“During the day, the young men, except the dancers, piled up dry logs in a level, open space near, for a grand demonstration. At night, when it was fired, I folded my blanket over my shoulders, _comme les sauvages_, and went out. The faces of many girls were brilliant with vermillion; others were blacked, their robes, leggins and skin dresses, glittering with beads and porcupine quill work. Rings and bracelets of shining brass encircled their taper arms and fingers, and shells dangled from their ears. Indeed, all the finery collectable was piled on in barbarous profusion, though a few, in good taste or through poverty, wore a single band, and but few rings; and with jetty hair, parted in the middle, from the forehead to the neck, terminating in two handsome braids....
“The girls, numbering two hundred, fell into line together, and the men, of whom there were two hundred and fifty, joining, a circle was formed, which ‘traveled’ around with the same shuffling step already described. The drummers, and other musicians (twenty or twenty-five of them) marched in a contrary direction, to, and from, and around the fire, inside the large ring; for, at the distance kept by the outsiders, the area was one hundred and fifty feet in diameter. There Appolonian emulators chanted the great deeds performed by the Cheyenne warriors; as they ended, the dying strain was caught up by the hundreds of the outside circle, who, in fast-swelling, loud tones, poured out the burden of their song. At this juncture, the march was quickened, the scalps of the slain were borne aloft and shaken in wild delight, and shrill warnotes, rising above the furious din, accelerated the pulsation, and strung high the nerves. Timeworn shields, careering in mad holders’ hands, clashed, and keen lances, once reeking in Pawnee blood, clanged. Braves seized one another with an iron grip, in the heat of excitement, or chimed more tenderly in the chant, enveloped in the same robe with some gentle maiden as they approvingly stepped through one of their own original polkas.
“Thirty of the chiefs, and principal men were ranged by the pile of blazing logs. By their invitation, I sat down near ‘Old Bark,’ and smoked death and its concomitant train of evils to those audacious tribes, who doubt the courage or supremacy of the brave, the great, and powerful Cheyenne nation.