Elk Dreamer Ceremony
Ethnographic Notes
An Elk Dreamer ceremony with mystical lines connecting the celebrant to various sources of power, including a red-shafted flicker, a type of woodpecker which the Lakota call “red feathers,” (sunluta---Buechel, 1970: 470). Compare the colors of the painted man, and the antlers on his mask, with Plate 11; and Neihardt, 1932: 208-212. The elk, which amassed large harems of females, conferred similar abilities on its acolytes, hence the many, extra-marital liasons appearing throughout Black Road's record.