The villages of the dead are uniformly built in circles.
(4.) Their social and domestic customs.
They exhibit great skill in the manufacture of pottery, and the specimens found in the earthen remains of the Ohio Valley, many of them at present in the museum at Cincinnati, correspond with many of the products of the Mandans. The Mandan women mould vases, cups, pitchers, and pots out of the black clay, and bake them in little kilns in the sides of the hill, or under the bank of the river. They possess secrets of manufacturing known only to themselves. They have the extraordinary art of making a very beautiful and lasting kind of blue glass beads, which they wear on their necks in great abundance. This must be the nation, or at least a portion of it, which Captains Lewis and Clarke saw, and whom they declared to be light-colored, and whose manufacture of beads and glass articles they described thirty years before Mr. Catlin.
Their canoes are the exact shape of the Welsh coracle, made of raw hides,—skins of buffaloes,—stretched underneath a frame made of willows or other boughs, and shaped nearly round like a tub, which the women carry on their heads. The Welsh coracle, a boat which has been used by fishermen from time immemorial, is made in the same way by covering a wicker frame with leather or oil-cloth, and is carried on the head or with straps from the shoulders.
In their social and domestic habits generally they are different from other Indians.
(5.) Their religious belief and ceremonies.
There is something reaching the marvellous connected with their religion. Their traditional belief one would imagine was nothing less than a corrupted epitome of the Christian belief.
(a.) The account of the transgression of mother Eve, involving the doctrine of the temptation, is quite explicit. The Evil Spirit, who was a black fellow, came and sat down by a woman and told her to take a piece out of his side, which she did, and ate it, which proving to be buffalo fat, she became enceinte.
(b.) The traditions of the Deluge are far more rational, and could more easily be believed, than many which have been entertained by other nations.
(c.) The most important religious ceremony among the Mandans is a representation of the death and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. It takes place annually, as soon as the willow is in full leaf; for, they say, "the twig which the bird brought in was a willow bough, and had full-grown leaves upon it." The spectacle presented in the crucifixion of the Saviour by the young men of the Mandan nation might not accord with our civilized tastes and notions of propriety, yet it is wonderfully impressive, and calculated to turn the spectator's thoughts to the tragedy of Calvary. The finest-looking young man is selected as the central figure, and others surround him, when they are stuck full of skewers, and suspended on beams around their rude temple where they worship.