This exciting and appalling scene, then, which is familiarly (and no doubt correctly) called the “Mandan religious ceremony,” commences, not on a particular day of the year, (for these people keep no record of days or weeks), but at a particular season, which is designated by the full expansion of the willow leaves under the bank of the river; for according to their tradition, “the twig that the bird brought home was a willow bough, and had full-grown leaves on it,” and the bird to which they allude, is the mourning or turtle-dove, which they took great pains to point out to me, as it is often to be seen feeding on the sides of their earth-covered lodges, and which, being, as they call it, a _medicine-bird_, is not to be destroyed or harmed by any one, and even their dogs are instructed not to do it injury. On the morning on which this strange transaction commenced, I was sitting at breakfast in the house of the Trader, Mr. Kipp, when at sun-rise, we were suddenly startled by the shrieking and screaming of the women, and barking and howling of dogs, as if an enemy were actually storming their village. “Now we have it!” (exclaimed _mine host_, as he sprang from the table,) the grand ceremony has commenced!—“drop your knife and fork, Monsr. and get your sketch-book as soon as possible, that you may lose nothing, for the very moment of _commencing_ is as curious as anything else of this strange affair.” I seized my sketch-book, and all hands of us were in an instant in front of the medicine-lodge, ready to see and to hear all that was to take place. Groups of women and children were gathered on the tops of their earth-covered wigwams, and all were screaming, and dogs were howling, and all eyes directed to the prairies in the West, where was beheld at a mile distant, a solitary individual descending a prairie bluff, and making his way in a direct line towards the village! The whole community joined in the general expression of great alarm, as if they were in danger of instant destruction; bows were strung and thrumed to test their elasticity—their horses were caught upon the prairie and run into the village—warriors were blackening their faces, and dogs were muzzled, and every preparation made, as if for instant combat.