the few shabby articles of apparel worn by the
mourners, are given away and the family left destitute. Thus far the
custom is universal or nearly so. The wives, mother, and sisters of
a deceased man, on the first, second, or third day after the
funeral, frequently throw off their moccasins and leggings and gash
their legs with their butcher-knives, and march through the camp and
to the place of burial with bare and bleeding extremities, while
they chant or wail their dismal songs of mourning. The men likewise
often gash themselves in many places, and usually seek the solitude
of the higher point on the distant prairie, where they remain
fasting, smoking, and wailing out their lamentations for two or
three days. A chief who had lost a brother once came to me after
three or four days of mourning in solitude almost exhausted from
hunger and bodily anguish. He had gashed the outer side of both
lower extremities at intervals of a few inches all the way from the
ankles to the top of the hips. His wounds had inflamed from
exposure, and were suppurating freely. He assured me that he had not
slept for several days or nights. I dressed his wounds with a
soothing ointment, and gave him a full dose of an effective anodyne,
after which he slept long and refreshingly, and awoke to express his
gratitude and shake my hand in a very cordial and sincere manner.
When these harsher inflictions are not resorted to, the mourners
usually repair daily for a few days to the place of burial, toward
the hour of sunset, and chant their grief until it is apparently
assuaged by its own expression. This is rarely kept up for more than
four or five days, but is occasionally resorted to, at intervals,
for weeks, or even months, according to the mood of the bereft.
I have seen few things in life so touching as the spectacle of an
old father going daily to the grave of his child, while the shadows
are lengthening, and pouring out his grief in wails that would move
a demon, until his figure melts with the gray twilight, when, silent
and solemn, he returns to his desolate family. The weird effect of
this observance is sometimes heightened, when the deceased was a
grown-up son, by the old man kindling a little fire near the head of
the scaffold, and varying his lamentations with smoking in silence.
The foregoing is drawn from my memory of personal observances during
a period of more than