This is one of Arrow's most important cultural images, documenting details of the Medicine Lodge, or Sun Dance ceremony, nowhere else depicted. On the morning when the cottonwood trees were cut to build the Medicine Lodge structure, and extensive willow greenery was needed to form the altar and part of the covering, the warrior societies competed in doing this necessary labor, and in seeing which group could quickly haul the most materials. Part of this effort to convert really hard work into an enjoyable experience involved a sham battle---a combination intramural football scrimmage, and equestrian demolition derby---when selected teams from each society competed with cottonwood clubs, until only members of one society remained on their horses. This will be described in more detail with Plates 134-137.

It is evident from these drawings that considerable time and effort was spent by each participant in preparing a costume for himself and his horse. These were replicas, comprised entirely of greenery, of whatever the individual commonly wore for combat. The horses were draped with willow breastbands, imitative of those shown in Plates 2, 65 & 163-165; their tails were wrapped with vines; and "scalps" of leaf clusters were hung to the bridles. Grinnell (1923, II: 229) mentions "headdresses" woven of willow and vine tendrils, some with long trailers like the horseback war bonnets shown in Plates 17, 19, etc.

Imitation shields were formed from a bent hoop of willow, with woven cross-withes to suggest the "Four Directions" motif, and long ends that extended beyond the circumference of the hoop, like the eagle feather and otter tail attachments shown on the war shields in Plates 17 & 27. Undoubtedly these were lashed together with peeled strips of willow bark. Such willow shields were described by Grinnell (1923, II: 229), and actually photographed by E.S. Curtis (1911: opp 96). Curtis' photo, however, made from in front of the riders, shows only the projecting ends of the shield withes, precisely like Arrow's figure at the left. Without the schematic views provided by Arrow on the right-hand figure here, and another in Plate 136, no one could have surmised what the Cheyennes were actually doing.

These sham shields were plaited precisely like the beginning framework for a corn-carrying basket, of the type made by the Arikaras, Mandans and Hidatsas---tribes with whom the Cheyennes traded and intermarried during the 18th & early-19th centuries. Plaiting such baskets was "women's work" among those tribes. One wonders if the Cheyenne replica shields might also have been woven by wives or sweethearts, as tokens for their men to carry into the game?

Arrow and his Nisson comrade, chosen contestants of the Elk Society, are riding together on Arrow's black stallion, shown previously in Plate 104. The two will share this horse again in Plate 138. Arrow rides in front, wearing the same shirt shown in Plate 44, and the dark blue (black) leggings with a stripe of blue silk ribbon shown in Plates 106 & 148. His comrade is the man riding behind, with the willow shield on his back, wearing a blue-striped shirt which will recur in Plate 138. His face is decorated with a "Nonono" or rainbow warpaint design, similar to those found on Cheyenne war shields (compare Cowdrey, 1999: Fig. 47; and Appendix, Plate D: Fig h). In Cheyenne cosmology, the rainbow is seen as a spring-snare used by the Thunderbird to choke its prey, the Water Monsters which cause rain by spewing torrents of water into the air (Petter, 1915: 170-171). When the rain stops, it was thought this was because the monster had been lassoed and choked by Thunder's snare, and thus the rainbow was seen in the sky.

Both of the horses here, and others in Plate 136, are painted with symbols emblematic of the riders' coups. The stripes on the haunches catalog first coups---being first to strike a particular enemy. On the buckskin, the three black dots trailing short, zigzag lines symbolized whistling bullets, like those shown in Plate 21. These symbols appear more commonly on the war clothing of Blackfeet men---Algonkian relatives of the Cheyennes. Here, they probably represent bullet wounds suffered by horses of the rider, an alternate for the "dripping blood" wound symbols shown in Plate 65 (Grinnell, 1923, II: 61).

Two red handprints on the buckskin's neck indicate that the horse has ridden over and trampled an enemy pedestrian. In describing the Southern Cheyenne Sun Dance ceremony of 1883, on the morning when the cottonwood trees were hauled into camp, Mary Little Bear Inkanish remembered:

"Men brought out their best horses, and painted them with pretty [designs] of open hands, and animal heads" (Marriott & Rachlin, 1977: 10).