DAKOTA DANCES. ; 2311 
placed rings of German silver. When all the children had had their ears 
pierced, ten men placed by the pole the skull of some large animal, crying 
over it and making sundry passes. Then all the young unmarried maidens 
who had obeyed their parents and had been chaste during the year went 
up and touched the tree, raised their right hands to the sun, bowed to the 
skull, and then retired from the inclosure. The young women had been 
told that if any of them had been unchaste the t vuching of the tree would 
insure fatal consequences to them, as the large animal represented by the 
skull would carry them off to the spirit land. 
At 8 o’clock the sun-dancers proper, seventeen in number, entered the 
ring. ‘These men had been fasting, no food or water having been given 
them for three days and nights previous to their entering the inclosure. 
Men who take part in this dance say what they are going to do before they 
are placed on record—i. e., they intend going one, two, or more days with- 
out food and water, and whether they intend being cut and tied up to the 
pole. After making such a declaration they lose all control of their own 
wills. They are obliged to fast, and are placed on buffalo robes in a sweat- 
house until they become as gaunt as grayhouads. In this condition were 
the seventeen brought into the ring by guards, and each one had a whistle 
placed in his mouth and a banner with a long staff placed in his hand. 
Then ten large bass drums, beaten by sixty men, struck up a hideous noise, 
the seventeen men danced, whistled, gazed steadily at the sun, and kept 
time with the drums. This scene was kept up with little or no change until 
the morning of the third day. 
The white visitors reached the grounds at 10 a. m. Saturday, the 26th. 
The same noise was there, and the seventeen were still dancing and whist- 
ling. The clubs used as drumsticks had horses’ tails fastened to them 
instead of the scalps which would have been used in earlier days. At 11 
a.m. seven of the seventeen were laid down on blankets, and after much 
ceremony and giving away of horses and ealico, each man was cut and tied 
up to the pole. This operation was performed by raising the skin of the 
right breast and then that of the left, cutting a hole about an inch long 
through the skin at each place. A round wooden skewer was inserted 
through each hole, fastened by sinews, the sinews tied to a rope, and the 
rope to the pole. One fellow had pins inserted in each arm, tied with 
sinews, and fastened to a horse which was standing beside him. The first 
and second dancers seemed to be veterans, as they went forward to the 
pole, made a short prayer, and then ran backward, breaking loose and fall- 
