SCAFFOLD BURIAL. 71 



which I inclose. Like all labors of a domestic kind, the preparation for 

 burial is left to the women, usually the old women. The work begins as 

 soon as life is extinct. The face, neck, and hands are thickly painted with 

 vermilion, or a species of red earth found in various portions of the Terri- 

 tory when the vermilion of the traders cannot be had. The clothes and 

 personal trinkets of the deceased ornament the body. When blankets 

 are available, it is then wrapped in one, all parts of the body being com- 

 pletely enveloped. Around this a dressed skin of buffalo is then securely 

 wrapped, with the flesh side out, and the whole securely bound with thongs 

 of skins, either raw or dressed; and for ornament, when available, a bright- 

 red blanket envelopes all 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 wrap- 

 pings upon this airy bed of death. This ceremony is accompanied with 

 lamentations so wild and weird that one must see and hear in order to appre- 

 ciate. 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 been 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 sup- 

 pose, that the horse goes with the man. As illustrating the jm'opensity 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. The hair, never 

 cut under other circumstances, is cropped off even with the neck, and the 

 top of the head and forehead, and sometimes nearly the whole body, arc 



