it is not
confined to the clearing. It is one which launches them into the midst of
the audience. Hither and thither they caper, and from their tracks emerge
a number of very young men. It might be that this is the "Dance of
Selection," for it undoubtedly has the result of bringing forth a number
of striplings from the ranks of the onlookers.

The dancers have made the complete circuit, and about one hundred young
men, little more than boys, join in the great Sun-dance.

Now ensues one of the most terrible scenes of human barbarity conceivable.
In the course of the dance the "med'cine" men seize upon each of the
willing victims in turn. On the breast of each boy incisions are made with
long, keen knives; two parallel incisions on each side of the chest. The
flesh between each two of these is then literally torn from the underlying
tissues, and a rough stick is thrust through the gaping wounds. So the
would-be brave is spitted.

Now a rawhide rope is attached to the centre of the stick, the end of it
is thrown over the gnarled limb of one of the trees in the centre of the
clearing, and the youth is lifted from the ground and remains suspended,
the whole weight of his body borne by the two straps of bloody flesh cut
from his chest.

The dance proceeds until each youth is spitted and suspended from the
central cluster of trees, then, with one accord, the men of the audience
break from their places and join in the war-dance. They dance about the
victims with a fierce glee like hundreds of fiends; they beat them, they
slash them with knives, they thrust lighted brands upon the fresh young
flesh till it blisters and throws out nauseous odors. Their acts are acts
of diabolical torture, inconceivably savage. But the worst agony is
endured in desperate silence by each victim. That is, by all but one.

Out of all the number hanging like dead men upon the trees only one youth
finds the torture unendurable.

He cries aloud for mercy, and his shrieks rise high above the pandemonium
going on about him.

Instantly he is cut down, the stick is removed from his body, and he is
driven from the ceremony by the waiting squaws, amidst a storm of feminine
vituperation. He is the only one whose heart is faint. He will never be
permitted to fight. He must live with the squaws all his days. He is
considered a squaw-man, the greatest indignity that can be put upon him.

Thus are the braves made.

While the Sun-dance was still at its he