This drawing should be considered in the context of Plate 33, where buffalo tracks also appear. What is depicted, here, is the altar design created on a patch of smoothed earth or sand within the tipi shown in Plate 57, from which a Buffalo Dreamer has emerged to circle the Oglala camp. Compare Neihardt, 1932: 206: “We made a sacred place like a bison wallow. Inside this we made...little bison tracks.” The designs all relate to the Lakota belief that buffalo originate in caves under the earth. At center is the stuffed skin of a mole (Scalopus aquaticus), called by the Lakota “lice in hair” (wahinheya--- Buechel, 1970: 517), and considered sacred, because its tunnels are analogs of “caves.” The coiled, circular motifs represent whirlwinds, which are visual “tunnels” carried into the sky. Such whirlwinds were often seen in the dust rising from a herd of running buffaloes.