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Photo of the Day

February 05, 2004

Piegan Medicine Man, Montana, 1900s

Photograph by Edward S. Curtis

A Piegan Indian holds a decorated medicine pipe used in the Piegan Sun Dance ceremony. The Sun Dance joined thousands of Indians to make offerings to the life-giving sun. Offerings were believed to contain sickness, bad thoughts, and other evils that supplicants were putting away from themselves. They prayed for health, for the love of someone longed for, for a change in fortune.

—Text adapted from the National Geographic book Edward S. Curtis: Coming to Light, 2001