 | CHAPTER III. Dahcotah, or, Life and legends of the Sioux around Fort Snelling |  |
3. CHAPTER III.
We rarely consider the Indian as a member of a family—
we associate him with the tomahawk and scalping-knife.
But the very strangeness of the customs of the Dahcotahs
adds to their interest; and in their mourning they have all
the horror of death without an attendant solemnity.
All the agony and grief that a Christian mother feels
when she looks for the last time at the form which will so
soon moulder in the dust, an Indian mother feels also. The
Christian knows that the body will live again; that the
life-giving breath of the Eternal will once more re-animate
the helpless clay; that the eyes which were brilliant and
beautiful in life will again look brightly from the now
closed lids—when the dead shall live—when the beloved
child shall “rise again.”
The Dahcotah woman has no such hope. Though she believes
that the soul will live forever in the “city of spirits,”
yet the infant she has nursed at her bosom, the child she
loved and tended, the young man whose strength and beauty
were her boast, will soon be ashes and dust.
And if she have not the hope of the Christian, neither
her clothes, throwing them under the scaffold, what joy
would it bring to her heart could she hope herself to take
the life of the murderer of her son.
Beloved Hail was borne by the Indians to his native village,
and the usual ceremonies attending the dead performed,
but with more than usual excitement, occasioned
by the circumstances of the death of their friend.
The body of a dead Dahcotah is wrapped in cloth or
calico, or sometimes put in a box, if one can be obtained,
and placed upon a scaffold raised a few feet from the
ground. All the relations of the deceased then sit round it
for about twenty-four hours; they tear their clothes; run
knives through the fleshy parts of their arms, but there is
no sacrifice which they can make so great as cutting off
their hair.
The men go in mourning by painting themselves black
and they do not wash the paint off until they take the scalp
of an enemy, or give a medicine-dance.
While they sit round the scaffold, one of the nearest relations
commences a doleful crying, when all the others
join in, and continue their wailing for some time. Then
for awhile their tears are wiped away. After smoking for
a short time another of the family commences again, and
the others join in. This is continued for a day and night,
and then each one goes to his own wigwam.
The Dahcotahs mourned thus for Beloved Hail. In the
evening the cries of his wife were heard as she called for
her husband, while the rocks and the hills echoed the wail.
He will return no more—and who will hunt the deer for
his wife and her young children!
The murderers were never found, and the hostages, after
being detained for eighteen months at Fort Snelling, were
released. They bore their confinement with admirable
patience, the more so as they were punished for the fault
of others. When they were released, they were furnished
with guns and clothing. For fear they would be killed by
the Dahcotahs, their release was kept a secret, and the
Dahcotahs knew not that the two Chippeways were released,
until they were far on their journey home. But one of
them never saw his native village again. The long confinement
had destroyed his health, and being feeble when
he set out, he soon found himself unequal to the journey.
He died a few days before the home was reached; and the
welcome that his companion received was a sad one, for he
brought the intelligence of the death of his comrade.
| CHAPTER III. Dahcotah, or, Life and legends of the Sioux around Fort Snelling | |