Their faith concerning a future life is this: When a Hidatsa dies his shade lingers four nights around the camp or village in which he died, and then goes to the lodge of his departed kindred in the Village of the Dead. When he has arrived there, he is rewarded for his valor, self-denial, and ambition on earth by receiving the same regard in the one place as in the other; for there, as here, the brave man is honored and the coward despised. Some say that the ghosts of those who commit suicide occupy a separate part of the village, but that their condition differs in no wise from that of the others. In the next world, human shades hunt and live on the shades of the buffalo and other animals that have here died. There too there are four seasons, but they come in an inverse order to the terrestrial seasons. During the four nights that the ghost is supposed to linger near his former dwelling, those who disliked or feared the deceased, and do not wish a visit from the shade, scorch with red coals a pair of moccasins, which they leave at the door of the lodge. The smell of the burning leather, they claim, keeps the ghost out; but the true friends of the dead man take no such precautions. * * * They believe in the existence and advisability of human and other ghosts, yet they seem to have no terror of graveyards and but little of mortuary remains. You may frighten children after nightfall by shouting noḣidaḣi (ghost), but will not scare the aged.[274] SAPONA CULTS. § 359½. The following account of the religion of the Sapona, a tribe related to the Tutelo, was given in 1729 by Col. William Byrd, of Westover, Va.[275] While much of it appears to be the white man’s amplification of the Indian’s narrative, it is plain that the account contains a few aboriginal beliefs. For this reason, and because it is the only known account of the Sapona religion, it is now given in full: