These lodges vary in size from forty to fifty feet in diameter, and are all of a circular form. The village is protected in front by the river, with a bank forty feet high, and on the back part by a piquet of timber set firmly in the ground. Back of the village, on the prairie, are seen the scaffolds on which their dead bodies are laid to decay, being wrapped in several skins of buffalo, and tightly bandaged. In the middle of the village is an open area of 150 feet in diameter, in which their public games and festivals are held. In the centre of that is their "Big Canoe," a curb made of planks, which is an object of religious veneration. Over the Medicine (or mystery) Lodge are seen hanging on the tops of poles several sacrifices to the Great Spirit of blue and black cloth, which have been bought at great prices, and there left to hang and decay. 503. The _Interior of a Mandan Lodge_, showing the manner in which it is constructed of poles, and covered with dirt. The Chief is seen smoking his pipe, and his family grouped around him. At the head of each warrior's bed is seen a post with his ornaments hanging on it, and also his _buffalo-mask_, which every man _keeps to dance_ the buffalo-dance. Some of these lodges contain thirty or forty persons, and the beds are seen extending around the side of the lodge, all with _sacking bottoms_, made of a buffalo-skin, and the frames of the bed covered with dressed skins. *** Reader, the hospitable and friendly Mandans, who were about 2000 in number when I was amongst them and painted these pictures, have recently been destroyed by the small-pox. It is a melancholy fact, that only thirty-one were left of the number, and these have been destroyed by their enemy, so that their tribe is extinct, and they hold nowhere an existence on earth. Nearly twenty of their portraits can be seen on the walls, and several other paintings of their games and amusements. MANDAN RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES. CERTIFICATE. We hereby certify that we witnessed, in company with Mr. Catlin, in the Mandan village, the ceremonies represented in the four paintings to which this certificate refers, and that he has therein faithfully represented those scenes as we saw them transacted, without any addition or exaggeration. J. KIP, Agent Amer. Fur Company. L. CRAWFORD, Clerk. ABRAHAM BOGARD. _Mandan Village, July 20th, 1833._ 504. Interior View of the _Medicine_ (or _Mystery_) Lodge of Mandans, during the first three days of an _Annual Ceremony_.