The “medicine man” of the Indians is at once prophet, priest, and physician; he has sometimes great influence. The ceremony by which this dignity is attained among the Sioux, is one involving no little suffering. The candidate for this honour has innumerable splints of wood driven through the most sensitive parts of his flesh, and being suspended by some of these to a pole, with his medicine bag in his hand, he is expected to keep his eyes steadily fixed on the sun from its rising to its setting, when he is taken down, and entitled to be called a medicine or mystery man for the remainder of his life; but he has to make ceaseless efforts for the support of his character, since the failure of either his cures or his prophecies renders him liable to universal contempt. Almost every family has its medicine or mystery bag, which consists of a beaver or otter skin curiously ornamented; this contains the medicinal stores and smaller consecrated articles of the family; it is considered a great disgrace to sell or otherwise part with an article once consecrated, and the medicine bag is always held sacred and inviolate to every hand but that of its owner. When a warrior of the Sac and Fox tribe falls in battle, his widow suspends his mystery bag on the pole before his tent, and sits herself within the lodge; the warriors, returned from the battle, and adorned with the scalps they have taken from the enemy, then assemble before the lodge; they dance to the medicine bag of their lost brother, and throw presents to his widow, of such articles as they think may best console her for her loss. The Indian dwelling is much varied in its form and manner among the various tribes; the Pawnees, for example, live in lodges thatched with prairie grass, and which are not unlike immense bee-hives. The Sioux, the Camanchees, the Crows, and others inhabiting a vast tract on the upper waters of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, and extending to the base of the Rocky Mountains, have moveable tents formed of buffalo skins richly ornamented, according to Indian notions of ornament, and fastened to poles sometimes twenty-five feet high; some of these tents will shelter eighty persons, and require from thirty to thirty-five buffalo skins to cover them. The Riccarees, Mandans, &c. are, or _were_, lodged in villages fortified by strong stockades eighteen feet high; their huts are formed of poles covered closely and smoothly with earth, and this in process of time becomes so compact and hard, that men, women, and children, recline and play on their tops.