As already mentioned, the performance of this ceremony extends through a period of four days and four nights. The day preceding is spent in preparation: the head of the family of the sick person makes ready for a feast, and helpers build a corral of piñon and spruce branches. This corral is circular, about forty yards in diameter and six feet high, with an opening at the east. To the west, close to the fence, is the medicine _kozhán_. The latter part of each morning of the four days is spent by the medicine-man and his assistants in the _kozhán_, where a dry-painting of blue, black, yellow, and red earths is made in the shape of a snake lying in a circle with a space between the head and the tail. The circle is about six feet in diameter, and within it are represented numerous animals: the bear, turkey, deer, eagle, buffalo, elk, badger, gopher, and others. A decoction is mixed in an earthen bowl and the patient is summoned. Sand from the various parts of the painting are sprinkled on the corresponding parts of his body, and the medicine mixture is given him to drink. The night portions of the ceremony begin shortly after dark. The medicine-man and any persons who know the songs gather in the _kozhán_ and sing, accompanied with a drum made of a basket inverted over a hole in the ground and covered with a buffalo skin, the head toward the east. The hole represents the pit in the legend, the basket the one the girls were weaving, and a figure interwoven in the latter symbolizes the butterfly of the story. The beating of the drum is varied at intervals by the use of a leg-bone of a mountain sheep rasped quickly over a notched stick. Any men of the tribe may enter the _kozhán_, and even a white man who is well known. The songs consist of recitals of the powers of the medicine-man and invocations to the various animals, as the bear, snake, and mountain sheep. Some of the songs consist merely in naming the parts of the animal’s body, while others are supposed to be those used by the Bear and the Snake in the legend. After singing these songs for about three hours, with intervals of rest, the dancing begins. On each side of the enclosure are three fires. Behind these on the north side are the men, on the south the women; thus a large open space is bounded by the two lines of fires, the _kozhán_, and the opening of the corral. Two women walk slowly into this space, their heads modestly bent. They stop, and a young man approaches to ascertain with whom they would dance. He then finds the desired persons, takes each by the arm, and drags him out. The men always feign unwillingness to go. In the meanwhile other pairs of women have come out and other young men become busy finding partners for them. As a rule they dance in groups of four, men and women facing each other and moving backward and forward five or six steps. As the dance progresses the man is likely to lay his hands upon the woman’s shoulders, but modesty forbids her a similar liberty.