164 MORTUARY CUSTOMS OF NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 
of skins, either raw or dressed; and forornament, when available, a bright-red blanket 
envelopes ail other coverings, and renders the general scene more picturesque until 
dimmed by time and the elements. As soon as the scaffold is ready, the body is borne 
by the women, followed by the female relatives, to the place of final deposit, and left 
prone in its secure wrappings upon this airy bed of death. This ceremony is accom- 
panied with lamentations so wild and weird that one must see and hear in order to 
appreciate. If the deceased be a brave, it is customary to place upon or beneath the 
scaffold a few buffalo-heads which time has rendered dry and inoffensive ; and if he 
has been brave in war some of his implements of battle are placed on the scaffold 
or securely tied to its timbers. If the deceased has heen a chief, or a soldier related 
to his chief, it is not uncommon to slay his favorite pony and place the body beneath 
the scaffold, under the superstition, I suppose, that the horse goes with the man. As 
illustrating the propensity to provide the dead with the things used while living, I 
may mention that some years ago I loaned to an old man a delft urinal for the use of 
his son, a young man who was slowly dying of a wasting disease. I made him prom- 
ise faithfully that he would return it as soon as his son was done using it. Not long 
afterwards the urinal graced the scaffold which held the remains of the dead warrior, 
and as it has not to this day been returned I presume the young man is not done 
using it. 
The mourning customs of the Dakotas, though few of them appear to be of universal 
observance, cover considerable ground. Thehair, never cut under other circumstances, 
is cropped off even with the neck, and the top of the head and forehead, and some- 
times nearly the whole body, are smeared with a species of white earth resembling 
chalk, moistened with water. The lodge, teepee, and all the family possessions except 
the few shabby articles of apparel worn by the mourners, are given away and the 
family left destitute. Thus far the custom is universal or nearly so. The wives, 
mother, and sisters of a deceased man, on the first, second, or third day after the 
funeral, frequently throw off their moccasins and leggins and gash their legs with 
their butcher-knives, and march through the camp and to the place of burial with 
bare and bleeding extremities, while they chant or wail their dismal songs of mourn- 
ing. The men likewise often gash themselves in many places, and usually seek the 
solitude of the higher point on the distant prairie, where they remain fasting, smok- 
ing, and wailing out their lamentations for two or three days. A chief who had lost 
a brother once came to me after three or four days of mourning in solitude almost ex- 
hausted from hunger and bodily anguish. He had gashed the outer side of both lower 
extremities at intervals of a few inches all the way from the ankles to the top of the 
hips. His wounds had inflamed from exposure, and were suppurating freely. He as- 
sured me that he had not slept for several days or nights. I dressed his wounds with 
asoothing ointment, and gave him a full dose of an effective anodyne, after which 
he slept long and refreshingly, and awoke to express his gratitude and shake my hand 
in a very cordial and sincere manner. When these harsher inflictions are not resorted 
to, the mourners usually repair daily for a few days to the place of burial, toward the 
hour of sunset, and chant their grief until it is apparently assuaged by its own expres- 
sion. Thisis rarely kept up for more than four or five days, but is occasionally resorted 
to, at intervals, for weeks, or even months, according to the mood of the bereft. Ihave 
seen few things in life so touching as the spectacle of an old father going daily to the 
grave of his child, while the shadows are lengthening, and pouring out his grief in 
wails that would move a demon, until his figure melts with the gray twilight, when, 
silent and solemn, he returns to his desolate family. The weird effect of this obsery- 
ance is sometimes heightened, when the deceased was a grown-up son, by the old man 
kindling a little fire near the head of the scaffold, and varying his lamentations with 
smoking in silence. The foregoing is drawn from my memory of personal observances 
during a period of more than six years’ constant intercourse with several subdivisions 
of the Dakota Indians. There may be much which memory has failed to recall upon 
a brief consideration. 
