When a young brave comes to man’s estate his initiation into the religion of his tribe is a great matter. Heretofore he has had no real name. He has been called by several names, perhaps, but they have been those given him by his parents, and are perhaps only the pet names of childhood. Now he is a man and gets the name which in war and on the hunt he is hopeful of making great and long-remembered by the tribe. Red Knife belonged to the family of the Crow. The signification of that family was painted upon his father’s wigwam, as it would be upon his own when he set up a domicile for himself. So the medicine-man had put into a bag the dried entrails of a crow, its hard, black claws, and some of its feathers, with various other charms against evil. The young man had watched all night upon a lonely hill, fasting, to guard his shield and arms, as well as the new medicine, from those spirits that are ever warring against human beings--according to the Indian code--and had in other ways proved himself worthy of being a brave in the councils of the Sioux. The bag, which had been fastened about Red Knife’s neck, was as precious to the Indian as his soul! Having lost it, he had lost caste and all else that an Indian holds of value. He would be considered apostate from the faith of his fathers; all that he had done heretofore in war and the chase would be held as nothing. He would be outcast from his kind, having lost his medicine, unless he could by some wonderful performance, or by some mysterious chance, find and appropriate a new medicine. There are just so many medicines in the world, according to the Indian belief; there is one for each man. Having lost his medicine, it could not be replaced by the medicine chief or by any other ordinary means. He could not kill an enemy and take _his_ medicine for his own; for as soon as a man is dead the virtue of his medicine accompanies him on the journey to the happy hunting-grounds. No man would be so foolish as to sell his medicine at any price. With his last breath he will fight for that amulet. Red Knife was undone indeed as he sat there beside the bloody pool. All the manhood had gone out of him. His hard fight and his many wounds seemed as nothing to him now. He was bereft of his choicest possession and could not be comforted. Yet a desire to be with his kind, to see the faces of his tribesmen again, drove the young man finally from his position. The fire had gone from the forest, and it was midday of the second day before he rose to his feet. The decomposing gases in the body of the bear had brought it to the surface. Red Knife hobbled down, cut off the paws and strung them about his neck, flayed the carcass, cut off some flesh for his own consumption, found a flint-stone, and with the back of his knife struck off sparks which lit a fire, and after eating and renewing his strength he wrapped himself in the gory robe and started for Oak Heart’s village.