276 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLEEY. 



of cannon for half an hour, and the shrill yells of the half-affrighted savages who 

 lined the shores, presented a scene of the most thrilling and picturesque appear- 

 ance. 



(See also outline by Mr. Catlin of Fort Union from the river opposite.) 



389. View ou Upper Missouri ; the Iron bluff, twelve hundred miles above Saint 



Louis ; a beautiful subject for a landscape. Painted in 1832. 



390. View on Upper Missouri; view in the Big Bend, nineteen hundred miles 



above Saint Louis ; showing the manner in which the conical bluffs on that 

 river are formed ; table-lands in distance, rising several hundred feet above 

 the summit level of the prairie. Painted in 1832. 



391. View on Upper Missouri ; view in the Big Bend; magnificent clay bluffs, with 



high table-land in the distance. Painted in 1832. 



392. View on Upper Missouri ; back view of the Mandan village, showing their 

 mode of depositing their dead, on scaffolds, enveloped in skins, and of pre- 

 serving and feeding the skulls ; eighteen hundred miles above Saint Louis ; 

 women feeding the skulls of their relatives with dishes of meat. Painted 

 in 1832. 



(Plate No. 48, page 89, vol. 1, Catlin's Eight Years; see also No. 502.) 



These people never bury the dead, but place the bodies on slight scaffolds, just 

 above the reach of human hands and out of the way of wolves and dogs, and they 

 are there left to molder and decay. This cemetery, or place of deposit for the dead, 

 is just back of the village, on a level prairie (Plate 48), and with all its appearances, 

 history, forms, ceremonies, &c., is one of the strangest and most interesting objects 

 to be described in the vicinity of this peculiar race. 



Whenever a person dies in the Mandan village, and the customary honors and con- 

 dolence are paid to his remains, and the body dressed in its best attire, painted, oiled, 

 feasted, and supplied with bow and quiver, shield, pipe and tobacco, knife, flint, and 

 steel, and provisions enough to last him a few days on the journey which he is to per- 

 form, a fresh buffalo's skin, just taken from the animal's back, is wrapped around the 

 body, and tightly bound and wound with thongs of raw-hide from head to foot. Then 

 other robes are soaked in water till they are quite soft and elastic, which are also 

 bandaged around the body in the same manner and tied fast with thongs, which are 

 wound with great care and exactness, so as to exclude the action of the air from all 

 parts of the body. 



There is then a separate scaffold erected for it, constructed of four upright posts, a 

 little higher than human hands can reach, and on the tops of these are small poles 

 passing around from one post to the others, across which a number of willow rods 

 just strong enough to support the body, which is laid upon them ou its back, with its 

 feet carefully presented toward the rising sun. 



There are a great number of these bodies resting exactly in a similar way, except- 

 ing in some instances where a chief or medicine man may be seen with a few yards of 

 scarlet or blue cloth spread over his remains as a mark of public respect and esteem. 

 Some hundreds of these bodies may be seen reposing in this manner in this curious 

 place, which the Indians call " the village of the dead," and the traveler who visits this 

 country to study and learn will not only be struck with the novel appearance of the 

 scene, but if he will give attention to the respect and devotions that are paid to this 

 sacred place he will draw many a moral deduction that will last him through life. 

 He will learn, at least, that filial, conjugal, and paternal affection are not necessarily 

 the results of civilization, but that the Great Spirit has given them to man in his 



