Nearly every important tribe, excepting perhaps those aboriginal skeptics, the Comanche, has or did have a tribal "medicine" equivalent to the _taíme_, around which centers the tribal mythology and ceremonial with which the prosperity and fate of the tribe is bound up. With the Cheyenne this is a bundle of sacred arrows, now in the keeping of one of the southern bands near Cantonment, Oklahoma. With the Arapaho it consists of a pipe, a turtle, and an ear of corn, all of stone, wrapped in skins, and kept by the hereditary priest with the northern branch of the tribe in Wyoming. Among the Omaha it was a large shell, now preserved in the Peabody Museum at Cambridge, Massachusetts. With the Creeks it is a set of graven metal tablets, possibly relics of De Soto's disastrous expedition through the gulf states, religiously guarded by the priest of the Wind clan of the nation in Indian Territory. THE SUN DANCE The great tribal ceremony of the Kiowa was the _k`adó_, or sun dance, which was commonly celebrated annually when the down appeared on the cottonwoods, i. e., about the middle of June. In their calendar system the summers are counted by _k`adós_, the winters being designated as "cold seasons." On this occasion the whole tribe encamped in a circle, each band in its appropriate place, with the _k`adó_ or medicine lodge in the center. Within the medicine lodge the _taíme_ was exposed during the continuance of the ceremony, which lasted four days, although the preliminary buffalo hunt and other necessary arrangements occupied much more time. Space forbids a detailed account of the ceremony, which was common to most of the prairie tribes, and has been described with more or less accuracy by various writers. The Kiowa sun dance resembled that of the Dakota, Cheyenne, and other tribes in its general features--the search for the buffalo, the arrangement of the camp circle, the procession of the women to cut down the tree for the center pole of the medicine lodge, the sham battle for possession of the pole, the building of the medicine lodge, and the four days' dance without eating, drinking, or sleeping. It differed radically, however, in the entire absence of those voluntary self tortures which have made the sun dance among other tribes a synonym for savage horrors. With the Kiowa even the accidental shedding of blood on such an occasion was considered an evil omen, and was the signal for abandoning the dance; voluntary laceration by way of sacrifice was practiced at other times, but not at the _k'ado_. Among the Kiowa the center pole must always be cut down by a captive woman. On account of the dread in which the _taíme_ is held, by reason of the many taboos connected with it, they have also a captive, taken from Mexico when a boy and given to the _taíme_ for this special purpose, to unwrap it and set it in place at the ceremonial exposure, so that should any regulation be inadvertently violated, the punishment