These dwellings, thus completed, resemble hillocks. A large aperture in the top serves to admit the light and also to
emit the smoke. They are very warm in winter, and cool, but oftentimes very damp, in summer. They are large enough to contain ten or a dozen families.
If, on the long journeys which they undertake in search of game, any should be impeded, either by age or sickness, their children or relations make a small but of dried grass to shelter them from the heat of the sun or from the weather, leaving as much provision as they are able to spare, and thus abandon them to their destiny. Nothing is more touching than this constrained separation, caused by absolute necessity -the tears and cries of the children on the one hand, and the calm resignation of the aged father or mother on the other. They often encourage their children not to expose their own lives in order to prolong their short remnant of time. They are anxious to depart on their long journey and to join their ancestors in the hunting grounds
of the Great Spirit. If, some days after, they are successful in the chase, they return as quickly as possible to render assistance and consolation. These practices are common to all the nomadic tribes of the mountains.
The Pawnees have nearly the same ideas concerning the universal deluge as those which I have given of the Potawatomies. In relation to the soul, they say that there is a resemblance in the body which does not die, but detaches itself when the body expires. If a man has been good during this life, kind to his parents, a good hunter, a good warrior, his soul (sa resemmbaance) is transported into a land of delights, abundance and pleasures. If, on the contrary, a man has been wicked, hard-hearted, cruel and indolent, his soul passes through narrow straits, difficult and dangerous, into a country where all is confusion, contrariety and unhappiness.
In their religious ceremonies they dance, sing and pray before a bird stuffed with all kinds of roots and herbs used in their superstition. They have a fabulous tradition, which