The Manitaries are as superstitious, and have as much faith in their medicines, or charms, as the Mandans. Among these medicines are included every kind of wolf and fox, especially the former; and, therefore, when they go to war, they always wear the stripe off the back of a wolf's skin, with the tail hanging down over their shoulders. They make a slit in the skin, through which they put their head, so that the skin of the wolf's head hangs down upon their breast. Buffaloes' heads are likewise medicine. In one of their villages they preserve the neck bones of a buffalo, as the Crows also are said to do; and this is done with a view to prevent the buffalo herds {400} from removing to too great a distance from them. At times they perform the following ceremony with these bones: they take a potsherd with live coals, throw sweet-smelling grass upon it, and fumigate the bones with the smoke. They have medicine stones and medicine trees, like the Mandans, and offer to the heavenly powers at such places red cloth, red paint, and other things. Like the Mandans, too, they also offer articles of value, wail, moan, do penance to conciliate their favour, and to ask their aid to obtain certain wishes and objects. Say relates that the wolf chief of the Manitaries sat for five days together on an isolated rock, without taking any food.[346] This was done on the Prairie Hill, to which the Mandans also resort in similar cases. They hold out till their strength fails them, and creep by night into a neighbouring cave, where they sleep and dream. Among the original traditions of this people is that of the two children, which Say relates. A party going to war saw two children sitting on two isolated hills, who vanished when they endeavoured to approach them. These two hills, which are near together, are called the Children's Hills; they are not on Knife River, as Say says, but on Heart River. The women go to one of these hills to do penance and lament when they desire to have children.[347]
Mr. Say relates another tradition very correctly, of a boy who lived and grew in the belly of a buffalo. They also assert that the bones of the buffaloes in the prairie sometimes come to life again.[348] Say likewise describes the corn dance, or rather the corn feast, for the consecration of the crops. They adopted it from the Mandans, and now celebrate it in the same manner.[349] The great medicine feast for attracting the herds of buffaloes will be described in the next chapter, as well as some of the incantations of the women. They likewise celebrate the Okippe (which they call Akupehri), but with several deviations. Thus, instead of the so-called ark, a kind of high pole, with a fork on the summit, is planted in the centre of the open circle. When the partisans of the war parties intend to go on some enterprise in May or June, the preparations are combined with the Okippe of several young men, who wish to obtain the rank of the brave, or men. A large medicine lodge is erected, open above, with a division in the middle, in which the candidates take their places. Two pits are usually dug in the middle for the partisans, who lie in them four days and four nights, with only a piece of leather about the waist. The first partisan usually chooses the second, who undergoes the ceremony with him. There are always young people enough ready to submit their bodies to torture, in order to display their courage and firm resolve. They fast four days and nights, which leaves them faint and weak. Many of them begin the tortures on the third day; but the fourth day is that properly set apart for them. To the forked pole of the medicine lodge is fastened a long piece of buffalo hide, with the head hanging down, and to this a strap is fastened. An old man is then chosen, who is to see to the torturing of the candidates, which is executed precisely in the same manner as among the Mandans. The sufferers often faint; they are then taken by the hands, lifted up, and encouraged, and they begin afresh. When they have dragged about the buffalo skull long enough, hanging to their flesh and skin, a large circle is formed, as among {401} the Mandans, in which they are made to run round till they drop down exhausted, when they are taken to the medicine lodge. The medicine man receives from one of the spectators the knife with which the operation is to be performed. He has called out to "have compassion with him, and to give him a knife," on which one of the persons standing round throws one at his feet. The partisan is bound to build the medicine lodge. During the ceremony the spectators eat and smoke; the candidates take nothing, and, like the partisans, are covered all over with white clay. The latter, when they dance during the ceremony, remain near their pits, and then move on the same spot, holding in their hands their medicines, a buffalo's tail, a feather, or the like. None but the candidates dance, and the only music is striking a dried buffalo's hide with willow rods. There have been instances of fathers subjecting their children, only six or seven years of age, to these tortures. We ourselves saw one suspended by the muscles of the back, after having been compelled to fast four days. No application whatever is subsequently made for the cure of the wounds, which leave large swollen weals, and are much more conspicuous among the Manitaries than the Mandans. Most of the Manitaries have three or four of these weals, in parallel semicircular lines, almost an inch thick, which cover the entire breast. Similar transverse and longitudinal lines, arising from the same cause, are seen upon the arms, nay, the whole length of the limb is often disfigured by them.[350] The medicine stone has already been mentioned, when treating of the Mandans. Lewis and Clarke also speak of it, saying that "the Manitaries have a stone of a similar kind;" but this is not quite correct, for it is the self-same stone to which the two people have recourse, and make use of similar ceremonies with it.
