When the seven old men took the pipes around the Omaha tribal circle, the bad Maⁿȼiñka-gaxe people wore plumes in their hair and wrapped branches of cedar around their heads, being awful to behold. So the old man passed them by and gave the pipe to the other Maⁿȼiñka-gaxe, who were good. In the Osage traditions, cedar symbolizes the tree of life. When a woman is initiated into the secret society of the Osage, the officiating man of her gens gives her four sips of water, symbolizing, so they say, the river flowing by the tree of life, and then he rubs her from head to foot with cedar needles three times in front, three times at her back, and three times on each side, twelve times in all, pronouncing a sacred name of Wakanʇa as he makes each pass. Part of the Paⁿɥka gens of the Osage tribe[44] are Red Cedar people. The Pañka gens of the Kansa tribe is called “Qŭndjalaⁿ,” i.e., “wearers of cedar (branches) on the head.” Cedar is used by the Santee Dakota in their ceremony of the four winds. (See § 128.) The Teton Dakota believe in the efficacy of the smell of cedar wood or of the smoke from cedar in scaring away ghosts. (See § 272.) In the Athapascan creation myth of Oregon, obtained by the author in 1884, the smoke of cedar took the place of food for the two gods who made the world, and the red cedar is held sacred as well as the ash, because these two trees were the first to be discovered by the gods.[45] That the Hidatsa have a similar notion about the red cedar is shown by their name for it, “midahopa,” mysterious or sacred tree. Compare what Matthews tells about the Hidatsa reverence for the cottonwood with what is recorded above about the Omaha sacred pole.[46] (§ 344.) The cottonwood tree also seems to have been regarded as a mystic tree by the Omaha and Ponka, just as it is by the Hidatsa. The sacred pole of the two tribes was made from a tall cottonwood.[47] When the lower part of the sacred pole became worn away, about 8 feet remained, and to this was fastened a piece of ash wood about 18 inches long. In preparing for the dance called the Hede watci, the Iñke-sabĕ people sought a cottonwood tree, which they rushed on, felled, and bore to the center of the tribal circle, where they planted it in the “ujeʇi.” Mystic names taken from the cottonwood are found in the Ȼixida and Nika[p]aɔna, the two war gentes of the Ponka tribe, and in the Ȼatada and [K]aⁿze gentes of the Omaha.[48]