a 
UNWRITTEN DAKOTA LAWS. ql 
and wars, the Dakota nation has increased for the last two hundred years. 
This has been proved true within the last few decades at villages where 
actual count has been made. But in their entering upon the habits and 
environments of civilization, it is usually found that a wave of death goes 
over the people. They do not know how to live in the changed conditions, 
and the death rate is fearfully increased. ‘‘We die, we all die, we are con- 
sumed with dying,” is the sad refrain of many a Dakota family. 
Living much in the outdoors and within airy tipis, and subsisting 
on wild meats and such roots and fruits as they could gather, the children 
usually lived. But, nevertheless, even then death came. The baby in the 
mother’s arms or strapped to her back sickened; or the little boy or girl 
occasionally succumbed under the hardships and privations; or the mother 
was taken with insidious consumption. The young father, it may be, ran 
too long and hard after that deer; he never ran again, but sickened and 
died. Then the old and the blind and the lame passed away, because they 
had reached the limits of life. So death comes to Indian tipis as to 
white men’s hovels and palaces. But it is no more welcome in the one 
case than in the other. The Dakota mother loves her infant as well as the 
white woman her baby. When the spirit takes its flight a wild howl goes 
up from the tent. The baby form is then wrapped in the best buffalo calf- 
skin or the nicest red blanket and laid away on a scaffold or on the branch 
of some tree. hither the mother goes with disheveled hair and the oldest 
and wails out 
her anguish, in the twilight, often abiding out far into the cold night. The 

clothes of sorrow—tor she has given away the better ones 
nice kettle of hominy is prepared and carried to the place where the spirit 
is supposed to hover still. When it has remained sufficiently long for the 
wanaei to inhale the ambrosia, the little children of the village are invited 
to eat up the remainder. 
But let us take another case. A young man is lying sick in yonder 
tent. He has been the best hunter in the village. Many a time he has 
come in carrying one, two, or more deer on his back, and has been met and 
relieved of his burden by his wife or mother. The old men have praised 
him as swifter than the antelope, while they have feasted on his venison. 
But now some spirit of wolf or bear has come into him and caused this 
sickness. The doctors of the village or conjurers are tried, one after 
another. The blankets, the gun, and the horse have all been given to 
secure the best skill; but it is all in vain; the hunter dies. The last act 
of the conjurer is to sing a song to conduct the spirit over the wanagi 