Another very remarkable institution of the Manitaries is the sudatory. When a man intends to undertake anything, and to implore by medicine the aid of the higher powers, he builds a small sudatory of twigs, which is covered all over with buffalo hides. Before the entrance is a straight path, forty feet long and one broad, from which the turf is taken off and piled up in a heap at one end opposite the hut. Near this heap a fire is kindled, in which large stones are made red hot. Two rows of shoes, sometimes thirty or forty pair, are placed along the path. As soon as the stones are hot, they are borne into the hut, where a hearth has been dug, on which the hot stones are laid. The whole population sit as spectators on either side of the path, where are placed a number of dishes with provisions, such as boiled maize, beans, meat, &c. An old medicine man is appointed to conduct the ceremonies. He walks from the heap of turf over the shoes, taking care always to set his feet upon them, to the sudatory. The young man, for whom the ceremony is performed, stands with only his breechcloth at the entrance of the sudatory, where for some time he wails and laments. The medicine man comes out of the hut, with a knife or arrow head, and cuts off a joint of his finger, which he throws away, as an offering to the lord of life, or to some other object of superstition, in which the young man has placed his confidence. After this operation the magician takes a willow twig, goes to the dishes containing {402} the provisions, dips the twig in each, and throws a portion of the contents in the direction of the four cardinal points, for the lord of life, the fire, and the divers supernatural powers, of which he makes open proclamation. The provisions are then distributed among the men, women, and children who are present. The older men go into the sudatory, the women carefully cover it, and water is sprinkled with bunches of wormwood, from vessels standing ready without upon the hot stones, which throws the persons present into a profuse perspiration; the men, meanwhile, all singing at once to the rattling of the schischikué. When they are satisfied they call to the women on the outside to remove the hides. After this, a buffalo head, with the snout foremost, is carried over the row of shoes to the heap of turfs, where it is placed in the same direction. The ceremony is now complete. The robes with which the hut was covered, often sixty or eighty in number, are given by the young man to the magician for his trouble, who distributes some of them among the spectators. The persons who have submitted to the operation put on their robes, and remain in the open air till their bodies are dry, this medicine being generally performed in the summer. In the winter they prepare such steam baths in their own huts, but at that season they are not medicine, and the men and women assemble together. The grand ceremony just described is instituted especially when they wish to ask success for a military expedition, or for some other important enterprise. They then purchase a red blanket or a piece of blue cloth, which they offer to the divinity, hanging it on a pole behind the sudatory, where it is left to be destroyed by the wind and weather.
The Manitaries likewise make offerings at times to the great serpent which lives in the Missouri, by placing in the river poles, to which robes or coloured blankets are attached.[351] This practice is founded on a story like that which is current among the Mandans, but with some differences. A war party was on its way to the Upper Missouri to meet the enemy: when they had proceeded a considerable distance two young men turned back, and found, at a certain spot, a large serpent coiled up. After looking at the animal for some time, one of them kindled a fire, in which they burnt the serpent. The man who had made the fire took up the remains, smelt them, and affirmed that the smell was so inviting, he could not refrain from eating a part, and, though his comrade dissuaded him, he ate a small portion of the roasted flesh. In the evening, when they were going to lie down to rest for the night, he took off his shoes, and, to his great astonishment, found that his feet were striped like the serpent which they had killed. He told his friend, and said, "This is delightful; when I go home, I will pull off my shoes, and everybody will look at my feet." On the following day his legs were striped up to the knees. He said, laughing, "This is admirable; I shall no longer have occasion to mark my exploits by stripes, for nature herself furnishes me with them." On the third day he was striped up to his hips. They slept on the evening of that day, and on the fourth day he was completely converted into a serpent. "Be not afraid of me," said he to his friend, "I have neither arms nor legs, and cannot move from the spot; carry me {403} to the river." His friend dragged him to the Missouri, being unable to carry him on account of his length and weight. The serpent immediately swam, dived below the surface, and called to his friend, who was mourning on the bank, "Weep