Blackfeet Indian Tipi Legend - An Underwater Spirit's Gift Of The Yellow Buffalo Tipi
Yellow Buffalo Tipi Of Cicile And James White Calf
Two boys, Weasel Heart and Most Sacred Man, went into the woods to get arrow shafts and bow staves. Then they sat down on a river bank to remove the bark from them. Weasel Heart looked into the river, then told his friend, "Say, I see a tipi in that deep, blue water." Most Sacred Man looked into the water, and he saw the tipi also.
Weasel Heart then said, "I am going into that tipi and visit its owner. Watch me. I will swim down stream, and when I reach the place where the tipi is, tell me and I will dive down into it."
So Weasel Heart undressed and swam down river until his friend told him to stop. Then he dived straight down into the tipi. The people in it greeted Weasel Heart and asked him why he had come. He told them he had seen the tipi top and told his friend he was going down into it for a visit. Weasel Heart's visit lasted all afternoon, while his partner on shore worried, thinking he had drowned. At the end of his visit the head man of the lodge told the boy, "My son, you may have my tipi. Take a good look at it, and paint your tipi like it."
So Weasel Heart noticed the buffalo painted on the tipi and everything that went with the tipi, even the buffalo stones in the bundle that accompanied it. Then he returned to shore where Most Sacred Man was waiting for him.
Weasel Heart told his partner how he had obtained the Yellow Buffalo Tipi. "The owner gave me the tipi and everything that goes with it, including a pipe with a black stone bowl, and buffalo dung to rest the bowl on."
That evening, the two boys returned home. Weasel Heart told the people all that had happened that day-how he saw the tipi in the river, and how he dove down into the water and was given the right to the Yellow Buffalo Tipi.