THE WOOING OF AH-KEY-NES-TOU.
MANDAN CHIEF.
At a period late in the twenties, the Mandans, one of the most intelligent tribes of Indians on the continent, were almost swept out of existence by the smallpox. The story comes down to us in the form of a tradition among other savages, but it is nevertheless true, as there are a few old trappers yet living who remember all the particulars of the event.
The Mandans resided in the vicinity of the mouth of the Yellowstone, where their villages were permanent for untold centuries, and at the time of the visitation of the fell disease which nearly annihilated them they comprised about three thousand families.
Shortly after sunrise, one morning in June, 1828, a young white man was reclining idly on one of the grassy knolls overlooking the village, the great river, and the vast prairie stretching westwardly from its bank. He was intently watching certain movements in the town, where the warriors were preparing for a grand hunt. In the distance, the buffalo could be seen grazing in immense herds, whose presence was the cause of the commotion among the Indians. Soon he saw hundreds of warriors, armed with bows, their quivers filled with arrows, emerge from the shadow of their lodges, and in a long line ride out toward the unsuspecting animals so peacefully feeding. The old men and squaws alone remained in the village, and they were gathered in anxious groups, applauding the husbands, sons and lovers as they went proudly forth to battle for that subsistence which was their only dependence when the snows of winter filled the now sunny valley.
A few moments after the warriors had disappeared in the purple morning mist of the prairies, a bevy of lightly dressed dusky maidens, in all their savage beauty, wandered toward the sandy margin of the Yellowstone to indulge in their favorite amusement of swimming in its clear sparkling tide,—for that stream in summer, like a great brook, ripples and babbles over the rounded quartz pebbles which compose its bed, with as rhythmical a flow as the tiniest rivulet in the recesses of the mountains.
