The snake would crawl up the man’s body, coil about his neck and thrust his head forward over the man’s crown and forehead; or he would coil about the man’s head like the head cloth a hunter used to wear, with his head thrust forward as I have said.
Bearing the snake thus on his head, Snake-head-ornament would enter some man’s lodge and sit down to eat. The snake however never ate with him, for his food was not the same as the man’s; the bull snake’s food was hide scrapings which the women of the lodge fed to him.
When Snake-head-ornament came home again he would say to the bull snake, “Father, get off.”
The snake would creep down from the man’s head, but before he entered his hole he would roll himself about on the earth lodge floor. Snake-head-ornament would say to him, “What are you doing? Do you think I am bad smelling, and do you want to wash off the smell from your body? It is you who are bad smelling; yet I do not despise _you_!”
The snake, hearing this, would creep into his hole as if ashamed.
Snake-head-ornament made up a war party and led it against enemies on the Yellowstone River. The party not only failed to kill any of the enemy, but lost three of their own men. This was a kind of disgrace to Snake-head-ornament; for as leader of the war party he was responsible for it. He thought his gods had deserted him; and when he came home he went about crying and mourning and calling upon his gods to give him another vision. He was a brave man and had many honor marks; and his ill success made his heart sore.
In old times, when one mourned, either man or woman, he cut off his hair, painted his body with white clay and went without moccasins; he also cut himself with some sharp instrument.
In those days also, when a man went out to seek his god, he went away from the village, alone, into the hills; and thus it happened that Snake-head-ornament, on his way to the hills, went mourning and crying past a garden where sat a woman, his clan cousin, on her watchers’ stage. Seeing him, she began to sing a song to tease him:
He said, “I am a young bird!” If a young bird, he should be in a nest; But he comes around here looking gray, And wanders aimlessly everywhere outside the village! He said, “I am a young snake!” If a young snake, he should stay in the hills among the red buttes; But he comes around here looking gray and crying, And wanders aimlessly everywhere!