LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 31 



form a junction, as soon as they learned that their approach 

 was discovered, the Yutas had successfully prevented it ; 

 and attacking one party, had entirely defeated it, killing 

 thirteen of the Rapaho braves. The other party had fled 

 on seeing the issue of the fight, and a few of the Yuta 

 warriors were now pursuing them. 



To celebrate so signal a victory, great preparations 

 sounded their notes through the village. Paints vermilion 

 and ochres, red and yellow were in great request ; whilst 

 the scrapings of charred wood, mixed with gunpowder, 

 were used as substitute for black, the medicine colour. 



The lodges of the village, numbering some two hundred 

 or more, were erected in parallel lines, and covered a large 

 space of the level prairie in shape of a parallelogram. In 

 the centre, however, the space which half-a-dozen lodges in 

 length would have taken up was left unoccupied, save by 

 one large one, of red-painted buffalo-skins, tatooed with the 

 mystic totems of the " medicine " peculiar to the nation. 

 In front of this stood the grim scalp-pole, like a decayed 

 tree-trunk, its bloody fruit tossing in the wind; and on 

 another pole, at a few feet distance, was hung the " bag " 

 with its mysterious contents. Before each lodge a tripod 

 of spears supported the arms and shields of the Yuta 

 chivalry, and on many of them smoke-dried scalps rattled 

 in the "wind, former trophies of the dusky knights who 

 were arming themselves within. Heraldic devices were 

 not wanting not, however, graved upon the shield, but 

 hanging from the spear-head, the actual "totem" of the 

 warrior it distinguished. The rattlesnake, the otter, the 

 carcagien, the mountain badger, the war-eagle, the kon- 

 qua-kish, the porcupine, the fox, &c., dangled their well- 

 stuffed skins, displaying the guardian " medicine " of the 

 warriors they pertained to, and representing the mental and 

 corporeal qualities which were supposed to characterise the 

 braves to whom they belonged. 



From the centre lodge, two or three medicine - men, 

 fantastically attired in the skins of wolves and bears, and 

 bearing long peeled wands of cherry in their hands, occa- 

 sionally emerged to tend a very small fire which they had 



