the lodge of the starving family, in the story
entitled Origin of the _I-kun-uh'-kah-tsi._

Ghosts sometimes speak to people. An instance of this is the following,
which occurred to my friend Young Bear Chief, and which he related to
me. He said: "I once went to war, and took my wife with me. I went to
Buffalo Lip Butte, east of the Cypress Mountains; a little creek runs by
it. I took eighteen horses from an Assinaboine camp one night, when it was
very foggy. I found sixteen horses feeding on the hills, and went into the
camp and cut loose two more. Then we went off with the horses. When we
started, it was so foggy that I could not see the stars, and I did not know
which way to run. I kept travelling in what I supposed was the direction
toward home, but I did not know where I was going. After we had gone a long
way, I stopped and got off my horse to fix my belt. My wife did not
dismount, but sat there waiting for me to mount and ride on.

"I spoke to my wife, and said to her, 'We don't know which way to go.' A
voice spoke up right behind me and said: 'It is well; you go ahead. You are
going right.' When I heard the voice, the top of my head seemed to lift up
and felt as if a lot of needles were sticking into it. My wife, who was
right in front of me, was so frightened that she fainted and fell off her
horse, and it was a long time before she came to. When she got so she could
ride, we went on, and when morning came I found that we were going
straight, and were on the west side of the West Butte of the Sweet Grass
Hills. We got home all right. This must have been a ghost."

Now and then among the Blackfeet, we find evidences of a belief that the
soul of a dead person may take up its abode in the body of an animal. An
example of this is seen in the story of E-k[=u]s'-kini, p. 90. Owls are
thought to be the ghosts of medicine men.

The Blackfeet do not consider the Sand Hills a happy hunting ground. There
the dead, who are themselves shadows, live in shadow lodges, hunt shadow
buffalo, go to war against shadow enemies, and in every way lead an
existence which is but a mimicry of this life. In this respect the
Blackfeet are almost alone. I know of scarcely any other American tribe,
certainly none east of the Rocky Mountains, who are wholly without a belief
in a happy future state. The Blackfeet do not especially say that this
future life is an unhappy one, but, from the way in which they speak of it,
it is clear that for