to all alike.  Often by the end of the fourth day, a secret helper—­usually, but by no means always, in the form of some animal—­appeared to the man in a dream, and talked with him, advising him, marking out his course through life, and giving him its power.  There were some, however, on whom the power would not work, and a much greater number who gave up the fast, discouraged, before the prescribed time had been completed, either not being able to endure the lack of food and water, or being frightened by the strangeness or loneliness of their surroundings, or by something that they thought they saw or heard.  It was no disgrace to fail, nor was the failure necessarily known, for the seeker after power did not always, nor perhaps often, tell any one what he was going to do.

Three modes of burial were practised by the Blackfeet.  They buried their dead on platforms placed in trees, on platforms in lodges, and on the ground in lodges.  If a man dies in a lodge, it is never used again.  The people would be afraid of the man’s ghost.  The lodge is often used to wrap the body in, or perhaps the man may be buried in it.

As soon as a person is dead, be it man, woman, or child, the body is immediately prepared for burial, by the nearest female relations.  Until recently, the corpse was wrapped in a number of robes, then in a lodge covering, laced with rawhide ropes, and placed on a platform of lodge poles, arranged on the branches of some convenient tree.  Some times the outer wrapping—­the lodge covering—­was omitted.  If the deceased was a man, his weapons, and often his medicine, were buried with him.  With women a few cooking utensils and implements for tanning robes were placed on the scaffolds.  When a man was buried on a platform in a lodge, the platform was usually suspended from the lodge poles.

Sometimes, when a great chief or noted warrior died, his lodge would be moved some little distance from the camp, and set up in a patch of brush.  It would be carefully pegged down all around, and stones piled on the edges to make it additionally firm.  For still greater security, a rope fastened to the lodge poles, where they come together at the smoke hole, came down, and was securely tied to a peg in the ground in the centre of the lodge, where the fireplace would ordinarily be.  Then the beds were made up all around the lodge, and on one of them was placed the corpse, lying as if asleep.  The man’s weapons, pipe, war clothing, and medicine were placed near him, and the door then closed.  No one ever again entered such a lodge.  Outside the lodge, a number of his horses, often twenty or more, were killed, so that he might have plenty to ride on his journey to the Sand Hills, and to use after arriving there.  If a man had a favorite horse, he might order it to be killed at his grave, and his order was always carried out.  In ancient times, it is said, dogs were killed at the grave.