Agait’osdunne, the hair scrapings man

“He is always doing such things,” she said to herself. When she lay down again she watched him through a hole in her blanket. She saw him get up and shake himself and immediately become a buffalo. “Why did I do this?” she said to herself and lay down again under her blanket. “So this is what you are doing,” she thought. After that she took good care of him.

Once the Indians were all chiseling out beaver. “I will watch them,” the boy thought and went where they were eating the beaver meat. When he saw the meat, he reached to take some a man was offering him. The man pulled it back again, fooling the boy. He was very angry. One old man gave him something to eat. After the Indians had gone he picked up a beaver leg and swallowed it, saying, “You will not kill beaver until I pass this bone.”

After that his grandmother traveled alone with the children behind the main band who were starving. Her nephews were starving; they were having a hard time. “Grandmother, I will fish with a hook and line. There are fish here in this old beaver pond,” he said. She cut a hole in the ice for him. “I will fish here,” he said. She went over where he was fishing. He took out a large beaver. He pushed a stick into the water and caught four beaver which he killed with a club. “Grandmother, there are four fish down there which I have killed,” he said to her. His grandmother went there and found he had killed four large beaver. She carried them back and put them by the fireplace. They ate beaver meat. “Grandmother, give me the mesentric membrane,” he said. She did as he requested.

Then his grandmother took him on her back and carried him after the other Indians. When the advance party saw the mesentric membrane he had in his hand they acted like crazy people about it. They threw down the children they were carrying to run after him. They got hold of the membrane and pulled it from side to side. This made him angry.

His uncle had set snares for beaver. He was sitting there by them and started to cry. “What is the matter?” he asked. “Kill it for me,” he said. Then he passed the leg bone of a beaver. Then all who were there, all his uncles, took out beaver.

Then they moved on ahead. Again they were starving, when someone reported having seen buffalo that did not know people were about. After the others had gone to bed he took arrows from each man and went to the buffalo. When he came near them he transformed himself into a buffalo and started to play with them. He killed them all and started back. They had a big fire ready for him and were sitting there, waiting. His grandmother was sitting on the pile of wood, crying. “Grandmother, why are you crying?” he asked. He took an arrow and held it on his bow. “One buffalo was caught in the willows. Who said this about me? Who said of me that, ‘he went along the people’s trail carrying arrows?’” he inquired. No one spoke and for that reason he did not shoot. He held two arrows by their heads, broke them, and threw them into the fire. “What did I do to your animals?” he asked them. They thought the buffalo were all ahead of them.

They started away, but one old man sat there after the others had gone. Agait’osdunne had put some buffalo fat in the fold of his blanket. He pulled that out for his grandfather. “Grandfather, the wolves killed a young buffalo. I thought I would put its fat in my pocket.” He passed it to him. “It is not young buffalo’s fat,” the old man said to himself. Then he told his grandfather that each man who knew his own arrows would know which buffalo belonged to him. His grandfather went away along the road after the others. They thought the buffalo were lying there alive and they were sitting over them ready to shoot. “.Why are you sitting there?” he asked. They thought the buffalo were still alive and they would take them all in snares. When he came to them he said, “Take the ones your arrows are sticking in.” He thought he and his grandmother would have an animal and he had left an old arrow lying on it. They stepped over that buffalo.

Agait’osdunne was very poor. The large band that camped ahead had a certain man for chief. He had a daughter no one liked. She went out one time and looking at Agait’osdunne said, “I do not like your eyes.” He was very angry because of that and after she had gone he went there and urinated.

She was very soon pregnant and gave birth to a child. “Make a medicine lodge,” the chief said. They made a medicine lodge. “The child will urinate on the man who is its father,” the chief said. They all came there where the medicine lodge stood. He disappeared now and then and then he was not about at all. [This probably refers to the spirit supposed to assist in the divination.] They did not know who could be its father. Agait’osdunne was the only one who did not go there. “Well, let everyone of the men come here,” the chief said. His grandmother was sorry for the child and liked it and for that reason went there. As soon as she took it, the child urinated. All the women then stripped the clothes from Agait’osdunne and put out his fire, but his grandmother put some fire in sinew and put it inside a pillow. They drove him away from his grandmother. “I hope when they get up they will take out the sinew,” she said. The next morning when they arose there was nothing they could do anything with. “Look inside grandmother’s pillow,” he said. She went there and found fire under the sinew where it had been left and built a fire with it.

“I wish you would make some arrows for me,” he told the woman. She made arrows for him from some poor willows. “I wish three wolves would come along here to us,” he said. Before long three wolves came there and he killed them all. The women went to them. They took hold of the wolves by their noses, rubbed them, and pulled the entire body out of the skins. Then they put on the skins with the hair still on them. “I wish thirteen caribou would come along here,” he said. They came very soon and he killed them all. They made a tipi cover of their skins. He wished again for three moose and they came. He killed them and they had the leather they needed.

He wished the others might die of starvation. For his grandmother, however, he used to drop fat along behind. “Because they did not care whether he starved or not, let them be very hungry and die of starvation,” he was thinking about them. “Well, let them come here,” he thought. They came there. He told them that before he had resolved not to get meat for them. He went away from them but before leaving, he told them that if many moose went by they were not to shoot the leader but only those following behind. Then owl, who was a person then, shot the moose that was in front. His wife took a skin and ran after him. She ran far away to him. “You are alive. You will not die quickly,” she said to him. “Roll up in the skin,” she told him. Then they beat owl with a club and that is why his head is large.

Second version. A child was heard to cry from a buffalo skin. An old woman went toward it and found a child sitting among the hairs which had been scraped from the buffalo skins. She took up the child and because she felt sorry for it, took care of it and raised it, although the others tried to dissuade her.

It grew quickly. “Put nothing but grass under me, grandmother,” he said. She put some grass under him but in the night she saw it was gone; there was nothing but bare ground under him. “What are you doing, grandchild?” she said to herself. She watched him through her ragged blanket one night and saw him stand up, a large buffalo. He ate up the grass he was lying on. “My grandson is a buffalo,” she thought.

A famine was killing the people when someone saw a herd of buffalo. There were many people camping there who decided to go together and kill the buffalo. The boy saw the buffalo and at night, while the people were asleep, took an arrow from each man’s supply. He went to the buffalo during the night and shot them all because they were not afraid of him. “The buffalo will belong to the man whose arrow is on it,” he said to himself, and distributed the arrows on the dead buffalo. “We will make meat of this one for my grandmother,” he said, and placed two of his arrows on one of the animals.

He went back to the camp to find someone had built a big fire. His grandmother was sitting on the wood, crying. “What is the matter, grandmother?” he asked; “You went for the people’s animals and they say they will burn you.” “Who says that about me?” he asked. “They all say it of you. They are not pleased.” “None of your animals ran away. They are still where they were last night. Go to them,” he said.

An old man was sitting there after the others had left. He took a seat by this old man and said, “I saw the wolves kill a young buffalo, grandfather.” They two followed along the way the others had gone. They found some of the Indians lying in front of the dead buffalo while others were trying to surround them. When they came up to the buffalo they found they had all been killed and the arrows were lying on the bodies. The people were all very much pleased.

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