The medicine dance is carried on chiefly to celebrate the skill of the “Medicine-man” in curing diseases.  This functionary belongs to a fraternity who are supposed to add to their other powers some skill in interpreting the will of the Great Spirit in regard to the conduct of his people.  He occasionally makes offerings and sacrifices which are regarded as propitiatory.  In this sense, the term “priest” may be deemed applicable to him.  He is also a “prophet” in so far as he is, in a limited degree, an instructor; but he does not claim to possess the gift of foretelling future events.

A person is selected to join the fraternity of the “Medicine-man” by those already initiated, chiefly on account of some skill or sagacity that has been observed in him.  Sometimes it happens that a person who has had a severe illness which has yielded to the prescriptions of one of the members, is considered a proper object of choice from a sort of claim thus established.

When he is about to be initiated, a great feast is made, of course at the expense of the candidate, for in simple as in civilized life the same principle of politics holds good, “honors must be paid for.”  An animal is killed and dressed, of which the people at large partake—­there are dances and songs and speeches in abundance.  Then the chief Medicine-man takes the candidate and privately instructs him in all the ceremonies and knowledge necessary to make him an accomplished member of the fraternity.  Sometimes the new member selected is still a child.  In that case he is taken by the Medicine-man so soon as he reaches a proper age, and qualified by instruction and example to become a creditable member of the fraternity.

Among the Winnebagoes there seems a considerable belief in magic.  Each Medicine-man has a bag or sack, in which is supposed to be inclosed some animal, to whom, in the course of their pow-wows, he addresses himself, crying to him in the note common to his imagined species.  And the people seem to be persuaded that the answers which are announced are really communications, in this form, from the Great Spirit.

The Indians appear to have no idea of a retribution beyond this life.  They have a strong appreciation of the great fundamental virtues of natural religion—­the worship of the Great Spirit, brotherly love, parental affection, honesty, temperance, and chastity.  Any infringement of the laws of the Great Spirit, by a departure from these virtues, they believe will excite his anger and draw down punishment.  These are their principles.  That their practice evinces more and more a departure from them, under the debasing influences of a proximity to the whites, is a melancholy truth, which no one will admit with so much sorrow as those who lived among them, and esteemed them, before this signal change had taken place.

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One of the first improvements that suggested itself about our new dwelling, was the removal of some very unsightly pickets surrounding two or three Indian graves, on the esplanade in front of the house.  Such, however, is the reverence in which these burial-places are held, that we felt we must approach the subject with great delicacy and consideration.