ancers, and, if such are found, to
bite them and tear their flesh with their teeth. They also guard the dance
like sentinels, and fly at one who attempts to leave it before it is done.

The frenzied shrieks of these human animals, and of the women who follow
them, produce a wonderful nervous effect upon the listening multitudes.
All feel that they are about to enter into the ecstatic spiritual
condition of departed souls, and are to be joined by the shades of the
dead heroes and warriors of tradition and story.

Each dancer has a masque. It may be an owl's head with mother-of-pearl
eyes, or a wooden pelican's beak, or a wolf's head. It may be a wooden
animal's face, which can be pulled apart by a string, and reveal under it
an effigy of a human face, the first masque changing into great ears. The
museum at Ottawa, Canada, contains a great number of such masques, and
some missionaries in the Northwest make curious collections of them.

The whirling begins. Everywhere are whirling circles--round and round they
go. The sight of it all would make a spectator dizzy. Cries arise, each
more and more fearful; the whole multitude are at last shrieking with
dizzy heads and wildly beating pulses. The cries become deafening; an
almost superhuman frenzy passes over all; they seem to be no longer
mortal--the armies of the dead are believed to be about them; they think
that they are reveling in the joys of the heroes' paradise. One by one
they drop down, until the whole assembly is exhausted.

At midnight the great fires are kindled, and throw their lights and
shadows over the frenzied sleepers. Such was the _Tamanous_-dance, and so
ended the first night of the feast.

On the second night the old chief gave away his private possessions, and
on the third the wedding ceremony was performed.

The wild and inhuman Death-dance, which the tribe demanded, was expected
to end the festival at the going down of the shadowy moon. Could it be
prevented after the traditions of unknown centuries, and at a time when
the historical pride of the warriors was awakened to celebrate the
barbarous deeds of their ancestors?

The wedding was simple. It consisted chiefly in gifts to the bride,
Multoona. The girl was fantastically dressed, with ornaments of shells and
feathers, and she followed the young prince demurely. After the ceremony
of the bridal gifts came the Fire-fly dance, in which light-torches
gleamed out in vanishing spirals here and there