The most common is called red-root (ceanothus canadensis), a plant abounding in the western prairies, although they seem to have more faith in some ceremony.
A dance peculiar to the tribe where I was, called the pipe dance, is worth mentioning, and is called by the Indians a good medicine. A small fire is kindled in the village, and around this the dancers, which usually consist of young men, collect, each one seated upon a robe.
The presiding genius is a chief, or a medicine man, who seats himself by a fire, with a long pipe which he prepares for smoking. Offering it first to the Great Spirit, he then extends it toward the north, south, east, and west, muttering unintelligibly. Meanwhile an equally august personage beats a drum, singing and leaping and smoking. The master of ceremonies sits calmly looking on, puffing away with all the vigor imaginable.
The dance closes with piercing yells, and barking like frightened dogs, and it lasts an hour or more.
When the mother gives birth to her child, it is not uncommon for no other person to be present. She then lives in a hut or lodge by herself until the child is twenty-five or thirty days old, when she takes it to its father, who then sees his child for the first time.
Females, after parturition, and also in other conditions, bathe themselves—swim, as they express it—in the nearest river or lake.
This is, no doubt, a most efficacious means of imparting strength and vigor to the constitution, and it is certain that Indian females are less subject to what are termed female complaints than white women.
It is an uncommon occurrence that an Indian woman loses her life in parturition.
When the child is old enough to run alone, it is relieved of its swathings, and if the weather is not too cold, it is sent off without a particle of clothing to protect it or impede the action of its limbs, and in this manner it is allowed to remain until it is several years old, when it receives a limited wardrobe.
Despite the rugged and exposed life they lead, there are comparatively few cripples and deformed persons among them. It is said that deformed infants are regarded as unprofitable and a curse from the Great Spirit, and disposed of by death soon after birth. Sometimes, at the death of a mother, the infant is also interred. An incident of this kind was related to me. A whole family had been carried off by small-pox except an infant. Those who were not sick had as much to do as they could conveniently attend to, consequently there was no one willing to take charge of the little orphan. It was placed in the arms of its dead mother, enveloped in blankets and a buffalo-robe, and laid upon a scaffold in their burying-place. Its cries were heard for some time, but at last they grew fainter, and finally were hushed altogether in the cold embrace of death, with the moaning wind sounding its requiem, and the wolves howling in the surrounding gloom, a fitting dirge for so sad a fate.