The women cut thin splinters of ash to be introduced under the nails, others prepared elder pith to make sulphur matches, whilst the youngest went into the forest to seek for armfuls of green wood destined to burn the condemned woman slowly, while stifling her with the smoke it would produce. In the meantime, the men had completely stripped the bark off a tree which they had chosen to serve as the stake of torture; they had then rubbed it well with elk fat mixed with red ochre; round its base they had placed the wood of the pyre, and this done, the sorcerer had come to conjure the tree by means of mysterious words, in order to render it fit for the purpose to which they destined it. These preparations terminated, the condemned was brought to the foot of the stake, and seated, without being tied, upon the pile of wood intended to burn her; and the scalp dance commenced. The unfortunate woman was, in appearance, impassible. She had made the sacrifice of her life; nothing that passed around her could any longer affect her. Her eyes, burning with fever and swollen with tears, wandered without purpose, over the vast crowd that enveloped her with the roarings of wild beasts. Her mind watched, nevertheless, as keenly and as lucidly as in her happiest days. The poor mother had a fear which wrung her heart and made her endure a torture, compared with which those which the Indians were preparing to inflict upon her were as nothing; she trembled lest her son, warned of the horrid fate that awaited her, should hasten to save her, and give himself up to his ferocious enemies. With her ear attentive to the least noise, she seemed to hear every instant the precipitate steps of her son flying to her assistance. Her heart bounded with fear. She prayed God from the very depths of her soul to permit her to die instead of her beloved child. The scalp dance whirled ferociously around her. A crowd of warriors, tall, handsome, magnificently dressed, but with their faces blackened, danced, two by two, round the stake, led by seven musicians armed with drums and chicikoués, who were striped with black and red, and wore upon their heads feathers of the screech owl, falling down behind. The warriors had in their hands guns and clubs, ornamented with black feathers and red cloth, of which they brought the butts to the ground as they danced. These men formed a vast semicircle around the stake; in face of them, and completing the circle, the women danced. Eagle Head, who led the warriors, carried a long staff, at the end of which was suspended a human scalp, surmounted by a stuffed pie with its wings out-spread; a little lower on the same stick were a second scalp, the skin of a lynx, and some feathers. When they had danced thus for an instant, the musicians placed themselves by the side of the condemned, and made a deafening noise, singing, whilst beating the drums with all their force, and shaking the chicikoués.