“My children, my children! It is I who wear the morning star on my head! It is I who wear the morning star on my head! I show it to my children! I show it to my children! Says the father! Says the father! ———— “With the ba-qati wheel I am gambling! With the ba-qati wheel I am gambling! With the black mark I win the game! With the black mark I win the game!” “This (last) song is from the northern Arapaho. The author of it in his visit to the spirit world, found his former friends playing the old game of the _baqati_ wheel, which was practically obsolete among the prairie tribes, but which is being revived since the advent of the Ghost Dance.... The game is played with a wheel (_baqati_, large wheel) and two pairs of throwing sticks.... It is a man’s game and there are three players, one rolling the wheel while the other two, each armed with a pair of throwing sticks, run after it and throw the sticks so as to cross the wheel in a certain position.”[286] [Illustration: PUEBLO RATTLES. Turtle shell, with hoofs of goats or sheep. Fastened to the rear of the right leg near the knee in dancing Painted gourd with wood handle ] Among the Mokis, some of the old men are custodians of songs, according to the societies to which they belong. Such a man is leader of the singing. It is he who knows the old songs. He meets a lot of the young men at a specified house, and placing an old tin pan on the floor to spit in while smoking cigarettes, and beside it a candle for light, they group themselves in a circle, sitting on the floor, while the instructor takes his place on a stool at the large double-headed drum at one end. He runs over a passage, beating time on the drum, and then all join in with a vigour that well-nigh raises the roof. There was something fine in the force and power with which these songs were rendered, and it was the only time in my experience that my artistic sense was stirred by Amerind singing. Later, on the same evening as the gathering mentioned, when the same young men were rehearsing further and also practising the dance with some small girls in a neighbouring house, the singing lost its fire and was not at all thrilling. Before the rehearsal with the young men the “choir master” rehearses by himself. From my house at Tewa, on the “East Mesa,” I could hear just after dark, every evening, through the stone wall, continuous singing. It was in the next room or “house,” the entrance to which, though on my level, was around a corner and not connected in any way with my balcony. I had a ladder of my own. I was curious to see who it was that was so devoted to this amusement. I mounted to my house-top by means of steps on the end of a wall, and then I could look down my neighbour’s chimney, from which little smoke and much sound were arising. I