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cipal chiefs. This was done without having awakened the curiosity of the villagers, as they had heard nothing of what was going on, and even the chiefs themselves seemed to be ignorant of my designs, until the pictures were completed. No one else was admitted into my lodge during the operation; and when finished, it was exceedingly amusing to see them mutually recognizing each other's likeness, and assuring each other of the striking resemblance which they bore to the originals. Both of these pressed their hand over their mouths awhile in dead silence (a custom amongst most tribes, when anything surprises them very much); looking attentively upon the portraits and myself, and upon the palette and colours with which these unaccountable effects had been produced. They then walked up to me in the most gentle manner, ta king me in turn by the hand, with a firm grip; with head and eyes inclined downwards, and in a tone a little above a whisper-pronounced the words 'te-ho-pe-nee Wash-ee!' and walked off. That moment conferred an honour on me which you as yet do not understand. I took the degree (not of Doctor of Laws, nor Bachelor of Arts) of Master of Arts-of mysteries of magic, and of hocus-pocus. I was recognized in that short sentence as a 'great medicine white man ;' and since that time, have been regularly installed medicine or mystery, which is the most honourable degree that could be conferred upon me here; and I now hold a place amongst the most eminent and envied personages, the doctors and conjurati of this titled community. ** After I had finished the portraits of the two chiefs, and they had returned to their wigwams, and deliberately seated themselves by their respective fire-sides, and silently smoked a pipe or two (according to an universal custom), they gradually began to tell what had taken place; and at length crowds of gaping listeners, with mouths wide open, thronged their lodges; and a throng of women and girls were about my house, and through every crack and crevice I could see their glistening eyes, which were piercing my hut in a hundred places, from a natural and restless propensity, a curiosity to see what was going on within. An hour or more passed in this way, and the soft

and silken throng continually increased, until some hundreds of them were clung and piled about my wigwam, like a swarm of bees hanging on the front and sides of their hive. During this time, not a man made his appearance about the premises after a while, however, they could be seen, folded in their robes, gradually siding up towards the lodge, with a silly look upon their faces, which confessed at once that curiosity was leading them reluctantly, where their pride checked and forbade them to go. The rush soon after became general, and the chiefs and medicine-men took possession of my room, placing soldiers (braves with spears in their hands) at the door, admitting no one, but such as were allowed by the chiefs, to come in. The necessity at this time of exposing the portraits to the view of the crowds who were assembled around the house, became imperative, and they were held up together over the door, so that the whole village had a chance to see and recognize their chiefs. The effect upon so mixed a multitude, who as yet had heard no way of accounting for them, was novel and really laughable. The likenesses were instantly recognized, and many of the gaping multitude commenced yelping; some were stamping off in the jarring dance— others were singing, and others again were crying—hundreds covered their mouths with their hands and were mute; others, indignant, drove their spears frightfully into the ground, and some threw a reddened arrow at the sun, and went home to their wigwams.** The squaws generally agreed, that they had discovered life enough in them to render my medicine too great for the Mandans; saying that such an operation could not be performed without taking away from the original, something of his existence, which I put in the picture, and they could see it move, could see it stir. This curtailing of the natural existence, for the purpose of instilling life into the secondary one, they decided to be an useless and destructive operation, and one which was calculated to do great mischief in their happy community; and they commenced a mournful and doleful chaunt against me, crying and weeping bitterly through the village, proclaiming me a most dangerous man; one who could make living persons by looking at them; and

at the same time, could, as a matter of course, destroy life in the same way, if he chose. That my medicine was dangerous to their lives, and that I must leave the village immediately. That bad luck would happen to those whom I painted; that I was to take a part of the existence of those whom I painted, and carry it home with me amongst the white people, and that when they died they would never sleep quiet in their graves.'»

At length a Council was called to take the subject into consideration. Mr. Catlin attended; his explanations were held to be satisfactory, and he was forthwith installed as a Medicine:

I was waited upon in due form and ceremony by the medicine-men, who received me upon the old adage, 'Similis simili gaudet.' I was invited to a feast, and they presented me with a she-shee-quoi, or doctor's rattle, and also a magical wand, or doctor's staff, strung with claws of the grizzly bear, with hoofs of the antelope-with ermine-with wild sage and bat's wings-and perfumed withal with the choice and savoury odour of the pole-cat-a dog was sacrificed and hung by the legs over my wigwam, and I was therefore and thereby initiated into (and countenanced in the practice of) the arcana of medicine or mystery, and considered a Fellow of the Extraordinary Society of Conjurati. »

D

We have already so far exceeded our usual bounds, that we must pause.

