Native American, American Indian, Cheyenne Indian Family with Horse and Tipi (Colorized Photo)

 Native American Cheyenne Indian Family with Horse and Tipi (Colorized Photo)

Cheyenne Indian called Left Hand with family, and horse in front of their tipi. Another great colorized photo of a Cheyenne Indian woman Native American Indian Pictures and History: Cheyenne Indian Woman Photographed in Montana, 1878 (nativeamericanindianpicturess.blogspot.com)

 

Native American, American Indian, Cheyenne Indian Woman Photographed in Montana, 1878

A hand-tinted colored photograph of a  Cheyenne Indian woman named Pretty Nose.  She was photographed in 1878 at Fort Keogh, Montana.

Color Tinted Photograph of a Cheyenne Indian Woman in Traditional Dress

 Native American, American Indian, Color Tinted Photograph of a Cheyenne Indian Woman in Traditional Dress

Rare hand-painted color photograph of a Cheyenne Indian woman in traditional Indian dress. Photograph dates to the late 1800s

Native American, American Indian, Cheyenne Indian Sun Dancers

Cheyenne Indians at a Sun Dance, by Edward S. Curtis, circa 1910. The Sun Dance is practiced primarily by tribes in the Upper Plains and Rocky Mountain areas. This annual ceremony is typically performed at the summer solstice (the time of longest daylight), with preparations beginning up to a year before the ceremony.

American Indian Scalping Picture Gallery

American Indian Scalping Picture Gallery

The British paid Native Americans for thousands of scalps during the Revolutionary War

Man found scalped by Indians near Fort Dodge, Kansas

Frontier settleler scalped

Photo of a man who survived being scalped by Indians

Photo taken in 1864 of a man who was scalped by the Miami Indian Chief Little Turtle as a child

American soldier killed and scalped by Indians

Indians preparing to scalp this helpless victim

Omaha and Kansa Sioux Earth Lodges

Omaha Indian Earth Lodge

The primitive domiciles of the Omaha were chiefly (1) lodges of earth or, more rarely, of bark or mats, and (2) skin lodges or tents. It may be observed that there were no sacred rites connected with the earth lodge-building or tent-making among the Omaha and Ponka.

Omaha Indian Earth Lodges.

When earth lodges were built, the people did not make them in a tribal circle, each man erecting his lodge where he wished; yet kindred commonly built near one another.

The earth lodges were made by the women, and were intended principally for summer use, when the people were not migrating or going on the hunt. Those built by the Omaha and Ponka were constructed in the following manner: The roof was supported by two series of vertical posts, forked at the top for the reception of the transverse connecting pieces of each series. The number in each series varied according to the size of the lodge; for a small lodge only four posts were erected in the inner series, for an ordinary lodge eight were required, and ten generally constituted the maximum. When Mr. Say1 visited [P]the Kansa Indians, he occupied a lodge in which twelve of these posts placed in a circle formed the outer series, and eight longer ones constituted the inner series, also describing a circle. The wall was formed by setting upright slabs of wood back of the outer posts all around the circumference of the lodge. These slabs were not over 6 feet in height, and their tops met the cross timbers on which the willow posts rested. Stocks of hard willow about 2 inches in diameter rested with their butts on the tops of the upright slabs and extended on the cross timbers nearly to the summit. These poles were very numerous, touching one another and extending all around in a radiating manner, supporting the roof like rafters. The rafters were covered with grass about a foot thick; and over the whole lodge, including the sides or slabs, earth was piled from a foot to 2 feet in depth. Such a covering lasted generally about twenty years. A hole in the middle served as an exit for the smoke.

Making an Earth Lodge

In addition to the lodge proper there was a covered way about 10 feet long and 5 feet wide, the entrance to which had a covering of tanned or dried buffalo hides. This covering consisted of two hides hanging side by side, with the inner borders slightly overlapping. They were fastened to the passageway at the top and at the outer sides, but were loose at the bottom where they overlapped. This part was raised by a person entering the lodge. A similar covering was placed at the interior end of the passageway.

