Fig. 871.—Ate buffalo and died.
Fig. 872.—Died of “whistle.”
Fig. 871.—Dakota war party ate a buffalo and all died. Swan’s Winter Count, 1826-’27. Battiste Good calls the same year, “Ate-a-whistle-and-died winter,” Fig. 872, and explains that six Dakotas on the warpath had nearly perished with hunger, when they found and ate the rotting carcass of an old buffalo, on which the wolves had been feeding. They were seized soon after with pains in the stomach, their bellies swelled, and gas poured from the mouth and the anus, and they “died of a whistle,” or from eating a whistle. The sound of gas escaping from the mouth is illustrated in the figure. The character on the abdomen and on its right may be considered to be the ideograph for pain in that part of the body.
Fig. 873.—Smallpox.
Fig. 873.—Many people died of smallpox. Cloud-Shield’s Winter Count, 1782-’83. The charts all record two successive winters of smallpox, but American-Horse makes the first year of the epidemic one year later than that of Battiste Good, and Cloud-Shield makes it two years later.
Fig. 874.—Smallpox.
Fig. 874.—Many died of smallpox. American-Horse’s Winter Count, 1780-’81. Here the smallpox marks are on the face and neck of a Dakota, as indicated by the arrangement of the hair.