Note 161 — Chapter VI · - GENTES IN OTHER TRIBES OF THE GANOWÁNIAN FAMILY.

This practice as an act of mourning is very common among the Crows, and also as a religious offering when they hold a “Medicine Lodge,” a great religious ceremonial. In a basket hung up in a Medicine Lodge for their reception as offerings, fifty, and sometimes a hundred finger joints, I have been told, are sometimes thus collected. At a Crow encampment on the Upper Missouri I noticed a number of women and men with their hands mutilated by this practice.