of straps, buckles, &c.  The three bead-work hooded cloaks were now removed, and then we successively unwrapped a gray woolen double shawl, five yards of blue cassimere, six yards of red calico, and six yards of brown calico, and finally disclosed the remains of a child, probably about a year old, in an advanced stage of decomposition.  The cadaver had a beaver-cap ornamented with disks of copper containing the bones of the cranium, which had fallen apart.  About the neck were long wampum necklaces, with Dentalium, Unionidae, and Auriculae, interspersed with beads.  There were also strings of the pieces of Haliotis from the Gulf of California, so valued by the Indians on this side of the Rocky Mountains.  The body had been elaborately dressed for burial, the costume consisting of a red-flannel cloak, a red tunic, and frock-leggins adorned with bead-work, yarn stockings of red and black worsted, and deer-skin beadwork moccasins.  With the remains were numerous trinkets, a porcelain image, a China vase, strings of beads, several toys, a pair of mittens, a fur collar, a pouch of the skin of Putorius vison, &c.

Another extremely interesting account of scaffold-burial, furnished by Dr. L.S.  Turner, United States Army, Fort Peck, Mont., and relating to the Sioux, is here given entire, as it refers to certain curious mourning observances which have prevailed to a great extent over the entire globe: 

The Dakotas bury their dead in the tops of trees when limbs can be found sufficiently horizontal to support scaffolding on which to lay the body, but as such growth is not common in Dakota, the more general practice is to lay them upon scaffolds from seven to ten feet high and out of the reach of carnivorous animals, as the wolf.  These scaffolds are constructed upon four posts set into the ground something after the manner of the rude drawing which I inclose.  Like all labors of a domestic kind, the preparation for burial is left to the women, usually the old women.  The work begins as soon as life is extinct.  The face, neck, and hands are thickly painted with vermilion, or a species of red earth found in various portions of the Territory when the vermilion of the traders cannot be had.  The clothes and personal trinkets of the deceased ornament the body.  When blankets are available, it is then wrapped in one, all parts of the body being completely enveloped.  Around this a dressed skin of buffalo is then securely wrapped, with the flesh side out, and the whole securely bound with thongs of skins, either raw or dressed; and for ornament, when available, a bright-red blanket envelopes all other coverings, and renders the general scene more picturesque until dimmed by time and the elements.  As soon as the scaffold is ready, the body is borne by the women, followed by the female relatives, to the place of final deposit, and left prone in its secure wrappings upon this airy bed of death.  This ceremony