this day trails

yaethl eh-kwe ta-pan ha te-u-su a-k'ia, o-ne yaethl kwai-k'ia-na.
over ahead taking I prayer with trails over go out shall.

FREE TRANSLATION.

Ah! Thanks, my father (or, my mother), this day I shall follow (thee)
forth over the trails. Prayerfully over the trails I shall go out.

Should a party be going to the hunt together, all repair to the House of
the Deer Medicine, repeating, one by one, the above prayers and
ceremonial as the fetiches are drawn.

The fetich is then placed in a little crescent-shaped bag of buckskin
which the hunter wears suspended over the left breast (or heart) by a
buckskin thong, which is tied above the right shoulder. With it he
returns home, where he hangs it up in his room and awaits a favorable
rain or snow storm, meanwhile, if but a few days elapse, retaining the
fetich in his own house. If a hunter be not a member of the orders above
mentioned, while he must ask a member to secure a fetich for him, in the
manner described, still he is quite as privileged to use it as is the
member himself, although his chances for success are not supposed to be
so good as those of the proper owner.

During his journey out the hunter picks from the heart of the _yucca_,
or Spanish bayonet, a few thin leaves, and, on reaching the point where
an animal which he wishes to capture has rested, or whence it has newly
taken flight, he deposits, together with sacrifices hereinafter to be
mentioned, a spider knot (ho-tsa-na mu kwi-ton-ne), made of four strands
of these yucca leaves. This knot must be tied like the ordinary
cat-knot, but invariably from right to left, so that the ends of the
four strands shall spread out from the center as the legs of a spider
from its body. The knot is further characterized by being tied quite
awkwardly, as if by a mere child. It is deposited on the spot over which
the heart of the animal is supposed to have rested or passed. Then a
forked twig of cedar is cut and stuck very obliquely into the ground, so
that the prongs stand in a direction opposite to that of the course
taken by the animal, and immediately in front, as it were, of the fore
part of its heart, which is represented as entangled in the knot.

This process, in conjunction with the roar of the animal, which the
fetich represents, and which is imitated by the hunter on the conclusion
of these various ceremonials, is supposed to limit the power of flight
of the animal soug