The Sioux thought the soul must journey after death toward the land from which the west wind comes. They believed that the soul did not leave the body until after nightfall. A horse was killed beneath the tree or scaffold, in order that the spirit of the animal might carry the spirit of the Indian to the Milky Way, which was regarded as the pathway of ghosts. On this pathway the spirit of the dead was met by the Old Woman with the Stick. If he passed the proper tests, she directed him down the left fork of the Milky Way to the Northern Lights, which were regarded as the campfires of the departed heroes and good people of the tribe. If he could not meet the tests, however, she pushed him along the right fork over a precipice; and he and his horse were there changed into beetle bugs forever. The above-ground type of cemetery undoubtedly contributed to the spread of disease. Of course, the tribes were subject to a variety of maladies, smallpox being the most dreaded. From this latter scourge the agricultural people suffered disastrously; the Mandan were nearly wiped out by it in the early nineteenth century. In the treatment of disease certain medicinal herbs were used rather intelligently, and the vapor bath was of distinct value; but when it came to the more severe forms of sickness, the primitive sufferers called in the medicine men and trusted to their incantations. As the hunters, saddened by the wailing of the mourners, went on their way, sounds of an altogether different type might have come to them--sounds of joy--of a wedding in progress. The bridegroom would have delivered the horses with which he paid for his bride, and the guests would be gathered at the lodge for the feast, which usually consummated the relatively simple affairs that courtship and marriage were among the prairie Indians. Perhaps the groom already had several wives--the possession of 6 was a common situation, and the great men of the tribe sometimes had as many as 14. Since the women did much of the work of field and lodge, the acquisition of another wife was not an added burden. Despite the existence of polygamy, however, Indian families were not large. The babies of the party would be seen strapped to board cradles, where a good part of infancy was spent in those days--a life that must have had its pleasant features. In this point of vantage a child could be set up by the side of the tipi or lodge to enjoy the sunshine, be hung up in a tree to talk to the birds, or be carried at the side of a horse or on the back of its mother to look serenely over the far prairies.