One horrible custom appears to prevail generally among the wandering tribes of the prairies, who are forced at times to make severe and hurried marches-that of leaving the aged and decrepit, who are unable to walk or ride, to perish; and so universally is this established, that the aged themselves often insist on its being enforced. Mr. Catlin was at a village of the Puncahs when they had just struck their tents and were about to depart, and his attention was directed by the Indian agent to a miserable helpless object, about, as it is called, to be exposed :

The tribe were going where hunger and dire necessity compelled them to go, and this pitiable object, who had once

been a chief, and a man of distinction in his tribe, who was now too old to travel, being reduced to mere skin and bones, was to be left to starve, or meet with such death as might fall to his lot, and his bones to be picked by the wolves! I lingered around this poor old forsaken patriarch for hours before we started, to indulge the tears of sympathy which were flowing for the sake of this poor benighted and decrepit old man, whose worn-out limbs were no longer able to support him; their kind and faithful offices having long since been performed, and his body and his mind doomed to linger into the withering agony of decay, and gradual solitary death. I wept, and it was a pleasure to weep, for the painful looks and the dreary prospects of this old veteran, whose eyes were dimmed, whose venerable locks where whitened by an hundred years, whose limbs were almost naked, and trembling as he sat by a small fire which his friends had left him, with a few sticks of wood within his reach, and a buffalo's skin stretched upon some crotchets over his head. Such was to be his only dwelling, and such the chances for his life, with only a few half-picked bones that were laid within his reach, and a dish of water, without weapons or means of any kind to replenish them, or strength to move his body from its fatal locality. In this sad plight I mournfully contemplated this miserable remnant of existence, who had unluckily outlived the fates and accidents of war to die alone, at death's leisure. His friends and his children had all left him, and were preparing in a little time to be on the march. He had told them to leave him, he was old,' he said, 'and too feeble to march.' My children,' said he, 'our nation is poor, and it is necessary that you should all go to the country where you can get meat,--my eyes are dimmed and my strength is no more; my days are nearly all numbered, and I am a burthen to my children-I cannot go, and I wish to die. Keep your hearts stout, and think not of me; I am no longer good for anything. In this way they had finished the ceremony of exposing him, and taken their final leave of him. I advanced to the old man, and was undoubtedly the last human being who held converse with him. I sat by the side of him,

and though he could not distinctly see me, he shook me heartily by the hand and smiled, evidently aware that I was a white man, and that I sympathized with his inevitable misfortune. I shook hands again with him, and left him, steering my course towards the steamer which was a mile or more from me, and ready to resume her voyage up the Missouri. »

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"Some months after," says Mr. Catlin, when passing by the site of the Puncah village, in my canoe, I went ashore with my men, and found the poles and the buffalo skin, standing as they were left, over the old man's head. The firebrands were lying nearly as I had left them, and I found at a few yards distant the skull, and other of his bones, which had been picked and cleaned by the wolves; which is probably all that any human being can ever know of his final and melancholy fate. "

We shall now join a party about to cross the plains for a distance of 200 miles, to the mouth of the Teton river :

"We took leave of our friends in the boat, and now mounting the green bluffs, steered our course from day to day over a level prairie, without a tree or a bush in sight, to relieve the painful monotony; filling our canteens at the occasional little streams that we passed, kindling our fires with dried buffalo dung, which we collected on the prairie, and stretching our tired limbs on the level turf whenever we were overtaken by night.** Every rod of our way was over a continuous prairie, with a verdant green turf of wild grass of six or eight inches in height, and most of the way enamelled with wild-flowers, and filled with a profusion of strawberries. For two or three of the first days, the scenery was monotoRous, and became exceedingly painful from the fact that we were (to use a phrase of the country) 'out of sight of land,' i. e. out of sight of anything rising above the horizon, which was a perfect straight line around us, like that of the blue and boundless ocean. The pedestrian over such a discouraging sea of green, without a landmark before or behind him, without a beacon to lead him on, or define his progress, feels weak and overcome when night falls; and he stretches his

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