t?"
demanded Naye{~COMBINING BREVE~}nayezgani in anger. "You must give her medicine to make her
comely again." So the Bear sang songs and made medicine until the girl was
herself again. Then came the Snake with the girl he had stolen. She had
become thin, like her master. "What have you done to make this girl so
thin?" cried Naye{~COMBINING BREVE~}nayezgani. "You must give her medicine to make her well
again." The Snake then sang his songs and made medicine until the girl
became again robust and beautiful.

As already mentioned, the performance of this ceremony extends through a
period of four days and four nights. The day preceding is spent in
preparation: the head of the family of the sick person makes ready for a
feast, and helpers build a corral of pinon and spruce branches. This
corral is circular, about forty yards in diameter and six feet high, with
an opening at the east. To the west, close to the fence, is the medicine
_kozhan_. The latter part of each morning of the four days is spent by the
medicine-man and his assistants in the _kozhan_, where a dry-painting of
blue, black, yellow, and red earths is made in the shape of a snake lying
in a circle with a space between the head and the tail. The circle is
about six feet in diameter, and within it are represented numerous
animals: the bear, turkey, deer, eagle, buffalo, elk, badger, gopher, and
others. A decoction is mixed in an earthen bowl and the patient is
summoned. Sand from the various parts of the painting are sprinkled on the
corresponding parts of his body, and the medicine mixture is given him to
drink.

The night portions of the ceremony begin shortly after dark. The
medicine-man and any persons who know the songs gather in the _kozhan_ and
sing, accompanied with a drum made of a basket inverted over a hole in the
ground and covered with a buffalo skin, the head toward the east. The hole
represents the pit in the legend, the basket the one the girls were
weaving, and a figure interwoven in the latter symbolizes the butterfly of
the story. The beating of the drum is varied at intervals by the use of a
leg-bone of a mountain sheep rasped quickly over a notched stick. Any men
of the tribe may enter the _kozhan_, and even a white man who is well
known. The songs consist of recitals of the powers of the medicine-man and
invocations to the various animals, as the bear, snake, and mountain
sheep. Some of the songs consist merely in naming the parts of the
a