368 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



one which I have just named. Several of the traders, who have been for a number of 

 years in the habit of seeing this part of the ceremony, have told me that two years 

 since, when they were looking on, there was one whose flesh on the arms was so strong 

 that the weights could not be left, and he dragged them with his body to the river by 

 the side of the village, where he set a stake fast in the ground on the top of the bank, 

 and fastening cords to it, he let himself half-way down a perpendicular wall of rock 

 of twenty-five or thirty feet, where the weight of his body was suspended by the two 

 cords attached to the flesh of his arms. In this awful condition he hung for several 

 days, equidistant from the top of the rock and the deep water below, into which he 

 at last dropped and saved himself by swimming ashore ! 



TRIBUTE TO INDIAN STOICISM AND POWERS OF ENDURANCE. 



I need record no more of these shocking and disgusting instances, of which I have 

 already given enough to convince the world of the correctness of the established fact 

 of the Indian's superior stoicism and power of endurance, although some recent writers 

 have, from motives of envy, from ignorance, or something else, taken great pains to 

 cut the poor Indian short in everything, and in this, even as if it were a virtue. 



I am ready to accord to them in this particular the palm ; the credit of outdoing 

 anything and everybody, and of enduring more than civilized man ever aspired to or 

 ever thought of. My heart has sickened also with disgust for so abominable and ig- 

 norant a custom, and still I stand ready with all my heart to excuse and forgive them 

 for adhering so strictly to an ancient celebration, founded in superstitions and mys- 

 teries, of which they know not the origin, and constituting a material part and feat- 

 ure in the code and forms of their religion. 



Reader, I will return with you a moment to the medicine-lodge, which is just to be 

 closed, and then we will indulge in some general reflections upon what has passed, 

 and in what, and for what purposes this strange batch of mysteries has been insti- 

 tuted and perpetuated. 



CLOSING THE SACRED LODGE, AND SACRIFICE OF THE EDGED TOOLS USED IN THE 



RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES. 



After these young men, who had for the last four days occupied the medicine-lodge, 

 had been operated on in the macner above described and taken out of it, the old 

 medicine-man, master of ceremonies, returned (still crying to the Great Spirit), sole 

 tenant of that sacred place, and brought out the " edged tools," which I before said 

 had been collected at the door of every man's wigwam, to be given as a sacrifice to 

 the water, and leaving the lodge securely fastened, he approached the bank of the 

 river, when all the medicine-men attended him and all the nation were spectators, 

 and in their presence he threw them from a high bank into very deep water, from 

 which they cannot be recovered, and where they are, correctly speaking, made a sac- 

 rifice to the water. This part of the affair took place just exactly at sundown, and 

 closed the scene, being the end or finale of the Mandan religious ceremony. — Pages 173 

 -176, vol. 1, Catlin's Eight Years. 



CERTIFICATES AS TO MR. CATLIN'S PAINTINGS AND NOTES ON THE 

 MANDAN RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES. 



We hereby certify that we witnessed, in company with Mr. Catlin, in the Mandan 

 village, the ceremonies represented in the four paintings [Nos. 504-507] and described 

 in his notes, to which this certificate refers, and that he has therein faithfully repre- 

 sented those scenes as we saw them transacted, without any addition or exaggera- 

 tion. 



J. Kipp, 

 Agent American Fur Company. 

 L. Crawford, Cleric. 

 * Abraham Bogard. 

 Mandan Village, July 20, 1832. 



