This dance is performed by the men alone--their war implements must be sacred from the touch of women.
Such scenes are witnessed every day at the Dahcotah villages.

The missionary sighs as he sees how determined is their belief in such a religion.

Is it not a source of rejoicing to be the means of turning one fellow-creature from a faith like this?
A few years ago and every Dahcotah woman reverenced the fish-dance as holy and sacred--even too sacred for her to take a part in it.

She believed the medicine women could foretell future events; and, with an injustice hardly to be accounted for, she would tell you it was lawful to beat a girl as much as you chose, but a sin to strike a boy! She gloried in dancing the scalp dance--aye, even exulted at the idea of taking the life of an enemy herself.
But there are instances in which these things are all laid aside beneath the light of Christianity; instances in which the poor Dahcotah woman sees the folly, the wickedness of her former faith; blesses God who inclined the missionary to leave his home and take up his abode in the country of the savage; and sings to the praise of God in her own tongue as she sits by the door of her wigwam.

She smiles as she tells you that her "face is dark, but that she hopes her heart has been changed; and that she will one day sing in heaven, where the voices of the white people and of the converted Dahcotahs, will mingle in a song of love to Him 'who died for the whole world.'" WABASHAW..