§ 137. Eight miles from Fort Meade, S. Dakota, is Mato tipi, Grizzly bear Lodge, known to the white people as Bear Butte. It can be seen from a distance of a hundred miles. Of this landmark Bushotter writes thus:
“The Teton used to camp at a flat-topped mountain, and pray to it. This mountain had many large rocks on it, and a pine forest at the summit. The children prayed to the rocks as if to their guardian spirits, and then placed some of the smaller ones between the branches of the pine trees. I was caused to put a stone up a tree. Some trees had as many as seven stones apiece. No child repeated the ceremony of putting a stone up in the tree; but on subsequent visits to the Butte he or she wailed for the dead, of whom the stones were tokens.” (See § 304.)
THE SUN AND MOON.
§ 138. The sun as well as the moon is called “wi” by the Dakota and Assiniboin tribes. In order to distinguish between the two bodies, the former is called aŋpetu wi, day moon, and the latter, haŋhepi wi or haŋyetu wi, night moon. The corresponding term in Ȼegiha is miⁿ, which is applied to both sun and moon, though the latter is sometimes called niaⁿba. “The moon is worshiped rather as the representative of the sun, than separately. Thus, in the sun dance, which is held in the full of the moon, the dancers at night fix their eyes on her.”[146]
§ 139. According to Smet[147]—
The sun is worshiped by the greater number of the Indian tribes as the author of light and heat. The Assiniboins consider it likewise to be the favorite residence of the Master of Life. They evidence a great respect and veneration for the sun, but rarely address it. On great occasions, they offer it their prayers, but only in a low tone. Whenever they light the calumet, they offer the sun the first whiffs of its smoke.
This last must refer to what Smet describes on p. 136 as the great “festival lasting several days,” during which the “high priest” offers the calumet to [“the Great Spirit], to the sun, to each of the four cardinal points, to the water, and to the land, with words analogous to the benefits which they obtain from each.
§ 140. Bushotter, in his Teton text, says:
They prayed to the sun, and they thought that with his yellow eye he saw all things, and that when he desired he went under the ground.