as
properly avenged; this, however, was many years ago, when their
enemies were within reasonable striking distance, such, for
instance, as the Chippewas and the Arickarees, Gros Ventres and
Mandan Indians. In cases of women and children, the squaws would cut
off their hair, hack their persons with flint, and sharpen sticks
and run them through the skin of the arms and legs, crying as for a
warrior.

It was an occasional occurrence twenty or more years ago for a squaw
when she lost a favorite child to commit suicide by hanging herself
with a lariat over the limb of a tree. This could not have prevailed
to any great extent, however, although the old men recite several
instances of its occurrence, and a very few examples within recent
years. Such was their custom before the Minnesota outbreak, since
which time it has gradually died out, and at the present time these
ancient customs are adhered to by but a single family, known as the
seven brothers, who appear to retain all the ancient customs of
their tribe. At the present time, as a mourning observance, the
squaws hack themselves on their legs with knives, cut off their
hair, and cry and wail around the grave of the dead person, and the
men in addition paint their faces, but no longer torture themselves
by means of sticks passed through the skin of the arms and legs.
This cutting and painting is sometimes done before and sometimes
after the burial of the body. I also observe that many of the women
of these tribes are adopting so much of the customs of the whites as
prescribes the wearing of black for certain periods. During the
period of mourning these Indians never wash their face, or comb
their hair, or laugh. These customs are observed with varying degree
of strictness, but not in many instances with that exactness which
characterized these Indians before the advent of the white man among
them. There is not now any permanent mutilation of the person
practiced as a mourning ceremony by them. That mutilation of a
finger by removing one or more joints, so generally observed among
the Minnetarree Indians at the Fort Berthold, Dak., Agency, is not
here seen, although the old men of these tribes inform me that it
was an ancient custom among their women, on the occasion of the
burial of a husband, to cut off a portion of a finger and have it
suspended in the tree above his body. I have, however, yet t