Nor were the Mandans alone on the American continent in marking the entrance upon manhood by distinctive observances. On the contrary, a writer of the highest authority on Red Indian subjects, states that no young man among the native tribes was considered fit to begin the career of life until he had accomplished his great fast. Seven days were considered the maximum time during which a young man could fast, and the success of the devotee was inferred from the length of his abstinence. These fasts, says Mr. Schoolcraft, "are awaited with interest, prepared for with solemnity, and endured with a self-devotion bordering on the heroic.... It is at this period that the young men and young women 'see visions and dream dreams,' and fortune or misfortune is predicted from the guardian spirit chosen during this, to them, religious ordeal. The hallucinations of the mind are taken for divine inspiration. The effect is deeply felt and strongly impressed on the mind; too deeply, indeed, ever to be obliterated in after life." It appears that they always in after life trust to, and meditate on, the guardian spirit whom they have chosen at this critical moment; but that "the _name_ is never uttered, and every circumstance connected with its selection, and the devotion paid to it, are most studiously and professedly concealed, even from their nearest friends" (A. R., vol. i. pp. 149, 150). Mystery is certainly pushed to its highest point, when the name of the spirit chosen at puberty, and the very circumstances of the choice, are preserved as an inviolable secret within the breast of the devotee.