Most of the material collected by modern observers
is necessarily of this promiscuous character.

It is noteworthy that the first effect of contact with the whites was an
increase of cruelty and barbarity, an intensifying of the dark shadows
in the picture! In this manner the "Sun Dance" of the Plains Indians,
the most important of their public ceremonials, was abused and perverted
until it became a horrible exhibition of barbarism, and was eventually
prohibited by the Government.

In the old days, when a Sioux warrior found himself in the very jaws of
destruction, he might offer a prayer to his father, the Sun, to prolong
his life. If rescued from imminent danger, he must acknowledge the
divine favor by making a Sun Dance, according to the vow embraced in his
prayer, in which he declared that he did not fear torture or death, but
asked life only for the sake of those who loved him. Thus the physical
ordeal was the fulfillment of a vow, and a sort of atonement for what
might otherwise appear to be reprehensible weakness in the face of
death. It was in the nature of confession and thank-offering to the
"Great Mystery," through the physical parent, the Sun, and did not
embrace a prayer for future favors.

The ceremonies usually took place from six months to a year after the
making of the vow, in order to admit of suitable preparation; always
in midsummer and before a large and imposing gathering. They naturally
included the making of a feast, and the giving away of much savage
wealth in honor of the occasion, although these were no essential part
of the religious rite.

When the day came to procure the pole, it was brought in by a party of
warriors, headed by some man of distinction. The tree selected was six
to eight inches in diameter at the base, and twenty to twenty-five
feet high. It was chosen and felled with some solemnity, including
the ceremony of the "filled pipe," and was carried in the fashion of a
litter, symbolizing the body of the man who made the dance. A solitary
teepee was pitched on a level spot at some distance from the village,
and the pole raised near at hand with the same ceremony, in the centre
of a circular enclosure of fresh-cut boughs.

Meanwhile, one of the most noted of our old men had carved out of
rawhide, or later of wood, two figures, usually those of a man and
a buffalo. Sometimes the figure of a bird, supposed to represent the
Thunder, was substituted for the buffalo. It was custom