Buffalo Medicine Read Free Page B

because I say so,” he snapped. “All things begin at the beginning. And you have a long way before you begin to be a medicine man!”
    Owl still had his doubts, but was wise enough to keep them to himself.

3
    It was in his sixteenth summer that Owl was pronounced qualified to assume the duties of his office. White Buffalo had allowed Owl to make the decision on the spring burning time this season, although he himself had made the announcement. Now, he advised his young assistant, there remained only one thing. His vision.
    The old man explained in some detail the procedure required, although Owl knew it well. White Buffalo was becoming more forgetful, and repeated himself often.
    â€œYou must go out into the hills alone. You must eat nothing and talk to no one for three days, or until your vision comes. It may be in a dream or awake, that your medicine animal comes to you. You must tell no one his name when you return to the People.”
    Owl nodded. He embraced Crow Woman, picked up his weapons and his robe, and stepped out into the sunlight of a crisp day in the Ripening Moon. He stopped
briefly at his parents’ lodge and then strode rapidly up the slope and out of sight.
    He knew exactly where he was going. A day’s journey to the southwest was a high, flat-topped mesa. Owl had been there before. From its crest one could see in all directions to the edge of the world. What better place, he thought, to fast and wait for one’s vision? He filled a water skin at a spring, and climbed the hill just as Sun Boy carried his torch below the western rim.
    Owl spread his robe and lay down, watching the stars come out. He wondered what to do next, and felt a little foolish. It had been many moons since he had had absolutely nothing to do. Then he felt guilty for having almost felt that his vision seeking was a waste of time. He mentally apologized to his yet-unknown medicine animal as he drifted off to sleep.
    Owl awoke with the sun in his face and the prairie alive with the morning. He was hungry. He wondered if it were permissible to admit to hunger, and decided that it was. He passed the day watching the distant herds of buffalo and antelope, and singing to himself some of the chants of the medicine man. He drank a little from his water skin, and slept. The following day was a repeat of the last.
    When he returned to the village, he would be recognized as a medicine man. He wondered idly when he would assume the title “White Buffalo.” Immediately, or at some future time? The name must be given away by the old man before his death. It would be up to him, when and how it would be accomplished, Owl supposed. He was still hungry as he drifted to sleep again.
    The next day the hunger was gone. He felt exhilarated, light-headed, yet strong. He felt that he could see things clearly, no matter how far. He could almost step off the mesa and fly, like the buzzards circling below him. This alarming thought brought him back to reality, and he
spent the day in thought, sometimes sleeping for a short while. That night came the dreams.
    It began as he dozed off, with the sound of a distant coyote’s chuckling song in his ears. The young man drifted in and out of consciousness. Part of the time the chortling cry was that of an actual animal beyond the hill. Then it became a segment of a confused dream, in which his grandfather, the Coyote, chuckled at his confusion. In one of his half-awake moments, Owl realized that this was the reason for his grandfather’s name. His chuckling giggle sounded exactly like the call of the animal on the hill. He smiled and drifted deeper.
    In his dreams, various animals came past the spot where he sat. Some spoke to him, others only looked curiously. But he found that either way, he could see “inside the head” as he had learned to do with the buffalo. He felt the constant anxiety of the rabbit, and the searching of the red-tailed hawk as he circled the meadow.