Mardi Gras is the French name for "Fat Tuesday." This festive day is celebrated on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, and it marks the end of the Catholic pre-Lent season.

In New Orleans, Mardi Gras is the festival to beat all the rest. It's a day for dancing, drinking, and dressing up or taking it all off, and, around the city, music plays from hundreds of jazz bands, and the floats dazzle your eyes.

If you wander down Bourbon Street, there's one group of revelers you won't be able to miss. The members of the Mardi Gras Indians take their costumes very, very seriously, and, every year, tribe members create ornate, hand-stitched costumes filled with beads, feathers, and sequins. Material for a single costume can cost as much as $5,000.

The Indians wear feathered headdresses and have formed 60 separate "tribes," but they are not Native Americans. The largest proportion of this group are African-American residents from some of the most impoverished areas of the city.

The tradition of the Mardi Gras Indians was not always a peaceful one  in earlier years, many of the Indians ended up in violent conflicts with members of opposing tribes. During the Great Depression era of the 1930s, the festivities actually became an excuse for young men to seek revenge on others.

In recent decades, though, the Mardi Gras ritual has become an occasion for celebration. "Chief of Chiefs" Tootie Montana taught his fellow Indians to focus their attention on costume - not fist - competitions. 

Since Hurricane Katrina struck, many of the Mardi Gras Indians have lost their homes, and more than half of them have been forced to leave their city. But, for now, there will still be plenty of dancing, singing, chanting, and costuming to liven up the day.