MAKING HORSE MEDICINE

This Blackfeet Indian is performing a medicine bundle ritual that was used throughout the 1880s. On the tripod before him are his medicine bundles made of painted rawhide. The ceremony makes his horse more powerful in battle and enables it to fight as one with its rider. To accomplish that, this man has marked himself with symbolic horse tracks. He wears a full horsehide, ears to tail, and has painted himself with earth.