Again, it must be noted that women who do not feel equal to the responsibility of the medicine woman's office, make a vow to announce publicly their virginity or faithfulness to their marriage vows, as the case may be, though for an unmarried woman to make such a pledge is the exception. This is spoken of as "the going forward to the tongues," the full meaning of which will appear later. The manner and occasion of making this vow are in most respects similar to the preceding. At a certain stage of the sun dance proceedings, all the women who made such a promise to the sun, come forward and make their statements subject to the challenge of any man present. This bears some resemblance to the virginity tests of the Dakota, but applies more particularly to married women and marital virtue than otherwise. Naturally, the number of women making promises of this kind was much greater than for the more important ceremony. Thus, we have a custom of calling upon the sun in time of need which is an almost universal practice, a more restricted form of such appeal peculiar to women in so far that sexual morality is a necessary qualification, the more specific vow of "going forward to the tongues", and the exceptional vow to perform the medicine woman's functions at the sun dance, a fair illustration of the way in which most complex folk ceremonies are supported by a pyramid of less and less differentiated practices. In passing, it should be noted that when the vow is made to perform the medicine woman's functions, it is literally an obligation to purchase a natoas bundle, or if already the owner of a bundle, to perform its ritual.[3] A woman may own more than one of these bundles at a time; indeed, we have heard of a woman purchasing new ones at several successive sun dances. This purchase is a fundamental feature in all bundle ceremonies to which the sun dance bundle offers no exception. On the other hand, the vow means more than the mere purchase of a bundle. We are told that the requirement as to virtue holds strictly for the vow and the tongue ceremony. A woman can buy a natoas in the ordinary sense and have it transferred with the ritual even though she has not been true to her husband. We are reminded that Scabby-round-robe's wife[4] was not true to her former husband and that when her husband received a beaver bundle there went with it a natoas and accessories; but that while she could use them by virtue of her relation to a beaver bundle, she was not competent to make a vow and initiate a sun dance.[5] This is consistent with the tradition that the natoas was once bought from a beaver bundle by a woman who gave the sun dance for that year and used instead of a wreath of juniper as in former ceremonies. It also throws some light on the relation of the natoas to the beaver and the sun dance rituals. FOOTNOTES: [3] This series, volume 7, 215. [4] This series, vol. 2, 83.