Subsequently to 1855, the Omaha dwelt in three villages composed of earth lodges, as follows: (1) Biku′de, a village near the agency; (2) Windja′ge, Standing Hawk's village, near the Presbyterian mission house; and (3) Jaⁿȼa′te ("Wood Eaters,") named after an insect found []under the bark of trees Sanssouci's village, near the town of Decatur, Nebraska.

Earth lodges were generally used for large gatherings, such as feasts, councils, or dances. Occasionally there was a depression in the center of the lodge which was used as a fireplace; but it was not over 6 inches deep. Each earth lodge had a ladder, made by cutting a series of deep notches along one side of a log. On a bluff near the Omaha agency I found the remains of several ancient earth lodges, with entrances on the southern sides. Two of these were 75 feet and one was 100 feet in diameter. In the center of the largest there was a hollow about 3 feet deep and nearly 4 feet below the surface outside the lodge.

1James' account of Long's Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in 1819-'20.

Native American Indians Affection and Reverence for Parents

REVERENCE AND AFFECTION FOR PARENTS.

There lived a noted chief at Michilimackinac, in days past, called Gitshe Naygow, or the Great-Sand-Dune, a name, or rather nick-name, which he had, probably, derived from his birth and early residence at a spot of very imposing appearance, so called, on the southern shore of Lake Superior, which is east of the range of the Pictured Rocks. He was a Chippewa, a warrior and a counsellor, of that tribe, and had mingled freely in the stirring scenes of war and border foray, which marked the closing years of French domination in the Canadas. He lived to be very old, and became so feeble at last, that he could not travel by land, when Spring came on and his people prepared to move their lodges, from their sugar-camp in the forest, to the open lake shore. They were then inland, on the waters of the Manistee river, a stream which enters the northern shores of Lake Michigan. It was his last winter on earth; his heart was gladdened by once more feeling the genial rays of Spring, and he desired to go with them, to behold, for the last time, the expanded lake and inhale its pure breezes. He must needs be conveyed by hand. This act of piety was performed by his daughter, then a young woman. She carried him on her back from their camp to the lake shore, where they erected their lodge and passed their spring, and where he eventually died and was buried.

This relation I had from her own lips, at the agency of Michilimackinac, in 1833. I asked her how she had carried him. She replied, with the Indian apekun, or head-strap. When tired she rested, and again pursued her way, on-wa-be-win by on-wa-be-win, or rest by rest, in the manner practised in carrying heavy packages over the portages. Her name was Nadowákwa, or the female Iroquois. She was then, perhaps, about fifty-five years of age, and the wife of a chief called Saganosh, whose home and jurisdiction were in the group of the St. Martin's Islands, north of Michilimackinac.

The incident was not voluntarily told, but came out, incidentally, in some inquiries I was making respecting historical events, in the vicinity. One such incident goes far to vindicate the affections of this people, and should teach us, that they are of the same general lineage with ourselves, and only require letters and Christianity, to exalt them in the scale of being.

The Manito Tree

THE MANITOU TREE.

There is a prominent hill in the vicinity of Sault Ste. Marie, at the outlet of lake Superior, called by the French La Butte des Terres. An Indian footpath formerly connected this hill with the old French settlement at those falls, from which it is distant about a mile. In the intermediate space, near the path, there formerly stood a tree, a large mountain ash, from which, Indian tradition says, there issued a sound, resembling that produced by their own war-drums, during one of the most calm and cloudless days. This occurred long before the French appeared in the country. It was consequently regarded as the local residence of a spirit, and deemed sacred.

From that time they began to deposit at its foot, an offering of small green twigs and boughs, whenever they passed the path, so that, in process of time, a high pile of these offerings of the forest was accumulated. It seemed as if, by this procedure, the other trees had each made an offering to this tree. At length the tree blew down, during a violent storm, and has since entirely decayed, but the spot was recollected and the offerings kept up, and they would have been continued to the present hour, had not an accidental circumstance put a stop to it.

