Trails of the Pathfinders

by George Bird Grinnell

Struggling on northward, Lewis and Clark passed the Otoes and Missourias, and on June 25 reached the mouth of the Kansas—named from the Indians living on its banks—three hundred and forty miles from the Mississippi. Game was abundant, and there are allusions to deer, elk, and buffalo. At the mouth of the Platte River they sent out messengers to bring in Indians, since a portion of their duty was to endeavor to make peace among the different tribes they met with. Otoes and Pawnees lived not far off, one of the Pawnee villages being then on the Platte, while another was on the Republican, and a third on the Wolf—now known as the Loup River. Incidental reference is here made to several tribes which wandered and hunted on the heads of the Platte River, and thence to the Rocky Mountains.

One of these, called the Staitan or Kite Indians, is said to have acquired the name of Kite from their flying; that is, from “their being always on horseback.” These Indians were, of course, the Suhtai—Suhtai, tribal name, and hētăn, man. In other words, when some Indian was asked his name or the name of his tribe, he replied: “I am a man of the Suhtai,” and this the explorers supposed was a tribal name. At that time the tribe was still living as an independent tribe, though about a generation later they joined the Cheyennes and finally became absorbed by them. So complete is this absorption that the Suhtai language, formerly a well-marked dialect of the Cheyenne, differing from it apparently almost as much as the Arikara dialect differs from the Pawnee, has been almost wholly lost. At the present day only a few of the older Cheyennes can recall any of its words. These Indians were said to be extremely ferocious, and the most warlike of all the Western Indians; they never yielded in battle, nor spared their enemies, and the retaliation for this barbarity had almost extinguished the nation. After these, according to our authors, come the Wetapahato and Kiawa tribes, associated together, and amounting to two hundred men. Wetapahato is the Sioux name for the Kiowas, which the Cheyennes have abbreviated to Witapat. Other tribes are mentioned, hardly now to be identified.

On July 31 a party of Otoe and Missouria Indians came to their camp, and on the following day a council was held, at which presents, medals, and other ornaments were given to the Indians. The point where this council was held was given the name Council Bluffs, and it stands to-day across the river from Omaha, Nebraska. A little farther up the river they reached an old Omaha village, once consisting of three hundred cabins, but it had been burned about 1799, soon after the small-pox had destroyed four hundred men and a proportion of the women and children. This dread disease gave the Omahas the worst blow that they had ever received, and, perhaps even as much as their wars with the Pawnees, reduced them to a tributary people. On August 16, two parties were sent out to catch fish on a little stream. “They made a drag with small willows and bark, and swept the creek; the first company brought three hundred and eighteen, and the second upward of eight hundred, consisting of pike, bass, fish resembling salmon, trout, redhorse, buffalo, one rock-fish, one flatback, perch, catfish, a small species of perch, called on the Ohio silverfish, and a shrimp of the same size, shape, and flavor of those about New Orleans and the lower part of the Mississippi.”

A few days before, one of their Frenchmen had deserted, and the commanding officers had sent out men to capture him. This they succeeded in doing, but the man subsequently escaped again. On the 18th they received another party of Indians—Otoes and Missourias. The next day the first death occurred in the expedition, that of Charles Floyd, who was buried on the top of the hill, and his grave marked by a cedar post.

The post which marked Floyd’s grave had been thrown down by the winds before 1839, but was set up again by Joseph Nicollet in that year. All the time, however, the Missouri River was eating into the bank toward the grave, and in the spring of 1857 the high water undermined a part of the bluff and left Floyd’s coffin exposed. When this became known at Sioux City, a party visited the grave and rescued the bones, reinterring them six hundred feet back from the first grave. This spot was lost again in the course of the years, but was rediscovered in 1895, and finally in 1901 a permanent monument of white stone was erected to the first citizen soldier of the United States to die and be buried within the Louisiana Purchase, and the only man lost on the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Farther up the stream, beyond the mouth of the Big Sioux River, they killed their first buffalo. Near the mouth of the Whitestone they found a curious mound, described as a regular parallelogram, the longest side being three hundred yards, and the shorter sixty or seventy. It rises sixty-five or seventy feet above the plain, and shows at the summit a level plain about twelve feet in breadth and ninety in length. This, according to the Sioux, was called the Hill of the Little People, and “they believe that it is the abode of little devils, in the human form, of about eighteen inches high, and with remarkably large heads; they are armed with sharp arrows, with which they are very skilful, and are always on the watch to kill those who should have the hardihood to approach their residence.” Many Indians have been killed by these spirits, and, among “others, three Omaha Indians, only a few years before. The Sioux, Omahas, and Otoes are so afraid of the place that they never visit it.”

The wind blows so strongly over the plain in which this mound stands that insects are obliged to seek shelter on its leeward side, or be driven against it. The little birds which feed on these insects resort there in great numbers to pick them up. There the brown martin was so employed, and the birds were so tame that they would not fly until closely approached.

At Calumet Bluff the party was visited by a number of Yankton Sioux, brought in by Sergeant Pryor and his party, who had gone to the village to induce them to come to the river. A council was held with these Indians and presents given them; and in the evening the Indians danced for the entertainment of the white men. To the Durions—Frenchmen who were trading with these Indians—presents were given; and they were requested to try to make peace between the Yanktons and their enemies.

Reference is made to the soldier bands of the Sioux and Cheyennes, though without much comprehension of what this organization is. It is spoken of in these terms: “It is an association of the most active and brave young men, who are bound to each other by attachment, secured by a vow never to retreat before any danger or give way to their enemies. In war they go forward without sheltering themselves behind trees or aiding their natural valor by any artifice. This punctilious determination not to be turned from their course became heroic or ridiculous a short time since, when the Yanktons were crossing the Missouri on the ice. A hole lay immediately in their course, which might easily have been avoided by going round. This the foremost of the band disdained to do, but went straight forward, and was lost. The others would have followed his example, but were forcibly prevented by the rest of the tribe. The young men sit, and encamp, and dance together, distinct from the rest of the nation; they are generally about thirty or thirty-five years old, and such is the deference paid to courage that their seats in council are superior to those of the chiefs, and their persons more respected. But, as may be supposed, such indiscreet bravery will soon diminish the numbers of those who practice it, so that the band is now reduced to four warriors, who were among our visitors. These were the remains of twenty-two, who composed the society not long ago; but, in a battle with the Kite Indians of the Black Mountains, eighteen of them were killed, and these four were dragged from the field by their companions.”

Warrior societies, or, as they are more often termed, soldier bands, existed among all the plains tribes. In some tribes there might be only four, in others a dozen or fifteen, such societies. They were police officers, and among their important duties was the seeing that orders of the chiefs were obeyed.