m upon their national medicine, and have succeeded
better than the Indian character would have seemed to promise.

Among the Flat-Heads female chastity is a national medicine. With the
Mandans, friendship for the whites is supposed to be the source of
national and individual advantage.

Besides the varieties of medicine already alluded to, there are in use
charms of almost every kind. When game is scarce, medicine is made to
call back the buffalo. The Man in the Sun is invoked for fair weather,
for success in war or chase, and for a cure of wounds. The spirits of
the dead are appeased by medicine songs and offerings. The curiosity of
some may be attracted by the following rude and literal translation of
the song of a Blackfoot woman to the spirit of her son, who was killed
on his first war-party. The words were written down at the time, and are
not in any respect changed or smoothed.

"O my son, farewell!
You have gone beyond the great river,
Your spirit is on the other side of the Sand Buttes;
I will not see you for a hundred winters;
You will scalp the enemy in the green prairie,
Beyond the great river.
When the warriors of the Blackfeet meet,
When they smoke the medicine-pipe and dance the war-dance,
They will ask, 'Where is Isthumaka?--
Where is the bravest of the Mannikappi?'
He fell on the war-path.
Mai-ram-bo, mai-ram-bo.

"Many scalps will be taken for your death;
The Crows will lose many horses;
Their women will weep for their braves,
They will curse the spirit of Isthumaka.
O my son! I will come to you
And make moccasins for the war-path,
As I did when you struck the lodge
Of the 'Horse-Guard' with the tomahawk.
Farewell, my son! I will see you
Beyond the broad river.
Mai-ram-bo, mai-ram-bo," etc., etc.

Sung in a plaintive minor key, and in a wild, irregular rhythm, the
dirge was far more impressive than the words would indicate.

It cannot be denied that the whites, who consort much with the ruder
tribes of Indians imbibe, to a considerable degree, their veneration for
medicine. The old trappers and voyageurs are, almost without exception,
observers of omens and dreamers of dreams. They claim that medicine is a
faculty which can in some degree be cultivated, and aspire to its
possession as eagerly as does the Indian. Sometimes they acquire a
reputation that is in many ways ben