420 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



will recall them to his recollection, when the Indian lays down by his fireside with 

 his drum in his hand, which he lightly and almost imperceptibly touches over, as he 

 accompanies it with his stifled voice of dulcet sounds that might come from the most 

 tender and delicate female. 



These quiet and tender songs are very different from those which are sung at their 

 dances, in full chorus and violent gesticulation, and many of them seem to be quite 

 rich in plaintive expression and melody, though barren of change and variety. 



Dancing, I have before said, is one of the principal and most valued amusements 

 of the Indians, and much more frequently practiced by them than by any civilized 

 society, inasmuch as it enters into their forms of worship and is often their mode of 

 appealing to the Great Spirit— of paying their usual devotions to their medicine— 

 and of honoring and entertaining strangers of distinction in their country. 



Instead of the " giddy maze" of the quadrille or the country dance, enlivened by 

 the cheering smiles and graces of silkened beauty, the Indian performs his rounds 

 with jumps, and starts, and yells, much to the satisfaction of his own exclusive self 

 and infinite amusement of the gentler sex, who are always lookers-on, but seldom 

 allowed so great a pleasure or so signal an honor as that of joining with their lords 

 in this or any other entertainment. Whilst staying with these people on my way up 

 the river I was repeatedly honored with the dance, and I as often hired them to give 

 them, or went to overlook where they were performing them at their own pleasure in 

 pursuance of their peculiar customs or for their own amusement, that I might study 

 and correctly herald them to future ages. I saw so many of their different varieties 

 of dances amongst the Sioux that I should almost be disposed to denominate them 

 the "dancing Indians." It would actually seem as if they had dances for everything. 

 And in so large a village there was scarcely an hour in auy day or night but what 

 the beat of the drum could somewhere be heard. These dances are almost as various 

 and different in their character as they are numerous — some of them so exceedingly 

 grotesque and laughable as to keer> the bystanders in an irresistible roar of laughter— 

 others are calculated to excite his pity and forcibly appeal to his sympathies, whilst 

 others disgust, and yet others terrify and alarm him with their frightful threats and 

 contortions. — Pages 243,244, vol. 1, Catlin's Eight Years. 



BURYING THE DEAD. 



[See also No. 392.] 



Whilst strolling about on the western bank of the river at this place, near the Man- 

 dan Village, I found the ancient site of an Indian village, which, from the character of 

 the marks, I am sure was once the residence of the Mandans. I said in a former let- 

 ter, when speaking of the Mandans, that, within the recollection of some of their oldest 

 men, they lived some 60 or 80 miles down the river from the place of their present 

 residence ; and that they then lived in nine villages. On my way down I became fully 

 convinced of the fact, having landed my canoe and examined the ground where the 

 foundation of every wigwam can yet be distinctly seen. At that time they must have 

 been much more numerous than at present, from the many marks they have left, as 

 well as from their own representations. 



The Mandans have a peculiar way of building their wigwams, by digging down a 

 couple of feet in the earth, and there fixing the ends of the poles which form the 

 walls of their houses. There are other marks, such as their caches, and also their 

 mode of depositing their dead on scaffolds, and of preserving the skulls in circles on 

 the prairies; which peculiar customs I have before described, and most of which are 

 distinctly to be recognized in each of these places, as well as in several similar re- 

 mains which I have met with on the banks of the river, between here and the Man- 

 dans, which fully convince me that they have formerly occupied the lower parts of 

 the Missouri, have gradually made their way quite through the heart of the great 



