72 MOUENING OBSEEVANCES. 



smeared with a species of white earth resembling chalk, moistened with 

 water. The lodge, teepee, and all the family possessions except the few 

 shabby articles of apparel worn by the mourners, are given away and the 

 family left destitute. Thus far the custom is universal or nearly so. The 

 wives, mother, and sisters of a deceased man, on the first, second, or third 

 day after the funeral, frequently throw off their moccasins and leggins and 

 gash their legs with their butcher-knives, and march through the camp and 

 to the place of burial with bare and Weeding extremities, while they chant 

 or wail their dismal songs of mourning. The men likewise often gash 

 themselves in many places, and usually seek the solitude of the higher 

 point on the distant prairie, where they remain fasting, smoking, and wail- 

 ing out their lamentations for two or three days. A chief who had lost a 

 brother once cameto me after three or four days of mourning in solitude 

 almost exhausted from hunger and bodily anguish. He had gashed the 

 outer side of both lower extremities at intervals of a few inches all the way 

 from the ankles to the top of the hips. His wounds had inflamed from 

 exposure, and were suppurating freely. He assured me that he had not 

 slept for several days or nights. I dressed his wounds with a soothing 

 ointment, and gave him a full dose of an effective anodyne, after which he 

 slept long and refreshingly, and awoke to express his gratitude and shake 

 my hand in a very cordial and sincere manner. When these harsher inflic- 

 tions are not resorted to, the mourners usually repair daily for a few days 

 to the place of burial, toward the hour of sunset, and chant their grief until 

 apparently assuaged by its own expression. This is rarely kept up for 

 more than four or five days, but is occasionally resorted to, at intervals, 

 for weeks, or even months, according to the mood of the bereft. I have 

 seen few things in life so touching as the spectacle of an old father going 

 daily to the grave of his child, while thS shadows are lengthening, and 

 pouring out his grief in wails that would move a demon, until his figure 

 melts with the gray twilight, when, silent and solemn, he returns to his 

 desolate family. The weird effect of this observance is sometimes height- 

 ened, when the deceased was a grown-up son, by the old man kindling a 

 little fire near the head of the scaffold, and varying his lamentations with 

 smoking in silence. The foregoing is drawn from my memory of personal 



