The Indians
continued to assemble. At eleven o'clock, the dance commenced. Although
I could not faithfully describe, yet I never can forget the scene. The
dark lowering sky--the mantle of snow and ice thrown over all the
objects that surrounded us, except the fierce human beings who were
thus, under Heaven's arch for a roof, about to offer to their deities a
solemn worship.
Then the music commenced, and the horrid sounds increased the wildness
of the scene; and the contortions of the medicine man, as he went round
and round, made his countenance horrible beyond expression. The devoted
attention of the savages, given to every part of the ceremony, made it
in a measure interesting. There were hundreds of human beings believing
in a Great Spirit, and anxious to offer him acceptable service; but how
degraded in that service! How fallen from its high estate was the soul
that God had made, when it stooped to worship the bones of animals, the
senseless rock, the very earth that we stood upon! The aged man,
trembling with feebleness, ready to depart to the spirit's land, weary
with the weight of his infirmities--the warrior treading the earth
with the pride of middle age--the young with nothing to regret and
everything to look forward to,--all uniting in a worship which they
ignorantly believe to be religion, but which we know to be idolatry.
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