Filled the river full of fishes; 13. "I am weary of your quarrels, Therefore be at peace henceforward, 14. "I will send a Prophet to you, A deliverer of the nations, Who shall guide you and shall teach you, If you listen to his counsels, 15. "Bathe now in the stream before you, Wash the war-paint from your faces, Wash the blood-stains from your fingers, Bury your war-clubs and your weapons, Break the red stone from this quarry. Mould and make it into Peace-Pipes, Take the reeds that grow beside you, Deck them with your brightest feathers, Smoke the calumet together, And as brothers live henceforward!" 16. Then upon the ground the warriors Threw their cloaks and shirts of deer-skin, Threw their weapons and their war-gear, Leaped into the rushing river, Washed the war-paint from their faces; Clear above them flowed the water, Clear and limpid from the footprints Of the Master of Life descending; Soiled and stained with streaks of crimson, 17. From the river came the warriors, Clean and washed from all their war-paint; Gitche Manito, the mighty, 18. And in silence all the warriors There is great regularity in the operation of smoking the pipe. The Indians always pass around the pipe, the first man puffing a few whiffs, and then handing it to the one next to him. One person takes hold of the pipe-stem at a certain place, the next one above, and the next one below alternately. Should any one fail to observe this order, whether white man or Indian, he cannot get the pipe until he takes hold of it in the proper way. The reason given is, that it is their medicine;' that no two men, sitting side by side, shall handle the pipe in the same way. It is also very common for a man, on receiving the pipe, to point the bowl toward the ground, and the stem toward the heavens. There is, perhaps, no more interesting ceremony than that of smoking. It is to them a great luxury, and as they sit in groups around, puffing out large volumes of smoke, and conversing in a low, quiet tone of voice, they present the most perfect picture of happiness and content ment. CHAPTER XXII. DANCES. Dancing is one of the principal and most frequent amusements of the aboriginals, and both vocal and instrumental music are made use of. These dances consist of about four different steps, which constitute all the different varieties, but the figures and forms of these scenes are most numerous and produced by the most violent jumps and contortions, accompanied with the songs and beats of drums, which are given in exact time with their motion. Dancing enters into their forms of worship and is often their mode of appealing to the Great Spirit, of paying their usual devotion to their "medicine," and of honoring and entertaining strangers of distinction in their country. There are many kinds of dances, most important of which are: the sun-dance, the ghost-dance, the bear-dance, the green-corn-dance, the buffalo-dance, eagle-dance, warriors-dance, war-dance, braves-dance, begging-dance, calumet-dance, pipe-dance, scalp-dance, and many others. SUN DANCE. This dance is really a feature of the original religion of the Indian in his wild state. No young man is considered a warrior until after he has subjected himself to the tortures of the Sun Dance, which takes place about the last of June each year. After a place has been selected by some of the head men of the tribe, the squaws build a large awning composed of brush and inclosing a circle similar to a circus. ring, covering a piece of ground about 150 feet in diameter. The pole is then selected by a prominent medicine-man, and has to be cut by a young squaw, who must be a virgin; it is then consecrated and prayed over in regular style, and set up in the middle of the inclosure. To the top of this long thongs of rawhide are attached, which reach nearly to the ground, and the lower end is attached to a rawhide thong which in its turn is attached to two small sticks of very tough wood, these sticks having previously been passed through the flesh of the breast of the young Indians who propose to devote themselves to the Great Spirit, and undergo this torture to show the Spirit how brave they will be in war. After all the attachments have been made, a large number of Indian bucks form a circle around the devotees and dance to the music of a little bore-whistle which they blow incessantly. The young men who are undergoing torture in the meantime are trying to tear the flesh away from their bodies by bearing their entire weight on the thong attached to their flesh. Some instances have been known where they have fallen back on the rope as many as twenty times, and suffer torture from fifteen minutes to half an hour before their flesh tears out and lets them loose, and extreme cases have been known when a medicine-man has thrown himself on the tortured Indian and torn him loose by adding his weight to that of the Indian undergoing torture. After this performance all participate in a huge dog-feast, often as many as a hundred dogs being dished up. This meat is highly appreciated by the Indians, in fact no morsel is so choice as a slice of a young fat puppy. At the feast every one is expected to gorge himself to such an extent that he or she is glad to sleep off the effects, which sleep is like unto the sleep of a drunken man, so heavy is it. The Indians appear in full evening dress, being fantastically painted from the tops of their heads to their waist, and from there down, the only covering is a breech-cloth, a small one at that, with a tomahawk attached, while on their heads are the only ornaments which may be fully appreciated. THE GHOST DANCE. The recent messiah craze among the Indians was simply a form of worship, and instituted by the "medicine-men" for profit, the same as "protracted meetings" or "revivals" are organized among the whites by evangelists. The Ghost Dance," as it was called, was but one of a series of such dances which have come into prominence every four or five years as far back as we have any knowlenge of the Sioux Indians. In matters of religion and forms of worship, the average Indian is as confiding and as easily duped as the average white man. In the recent outburst of religious zeal and enthusiasm, in the Wa-ka, Chin-chah Wa-che of God's son's dance, commonly known as the "Ghost Dance," Short Bull took advantage of the Indians' ignorance and credulity and his own skill in the art of sleight of hand- he being a Sioux Herrmann of no mean accomplishments and profited thereby. Short Bull, like the noted Herrmann, always has to have a helper, who is on to all the tricks. In the Ghost Dance, Short Bull would tell his helper to pray for anything he wanted which was understood to be meat, for that was the one thing desired by the average Indian at that time; and he got wa-sna, a favorite dish with the Indians, a rarity and a delicacy rather. This wa-sna consists of meat and tallow and dried berries pounded into a sort of hash, and after it stands until it gets hard, it will keep the year round. This meat was supplied by Short Bull, and the plate kept supplied by him by means of his wizard art. Another one of his tricks was what may be called the "pipe trick." This consisted in setting three ordinary smoking pipes with the bowl in the ground, and then say to his helper, he might pray for meat, and it would come in either pipe he wished, if he would but designate one. After a pipe was designated, Short Bull would pow wow over the pipe for a short time, when a piece of bacon would be seen sticking in the designated pipe -just where the wily Sioux had dexterously placed it. |