§ 376. Black is assumed to be the symbolic color for the Takuśkanśkan, the Wind-makers, whose servants are the four winds and the four black spirits of night. Black as a war color is put on the face[298] of the warrior. The Santee Dakota consider the raven (a black bird) and a small black stone, less than a hen’s egg in size, symbols of the four winds or quarters. Among the Teton Dakota, the Takuśkanśkan symbols, are small pebbles of two kinds, one white, and, according to the description, translucent; the other “resembles ordinary pebbles,” probably in being opaque. § 377. Yellow is assumed to be the color symbolizing water, the west, and the setting sun. The Dakota, Omaha, Ponka, and ┴ɔiwere tribes have been familiar for years with the color of the water in the Missouri river. In a Yankton Dakota legend[299] recorded by the author it is said that when two mystery men prepared themselves to visit a spirit of the water in order to recover an Indian boy, one of the men painted his entire body black, and the other painted himself yellow (this seems to refer to the south and west, the windmakers and the spirits of the waters). In certain Omaha tent decorations we find that the tent of a Turtle man (Fig. 161) has a yellow ground. A similar yellow ground on the tent of Maⁿtcu-naⁿba of the Hañga gens (Fig. 174) may be connected with the tradition that the Hañga gens came originally from beneath the water. Too much stress, however, must not be placed upon the colors of such mystery decorations, as they may be found hereafter to have had another origin. It is conceivable, although we have no means of proving it, that he who had a vision, depicted on his robe and tent not only the colors pertaining to the objects seen in the vision, but also the color peculiar to the eponymic ancestor or power that was the “nikie” (§ 53). As some men were members of more than one order of shamans, their tent and robe decorations may refer to the one order rather than to the other, and sometimes there may be a reference to both orders. The yellow on the top of the tent of Frog, an Ictasanda man, was said to refer to a grizzly bear vision (_fide_ George Miller, an Omaha--see Fig. 177.) But when we compare it with Pl. XLIV, D, showing the tent of a Hañga man, who was a Buffalo shaman as well as a Grizzly Bear shaman, we find that the top of the latter tent has a yellow band (apparently pointing to the Hañga tradition of an aquatic origin), as well as a blue band at the bottom (referring to the grizzly bear vision). § 378. From what has been said respecting the figures 194-199, we are led to make the following provisional coördinations: