From The Examiner.

О-КЕЕ-РА.

O-Kee-Pa: A Religious Ceremony; and Other Customs of the Mandans. By George Catlin. With Thirteen Coloured Illustrations. Trübner and Co.

bers were then two or three thousand, and they followed their native customs, having no civilized people near them except a few agents of the Missouri Fur Company's busiside. They were a friendly and hospitable ness, who lived in a trading-house by their tribe, of whom it was said that no Mandan ever killed a white man.'

On the first day of their great festival, the THE most incredible part of Mr. Catlin's leading medicine man stood on the top of a account of the North American Indians, wigwam before sunrise, and announced the and those of South America, among whom coming of a great white man to open the he lived for fourteen years, collected memo- Medicine Lodge. This lodge was a large rials, and sketched and painted, not himself wigwam religiously closed during the whole but many a canvas, was his account of the year, except during the five days of the religious ceremonies of the Mandans. As O-kee-pa. Then there was shouting, yellit has been discredited by Mr. Schoolcraft ing, and looking westward till the white in his large work on the North American man an old man covered with white clay, Indians, it is now republished with addition- and carrying a large Medicine Pipe,— who al detail, and a dozen or more of curious represented the one man saved from the illustrative sketches, printed in colour. Mr. traditional flood, came down the distant Catlin also produces witness to the trust- hills and approached the village. He anworthiness of his account in a letter, dated nounced himself, caused everybody to retire last December, addressed to him by the and be silent, the dogs also to be muzzled, venerable Prince Maximilian of Neuwied, and proceeded to open the Medicine Lodge who is in repute among his countrymen as which, by the hands of four clean men of a scientific traveller, and himself visited the the tribe from North, South, East, and Indian tribes of the Missouri, thirty-three West, he swept and garnished. Then he years ago, spending a whole winter with the went to the door of each wigwam and Mandan tribe, now all but destroyed, or received from its occupant an edge tool. quite destroyed, by small-pox and the ruin These edge tools were collected in the that came on the few survivors of the pesti- Medicine Lodge, and at the close of the feslence. Prince Maximilian joined the Man- tival would be thrown into deep water, from dans after the season of the religious festi- the top of the rocks, as a sacrifice to the val of O-kee-pa, which Mr. Catlin saw and water. The mysterious visitor slept after described; but he had detailed descriptions the first day of silence in the Medicine of it from all the chiefs and from Mr. Kipp, Lodge. Next morning he called to the who was then director of Fort Clarke at lodge all the young men of the tribe who the Mandan village, and from these descrip- desired to graduate as warriors. Fifty-five tions the Prince gave in his book of travel young fellows obeyed his call. He then an account of the O-kee-pa, essentially transferred his pipe of office to the chief agreeing with Mr. Catlin's report of what medicine man of the tribe, passed out of the Mr. Kipp, Agent of the American village and made his way back to the hills. Fur Company, and two other Europeans Mr. Catlin owed his privilege of witnessing certified that they were with Mr. Catlin and the ceremonies within the Lodge to the fasaw what he saw. Mr. Kipp's predecessor, vour of the medicine man, whose heart he who conducted the American Fur Com- had won by painting his portrait. pany's business with the Mandans for eight years, says that he witnessed annually for eight years the ceremonies described by Mr. Catlin, except that he never got admission to the inside of the Medicine Lodge and saw what was done there.

he saw.

Upon their annual religious ceremony of the O-kee-pa, the Mandans believed that their supply of buffaloes depended.

In the summer of 1832 Mr. Catlin paid two visits to the Mandans in a village of earth-covered wigwams on the west bank of the Missouri River, eighteen hundred miles above the town of St Louis. Their num

For three days, and part of a fourth, the young candidates for the degree of warrior were kept in the lodge without meat, drink, or sleep, while outside festival was going on, in which the chief feature was the Bull Dance to secure the year's supply of buffaloes. It was danced four times on the first day, eight times on the second day, twelve times on the third day, and sixteen times on the fourth day, by eight men dressed in buffalo skins to represent buffalo bulls, two men in black paint dotted with white stars who represented" night," and two in red paint with long white stripes called "morn

ing rays." Round about the dance was a masque of grizzly bears, bald eagles, vultures, antelopes, swans, rattlesnakes, and wolves, two of each. These performers, and also the young men waiting for the ordeal through which they reached the degree of M. W., or Mandan Warrior, were so elaborately and completely painted with coloured clays, in a lodge set apart for this artistic purpose, that not an inch of the natural colour of their bodies, limbs or hair, was to be seen. Into the last dance, on the fourth day, a man blackened and made horrible, to represent the evil spirit, broke loose, and had, by outery and ceremony, to be banned from the village; great honour being paid to the young woman by whom. in the course of the business, his wand had been broken. It was she who stopped the bull dance, invited the chiefs to enter the Medicine Lodge, and ordered the beginning of the voluntary examination by torturing of the starving and sleepless candidates for the degree of warrior. What was done then within the lodge we leave Mr. Catlin himself to tell. Strange as it is, it is not incredible, and has its parallel in many a record of what is done by fanatical dervishes in the name of religion. Here it is done only in evidence of courage and endurance.

Two men, who were to infict the tortures, had taken their positions near the middle of the lodge; one, with a large knife with a sharp point and two edges, which were backed with arother knife in order to produce as much pain as possible, was ready to make the incisions through the flesh, and the other, prepared with a handful of splints of the size of a man's finger, and sharpened at both ends, to be passed through the wounds as soon as the knife was withdrawn.

The bodies of these two men, who were probably medicine men, were painted red, with their hands and feet black; and the one who made the incisions with the knife wore a mask, that the young men should never know who gave them their wounds; and on their bodies and limbs they had conspicuously marked with paint the scars which they bore, as evidence that they had passed through the same ordeal. To these two men one of the emaciated candidates at a time crawled up, and submitted to the knife (as seen in Plate X.), which was passed under and through the integuments and flesh taken up between the thumb and forefinger of the operator, on each arm, above and below the elbow, over the brachialis externus and the extensor radialis, and on each leg above and below the knee, over the vastus externus and the peroneus; and also on each breast and each shoulder.

During this painful operation, most of these young men, as they took their position to be

operated upon, observing me taking notes, beckoned me to look them in the face, and sat, without the apparent change of a muscle, smiling at me whilst the knife was passing through their flesh, the ripping sound of which, and the and limbs, filled my eyes with irresistible tears. trickling of blood over their clay covered bodies

When these incisions were all made, and the

splints passed through, a cord of raw hide was lowered down through the top of the wigwam, and fastened to the splints on the breasts or shoulders, by which the young man was to be raised up and suspended, by men placed on the top of the lodge for the purpose.

These cords having been attached to the splints on the breast or the shoulders, each one had medicine bag was held in his left hand, and a his shield hung to some one of the splints; his dried buffalo skull was attached to the splint on each lower leg and each lower arm, that its weight might prevent him from struggling; when, at a signal, by striking the cord, the men on top of the lodge commenced to draw him up. He was thus raised some three or four feet above the ground, until the buffalo heads and other articles attached to the wounds swung clear, when another man, his body red and his hands and feet black, stepped up, and with a small pole, began to turn him around. increased until fainting ensued, when it ceased. The turning was slow at first, and gradually In each case these young men submitted to the knife, to the insertion of the splints, and even to being hung and lifted up, without a perceptible murmur or a groan; but when the turning commenced, they began crying in the most heart-rending tones to the Great Spirit, imploring him to enable them to bear and survive the painful ordeal which they were entering on. This piteous prayer, the sounds of which no imagination can ever reach, and of which I could get no translation, seemed to be an established form, ejaculated alike by all, and continued until fainting commenced, when it gradually ceased.

In each instance they were turned until they fainted and their cries were ended. Their heads hanging forwards and down, and their tongues distended, and becoming entirely motionless and silent, they had in each instance, the appearance of a corpse. (See Plate XI.) In this view, which was sketched whilst the two young men were hanging before me, one is suspended by the muscles of the breast, and the other by the muscles of the shoulders, and two of the young candidates are seen reclining on the ground, and waiting for their turn.

When brought to this condition, without signs of animation, the lookers on pronounced the word dead! dead! when the men who had turned them struck the cords with their poles, which was the signal for the men on top of the lodge to lower them to the ground, the time of their suspension having been from fifteen to twenty minutes.

The excessive pain produced by the turning, which was evinced by the increased cries as the

rapidity of the turning increased, was no doubt | ground as they ran, amidst the deafening shouts caused by the additional weight of the buffalo skulls upon the splints, in consequence of their centrifugal direction, caused by the rapidity with which the bodies were turned, added to the sickening distress of the rotary motion; and what that double agony actually was every adult Mandan knew, and probably no human being but a Mandan ever felt.

It is wonderful that only one young man was known to have died under this dreadful discipline.

From the Spectator.

EUROPEAN WILL AND ORIENTAL VOLI

TION.

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the torture the candidates had their choice of be- | had willed, and his volition was executive. ing,in the first, suspended by the breasts or by The incident curiously illustrates what s the shoulders; and in the "last race" of being perhaps the main difference between an dragged as has been described, or to wander Asiatic and a European, a difference which about the prairies from day to day, and still is patent to any one who has personally without food, until suppuration of the wounds took place, and, by the decay of the flesh, the studied both, but which we almost despair dragging weights were left behind. of making clear by any form of words, a difference in the apparent, or, for aught we know, the real nature of the will. With a European, or a man trained from childhood in European habits, the will seems to - of course it cannot really be—an artificial quality, a power which he accumulates by a mental process in order to beat down resistance, and which he can call upon as he can upon steam, or friction, or electricity, to a precisely limited extent. It needs obstacles to call it into full activity, as a motor needs a resisting fluid. The European, except in exceptional cases, is not fond of exerting it, does not wish to recognize it, feels willessness, the voluntary paralysis of the will, to be one of the first conditions of ease and enjoyment. The use of the power suggests labour, like the use of any other faculty, and when he does not want to labour he does not want to will. A European habitually unopposed would, therefore, usually have a weak will and a high temper, a will as of a spoiled child, which fumes and screams at opposition, but yields to resistance, yields in some cases without any intention of resuming the contest. That is not the case with a Western Asiatic, or any Asiatic except a Chinaman, though the difference is very hard to put in words. His will is not a thing developed by mental churning, or an artificial power at all, but something in his nature which is strengthened, not weakened, by an absence of opposition, a fever of the blood, an emotion of the muscles, something more nearly like a lust than a purely mental operation. It is a crave to do this or that, or leave undone this or that, so fierce and strong that the reason seems scarcely to have more power than over the beating of the pulse or the winking of the eyelid. You may restrain either for the moment, but it will be, with all deference to M. Schulz, by an exertion which is pain, and it is only by a similar exertion that an Asiatic coerces his will into obedience. An Englishman, for example, must be very drunk either with rage or wine before he would exert his will against a natural force, or feel that it had been defeated by an element. An Asiatic can so exert it, can be carried away by it into an effort, to use an absurd illustration, to stop the rain, to punish nature for refusing compliance. We have always believed

THE most characteristic incident in the Sultan's visit, at least the most characteristic of those which have reached the public ear, is the stoppage of the train just outside Folkestone. His Majesty, according to the story, had taken his seat in the saloon with the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge, and been carried a few miles, when he began to feel a little drowsy. The papers say he is always sleeping, but we suppose the truth is that he is accustomed to sleep, as animals are, when he wants to sleep, not when it is etiquette, and therefore habit, to feel sleepy. Neapolitans are called lazy for much the same reason, because they sleep after meals, like cows, and work when it is cool, instead of when it is hot. Feeling drowsy, the Sultan quietly request ed that the train should be stopped, that the Prince and the Duke should get out, and that he himself should be left to sleep in peace, requests which were complied with, with a readiness implying possibly a certain relief from a most ennuyant situation. It must be a horrible bore to entertain an immensely great man through an interpreter. We take the story as told in the Times and two other journals, and whether true or false it is equally characteristic. No Western man, - we suppose after Mr. Fawcett's little sarcasm about the geography of Constantinople we must not say no European, -would have done that, and almost any Asiatic of that rank would, and would have done it without the slightest conception that he was doing any thing discourteous, or unusual, or odd. The Sultan wanted to sleep, and why should he not stop a train, or tell the ebbing tide to flow, or do any thing else necessary to carry out his purpose? He

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EUROPEAN WILL AND ORIENTAL VOLITION.

that story of Xerxes whipping the sea, just because it is one no European would have invented. He would have thought he was writing nonsense. of the brain which gives to the will of an It is this independence Oriental its frightful power over himself. All European travellers, English, French, Portuguese, and American, have noticed the Hindoo custom of "sitting in dhurna as something abnormally strange, inexplicable by any analogy familiar to them; and they are right. No European could do it. It is very easy to say it is mere childishness or whim, but a Hindoo willing a certain thing will calmly starve himself to secure that thing, will sit day after day in one place foodless, wasting to skin and bone, and so die rather than give up. nary European simply could not do it, could An ordinot retain that absolute command over the brain and the body, command as of an external force. He would be mad first, or "lose his fortitude," and so yield. Suffering seems to have no meaning to an Asiatic once excited, external obstacles no weight. He has willed, and every obstacle disappears, if not in reality, at least from his mental ken. will deepens under favourable circumstanIn action this intensity of ces, until a Sultan is capable of feeling as if his will were a creative volition, as if obedience were an inevitable result, like beat from friction, of ordering the greatest or most horrible act without excitement or sense of victory. It is this which produces alike the wonderful calm and the terrible fury of the higher Asiatics. They will, not as we will, with a notion that we must exert a force to bear down opposition, but as we will a movement of hand or eyelid, simply as a precedent condition, which nature teaches them is essential to getting that movement, without a thought of resistance. Stopping a train when he willed to stop a a train seemed to the Sultan no more than closing his hand when he willed to close his hand, would have seemed no more if the stoppage had involved a thousand lives, or, under certain conditions, his own. ance, which would have woke the European Resistto a compression of the will, would simply have woke him either to fury or to unscrupulousness, to an effort to get his way, in which bonds usually strongly felt would snap like burnt cotton. quite possible, as we shall very likely be Of course it is told, that this is mere childishness, a gradual development from unchecked obstinacy, and we dare say, if we go back a few thousand years, this may be true, but we have seen this. An Indian, or Arab, or Coptic

child of two, can sit, if it is told, for hours motionless, like a little statue, only its eyes rolling, but no limb moving. of obedience, and the question is only child cannot. Call it, if you will, a habit pushed one step back. An English tle monkey the power to obey, the capacity of restraining the nervous impulse to move, What gives the litering with their natural life? What makes its will so independent of its instincts, its the means of keeping its muscles from quivdesires, and its habits?

one of the main obstacles, perhaps the main obstacle, to any radical change in the politThis particular condition of the will is ical organizations of the East. Orientals do not desire power unless they can exerout a perpetual exertion of other faculties. cise it by volition, unless the will acts withPower in the shape of influence is to them not power at all; it may be valuable or useful or endurable, but it is not power. They will fawn to get power, but having got it they want to use it without all that friction, as they use their limbs. It is the hardest thing in the world to keep an Asiatic who means to be just within the limits its exercise he never is kept except by coof his authority, and within the forms of ercion. If he has power to decree death, and wills death, nothing except punishment will make him decree death according to some regular formula. So it is the hardest thing to get resistance offered when it ought to be. The lord's volition ought to be executive over his servants, just as it is over his eyelids. Moreover, if that lord is a native, it will be executive, and in small things as well as great, and consequently he must be obeyed subserviently. An Asiatic cannot resist any order from a superior, however slight, without a revolt, generally a bloody one, because he knows that his superior's will is as strong in small things as in great, will go on to realization through any thing, the necessity of inflicting torture included. The Sepoys could have abolished greased cartridges simply by resigning en service, masse, ruler's will would be inexorable, would -as permitted by their terms of continue to be executive, till he was killed. but they calculated that the Every opposition is war to the knife, and opposition, therefore, is never made except the ruler does not will, Asiatic government when war to the knife is intended. Where is usually lenient or lax to the last degree. A Turk is infinitely freer to do as he likes than a Russian in all the ordinary concerns of his life. Only if a superior wills, be it to steal his daughter or take his wealth, he