The last time this sacrifice was made, according to official reports,
was sixty years ago (April, 1838).  Dunbar relates this last reported
sacrifice as follows: 
        The winter previous to the date given, the Ski-di, soon after
        starting on their hunt, had a successful fight with a band of
        Ogallalla Sioux, killed several men and took over twenty
        children.  Fearing that the Sioux, according to their tactics,
        would retaliate by coming upon them in overwhelming force,
        they returned for safety to their village before taking
        a sufficient number of buffalo.  With little to eat, they
        lived miserably, lost many of their ponies from scarcity of
        forage, and, worst of all, one of the captives proved to have
        the smallpox, which rapidly spread through the band, and in
        the spring was communicated to the rest of the tribe. 
        All these accumulated misfortunes the Ski-di attributed to
        the anger of the morning star, and accordingly they resolved
        to propitiate its favour by a repetition of the sacrifice,
        though in direct violation of a stipulation made two years
        before that the sacrifice should not occur again.

In connection with its abolition, the oft-told story of Pit-a-le-shar-u is recalled.  Sa-re-cer-ish, second chief of the Cau-i band, was a man of unusually humane disposition, and had strenuously endeavoured to secure the suppression of the practice.  In the spring of 1817 the Ski-di arranged to sacrifice a Comanche girl.  After Sa-re-cer-ish had essayed in vain to dissuade them, Pit-a-le-shar-u, a young man about twenty years of age, of almost giant stature, and already famed as a great brave, conceived the bold design of rescuing her.  On the day set for the rite he actually cut the girl loose, after she had been tied to the stakes, placed her upon a horse that he had in readiness, and hurried her away across the prairies till they were come within a day’s journey of her people’s village.  There, after giving necessary directions as to her course, he dismissed her, himself returning to the Pawnees.  The suddenness and intrepidity of his movements, and his known prowess, were no doubt all that saved him from death at the moment of the rescue and after his return.  Twice afterward he presumed to interfere.  In one instance, soon after the foregoing, he assisted in securing by purchase the ransom of a Spanish boy, who had been set apart for sacrifice.  Several years later, about 1831, he aided in the attempted rescue of a girl.  The resistance on this occasion was so determined that even after the girl had been bought and was mounted upon a horse behind Major Daugherty, at that time general agent, to be taken from the Ski-di village, she was shot by one of the medicine-men.  The magnanimous conduct of Sa-re-cer-ish and Pit-a-le-shar-u