SUN DANCE. The great annual religious ceremony common to all the tribes of the Plains with the exception of the Comanche and perhaps one or two others. In purpose it is a thanksgiv ing and invocation to the sun god and his rep resentative the buffalo. Although anticipated as a yearly tribal event, it is usually 'made' or organized on each occasion in fulfillment of a vow by some particular individual in gratitude for recovery from sickness or for sonic other bless ing. The management of details is in charge of certain priests, together with the warrior societies. The dance usually takes place about the beginning of summer and with all its at tendant ceremonies lasts more than a week, the dance proper continuing four days and nights. The entire tribe assemble for the occasion and pitch their tipis in a great circle, in the centre of which is erected the medicine lodge of leafy cottonwood saplings. The centre pole of the lodge is decorated with streamers and symbolic paints, besides which a sacred bundle, usually wrapped in a buffalo skin, is fastened near the top. The centre pole is cut down by the women with much ceremony. The dancers are stripped and painted,the paint design differing in symbolic char acter at each stage of the dance, and are prohibited horn eating or drinking during the four days of the dance. Among the Sioux, Cheyenne, and some other tribes they formerly also subjected themselves to voluntary torture by leaning their weight upon ropes fastened to wooden skewers driven through the flesh of their breasts and shoulders. Among the Mandan this torture was
carried to an almost incredible degree; the vic tim was lifted completely from the ground and permitted to swing from the roof pole in this condition, after which one Or more fingers were chopped off as a further sacrifice. Among the Kiowa such torture was unknown.
The dancers form a half circle about the centre pole, each one looking steadfastly upon the sacred bundle at the top and constantly facing the sun in its course, with their arms swinging at their sides, and holding between their teeth whistles of eagle bone with which tiny keep up a continual shrill whistling. At the west end of the medicine lodge is an altar of bushes and variously decorated twigs within which are the sacred buffalo skull, the sacred pipe, and other ceremonial objects. On another side are the drummers, who sing the songs of the sun dance to the accompaniment of a pow•er fttl drum. Throughout the ceremony there is a rapid succession of ceremonial performances, in cluding addresses, feasting, giving of presents, initiation of new members into the various so cieties, and the piercing of the ears of the chil dren born during the past year. At night there are games, story-telling, and more feasting, winding up with various social dances after the grand performance is at an end. The dance is still kept up among nearly all the Plains tribes, varying but little in details.