The dancers form a line on the east side of the lodge facing the image. Their step is that characteristic of the sun dance of other tribes: they stand in place, alternately bending their knees and rising on their toes. They dance intermittently throughout four days and nights; the common dancers leave as the periods for which they have vowed to dance have elapsed or when they can no longer stand the combined strain of fasting, thirsting, and dancing. Martinez left after three days and nights. The "four days and nights" which are specified are in reality only three nights and days; evidently the first day of preliminary dancing is included to fill out the quota to the magic "four." In Scott's account, the dancers perform on the first day from evening to the middle of the night, and on the succeeding days from sunrise to the chorus's breakfast, nine o'clock to dinner, four in the afternoon to sundown, and from evening to midnight, ending in the evening of the fourth day. The dance Battey describes evidently began in the evening of the 18th and continued intermittently to late afternoon of the 21st. Apparently the dancers do not leave the lodge during this entire period. _19th_ [June, 1873.]--Music and dancing continued in the medicine house through the night. At an early hour this morning I went thither with Couguet, and witnessed one dance throughout. The ground inside the enclosure had been carefully cleared of grass, sticks, and roots, and covered, several inches deep, with a clean, white sand. A screen had been constructed on the side opposite the entrance, by sticking small cottonwoods and cedars deep into the ground, so as to preserve them fresh as long as possible. A space was left, two or three feet wide, between it and the enclosing wall, in which the dancers prepared themselves for the dance, and in front of which was the medicine. This consisted of an image, lying on the ground, but so concealed from view, in the screen, as to render its form indistinguishable; above it was a large fan, made of eagle quills, [an error, these are crow feathers], with the quill part lengthened out nearly a foot, by inserting a stick into it, and securing it there. These were held in a spread form by means of a willow rod, or wire, bent in a circular form; above this was a mass of feathers, concealing an image, on each side of which were several shields, highly decorated with feathers and paint. Various other paraphernalia of heathen worship were suspended in the screen, among these shields or over them, impossible for me to describe so as to be comprehended. A mound had also been thrown up around the central post of the building, two feet high, and perhaps five feet in diameter.