While nothing is said about the size of these figures, one wonders whether the reference may not be to that stone figure known as the Standing Rock, concerning which the Yankton Sioux have a tradition. We have not heard of the figure of a man in connection with the Standing Rock, but there was certainly the figure of a woman and of a dog, and the woman, who owned the dog, is said to have been a Ree woman. The Yankton tradition, however, is quite different from that given by Lewis and Clark. Their two stone figures are a lover and a girl whose parents declined to permit the marriage; and these two young persons, the man accompanied by his dog, met on the prairie, and, after wandering about, were at last turned to stone. The Standing Rock, which is now at Standing Rock Agency, in North Dakota, is said to have been a Ree woman, who, after having long been the only wife of her husband, became jealous when he took another wife, and, lagging behind the travelling body of the Rees, was finally turned to stone, and remains to this day a warning to all jealous women.
A little later during the day’s journey they saw great numbers of “goats” (antelope) coming to the banks of the river. No doubt these animals were then migrating toward the mountains, or perhaps to the broken hills of the Little Missouri. On October 18 they passed the Cannon-ball River, referred to as Le Boulet; and here they met two Frenchmen who had been robbed by the Mandans, but who turned about and proceeded north again with the white men, in the hope of recovering their possessions. Game was extremely abundant—buffalo, elk, and deer. An Indian who was with them pointed out to them a number of round hills, in which he declared the calumet birds—probably the thunder-bird—had their homes.
CHAPTER IX
LEWIS AND CLARK II
As they proceeded, they passed a number of ruined villages of the Mandans, the low mounds of earth showing where the sod houses had fallen in; but on October 24 they came to a large Mandan village, where they were received with friendship, and where the chief of the Arikaras smoked with the grand chief of the Mandans.
On the 26th, at a large Mandan camp, they met a Mr. McCracken, a trader in the employ of the Northwest Fur Company, who was much on the Missouri River in those early days. The younger Henry frequently mentions him in his journal, but at a slightly later day. The Mandans were not only most friendly, but most interested in the strange people who had arrived in boats; and men, women, and children crowded to the river-bank to see them. “The object which seemed to surprise them most was a corn-mill fixed to the boat, which we had occasion to use, and which delighted them by the ease with which it reduced grain to powder,” for the Mandans, like other Indians, pulverized their corn by pounding it in a mortar.
On the following day their boat reached the principal Mandan village, and here was found a Frenchman named Jessaume, who was living among the Mandans with an Indian wife. Not far from the Mandan village was one of the Annahways, a tribe, according to Dr. Matthews, closely related to the Hidatsa, or Minnetari, a part of whose warriors were then absent on an expedition against the Shoshoni. In speeches of the usual form, Captains Lewis and Clark expressed the good will of the Great Father at Washington, and his desire that all the tribes should be at peace; and presents and medals were distributed among the chiefs. In the course of the next few days these presents were returned by gifts of corn and dried meat; and the Arikara chief set out for his home with one Mandan chief and several Minnetari and Mandan warriors. Captain Clark, after much investigation, found a good situation for a winter post, and the work of felling timber and erecting buildings began. Besides the Mandan interpreter, Jessaume, they met here a Canadian Frenchman, who had been with the Cheyenne Indians “on the Black Mountains,” and the previous summer had come by way of the Little Missouri to the Great River. The Little Missouri was always a great range for the Cheyennes.
The weather, which for some time had been cold, now grew much colder, and ice formed on the edges of the rivers. Water fowl were passing south, and it was evident that soon the river would close up. A large camp of Assiniboines, with some Crees, had come to the Mandan village and encamped there. A couple of Frenchmen made their appearance from farther down the river. It seems extraordinary how many Canadian Frenchmen there were at this time in this distant country.
Near Fort Mandan, just established, there were five Indian villages, the residence of three distinct tribes, the Mandans, the Annahways, and the Minnetari. The journal gives the history of these nations as follows: “Within the recollection of living witnesses the Mandans were settled forty years ago in nine villages (the ruins of which we passed about eighty miles below), situated seven on the west and two on the east side of the Missouri. The two finding themselves wasting away before the small-pox and the Sioux, united into one village and moved up the river opposite to the Ricaras. The same causes reduced the remaining seven to five villages, till at length they emigrated in a body to the Ricara nation, where they formed themselves into two villages and joined those of their countrymen who had gone before them. In their new residence they were still insecure, and at length the three villages ascended the Missouri to their present position. The two who had emigrated together settled in the two villages on the northwest side of the Missouri, while the single village took a position on the southeast side. In this situation they were found by those who visited them in 1796, since which the two villages have united into one. They are now in two villages, one on the southeast of the Missouri, the other on the opposite side, and at the distance of three miles across. The first, in an open plain, contains about forty or fifty lodges, built in the same way as those of the Ricaras; the second, the same number, and both may raise about three hundred and fifty men.