Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/513

 Cheyenne Tales. 165

comes angry. The post is already partly eaten through. For this reason one band of Cheyennes never eat beaver, or even touch the skin. If they do touch it, they become sick.

IXa.

White-man 1 was travelling, with nothing to eat. He came to a large lake, on which he saw numbers of birds. At the edge of the pond was a prairie-dog town ; the inhabitants were sitting up, all of them fat. White-man was very hungry, and very anxious to catch some of these animals, but he knew he could not get to them. So he went off into a hollow, and thought out a plan. He got a stick, peeled off the bark, and painted it. He also painted a pretty buffalo horn that he found, and stuck it on the end of the stick. This he pretended was powerful against disease. He went back to the lake, and said : " Great danger and sickness are coming behind me, but whoever comes up to touch this stick will be safe." The birds believed this, and all asked to be allowed to touch the horn. He told them to follow him to an open place. Then he went to the prairie-dog village, and said the same that he said to the ducks, so their leader told all the prairie-dogs to follow him, with their whole families. White-man ordered them to shut their holes tight, on account of the danger. They worked hard and did this. Then they all followed him — prairie-dogs, ducks, geese, and other birds — while he led the way to an open plain, carrying his horn so that all could see it. Then he stuck the pole in the ground. In a cir- cle around it he placed the prairie-dogs, around them the ducks, then the geese, and inside the cranes. Inside of all he put the white-nosed ducks. He told them to shut their eyes, as they would get red eyes if they looked. He would sing powerful songs, and dance among them, but they were not to look or move until he told them to. Then he commenced to sing. With a pole he knocked down and killed the dancers, meanwhile singing : " Your eyes will turn red, your backs will become twisted, your necks will be twisted, if you look." At the end was a white-nosed duck ; as White-man came near him, he was trying to touch his neighbors, but could not. At last he opened his eyes and saw one of his friends being knocked down and others lying dead. He cried out, and the rest of the birds flew away. But since then that duck has had a red eye and crooked back and neck. The man went to the river, built a fire, and made sausages of his meat. Near him were two great willows ; the wind

1 Vihuk or Vihu, White-man, is the Ojibwa Manabozho and the Blackfoot Nap (Old Man, " man -yellowish- white "). Among the Arapaho also he is called White-man. Here he appears only in his so-called " degraded " form : that of the trickster, corresponding to the Omaha Ictinike.

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