In the month of July 1822, the government sent a military force to take post, at that ancient point of French settlement, at the foot of the falls, and one of the first acts of the commanding officer was to order out a fatigue party to cut a wagon road from the selected site of the post to the hill. This road was directed to be cut sixty feet wide, and it passed over the site of the tree. The pile of offerings was thus removed, without the men's knowing that it ever had had a superstitious origin; and thus the practice itself came to an end. I had landed with the troops, and been at the place but nine days, in the exercise of my appropriate duties as an Agent on the part of the government to the tribe, when this trait of character was mentioned to me, and I was thus made personally acquainted with the locality, the cutting of the road, and the final extinction of the rite.

Our Indians are rather prone to regard the coming of the white man, as fulfilling certain obscure prophecies of their own priests; and that they are, at best, harbingers of evil to them; and with their usual belief in fatality, they tacitly drop such rites as the foregoing. They can excuse themselves to their consciences in such cases, in relinquishing the worship of a local manito, by saying: it is the tread of the white man that has desecrated the ground.

American Indian Torture Dance and Flesh Sacrifice

The Native American Human Torture Ceremony.

The torture feature, especially prominent in the ceremonies of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Dakota, was formerly given a place among the dancing lodge ceremonies of the Blackfoot. The information we have seems to indicate that this ceremony had not become thoroughly adjusted to its place in this series at the time of its prohibition by the United States and Canadian governments. The claim is made by some of the Piegan that it was borrowed from the Arapaho and was not looked upon with much favor. As one man expressed it, "None of those taking the cutting lived to reach old age." It was said that a few Blackfoot warriors once visited the Arapaho at the time of their sun dance where they were put through the cutting ceremony. According to the Blackfoot mode of thought, this means that the medicine rites (and rights) were transferred to them. When they returned, they induced others to take the cutting, to whom, of course, the rites were transferred. Whether this historical statement is accurate or mythical, we have no means of knowing, but we are inclined to give [263]it some weight as evidence. It seems, however, that warriors took the cutting because of a vow, similar to that of the medicine woman. Sometimes a man dreamed that the sun required it of him. The giving of property and the conditions of the transfer were the same as for "cutting the thong," though we have no information that "catching" was permitted. Such may, however, have been tolerated.

The men taking the cutting were nude to the belt. Sage was tied around the wrists and ankles. The hair hung down, held in place by a wreath of cedar (some informants say sage). They were painted white. Rows of spots in blue extended down the sides of the face, over the shoulders and down the arms. Wavy lines of the same color were also drawn down the arms. A circle representing the sun, was made on the breast, also upon the chin and probably on the back opposite the one over the heart. On the forehead was another circle representing the moon. Other informants say a crescent moon in black was used instead of these circles.

According to one informant, vows were made to purchase this ceremony when ill or in great danger. If the promise brought results, the vow was fulfilled at the next dance. The supplicant calls upon one having purchased the rite. They enter the booth of the weather dancers, a blanket is held up to shut out the gaze of the others. The transferrer then paints the purchaser. He cuts a hole through the skin of the right shoulder, over the scapula, and a hole over each breast. A small sharpened stick is thrust through each. A shield is hung on the back. Long cords were fastened to those on the breast, the ends of which were tied fast, high up to the center pole. The purchaser goes up to the pole, embraces it, and cries for a time. Then he backs off, and dancing, throws his weight on the ropes. The transferrer jerks the shield from his shoulders and if necessary, assists him in tearing loose. At once, the purchaser goes out into the hills and sleeps in different places to receive power.

It is said that all who take this ceremony die in a few years, because it is equivalent to giving one's self to the sun. Hence, the sun takes them for his own.

The cutting was similar to that described by Catlin and other writers as observed elsewhere. Some informants say the dancers held whistles in their mouths and gazed at the sun as they danced. When all the thongs were torn out, some of the lacerated flesh was cut off as an offering to the sun.

McLean reports the following observations upon this ceremony at a Blood sun dance:—

... The chief attraction to the pale-face is what has been ignorantly termed "making braves." I desired very much to see this ceremony once, that I might know the[264] facts from personal observation, and draw my own conclusions after conversing with the Indians.

