Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri / Edited with Notes and Biographical Sketch

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
Forty-sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1928-1929, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1930, pages 375-628.
This manuscript is entitled “A Report to the Hon. Isaac I. Stevens, Governor of Washington Territory, on the Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri, by Edwin Thompson Denig.” It has been edited and arranged with an introduction, notes, a biographical sketch of the author, and a brief bibliography of the tribes mentioned in the report.
The report consists of 451 pages of foolscap size; closely written in a clear and fine script with 15 pages of excellent pen sketches and one small drawing, to which illustrations the editor has added two photographs of Edwin Thompson Denig and his Assiniboin wife, Hai-kees-kak-wee-lãh, Deer Little Woman, and a view of Old Fort Union taken from “The Manoe-Denigs,” a family chronicle, New York, 1924.
The manuscript is undated, but from internal evidence it seems safe to assign it to about the year 1854.
The editor has not attempted to verify the statements of the author as embodied in the report; he has, however, where feasible, rearranged some portions of its contents by bringing together under a single rubric remarks upon a common topic which appeared in various parts of the report as replies to closely related but widely placed questions; and he has attempted to do this without changing the phraseology or the terminology of Mr. Denig, except in very rare instances, and then only to clarify a statement. For example, the substitution of the native term for the ordinary English expression, the Great Spirit, and divining in the place of “medicine” in medicine man, practically displacing medicine man , by the word diviner .
In his letter of transmittal “To his Excellency, Isaac I. Stevens, Governor of Washington Territory,” Mr. Denig writes: “Being stimulated with the desire to meet your wishes and forward the views of government, I have in the following pages endeavored to answer the ‘Inquiries’ published by act of Congress, regarding the ‘History, Present Condition, and Future Prospects of the Indian Tribes’ with which I am acquainted. Independent of my own personal observation and knowledge acquired by a constant residence of 21 years among the prairie tribes, in every situation, I have on all occasions had the advice of intelligent Indians as to the least important of these inquiries, so as to avoid, if possible, the introduction of error.