TENT OF PREPARATION.
§ 156. After this there is set up within the camping circle a good tent known as the tent of preparation.[155] When the managers wish to set up the tent of preparation, they borrow tent skins here and there. Part of these tent skins they use for covering the smoke hole, and part were used as curtains, for when they decorate the candidates they use the curtains for shutting them in from the gaze of the people and when they finish painting them they throw down the curtains.
In the back part of this tent of preparation are placed the buffalo skulls, one for each candidate. A new knife which has never been used is exposed to smoke. A new ax, too, is reddened and smoked.
§ 157. Wild sage (Artemisia) is used in various ways prior to and during the sun dance. Some of it they spread on the ground to serve as couches, and with some they wipe the tears from their faces. They fumigate with the plant known as “ćaŋ śilśilya,” or else they use “walipe waśtema,” sweet-smelling leaves. Day after day they fumigate themselves with “waćaŋġa,” a sweet-smelling grass. They hold every object which they use over the smoke of one of these grasses. They wear a kind of medicine on their necks, and that keeps them from being hungry or thirsty, for occasionally they chew a small quantity of it. Or if they tie some of this medicine to their feet they do not get weary so soon.[156]
§ 158. When the tent of preparation is erected, there are provided for it new tent pins, new sticks for fastening the tent skins together above the entrance, and new poles for pushing out the flaps beside the smoke hole. These objects and all others, which had to be used, are brought into the tent of preparation and fumigated over a fire into which the medicine has been dropped. By this time another day has been spent. Now all the candidates assemble in the tent of preparation, each one wearing a buffalo robe with the hair outside. One who acts as leader sits in the place of honor at the back part of the tent, and the others sit on either side of him around the fireplace. They smoke their pipes. When night comes they select one of the songs of the sun dance, in order to rehearse it. Certain men have been chosen as singers of the dancing songs, and, when one set of them rest, there are others to take their places. The drummers beat the drum rapidly, but softly (as the Teton call it, kpaŋkpaŋyela, the act of several drummers hitting in quick succession).
Bureau of Ethnology. | Eleventh Annual Report. Plate XLV |
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GAST LITH. CO. | |
CAMPING CIRCLE AT THE TIME OF THE SUN-DANCE. | |
Three times do they beat the drums in that manner, and then they beat it rapidly, as at the beginning of the sun dance. At this juncture, as many as have flutes—made of the bones of eagles’ wings, ornamented with porcupine quills, and hung around their necks, with cords similarly ornamented, with some eagle down at the tip ends of the flutes—blow them often and forcibly as they dance. While the drum is beaten three times in succession (kpaŋkpaŋyela, as has been described), all the candidates cry aloud (ćeya), but when it is beaten the fourth time, they cry or wail no longer, but dance and blow their flutes or whistles.
FIG. 190.—Eaglewing flute. (From original, loaned by Capt. J. G. Bourke, U. S. A.)
§ 159. When the candidates take their seats in the tent of preparation, they select a man to fill the pipe with tobacco. When they wish to smoke, this man passes along the line of candidates. He holds the pipe with the mouthpiece toward each man, who smokes without grasping the pipe stem.[157]