Two young men having their whole bodies painted, wearing the loin-cloth only, and with wreaths of leaves around their heads, ankles and wrists, stepped into the center of the lodge. A blanket and a pillow were laid on the ground, and one of the young men stretched himself upon them. As he lay, an old man came forward and stood over him and then in an earnest speech told the people of the brave deeds, and noble heart of the young man. In the enumeration of his virtues and noble deeds, after each separate statement the musicians beat applause. When the aged orator ceased, the young man arose, placed his hands upon the old man's shoulders, and drew them downward, as a sign of gratitude for the favorable things said about him. He lay down, and four men held him while a fifth made the incisions in his breast and back. Two places were marked in each breast denoting the position and width of each incision. This being done, the wooden skewers being in readiness, a double edged knife was held in the hand, the point touching the flesh, a small piece of wood was placed on the under side to receive the point of the knife when it had gone through, and the flesh was drawn out the desired length for the knife to pierce. A quick pressure and the incision was made, the piece of wood was removed, and the skewer inserted from the under-side as the knife was being taken out. When the skewer was properly inserted, it was beaten down with the palm of the hand of the operator, that it might remain firmly in its place. This being done to each breast, with a single skewer for each, strong enough to tear away the flesh, and long enough to hold the lariats fastened to the top of the sacred pole, a double incision was made on the back of the left shoulder, to the skewer of which was fastened an Indian drum. The work being pronounced good by the persons engaged in the operation, the young man arose, and one of the operators fastened the lariats giving them two or three jerks to bring them into position.

The young man went up to the sacred pole, and while his countenance was exceedingly pale, and his frame trembling with emotion, threw his arms around it, and prayed earnestly for strength to pass successfully through the trying ordeal. His prayer ended he moved backward until the flesh was fully extended, and placing a small bone whistle in his mouth, he blew continuously upon it a series of short sharp sounds, while he threw himself backward, and danced until the flesh gave way and he fell. Previous to his tearing himself free from the lariats, he seized the drum with both hands and with a sudden pull tore the flesh on his back, dashing the drum to the ground amid the applause of the people. As he lay on the ground, the operators examined his wounds, cut off the flesh that was hanging loosely, and the ceremony was at an end. In former years the head of a buffalo was fastened by a rope on the back of the person undergoing the feat of self-immolation, but now a drum is used for that purpose.

From two to five persons undergo this torture every Sun-Dance. Its object is military and religious. It admits the young man into the noble band of warriors, whereby he gains the esteem of his fellows, and opens up the path to fortune and fame. But it is chiefly a religious rite. In a time of sickness, or danger, or in starting upon some dangerous expedition, the young man prays to Natos for help, and promises to give himself to Natos if his prayers are answered. Upon his return, when the Annual Sun-Dance is held, he fulfills his vow, gives himself to his god, and thus performs a twofold duty. Of course the applause of the people and the exhibition of courage are important factors in this rite, but its chief feature is a religious one.[265] Instead of being a time of feasting and pleasure, the Sun-Dance is a military and religious festival, in connection with which there are occasions for joy, and the feast enhances the pleasure.[16]

It may be well to note that the offering of bits of flesh to the sun was a general practice not necessarily associated with the sun dance. Many comparatively young men now living (1904) bear numerous scars testifying to such offerings. When in perilous situations a finger would sometimes be struck off with a call upon the sun for help. Among the Blood, such sacrifice of a finger by women as well as men was common at the sun dance.[17] These facts concerning the more general practice of mutilating the body to win the approval of the sun suggest that if the cutting ceremony is intrusive, it either found on hand a series of analogous customs or brought with it a concept that afterwards gave birth to them. It may be observed that the form of costume and dance is strikingly like that employed by the present weather dancers.

