[329] These burial scaffolds were noted by most travellers on the Missouri, and Catlin gives a drawing of a Mandan cemetery, in North American Indians, i, pp. 89-92. Bradbury, in our volume v, p. 160, describes a scaffold in detail. According to James's Long's Expedition, our volume xv, pp. 66, 67, the Omaha buried their dead. The burial customs of all the Dakotan tribes would appear to have been fluctuating, inclining to aerial sepulture. Of late years, on the Fort Berthold reservation, this method is declining; and during the smallpox epidemic of 1838 the Mandan buried their dead; see Audubon's Journals, ii, pp. 14, 15. On the entire subject consult H. C. Yarrow, Introduction to Study of Mortuary Customs among the North American Indians (Washington, 1880); and "Further Contributions to the study of Mortuary Customs among the North American Indians," in United States Bureau of Ethnology Report, 1879-80, pp. 87-203.—Ed.
[330] The belief in the plurality of souls appears to have been widespread among Dakotan tribes. Matthews (Hidatsa, p. 50) says that the Minitaree believe in four for each person, and that he has heard this faith disputed with the Assiniboin, who believe in but one. The Teton Sioux think one spirit is of the body and dies with it; the second remaining with or near the body—hence the offering of food to the deceased; the third goes to the spirit home in the south; and the fourth abides with the lock of hair cut from the head of the corpse—if this is thrown into an enemy's camp, the ghost harasses the hostiles in time of war. See Dorsey, "Siouan Cults," p. 484. The belief in a home of spirits is indefinite and ill-defined—most Dakotan people think of an ancestral home to which spirits return, but the distinction between abodes for the good and the wicked appears imported, not indigenous.—See Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, v, p. 347.—Ed.
[331] Compare the accounts of mourning in James's Long's Expedition, our volume xv, pp. 66-68, and Boller, Among the Indians, p. 70. Mutilation was practiced by many tribes as a sign of mourning; see Yarrow, "Further Contributions to the Study of Mortuary Customs."—Ed.
[332] See Indian Vocabularies, in our volume xxiv.—Ed.
[333] Compare on this point Matthews, Hidatsa, pp. 18, 84, who claims that on the Fort Berthold reservation there appears no tendency to coalescence, and that Mandan, Minitaree, and Arikkara are still linguistically distinct.—Ed.
[334] A tradition of white-bearded Indians living far to the westward was rife among the French traders and explorers in the early eighteenth century, and when he visited the Mandan in 1738 La Vérendrye sought "that nation of whites so much spoken of." The variation in color of complexion, hair, and eyes among the Mandan (see note 215, ante) led to various theories of their origin. Among these that of Welsh derivation gained much currency. The alleged American adventure in the twelfth century of Prince Madoc from Wales, and the consequent blending of his followers with the aborigines was a current theory among English ethnographers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Catlin enthusiastically adopted it to account for Mandan peculiarities; see his North American Indians, i, pp. 205-207; ii, pp. 259-261. For a bibliography of this theory, which Maximilian's scientific sense rejected, see Justin Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of America (Boston, 1889), i, pp. 109-111; see also B. F. Bowen, Welsh in North America (Philadelphia, 1876), especially chapter xi.—Ed.
CHAPTER XXVI
OBSERVATIONS ON THE TRIBE OF THE MANITARIES, OR GROS VENTRES
The name, Manitaries, by which this tribe is now generally known, was given by the Mandans, and signifies, "those who came over the water." The French give them the singular designation of Gros Ventres, which is no more appropriate to them than to any other of the Indian tribes: the Anglo-Americans also frequently use this name.[335] This people was formerly a part of the nation of the Crows, from which it is said they separated, in consequence of a dispute about a buffalo that had been killed, and removed to the Missouri.[336] They are near neighbours, and have been for many years allies of the Mandans. They have long resided in three villages on the Knife River, two on the left bank, and the third, which is much the largest, on the right bank.[337] Much confusion and misunderstanding have been occasioned by the variety of names given to these villages by the inhabitants, as well as by other tribes. At present the Manitaries live constantly in their villages, and do not roam about as they formerly did, when, like the Pawnees and other nations, they went in pursuit of the herds of buffaloes as soon as their fields were sown, returned in the autumn for the harvest, after which they again went into the prairie. In these wanderings they made use of leather tents, some of which are still standing by the side of their permanent dwellings. The more considerable part of the nation, the Crows, are still exclusively a people of hunters, who cultivate no kind of useful plants: even tobacco is now seldom planted, because they prefer that which they obtain from the traders. They still, however, preserve their own species of this plant for the purpose I have before mentioned.