_A Sacrifice._


During the next two years I went to war five times, always as a servant,
but always I had good luck. This was because early, after my first trip to
war, I had asked an old man, one of my relations, to teach me how to make a
sacrifice which should be pleasing to those spirits who rule the world.

It was in the early summer, when the grass was high and green, not yet
turning brown, that, with this old man, Tom Lodge, I went out into the
hills to suffer and to pray, to ask for help in my life, and that I might
be blessed in all my warpaths. Tom Lodge had told me what I must do, and
before the time came I had cut a pole, and brought it and a rope, and a
bundle of sinew, and some small wooden pins near to the place where we were
to go, and had hidden them in a ravine.

It was before the sun had risen that we started out, and when we came to
the hill where the things were, I carried them to the top of the hill, and
there Tom Lodge and I dug a hole in the soil with our knives, and planted
the pole, stamping the earth tightly about it, and then putting great
stones on the earth, so that the pole should be held firmly. Then Tom Lodge
tied the rope to the pole, and with sinew tied the pins to the rope, and
then holding the pins and his knife up to the sun, and to the sky, and then
placing them on the earth, he prayed to all the spirits of the air, and of
the earth, and of the waters, asking that this sacrifice that I was about
to make should be blessed, and that I should have help in all my
undertakings. Then he came and stood before me, and taking hold of the skin
of my breast on the right side, he pinched it up and passed his knife