If you were a man amongst the Mandan people of North America and wanted to stay part of the tribe, you really had to earn it. The rite of passage through which they went was known as the Okipa ceremony and it was extraordinarily brutal. The young men would endure 4 days of fasting and sleeplessness before having wooden skewers inserted through the skin of their chest and backs. They were then hung from the roof of a hut by these skewers until they passed out from the pain at which point their left little finger was amputated and they would set off on a race around the village to prove their strength