for a long time. Various articles were brought forward, and laid upon the ground, which he took up and hung in proximity to the medicine. After along time, the other dancers reappeared, and he retired; these continued their exercises, until driven off as before. The last dance differed from the preceding in this: the last man selected and separated from the others by the medicine chief to be driven off, though he ran from him, did not appear terrified, and would not fall down, but retired, with the medicine chief, behind the screen.

At one of the dances to-day, five human scalps were exhibited,—one attached to each of the right wrists of two men, and one to each wrist of another, besides the one worn attached to the scalp lock of the medicine chief. Two of these scalps were from the heads of Indians. They had all been tanned, and evidently belonged with the medicine fixtures.

The whole ceremony closed about four o'clock in the afternoon. The medicine was packed away by the medicine chief, and the several articles which had been hung about it—medicated, I suppose, or, in other words, sanctified by proximity to the sacred things during the ceremonies, and consequently having power to protect their possessors from evil—were restored to the proper owners. They then packed them, took them upon their backs, formed into a procession, and marched, to the music of the drums, around and out of the medicine house, whence every one took the direction of his or her own lodge, and the ceremonies of the great medicine were ended.[52]

At the end of the ceremony, the image keeper chews up some medicine root and prepares a drink, of which the dancers are permitted to imbibe a little.[53]

After the image has been removed, old clothing is hung on the center pole as a sacrifice. Once Martinez saw a horse tied to the center pole as a sacrifice to the sun. It remained there until it starved to death. Horses were also painted and placed, together with blankets and similar valuables, on high hills as sacrifices. Others beside the associates sacrificed their flesh to the sun at this time, or in fact, whenever they wanted to, as Martinez has done. The Kiowa never suspended their dancers, as in the self-torture dance of other tribes, neither in the sun dance, nor when an individual sought a vision while fasting alone in the mountains.

The night the dance closes everyone joins in a hilarious time in the dance lodge. Next morning the camp circle breaks up, and the warriors soon go off to war.[54] They do not molest the dance lodge, though other tribes passing that way may do so: the Kiowa do not care.