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The reader will forgive me for here inserting the Certificates which I have just received from Mr. Kipp, of the city of New York, and two others, who were with me; which I offer for the satisfaction of the world, who read the above account.
“We hereby certify, that we witnessed, in company with Mr. Catlin, in the Mandan Village, the ceremonies represented in the four paintings, and described in his Notes, to which this Certificate refers; and that he has therein faithfully represented those scenes as we saw them transacted without any addition or exaggeration.
“J. Kipp, Agent Amer. Fur Company.
L. Crawford, Clerk.
“Mandan Village, July 20, 1833.Abraham Bogard.”
The strange country that I am in—its excitements—its accidents and wild incidents which startle me at almost every moment, prevent me from any very elaborate disquisition upon the above remarkable events at present; and even had I all the time and leisure of a country gentleman, and all the additional information which I am daily procuring, and daily expect to procure hereafter in explanation of these unaccountable mysteries, yet do I fear that there would be that inexplicable difficulty that hangs over most of the customs and traditions of these simple people, who have no history to save facts and systems from falling into the most absurd and disjointed fable and ignorant fiction.
What few plausible inferences I have as yet been able to draw from the above strange and peculiar transactions I will set forth, but with some diffidence, hoping and trusting that by further intimacy and familiarity with these people I may yet arrive at more satisfactory and important results.
That these people should have a tradition of the Flood is by no means surprising; as I have learned from every tribe I have visited, that they all have some high mountain in their vicinity, where they insist upon it the big canoe landed; but that these people should hold an annual celebration of the event, and the season of that decided by such circumstances as the full leaf of the willow, and the medicine-lodge opened by such a man as Nu-mohk-muck-a-nah (who appears to be a white man), and making his appearance “from the high-mountains in the West;” and some other circumstances, is surely a very remarkable thing, and requires some extraordinary attention.
This Nu-mohk-muck-a-nah (first or only man) is undoubtedly some mystery or medicine-man of the tribe, who has gone out on the prairie on the evening previous, and having dressed and painted himself for the occasion, comes into the village in the morning, endeavouring to keep up the semblance of reality; for their tradition says, that at a very ancient period such a man did actually come from the West—that his body was of the white colour, as this man’s body is represented—that he wore a robe of four white wolf skins—his head-dress was made of two raven’s skins—and in his left hand was a huge pipe. He said, “he was at one time the only man—he told them of the destruction of every thing on the earth’s surface by water—that he stopped in his big canoe on a high mountain in the West, where he landed and was saved.”