Annually in the month of July the Minnetarees celebrate their great medicine dance. * * * On this occasion a considerable quantity of food is prepared. * * * The devotees then dance and sing to their music at intervals for three or four days together in full view of the victuals without attempting to taste them. But they do not, even at this time, forego their accustomed hospitality. And if a stranger enters, he is invited to eat, though no one partakes with him. On the third or fourth day, the severer * * * tortures commence. * * * An individual presents himself before one of the * * * magi, crying and lamenting, and requests him to cut a fillet of skin from his arm, which he extends for that purpose. The operator thrusts a sharp instrument through the skin near the wrists, then introduces the knife and cuts out a piece of the required length, sometimes extending the cut entirely to the shoulder. Another will request bands of skin to be cut from his arm. A third will have his breast flayed so as to represent a full-moon or crescent. A fourth submits to the removal of concentric arcs of skin from his breast. A fifth prays the operator to remove small pieces of skin from various indicated parts of his body. * * * An individual requests the operator to pierce a hole through the skin on each of his shoulders, and after passing a long cord through each hole, he repairs to a burial ground at some distance from the village, and selects one of the bison skulls collected there. To the chosen skull he affixes the ends of his cords, and drags it to the lodge, around which he must go with his burden before he can be released from it. No one is permitted to assist him, neither dare he to put his hands to the cords to alleviate his sufferings. If it should so happen that the horns of the skull get hooked under a root or other obstacle, he must extricate it in the best manner he can by pulling different ways, but he must not touch the cords or the skull with his hands, or in any respect attempt to relieve the strain upon his wound until his complete task is performed. Some of the penitents have arrows thrust through various muscular parts of their bodies, as through the skin and superficial muscles of the arms, leg, breast, and back.