﻿A RESIDENCE AMONG THE INDIANS. 



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opening having been made for his entrance, he crept cautiously 

 along, during the most profound silence of the spectators, towards 

 the wounded man, who was even now in the agonies of death. I 

 will give you a picture of this 

 curious looking individual. On 



-.j 



his head was the skin of an enor- 

 mous bear, the head of which 

 served him as a mask. At- 

 tached to this, on every side, 

 were the skins of various kinds 

 of animals, and to each of these 

 an immense number of rattles. 

 In his hands he carried a spear, 

 gaudily trimmed, and a rattle 

 somewhat like the head of a 

 drum, which he alternately shook 

 over the dying man, dancing 

 about from side to side, and occasionally uttering the most horrible 

 noise, and chanting, in a peculiar style, an address to the Good 

 Spirit for the safety and life of the sufferer. In a few minutes the 

 man died, and the medicine doctor bounded away to his tent, and no 

 more was seen of him. Thus ended one of the most ridiculous per- 

 formances I have ever witnessed, and yet every Indian present was 

 perfectly serious and believed, no doubt, to the fullest extent, in the 

 wonderful mysteries of this enchanter. 



I soon found that my daily intercourse with the Indians gave me 

 many chances to gain their good will, and also to study their habits. 

 About a month after the ceremony of the medicine man, above 

 alluded to, I went with a party of their young warriors to hunt the 

 buffalo. They were disappointed, however, for the immense herds 

 which had but a few days before covered the plains, had entirely 

 disappeared. 



These animals are continually roving about over the immense 

 western prairies, and sometimes there is so great scarcity of buffalo 

 meat, which is the Indians' principal food, that they resort to the 

 l - buffalo dance " (which I shall explain hereafter) to bring the animals 

 back again. On our return, however, we fell in with a troop of the 



