is accompanied with lamentations wild and weird that one must see and hear in order to appreciate.  If the deceased be a brave, it is customary to place upon or beneath the scaffold a few buffalo-heads which time has rendered dry and inoffensive; and if he has been brave in war some of his implements of battle are placed on the scaffold or securely tied to its timbers.  If the deceased has been a chief, or a soldier related to his chief, it is not uncommon to slay his favorite pony and place the body beneath the scaffold, under the superstition, I suppose, that the horse goes with the man.  As illustrating the propensity to provide the dead with the things used while living, I may mention that some years ago I loaned to an old man a delft urinal for the use of his son, a young man who was slowly dying of a wasting disease.  I made him promise faithfully that he would return it as soon as his son was done using it.  Not long afterwards the urinal graced the scaffold which held the remains of the dead warrior, and as it has not to this day been returned I presume the young man is not done using it.

The mourning customs of the Dakotas, though few of them appear to be of universal observance, cover considerable ground.  The hair, never cut under other circumstances, is cropped off even with the neck, and the top of the head and forehead, and sometimes nearly the whole body, are smeared with a species of white earth resembling chalk, moistened with water.  The lodge, teepee, and all the family possessions except the few shabby articles of apparel worn by the mourners, are given away and the family left destitute.  Thus far the custom is universal or nearly so.  The wives, mother, and sisters of a deceased man, on the first, second, or third day after the funeral, frequently throw off their moccasins and leggings and gash their legs with their butcher-knives, and march through the camp and to the place of burial with bare and bleeding extremities, while they chant or wail their dismal songs of mourning.  The men likewise often gash themselves in many places, and usually seek the solitude of the higher point on the distant prairie, where they remain fasting, smoking, and wailing out their lamentations for two or three days.  A chief who had lost a brother once came to me after three or four days of mourning in solitude almost exhausted from hunger and bodily anguish.  He had gashed the outer side of both lower extremities at intervals of a few inches all the way from the ankles to the top of the hips.  His wounds had inflamed from exposure, and were suppurating freely.  He assured me that he had not slept for several days or nights.  I dressed his wounds with a soothing ointment, and gave him a full dose of an effective anodyne, after which he slept long and refreshingly, and awoke to express his gratitude and shake my hand in a very cordial and sincere manner.  When these harsher inflictions are not resorted to, the mourners usually repair