WHITE DEER—SPLENDID HEAD-DRESS. 79 
dulous ears, in a circle around its eyes, and on the lower end of a piece which 
hangs down four or five inches from the mouth, representing the tongue. 
In the autumnal dance mentioned above, these are paraded with great 
pride, rendering their possessors illustrious in the eyes of all men. No 
Indian will part with a white deer-skin on any consideration. I offered 
several of them $100 in gold coin for one, but they simply laughed at me. 
There are other articles paraded and worn in this and other ceremonial dances 
which they will on no account part with, at least to an American, though 
they sometimes manufacture them to order for one another. One of these 
is the flake or knife of obsidian or jasper. I have seen several which 
were fifteen inches or more in length and about two and a half inches 
wide in the widest part. Pieces as large as these are carried: aloft in the 
hand in the dance, wrapped with skin or cloth to prevent the rough 
edges from lacerating the hand, but the smaller ones are mounted on 
wooden handles and glued fast. The large ones cannot be purchased at 
any price, but I procured some about six inches long at $2.50 apiece. 
These are not properly “knives”, but jewelry for sacred purposes, passing 
current also as money. Another thing is a ferocious-looking head-band 
made of the tail of a big gray wolf. Still another is the gorgeous head- 
dress which is-worn in the dance described below. It consists of a 
piece of almost snow-white buckskin, about three feet long and seven 
or eight inches wide, blunt-pointed at the ends, richly and brilliantly cov- 
ered with scarlet woodpecker’s down sewed on in broad bands and zig- 
zag stripes, sometimes intermingled with green down from the same bird. 
I had almost closed a bargain with an old Indian after much persuasion 
to pay him $60 gold for an inferior one of these, but in consulting with his 
family he encountered such determined opposition that he withdrew from his 
agreement. They held it sacrilegious to sell it. 
The greatest Hupa festival is the dance of peace, the celebration of 
which, like the closing of the Temple of Janus, signifies that the tribe are 
at peace with all their neighbors. I will give first the legend on which it 
is founded, merely premising that it was related to me by a white man, and 
that the Indians say it is authentic, only the name ‘‘ Gard” does not prop- 
erly belong to the Hupaé mythology, being of Yurok origin. 
