hese are
not offerings made directly to the stream, but are given to the Under Water
People, who live in it.

Mention has already been made of the buffalo rock, which gives its owner
the power to call the buffalo.

Another sacred object is the medicine rock of the Marias. It is a huge
boulder of reddish sandstone, two-thirds the way up a steep hill on the
north bank of the Marias River, about five miles from Fort
Conrad. Formerly, this rock rested on the top of the bluff, but, as the
soil about it is worn away by the wind and the rain, it is slowly moving
down the hill. The Indians believe it to be alive, and make presents to
it. When I first visited it, the ground about it was strewn with decaying
remnants of offerings that had been made to it in the past. Among these I
noticed, besides fragments of clothing, eagle feathers, a steel finger ring,
brass ear-rings, and a little bottle made of two copper cartridge cases.

Down on Milk River, east of the Sweet Grass Hills, is another medicine
rock. It is shaped something like a man's body, and looks like a person
sitting on top of the bluff. Whenever the Blackfeet pass this rock, they
make presents to it. Sometimes, when they give it an article of clothing,
they put it on the rock, "and then," as one of them once said to me, "when
you look at it, it seems more than ever like a person." Down in the big
bend of the Milk River, opposite the eastern end of the Little Rocky
Mountains, lying on the prairie, is a great gray boulder, which is shaped
like a buffalo bull lying down. This is greatly reverenced by all Plains
Indians, Blackfeet included, and they make presents to it. Many other
examples of similar character might be given.

The Blackfeet make daily prayers to the Sun and to Old Man, and nothing of
importance is undertaken without asking for divine assistance. They are
firm believers in dreams. These, they say, are sent by the Sun to enable us
to look ahead, to tell what is going to happen. A dream, especially if it
is a strong one,--that is, if the dream is very clear and vivid,--is almost
always obeyed. As dreams start them on the war path, so, if a dream
threatening bad luck comes to a member of a war party, even if in the
enemy's country and just about to make an attack on a camp, the party is
likely to turn about and go home without making any hostile
demonstrations. The animal or object which appears to the boy, or man, who
is trying to dream for power, is, as h