[15] Mémoire du Sieur de la Vérendrye au Sujet des Établissements pour parvenir à la Découverte de la Mer de l’Ouest.
[16] Mémoire en abrégé de la Carte qui représente les Établissements faits par le Sieur de la Vérendrye et ses Enfants (Margry, vi. 616); Carte des Nouvelles Découvertes dans l’Ouest du Canada dressée sur les Mémoires du Mr. de la Vérendrye et donnée au Dépôt de la Marine par M. de la Galissonnière, 1750; Bellin, Remarques sur la Carte de l’Amérique, 1755; Bougainville, Mémoire sur l’État de la Nouvelle France, 1757.
Most of La Vérendrye’s forts were standing during the Seven Years’ War, and were known collectively as Postes de la Mer de l’Ouest.
[17] Journal de la Vérendrye joint à la Lettre de M. de Beauharnois du—Octobre, 1737.
[18] Journal de La Vérendrye, 1738, 1739. This journal, which is ill-written and sometimes obscure, is printed in Brymner, Report on Canadian Archives, 1889.
[19] Le Prince Maximilien de Wied-Neuwied, Voyage dans l’Intérieur de l’Amérique du Nord, ii. 371, 372 (Paris, 1843). When Captains Lewis and Clark visited the Mandans in 1804, they found them in two villages, with about three hundred and fifty warriors. They report that, about forty years before, they lived in nine villages, the ruins of which the explorers saw about eighty miles below the two villages then occupied by the tribe. The Mandans had moved up the river in consequence of the persecutions of the Sioux and the small-pox, which had made great havoc among them. Expedition of Lewis and Clark, i. 129 (ed. Philadelphia, 1814). These nine villages seem to have been above Cannon-ball River, a tributary of the Missouri.
[20] Journal du Sieur de la Vérendrye, 1740, in Archives de la Marine.
[21] Mémoire du Sieur de la Vérendrye, joint à sa lettre du 31 Octobre, 1744.
[22] Prince Maximilian spent the winter of 1832-33 near the Mandan villages. His artist, with the instinct of genius, seized the characteristics of the wild life before him, and rendered them with admirable vigor and truth. Catlin spent a considerable time among the Mandans soon after the visit of Prince Maximilian, and had unusual opportunities of studying them. He was an indifferent painter, a shallow observer, and a garrulous and windy writer; yet his enthusiastic industry is beyond praise, and his pictures are invaluable as faithful reflections of aspects of Indian life which are gone forever.
Beauharnois calls the Mandans Blancs Barbus, and says that they have been hitherto unknown. Beauharnois au Ministre, 14 Août, 1739. The name Mantannes, or Mandans, is that given them by the Assiniboins.