me to Spotted Elk, the greatest of all medicine men, he that could make birds from lumps of meat and mice from acorns.
“To him my father said: ‘My son wishes to be great medicine man. Because you are old and wise I bring him to you. Help me to give him wisdom.’
“Then they took me to a tepee on a hill far from the camp, and there they sat down with me and sang the old, old songs of our tribe. They took food, and offered it to the Great Spirits who lived in the six directions, beginning at the southeast. Then they smoked, always beginning at the southeast. This they taught me to do, and to chant a prayer to each. Then they closed the tepee, and left me alone.