THE-GEOKGE CATLIN -^INDIAN GALLERY. 369 



3SIR. OATLIN'S notes ON MANDAN CEREMONIES AND TRADITIONS. 



From Mandan Village (noio BaTcota), Juhj, 1832. — The strange country that I am in — 

 its excitements, its accidents and wild incidents, ^vhich startle me at almost every 

 moment, prevent me from any very elaborate disquisition upon the ahove remarka- 

 ble events at present ; and even had I all the time and leisure of a country gentleman, 

 and all the additional information which I am daily procuring, and daily expect to 

 procure hereafter, in explanation of these unaccountable mysteries, yet do I fear that 

 there would be that inexplicable difficulty that hangs over most of the customs and 

 traditions of these simple people, who have no history to save facts and systems from 

 falling into the most absurd and disjointed fable and ignorant fiction. 



What few plausible inferences I have as yet been able to draw from the above 

 strange and peculiar transactions I will set forth, but with some diffidence, hoping 

 and trusting that by further intimacy and familiarity with these people I may yet 

 arrive at more satisfactory and important results. 



That these j)eople should have a tradition of the flood is by no means surprising, 

 as I have learned from every tribe I have visited that they all have some high mount- 

 ain in their vicinity, where they insist ui^on it the big canoe landed ; but that these 

 people should hold an annual celebration of the event, and the season of that de- 

 cided by such circumstances as the full leaf of the willow, and the medicine-lodge 

 opened by such a man as Nu-moWk-muck-a-nah (who appears to be a white man), and 

 making his appearance " from the high mountains in the west," and some other cir- 

 cumstances, is surely a very remarkable thing, and requires some extraordinary at- 

 tention. 



This Nu-moTik-muck-a-nah (first or only man) is undoubtedly some mystery or medi- 

 cine-man of the- tribe, who has gone out on the prairie on the evening previous, and 

 having dressed and painted himself for the occasion, comes into the village in the 

 morning, endeavoring to keep up the semblance of reality ; for their tradition says 

 that at a very ancient period such a man did actually come from the West ; that his 

 body was of the white color, as this man's body is represented ; that he wore a robe 

 of four white wolf skins, his head-dress was made of two ravens' skins, and in his left 

 hand was a huge pipe. He said " he was at one time the only man ; he told them of 

 the destruction of everything on the earth's surface by water ; that he stopped in his 

 big canoe on a high mountain in the West, where he landed and was saved." 



"That the Mandans and all other people were bound to make yearly sacrifices of 

 some edged tools to the water, for of such things the big canoe was made ; that he 

 instructed the Mandans how to build their medicine-lodge, and taught them also the 

 forms of these annual ceremonies, and told them that as long as they made these sac- 

 rifices and performed their rites to the full letter they might be assured of the fact 

 that they would be the favorite people of the Almighty, and would always have 

 enough to eat and drink, and that so soon as they should depart in one tittle from 

 these forms they might be assured that their race would decrease and finally run out, 

 and that they might date their nation's calamity to that omission or neglect." 



These iieoplo have, no doubt, been long living under the dread of such an injunc- 

 tion, and in the fear of departing from it; and while they are living in total igno- 

 rance of its origin, the world must remain equally ignorant of much of its meaning, 

 as they needs must be of all Indian customs resting on ancient traditions which soon 

 run into fables, having lost all their system, by which they might have been con- 

 strued. 



This strange and unaccountable custom is undoubtedly peculiar to the Mandans, 

 altbough aoiongst the Miuatarces, and some others of the neighboring tribes, they 

 have seasons of abstinence and self-torture somewhat similar, but bearing no other 

 resemblance to this than a mere feeble effort or form of imitation. 



It would soem from tlicir tradition of the willow branch and the dove that these 

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