When the owner wishes to sacrifice such a skin to the Omahank-Numakshi or to the Numank-Machana, he rolls it up, after adding some artemisia or an ear of corn, and then the skin remains suspended on a pole until it decays.[246] Besides the white buffalo skins hung on tall poles as sacrifices, there were other strange objects hung on tall poles near the villages of the Mandan and Hidatsa. These figures were composed of skin, grass, and twigs, which seemed to represent the sun, moon, and perhaps the Omahank-Numakshi and the Numank-Machana. The Indians resorted to them when they wished to petition for anything, and sometimes howled for days and weeks together.[247] For a reference to trees and stones, see § 348. “Charata-Numakshi (the Chief of Wolves),” a Mandan, had a painted buffalo dress, which was his fetich. He valued it highly as a souvenir of his brother, who had been shot by the enemy.[248] FOLK-LORE. § 335. When a child is born the father must not bridle a horse, that is, he must not fasten a lariat to the horse’s lower jaw, otherwise the infant would die in convulsions. Should the wife be enceinte when the husband bridled the horse ill luck would be sure to follow, frequently in the form of a failure to kill any game. If an Indian in such cases wounds a buffalo without being able to kill it quickly, he tries to take the buffalo’s heart home and makes his wife shoot an arrow through it; then again he feels confidence in his weapons that they will kill speedily. The Indians affirm that a pregnant woman is very lucky at a game resembling billiards. If a woman passes between several Mandan who are smoking together it is a bad omen. Should a woman recline on the ground between men who are smoking a piece of wood is laid across her to serve as a means of communication between the men. The strongest man now living among the Mandan, who has been the victor in several wrestling matches with the white people, always takes hold of his pipe by the head, for were he to touch another part of it the blood would suddenly rush from his nostrils. As soon as he bleeds in this manner he empties his pipe, throwing the contents into the fire, where it explodes like gunpowder, and the bleeding stops immediately. They say that nobody can touch this man’s face without bleeding at nose and mouth. A certain Mandan affirms that whenever another offers him a pipe to smoke, out of civility, his mouth becomes full of worms, which he throws into the fire by handfuls.