rked in like manner; she had
evidently been dead but a day or two, and to our surprise a portion
of the upper part of her person was bare, exposing the face and a
part of the breast, as if the robes in which she was wrapped had by
some means been disarranged, whereas all the other bodies were
closely covered up. It was, at the time, the opinion of our
mountaineers, that these Indians must have fallen in an encounter
with a party of Crows; but I subsequently learned that they had all
died of the cholera, and that this young girl, being considered past
recovery, had been arranged by her friends in the habiliments of the
dead, inclosed in the lodge alive, and abandoned to her fate, so
fearfully alarmed were the Indians by this to them novel and
terrible disease.

It might, perhaps, be said that this form of burial was exceptional, and
due to the dread of again using the lodges which had served as the homes
of those afflicted with the cholera, but it is thought such was not the
case, as the writer has notes of the same kind of burial among the same
tribe and of others, notably the Crows, the body of one of their chiefs
(Long Horse) being disposed of as follows:

The lodge poles inclose an oblong circle some 18 by 22 feet at the
base, converging to a point, at least 30 feet high, covered with
buffalo-hides dressed without hair except a part of the tail switch,
which floats outside like, and mingled with human scalps. The
different skins are neatly fitted and sewed together with sinew, and
all painted in seven alternate horizontal stripes of brown and
yellow, decorated with various lifelike war scenes. Over the small
entrance is a large bright cross, the upright being a large stuffed
white wolf-skin upon his war lance, and the cross-bar of bright
scarlet flannel, containing the quiver of bow and arrows, which
nearly all warriors still carry, even when armed with repeating
rifles. As the cross is not a pagan but a Christian (which Long
Horse was not either by profession or practice) emblem, it was
probably placed there by the influence of some of his white friends.
I entered, finding Long Horse buried Indian fashion, in full war
dress, paint and feathers, in a rude coffin, upon a platform about
breast high, decorated with weapons, scalps, and ornaments. A large
opening and wind-flap at the top favored ventilation, and though he
had lain there in an open coffin a f