not, my friend; be comforted and go home in peace; four things, however, I must beg of you to bring me; first, bring me a white wolf; secondly, a polecat; thirdly, another painted red; and fourthly, a black pipe." His friend went home, and after some time returned with the objects required, and lamented a whole day on the bank of the river. The serpent then appeared: "It is well that you have kept your word," said he; "you will go to war and kill as many enemies as you have brought objects to me. But first come here and lament, for I am medicine for all futurity." The Indian went out the same day and killed an enemy; but the serpent had previously told him that its head would be at the old Mandan village, and its tail reach to the mouth of the Yellow Stone River; that with one ear it would be able to hear to the distance of the Maison du Chien, a hill in the prairie two days' journey from the north bank of the Missouri, and with the other to the Crête Côte, likewise two days' journey from the other bank. The friend went four times to war, and each time killed an enemy. The Manitaries, who firmly believe this story, still go to the river when the fancy strikes them, and set up an offering. They relate that a man once went to the river to see the serpent; he lamented for a long time, at length it appeared, on which he called it his father. But the serpent said, "You are not my son; I have only one son, whose name is——, he who has no arms; but you are the son of him who shall be chief of the village to which I have destined him. When you ride out to hunt the buffalo you will kill your enemies, and some of your people will likewise be killed."
In cases of difficult parturition, which, however, seldom occur, they are accustomed to give the medicine man one, two, or even four horses. He comes to the hut of the lying-in woman, smokes with her husband, then takes a fox or wolf skin cap, and strokes the woman with it on the back, or some other part of the body, singing, and rattling the schischikué. Often he touches or rubs her with a tortoise shell, as the Botocudos in Brazil do, often merely with a feather.
Like the Mandans they sometimes keep owls in their huts, which they consider as soothsayers, and whose notes they pretend to understand. This is the large grey owl, without doubt the Strix Virginiana. The war eagle (Aquila chrysactos) is likewise kept alive for the sake of the tail feathers, which they so highly prize. Some individuals among them have strange superstitious ideas and practices; thus, a certain man smokes very slowly, no person is allowed to speak nor to move a single limb of his body, except to take hold of the pipe. Neither women, children, nor dogs, are suffered to remain in the hut while he is smoking, and some one is always stationed to keep the door. If, however, there are exactly seven persons present to smoke, all these precautionary measures are done away with, and they may smoke as quickly as they please. {404} When he clears his pipe and shakes the ashes into the fire, it blazes up, doubtless because he puts some gunpowder, or similar combustible, into the pipe. When any person has a painful or a diseased place, the same man puts his pipe upon it and smokes. On these occasions he does not swallow the smoke, as is the Indian custom, but affirms that he can extract the disorder by his smoking, which he pretends to seize with his hand, and to throw into the fire.
The division of the year into months is not very dissimilar from that of the Mandans, though I have never been able to obtain two accounts which precisely correspond. But little is to be said of the hunting and war of the Manitaries which has not been already related of the Mandans. They are reported as being very skilful in making the cabri parks, which, in the month of April, they can do in half a day, though they have not made any such for some time past. The skin of the cabri is used for shoes.
The Manitaries are at present friendly towards the Whites in the vicinity of the Missouri; but, if a white man happens to encounter one of their war parties in the prairie, he is generally plundered. In the north, on the Red River, they often act in a hostile manner to the Whites and Half-breeds residing there. Their enemies properly so called are the Blackfeet, the Assiniboins, the Sioux, the Pawnees, the Arikkaras, the Shiennes or Chayennes, the Crees, and the Arrapahos; their allies are the Mandans and the Crows.
All these Indians treat the bodies of their slain enemies in the most barbarous manner. Charbonneau remembers that the Manitaries, for several months, kept the body of an Assiniboin, who was killed in the winter, which they daily used as a mark to shoot at. Mutilation is very common among them. Want of feeling towards their prisoners is common to all uncivilized people; the nations of hunters especially do not regard the tortures of living creatures; and the Brazilian savage does not in this respect differ from the North American, and the Gaucho in the south of this continent, or, indeed, from man in a state of nature in every part of the habitable globe.