[5] Charles Primeau was born at St. Louis, Mo., entered the American Fur Company as clerk, and continued in that service many years. Later he helped to form an opposition company under the name of Harvey, Primeau, & Co., which did business for a few years, until, like most of the smaller concerns, it was absorbed by the American Fur Co. He then went back to his former employers, and afterward was engaged by the U.S. Government as Indian interpreter, long holding this position. In 1896 he was living in the vicinity of Fort Yates.—E. C.
[6] The "Assiniboin" was the steamer on which Maximilian, Prince of Wied, travelled down the Missouri in 1833.
[7] This is an interesting note of the early French name on the Missouri of the persons about a boat whom we should call "stevedores," or "roustabouts." The French word charette, or charrette, occurs also as a personal name, and it will be remembered that there was a town of La Charette on the Lower Missouri.—E. C.
[8] Heart River, the stream which falls into the Missouri near the town of Mandan, about opposite Bismarck, N. Dak. Here the river is now bridged by the Northern Pacific Railroad, which crosses the Missouri from Bismarck, and follows up Heart River for some distance.—E. C.
[9] "Fort Clark came in sight, with a background of the blue prairie hills, and with the gay American banner waving from the flag-staff.... The fort is built on a smaller scale, on a plan similar to that of all the other trading posts or forts of the company. Immediately behind the fort there were, in the prairie, seventy leather tents of the Crows." (Prince of Wied, p. 171.)
Fort Clark stood on the right bank of the Missouri, and thus across the river from the original Fort Mandan built by Lewis and Clark in the fall of 1804. Maximilian has much to say of it and of Mr. Kipp.
[10] This Fox was probably the cross variety of the Long-tailed Prairie Fox, Vulpes macrourus of Baird, Stansbury's Exped. Great Salt Lake, June, 1852, p. 309; Vulpes utah of Aud. and Bach. Quad. N. Am. iii., 1853, p. 255, pl. 151 (originally published by them in Proc. Acad. Philad., July, 1852, p. 114).—E. C.
[11] No doubt the Mammillaria vivipara, a small globose species, quite different from the common Opuntia or prickly pear of the Missouri region.—E. C.
[12] The individual so designated was an important functionary in these villages, whose authority corresponded with that of our "chief of police," and was seldom if ever disputed.—E. C.
[13] "It rises to the west of the Black Mts., across the northern extremity of which it finds a narrow, rapid passage along high perpendicular banks, then seeks the Missouri in a northeasterly direction, through a broken country with highlands bare of timber, and the low grounds particularly supplied with cottonwood, elm, small ash, box, alder, and an undergrowth of willow, red-wood, red-berry, and choke-cherry.... It enters the Missouri with a bold current, and is 134 yards wide, but its greatest depth is two feet and a half, which, joined to its rapidity and its sand-bars, makes the navigation difficult except for canoes." ("Lewis and Clark," ed. 1893, pp. 267, 268.)