THE GEOEGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 307 



in. Yet so great was my medicine that chiefs and medicine-men turned out and 

 agreed to compliment me with a dance (Plate 100, No. 436). I looked on with great 

 satisfaction, having been assured by the interpreters and traders that this was the 

 highest honor they had ever known them to pay to any stranger amongst them. 



In this dance, which I have called "■ the dance of the chiefs," for want of a more sig- 

 nificant title, was given by fifteen or twenty chiefs and doctors, many of whom were 

 very old and venerable men. All of them came out in their head-dresses of war-eagle 

 quills, with a spear or staff in the left hand and a rattle in the right. It was given 

 in the midst of the Sioux village, in front of the head chief's lodge ; and beside the 

 medicine-men, who beat on the drum and sang for the dance, there were four young 

 women standing in a row and chanting a sort of chorus for the dancers, forming one 

 of the very few instances that I ever have met where the women are allowed to take 

 any part in the dancing, or other game or amusement, with the men. 



This dance was a very spirited thing, and pleased me much, as well as all the vil- 

 lage, who were assembled around to witneps what most of them never before had 

 seen, their aged and venerable chiefs united in giving a dance. — G. C. 



437. Dog-Dance, Sioux. Painted in July, 1835, at Fort Snelling. 

 (Plate No. 237, page 136, vol 2, Catlin's Eight Years.) 

 The dog's liver and heart are taken raw and bleeding, and placed upon a crotch ; 

 and, being cut into slips, each man dances up to it, bites off and swallows a piece of 

 it, boasting at the same time that he has thus swallowed a piece of the heart of his 

 enemy whom he has slain in battle. 



SIOUX AND CHIPPEWA DANCES. 



The Fourth of July was hailed and celebrated by us at this place (Fort Snelling, falls 

 of Saint Anthony, 1835), in an unusual and not uninteresting manner. With the pres- 

 ence of several hundreds of the wildest of the Chippeways and as many hundreds of the 

 Sioux, we were prepared with material in abudance for the novel — for the wild and gro- 

 tesque — as well as for the grave and ludicrous. Major Taliafferro, the Indian agent, 

 to aid my views in procuring sketches of manners and customs, represented to them 

 that I was a great Medicine-man, who had visited and witnessed the sports of a vast 

 many Indians of different tribes, and had come to see whether the Sioux and Chip- 

 peways were equal in a ball-play, &c, to their neighbors, and that if they would 

 come in on the next day (Fourth of July), and give us a ball-play and some of their 

 dances, in their best style, he would have the dig gun fired twenty-one times (the 

 customary salute for that day), which they easily construed into a high compliment 

 to themselves. This, with still stronger inducements, a barrel of flour, a quantity of 

 pork and tobacco, which I gave them, brought the scene about on the day of inde- 

 pendence, as follows : About 11 o'clock (the usual time for Indians to make their 

 appearance on any great occasion), the young men who were enlisted for ball-play 

 made their appearance on the ground with ball-sticks in hand, with no other dress 

 on than the flap, and attached to a girdle or ornamental sash, a tail, extending nearly 

 to the ground, made of the choicest arrangement of quills and feathers or of the hair 

 of white horses' tails. After an excited and warmly contested play of two hours, 

 they adjourned to a place in front of the agent's office, where they entertained us for 

 two or three hours longer with a continued variety of their most fanciful and pictur- 

 esque dances. They gave us the Beggar' s-dance, the Buffalo-dance, the Bear-dance, 

 the Eagle-dance, and the dance of the braves. — G. C. 



DOG-DANCE. 



Several days after this the plains of Saint Anthony rang with the continual sounds 

 of drums and rattles, in time with the thrilling yells of the dance, until it had 

 doubly ceased to be novelty. General Patterson, of Philadelphia, and his family, ar- 



