M. R. HARRINGTON — SACRED BUNDLES OP THE SAC AND FOX INDIANS. 177

and three little bundles of roots without covering, attached to a woven yam and bead band about the neck. This head band was in very bad order, but the remaining two were worse, mere fragments without points of interest.
Arm band decorated with porcupine quills (PI. XXXH, B). This is the best thing of the kind I have ever seen. The band part, measuring 9f" x 2y", is made of buckskin, with thongs at the comers for tying the ends together about the arm. On the outside this is covered with porcupine quill decoration, the quills being wrapped around fourteen flat thongs of skin, attached, parallel and adjacent to one another, to the buck- skin band. The ground color is yellow, the field bordered on all four sides with a narrow thong wrapped in red quills. The design consists of five brown bird-like figures in a row, a nar- row brown line forming a rectangle about them. At one end of the band is a tab of netted quill work, two yellow truncated triangles on a red ground, with a buckskin fringe wrapped in quills; while at the other end, is a flat, quilled streamer 20*' long terminating in the tassel of a buffalo tail, the proximal end wrapped in swan’s down; a few strips of faded red rib- bon and an eagle feather. The streamer is composed of eleven strands or thongs of buckskin, the two outer ones wrapped in strips of bird quill dyed dark brown, green and red; the inner nine wrapped in porcupine quills dyed green, red and yellow, the colors so arranged as to form, when the strands lie flat and side by side, three human figures in red on a yellow ground, each with a green stripe down the center of the body. The quilled strands were formerly fastened together so as to lie flat, once at 6" and again 5" further down, but have now worked loose. From the point where the streamer joins the band, hang several very slender quilled thongs, provided with copper jinglers. Similar jinglers had once been attached to the side strands of the streamer at intervals of about an inch, but many of these are now missing. Where the streamer joins the band were also four little packets of magic medicines and paint, also a buckskin string to which are tied two sets of bits
Digitized by
Google
178 UNIVERSITY MUSEUM — ANTHROPOLOGICAL PUBLICATIONS VOL. IV.
of root without covering, two in each set, and knots from which four other similar sets have fallen. At the point where the eagle feather is attached are two packets. The whole amulet seems to be a development from the simple buffalo tail bent over to form a loop. While often worn on the belt, these amulets could be used as arm bands by simply passing the hand through the loop. An intermediate form may be seen in the quilled buffalo tail already' described as part of the contents of bundle 2/6373 (PI. XXXIV, C), which was used as an arm band, and a further development in the specimen in bundle 2/8739 (PI. XXXIV, B). The complexity of the amulet was not in form only, but in its powers also, for it was not only supposed to confer upon its wearer, the power of the buffalo and all the powers of the little packets of herbs and paints, but the eagle feather invoked the warlike abilities of that powerful bird; and the five bird-like figures on the band, the awesome might of the Thunder Beings, which they were supposed to represent.
A simple buffalo tail amulet, folded over in the usual way for attachment to the belt, bearing the remains of some red ribbon, two medicine packets, two pairs of little roots and one single root, all tied to a buckskin string (PI. XXXIV, H).
Two other tails, nearly worn out, bore one medicine packet each (PI. XXXIV, G) ; one tail, four strips of red cloth; and three tails, nothing. Two of these last had lost nearly all their hair.
Two arm bands, made of the skin of the buffalo’s fore- legs. One of these embodies a lock from the mane but noth- ing else (PI. XXXIV, A) ; the other eight medicine packets and two little packages of exposed rootlets in addition, knotted on a buckskin string (PI. XXXIV, D).
Three amulets for the scalp lock. The most complex was made on a strip of red cloth 5§" x If", rounded at the anterior end and provided with a border of ribbon work (appliqu6) in blue and yellow with a bead edging (PI. XXXI, D). To the upper surface was fastened the terminal tuft of a buffalo tail, some eagle down feathers, part white, part dyed
Digitized by kjOOQle