The frenzied shrieks of these human animals, and of the women who follow them, produce a wonderful nervous effect upon the listening multitudes.  All feel that they are about to enter into the ecstatic spiritual condition of departed souls, and are to be joined by the shades of the dead heroes and warriors of tradition and story.

Each dancer has a masque.  It may be an owl’s head with mother-of-pearl eyes, or a wooden pelican’s beak, or a wolf’s head.  It may be a wooden animal’s face, which can be pulled apart by a string, and reveal under it an effigy of a human face, the first masque changing into great ears.  The museum at Ottawa, Canada, contains a great number of such masques, and some missionaries in the Northwest make curious collections of them.

The whirling begins.  Everywhere are whirling circles—­round and round they go.  The sight of it all would make a spectator dizzy.  Cries arise, each more and more fearful; the whole multitude are at last shrieking with dizzy heads and wildly beating pulses.  The cries become deafening; an almost superhuman frenzy passes over all; they seem to be no longer mortal—­the armies of the dead are believed to be about them; they think that they are reveling in the joys of the heroes’ paradise.  One by one they drop down, until the whole assembly is exhausted.

At midnight the great fires are kindled, and throw their lights and shadows over the frenzied sleepers.  Such was the Tamanous-dance, and so ended the first night of the feast.

On the second night the old chief gave away his private possessions, and on the third the wedding ceremony was performed.

The wild and inhuman Death-dance, which the tribe demanded, was expected to end the festival at the going down of the shadowy moon.  Could it be prevented after the traditions of unknown centuries, and at a time when the historical pride of the warriors was awakened to celebrate the barbarous deeds of their ancestors?

The wedding was simple.  It consisted chiefly in gifts to the bride, Multoona.  The girl was fantastically dressed, with ornaments of shells and feathers, and she followed the young prince demurely.  After the ceremony of the bridal gifts came the Fire-fly dance, in which light-torches gleamed out in vanishing spirals here and there, and over all the plain.  Then followed the Tamanous or Spirit dance, in which a peculiar kind of frenzy is excited, as has been described.  The excitement was somewhat less than usual this night, on account of the great orgies which were expected to follow.

The third and great night of the Potlatch came.  It was the night of the full October moon.  The sun had no sooner gone down in the crimson cloud-seas among the mountains, than the moon, like another sun, broad and glorious, lifted its arch in the distant blue of the serene horizon.

The Indians gathered on the glimmering plain in the early shadows of evening, besmeared with yellow ochre and war-paint.  Every head was plumed.  There was a savagery in their looks that had not been seen before.