(34 LODGE BURIAL -CROWS. 



on her feet, and her body was wrapped in two superb buffalo-robes worked 

 in like manner ; she had evidently been dead but a clay or two, and to our 

 surprise a portion of the upper part of her person was bare, exposing the 

 face and a part of the breast, as if the robes in which she was wrapped had 

 by some means been disarranged, whereas all the other bodies were closely 

 covered up. It was, at the time, the opinion of our mountaineers that these 

 Indians must have fallen in an encounter with a party of Crows ; but I 

 subsequently learned that they had all died of the cholera, and that this 

 young girl, being considered past recovery, had been arranged by her 

 friends in the habiliments of the dead, inclosed in the lodge alive, and aban- 

 doned to her fate, so fearfully alarmed were the Indians by this to them 

 novel and terrible disease. 



It might, perhaps, be said that this form of burial was exceptional, 

 and due to the dread of again using the lodges which had served as the 

 homes of those afflicted with the cholera, but it is thought such was not the 

 case, as the writer has notes of the same kind of burial among the same 

 tribe and of others, notably the Crows, the body of one of their chiefs 

 (Long Horse) being disposed of as follows : 



"The lodge poles inclose an oblong circle some 18 by 22 feet at the 

 base, converging to a point at least 30 feet high, covered with buffalo-hides 

 dressed without hair except a part of the tail switch, which floats outside 

 like, and mingled with human scalps. The different skins are neatly fitted 

 and sewed together with sinew, and all painted in seven alternate horizon- 

 tal stripes of brown and yellow, decorated with various life-like war scenes. 

 Over the small entrance is a large bright cross, the upright being a large 

 stuffed white wolf-skin upon his war lance, and the cross-bar of bright scar- 

 let flannel, containing the quiver of bow and ari-ows, which nearly all war- 

 riors still carry, even when armed with repeating rifles. As the cross is not 

 a pagan but a Christian (which Long Horse was not either by profession 

 or practice) emblem, it was probably placed there by the influence of some 

 of his white friends. I entered, finding Long Horse buried Indian fashion, 

 in full war dress, paint and feathers, in a rude coffin, upon a platform about 

 breast high, decorated with weapons, scalps, and ornaments. A large open- 

 ing and wind-flap at top favored ventilation, and though he had lain there 

 in an open coffin a full month, some of which was hot weather, there was 



