After being released from the reservations they kept themselves in abject poverty for many sacrificing their best blankets, baskets and clothing in the devouring flames of a fire kindled for that purpose, when holding their annual mourning festivals in memory of their dead friends.
RELIGIOUS BELIEFS.
The old Indians are all very reticent regarding their religious beliefs.

They hold them too sacred to be exposed to possible ridicule, and it is therefore very difficult to get information from them by direct questions.
They seem, however, to have a vague, indistinct belief or tradition that their original ancestors, in the long forgotten past, dwelt in a better and much more desirable country than this, in the _El-o'-win_, or distant West, and that by some misfortune or great calamity they were separated from that nappy land, and became wanderers in this part of the world.

They also believe that the spirits of all good Indians will be permitted, after death, to go back to that happy country of their ancestors' origin; but that the spirits of bad Indians have to serve another earth life in the form of a grizzly bear, as a punishment for their former crimes.

Hence, no Indians ever eat bear meat if they know it.
All the old Indians are spiritualists, and very superstitious in their religious beliefs.

One special tenet is that if one of their relatives or friends has been murdered, he will not receive them on terms of friendship in the spirit world unless they revenge his death, by either killing the murderer or some one of the same blood.