[23] The Minnetarees and other tribes of the Missouri built their lodges in a similar way.
[24] The Cheyennes have a tradition that they were the first tribe of this region to have horses. This may perhaps justify a conjecture that the northern division of this brave and warlike people were the Horse Indians of La Vérendrye; though an Indian tradition, unless backed by well-established facts, can never be accepted as substantial evidence.
[25] A similar phenomenon occurs farther west on the face of the perpendicular bluffs that, in one place, border the valley of the river Rosebud.
[26] Journal du Voyage fait par le Chevalier de la Vérendrye en 1742. The copy before me is from the original in the Dépôt des Cartes de la Marine. A duplicate, in the Archives des Affaires Étrangères, is printed by Margry. It gives the above date as November 9 instead of October 9. The context shows the latter to be correct.
[27] The enmity between the Sioux and the Snakes lasted to our own time. When the writer lived among the western Sioux, one of their chiefs organized a war-party against the Snakes, and numerous bands came to join the expedition from a distance in some cases of three hundred miles. Quarrels broke out among them, and the scheme was ruined.
[28] The above descriptive particulars are drawn from repeated observation of similar scenes at a time when the primitive condition of these tribes was essentially unchanged, though with the difference that the concourse of savages counted by hundreds, and not by thousands.
[29] At least this was done by a band of Sioux with whom the writer once traversed a part of the country ranged by these same Snakes, who had lately destroyed an entire Sioux village.
[30] The Bighorn Range, below the snow line, is in the main well timbered with pine, fir, oak, and juniper.
[31] The only two tribes of this region who were a match for the Snakes were the Sioux and the Blackfeet. It is clear that the Bow Indians could not have been Blackfeet, as in that case, after the war-party broke up, they would have moved northward towards their own country, instead of east-southeast into the country of their enemies. Hence I incline to think the Bow Indians a band of Sioux, or Dakota,—a people then, as since, predominant in that country.
The banks of the Missouri, in the part which La Vérendrye would have reached in following an east-southeast course, were occupied by numerous bands or sub-tribes of Sioux, such as the Minneconjou, Yankton, Oncpapa, Brulé, and others, friends and relatives of the Bow Indians, supposing these to have been Sioux.