hot rocks, and a dense steam rises, making the perspiration fairly drip from the body.  Occasionally, if the heat becomes too intense, the covering is raised for a few minutes to admit a little air.  The sweat bath lasts for a long time, often an hour or more, during which many prayers are offered, religious songs chanted, and several pipes smoked to the Sun.  As has been said, the sweat lodge is built to represent the Sun’s own lodge or home, that is, the world.  The ground inside the lodge stands for its surface, which, according to Blackfoot philosophy, is flat and round.  The framework represents the sky, which far off, on the horizon, reaches down to and touches the world.

As soon as the sweat is over, the men rush out, and plunge into the stream to cool off.  This is invariably done, even in winter, when the ice has to be broken to make a hole large enough to bathe in.  It is said that, when the small-pox was raging among these Indians, they used the sweat lodge daily, and that hundreds of them, sick with the disease, were unable to get out of the river, after taking the bath succeeding a sweat, and were carried down stream by the current and drowned.

It is said that wolves, which in former days were extremely numerous, sometimes went crazy, and bit every animal they met with, sometimes even coming into camps and biting dogs, horses, and people.  Persons bitten by a mad wolf generally went mad, too.  They trembled and their limbs jerked, they made their jaws work and foamed at the mouth, often trying to bite other people.  When any one acted in this way, his relations tied him hand and foot with ropes, and, having killed a buffalo, they rolled him up in the green hide, and then built a fire on and around him, leaving him in the fire until the hide began to dry and burn.  Then they pulled him out and removed the buffalo hide, and he was cured.  While in the fire, the great heat caused him to sweat profusely, so much water coming out of his body that none was left in it, and with the water the disease went out, too.  All the old people tell me that they have seen individuals cured in this manner of a mad wolf’s bite.

Whenever a person is really sick, a doctor is sent for.  Custom requires that he shall be paid for his services before rendering them.  So when he is called, the messenger says to him, “A——­ presents to you a horse, and asks you to come and doctor him.”  Sometimes the fee may be several horses, and sometimes a gun, saddle, or some article of wearing-apparel.  This fee pays only for one visit, but the duration of the visit is seldom less than twelve hours, and sometimes exceeds forty-eight.  If, after the expiration of the visit, the patient feels that he has been benefited, he will probably send for the doctor again, but if, on the other hand, he continues to grow worse, he is likely to send for another.  Not infrequently two or more doctors may be present at the same time, taking turns with the patient.  In early days, if a man fell sick, and remained so for three weeks or a month, he had to start anew in life when he recovered; for, unless very wealthy, all his possessions had gone to pay doctor’s fees.  Often the last horse, and even the lodge, weapons, and extra clothing were so parted with.  Of late years, however, since the disappearance of the buffalo, the doctors’ fees are much more moderate.