Battiste Good says: “Many-crows-died winter.”
Cloud Shield says: The winter was so cold that many crows froze to death.
White-Cow-Killer calls the preceding year, 1787-’88, “Many-black-crows-died winter.”
For the year 1789-’90, American-Horse says: “The cold was so intense that crows froze in the air and dropped dead near the lodges.”
This is an instance of where three sets of accounts refer to the same severe cold, apparently to three successive years; it may really not have been three successive years, but that all charts referred to the same season, the fractions of years not being regarded, as above explained.
1789-’90.—No. I. Two Mandans killed by Minneconjous. The peculiar arrangement of the hair distinguishes the tribe.
The Mandans were in the last century one of the most numerous and civilized tribes of the Siouan stock. Lewis and Clarke, in 1804, say that the Mandans settled forty years before, i. e., 1764, in nine villages, 80 miles below their then site (north of Knife River), seven villages on the west, and two on the east side of the Missouri. Two villages, being destroyed by the small-pox and the Dakotas, united and moved up opposite to the Arickaras, who probably occupied the same site as exhibited in the counts for the year 1823-’24.
Battiste Good says: “Killed-two-Gros-Ventres-on-the ice winter.”
1790-’91.—No. I. The first United States flag in the country brought by United States troops. So said the interpreter. No special occasion or expedition is noted.