The Flat-Pipe is the paramount sacred medicine of the Arapaho, at once a ceremonial object and a primordial being present at the making of the world. In the cosmogony it rests with the Creator upon the endless primeval water before there is any land, and the raising of the earth is accomplished around it. As the tribal palladium it is kept by a hereditary Pipe Keeper and its rites are the most restricted in Arapaho religion, its wellbeing identified with the wellbeing of the people. Traditions differ over whether the Pipe is itself the active creative power or the sacred possession of Man-Above through which he works.