117. In the afternoon there were no ceremonies in the medicine lodge. The qaçàli and his assistants took a half holiday, and not without deserving it, for they had wrought well for three days and they had a long day’s work and a long night’s work still before them. A large number of people had by this time assembled, and from time to time more arrived. Throughout the sparse grove which surrounded us, little temporary corrals and huts of boughs were going up in every direction. In more secret spots in the rugged walls of a cañon, about half a mile from the medicine lodge, other shelters were erected, where visiting performers were to prepare themselves on the last night. Many young men were busy in the afternoon cutting down the trees and lopping off the branches which were to form the great corral (the ilnásjin, the dark circle of branches) on the next day. Some of the visiting women were busy grinding meal and attending to different household duties; others played cards or engaged in the more aboriginal pastime of áz¢ilçil, a game played with three sticks and forty stones, the latter for counters. 118. The friends of the sick woman prepared the alkàn, a great corn cake baked in the earth, the manufacture of which gave evidence of the antiquity of the process. The batter was mixed in one large hole in the ground lined with fresh sheepskin. It was baked in another hole in which a fire had been burning for many hours, until the surrounding earth was well heated. The fire was removed; the hole lined with corn husks; the batter ladled in and covered with more cornhusks; hot earth and hot coals were spread overall. The cake was not dug up until the following day, and was designed chiefly for the special entertainment of those who were at work in the medicine lodge. 119. NINTH DAY (UNTIL SUNSET). On Tuesday (October 28) the work in the lodge consisted in preparing certain properties to be used in the ceremonies of the night. These were the wands to be used in the first dance, the kátso-yisçàn or great plumed arrows, and the trees which the dancers pretended to swallow. 120. The wand of the nahikàï was made by paring down a straight slender stick of aromatic sumac, about three feet long, to the general thickness of less than half an inch, but leaving a head or button at one end. A ring was fashioned from a transverse slice of some hollow or pithy plant, so that it would slide freely up and down the slender wand, but would nob pass over the head. Eagle down was secured to the wooden head and also to the ring. In the dance (paragraph 129) the eagle down on the stick is burned off in the fire while the ring is held in the palm of the hand. When the time comes for the wand to grow white again, as the name nahikàï expresses it, the ring is allowed to leave the palm and slide to the other end of the stick.