is usually formed in early youth, and can only be broken by death.
It is the essence of comradeship and fraternal love, without thought
of pleasure or gain, but rather for moral support and inspiration.
Each is vowed to die for the other, if need be, and nothing is denied
the brother-friend, but neither is anything required that is not in
accord with the highest conceptions of the Indian mind.





III
CEREMONIAL AND SYMBOLIC WORSHIP

Modern Perversions of Early Religious Rites. The Sun Dance. The
Great Medicine Lodge. Totems and Charms. The Vapor-Bath and the
Ceremonial of the Pipe.

The public religious rites of the Plains Indians are few, and in
large part of modern origin, belonging properly to the so-called
"transition period." That period must be held to begin with the
first insidious effect upon their manners and customs of contact
with the dominant race, and many of the tribes were so influenced
long before they ceased to lead the nomadic life.

The fur-traders, the "Black Robe" priests, the military, and
finally the Protestant missionaries, were the men who began the
disintegration of the Indian nations and the overthrow of their
religion, seventy-five to a hundred years before they were forced
to enter upon reservation life. We have no authentic study of them