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

by Edwin Thompson Denig

But the report of Mr. Denig consists of brief and greatly condensed replies to as many of the questions propounded in the circular in question as concerned the native tribes of the upper Missouri River, to wit, the Arikara, the Mandan, the Sioux, the Gros Ventres, the Cree, the Crows, the Assiniboin, and the Blackfeet, tribes with whom he was thoroughly acquainted, although the Assiniboin seem to have been the chief subjects of his observations. It should be noted that the answers to some of the questions, if adequately treated, would have required nearly as much space as was devoted to the entire report.

While the facts embodied in the replies of Mr. Denig are, when unqualified, affirmed of all the eight tribes mentioned in his letter of transmittal, he is nevertheless careful, when needful, to restrict many of his answers to the specific tribes to which their subject matter particularly related. But, of course, all the tribes mentioned belonged measurably to a single cultural area at that time.

That Mr. Denig made use of the circular issued by Mr. Schoolcraft is clearly evident from the fact that on the left-hand margin of the manuscript he usually wrote the number of the question to which he was giving an answer.

In the manuscript there appear two quite distinct handwritings, and so it is possible that this particular manuscript is a copy of an original which was retained by the author.

Dr. F. V. Hayden made extensive use of this report in preparation of his “Contributions to the Ethnography and Philology of the Indian Tribes of the Missouri Valley,” Philadelphia, C. Sherman & Son, 1862. But he did not give Mr. Denig proper credit for using verbatim numbers of pages of the manuscript without any indication that he was copying a manuscript work from another writer whose position and long experience among them made him an authority on the tribes in question. This piece of plagiarism was not concealed by the bald statement of Doctor Hayden that he was “especially indebted to Mr. Alexander Culbertson, the well-known agent of the American Fur Co., who has spent 30 years of his life among the wild tribes of the Northwest and speaks several of their languages with great ease. To Mr. Andrew Dawson, superintendent of Fort Benton; Mr. Charles E. Galpin, of Fort Pierre; and E. T. Denig, of Fort Union, I am under great obligations for assistance freely granted at all times.”

Mr. Edwin Thompson Denig, the author of this manuscript report, was the son of Dr. George Denig and was born March 10, 1812, in McConnellstown, Huntingdon County, Pa., and died in 1862 or 1863 in Manitoba, probably in the town of Pilot Mound, in the vicinity of which his daughters live, or did live in 1910. His legally married wife was the daughter of an Assiniboin chief, by whom he had two daughters, Sara, who was born August 10, 1844, and Ida, who was born August 22, 1854, and one son, Alexander, who was born May 17, 1852, and who was killed by lightning in 1904.

To his early associates Mr. Denig was a myth, more or less, having gone West as a young man and having died there. He lost caste with his family because of his marriage with the Assiniboin woman.

Mr. Denig entered the fur trade in 1833 and became very influential among the tribes of the upper Missouri River. He was for a time a Government scout; then a bookkeeper for the American Fur Co. Earlier he had gone to St. Louis and became connected with the Chouteaus and the American Fur Co. Before he was 30 years of age he was living among the Indians as the representative of these two companies in that vast and almost unknown region between the headwaters of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers inhabited by tribes of the Sioux.

Mr. Denig became a bookkeeper for the American Fur Co. at Fort Union, situated near the mouth of the Yellowstone River, of the offices of which for a time, about 1843, he was superintendent. Because of his thorough and comprehensive knowledge of the Indians of his adopted tribe, their language, customs, and tribal relations, he was consulted by most of the noted Indian investigators of that period—Schoolcraft, Hayden, and others.

Being a Government scout, Mr. Denig was able to conciliate the Indians during the expedition of Audubon in 1843, making it possible for the great Frenchman to collect his wonderful specimens. A very colorful description of Fort Union was written by Mr. Denig July 30, 1843. This description is found in Volume II, page 180, of “Audubon and His Journals.” In it Mr. Denig writes: “Fort Union, the principal and handsomest trading post on the Missouri River, is situated on the north side, about 6½ miles above the mouth of the Yellowstone River; the country around it is beautiful and well chosen for an establishment of the kind.” Then after describing in detail the structure and furnishings of the fort, he says: “The principal building in the establishment, and that of the gentleman in charge, or bourgeois, is now occupied by Mr. Culbertson, one of the partners of the company,” and farther on, “Next to this is the office, which is devoted exclusively to the business of the company. * * * This department is now under my supervision [viz., E. T. Denig].”