“When I asked the dreamer what he meant by the strokes and figures at the foot of the drawing, he said: ‘It is a notice that I fasted nine days on account of this dream. The nine strokes indicate the number nine, and a small figure of the sun over them means days.’ “His own self he indicated by the human figure. It has no head but an enormous heart in the centre of the breast. “Though the head is frequently missing, the heart is never omitted in Indian figures, because they have as a general rule, more heart than brains, more courage than sense. ‘I purposely made the heart rather large,’ the author of the picture remarked, ‘in order to show that I had so much courage as to endure a nine days’ fast.’ He omitted the head, probably because he felt that sense was but little mixed up with such nonsensical fasting. “‘But why hast thou painted the sun once more, and with so much care over it?’ asked I. ‘Because,’ replied he, ‘the very next morning after my fast was at an end, the sun rose with extraordinary splendour, which I shall never forget, for a fine sunrise after a dream is the best sign that it will come to pass.’” The superstitions, in fact, of all Indians, are singularly wild, poetic, and primitive. Catlin, in his “Descriptive Catalogue,” gives some strange and interesting particulars. He says, for instance, the Sioux have a superstitious belief that they will conquer their enemy if they go through the following ceremony:--A dog’s liver and heart are taken raw and bleeding and placed upon a sort of platform, and, being cut into slips, each man dances upon it, bites off and swallows a piece of it, in the certain belief that he has thus swallowed a piece of the heart of his enemy whom he has slain in battle. Again, it is supposed that he most is in the favour of the Great Spirit who can throw most arrows from an Indian bow before the first cast reaches the ground, and Catlin says: “So eager are the Indians for this supremacy that I have known men who could get eight arrows in the air, all moving at the same time.” Another superstition takes the shape of a belief in dancing compelling a flock of buffaloes to turn upon the path of the dancers. This superstitious gyration is only resorted to when a tribe is absolutely starving, and it is accompanied by a song to the Great Spirit, imploring Him to help them, promising, at the same time, a burnt sacrifice, or, as they themselves generally put it, that the Great Spirit shall have the best of the meat cooked for himself. A far more charming use of the superstitious, or rather religious, dances is that of the warriors upon their return from battle, when, if they can exhibit scalps, they are justified in dancing and wailing in front of the wigwams of the widows of their companions who have been killed. If the widow is one of a man of any importance in the tribe, especially if he has been a medicine man, they cast presents upon the ground for the use of the widowed woman.