Since there seems to be no good published data on the sacrificing of skin and fingers we append the narrative of Split-ears:—

Sometimes, when warriors are on an expedition and come in sight of the enemy they will sit in a circle while the leader, or the oldest member of the party, offers prayers that they may succeed in their undertaking. Then they proceed to offer bits of their own skin to the sun. The one who prayed sits down by one of the party, takes up a needle or bodkin and a knife, thrusts the former under a small section of skin and raising it, cuts off a small slice with a knife. This leaves a circular wound a quarter of an inch or less in diameter. It is understood that the operator pulls the skin up with the needle and slices off a small section underneath that instrument. He then takes up some black paint and dips the bit of skin into it. Then he holds it up to the sun and prays for the success of his victim. The bit of skin is then placed upon a piece of cloth and another is removed from the victim in the same manner and so the operator goes to each of the party in turn, each time removing a piece of skin, dipping it in black paint, and holding it up in a prayer to the sun. While each person is expected to give two pieces, they are not limited to the maximum number, some men giving four and some still more. The bits of skin thus collected are tied up in one corner of the cloth which is mounted upon a stick wrapped with wild sage, the whole being fastened in a tree or set up on the top of a high hill as the[266] sun's offering. This sacrifice is always spoken of as feeding the sun with flesh from one's own body. The cloth is fastened to the stick in the form of a flag or banner so that it waves in the wind with the flesh offerings tied in one corner. This sacrifice is considered one of the greatest a man can make.

Now, as I have said, some men only give two small pieces of skin, while others give a great many more, but as they do this each time they go on an expedition, it so happens that a man who made many war expeditions has many small scars on his arms and legs. Thus, we can still tell those of our old men who went upon the warpath many times in their youth. We can tell by the scars made from feeding the sun their own flesh. But, again, it so happens that men while at home may have dreams in which they are commanded to feed the sun. Now it is believed that unless a man heeds such a command, he is certain to be visited by misfortune or even death, so he always makes haste to comply with the command. After such a dream he makes a sweathouse and invites in an old man who prays and makes the offering. The procedure here is the same as previously described and the offering is made into a banner and placed in a tree or upon a hill. Then again, the men who are at home in the camp but who have relatives in a war party may so wish for the safety of these that they themselves offer bits of skin in their behalf. Thus, you see, there are many times when people will offer bits of skin, so that it was not uncommon for a man to have one hundred or more scars upon his body. These are generally arranged in rows up and down the arms, down the legs, down the breasts and the back. I have even heard of cases where a man is said to have offered one hundred pieces of skin at one time. This, however, was unusual.

Fig. 1. The Offering of Human Flesh. The bits of flesh are tied in the corner of the banner. Drawn from a native sketch.

Sometimes, instead of offering skin, the warrior would offer a finger. Thus, if beset by very great danger on the warpath a man may make a vow to the sun[267] stating that if brought home safely he will sacrifice a finger. This sacrifice can be made at any time; either when on the warpath or when at home in camp or at the sun dance. In such cases, the finger is offered to the sun in the precise manner as the pieces of skin described above.

There are, however, occasions upon which fingers are cut off that are not offerings to the sun. Thus, people who are in mourning sometimes sacrifice a finger. In those cases it is usual to call upon some old woman who is skilled in the amputation. She cuts off the finger, usually reciting a kind of ritual, but it is not offered to the sun. It is simply thrown away. Then again babies' fingers are sometimes cut off to give the child good luck. Thus, if a woman lost many children she would call upon an old woman to make the sacrifice for her newly born. In this case, the tip end of a finger is cut off and wrapped up in a piece of meat which the mother is required to swallow. This is supposed to insure the child's living to maturity. It had no connection with the sun.

I have told you how men are called upon to cut off pieces of skin and how certain old women were selected to amputate fingers. You should also know that in olden times there were some women and men who might be called upon to cut open dead persons for various reasons. Sometimes they did this on their own account in order to get information as to the cause of death.

These accounts show for one thing that the cutting ceremony in the sun dance is but one of a type of blood and flesh offerings made to the sun, in fulfillment of a vow. The sacrifice of a finger is more frequent and less specialized, though frequently done at the sun dance. Then comes the very frequent offering of bits of skin, a sacrifice common in war raids at all times. The offering of bits of skin in the precise manner described here is found elsewhere in the Plains. The writer has observed men so scarred among several divisions of the Dakota. The method of removing the skin was here the same as followed by the Blackfoot. The thrusting in of the awl has a curious similarity to the cutting and skewering in the sun dance; one may even be pardoned for wondering if it did not so arise.