OCR Text |
Show 50 IV. ASDZ^ NAADLEEHI BIDINE'E replied. "He will be sung over at the ceremony. That way he will learn the songs and paintings of the place where the Wind, Hail, Water, and Female and Mountain Shooting Ways meet." White Thunder was chosen to sing over Elder Brother. After the ceremony, the Yei'ii transported Elder Brother back to Mount Taylor. They told him to go straight home from there. After returning home, Elder Brother wandered for a time with his family. One morning his sister called him to come to the top of a small hill. From there they could see many Buffalo. He set out to hunt them, but he couldn't kill any. Each time he got close enough for an ambush, he couldn't shoot. One night, as he slept, two women came to his camp. They took off their buffalo robes, sat down beside him, and spent the night with him. In the morning, when he awoke, he was weak and in pain. The women gathered medicine plants from places where Buffalo had lain. From this they prepared a meal. Then they clothed him in a buffalo-hide robe. This transformed him into a Buffalo, and he traveled off with them. They told him that the heads of the Buffalo People, Abalone Woman (who was really a man), Buffalo Woman, Horned Chief, and Buffalo Calf, had sent for him. When they reached the camp of the Buffalo People at Wide River, Abalone Woman began to go mad. It seems that one of the two women who had spent the night with Elder Brother was Abalone Woman's wife. The chief showed his fury by charging and killing all but the chief Buffalos, but still he had not satisfied his rage. He charged at Elder Brother, but the young man had surrounded himself with four sacred mountains of earth, and the Buffalo Chief wasted all his energy trying to destroy these. The fourth time the Buffalo Chief charged, Elder Brother slew him. The father of the chief approached Elder Brother and begged him for the Buffalo Chiefs life. Elder Brother showed him how to remove the arrows and restore the Buffalo to life. In the distance, however, circling buzzards showed that one Buffalo still lay dead. When Elder Brother reached the carcass, he withdrew the arrows and sang this song: Getting up, getting up is to be, halagai . . . Abalone Woman, what has happened to your young one?... What he replaces his nerves, when he causes you to move, when he handles you, when he seats you, when he |