In the afternoon the Manitaries returned from the Mandan village, and again took deliberate possession of the various apartments of the fort. The Monkey-face, a cunning, perfidious Indian, who wore a new red felt hat, is the chief who now takes the lead among the Manitaries. Accordingly, as soon as he took leave, all the Indians followed him. One of the chiefs, with his family, sat a long time in our room, and were much interested with Mr. Bodmer's drawings, and astonished and delighted with our musical box. A Mandan who was present thought that a little white man, who was making this pretty music, must be concealed in it. All of them asked for presents, {444} and they would certainly have pilfered many things if we had not kept close watch over them. At length our door was opened, and a tall, heavy man, with a blackened face, entered, and, like all the rest assembled there, demanded something to eat. We, however, gave him to understand that we had nothing to give them, as we were supplied by Mr. Kipp, and with this answer they were obliged to be satisfied. Towards evening our provision store was replenished by three sledges, laden with meat, sent by Picotte, which arrived in the fort.
On the following day, a very high, cold wind arose, which blew the snow off from the ice that covered the river, and the Indian women, carrying their burdens, frequently fell down on the slippery surface. The Mandans had found a dead buffalo cow in the prairie, and, although it was in part decayed, they greedily devoured it.
On the 17th, at eight in the morning, with a temperature of 1° below 0, the woods were covered with hoar frost; the wind blew from the south, and veered to the southwest; the river had risen considerably, and, in some places, overflowed its banks. The sledges had much difficulty in crossing the river without getting into the water, and the ice broke under one of them. At noon, the temperature was 10°, and afterwards there was a fall of snow. Dreidoppel shot a beautiful red fox in the prairie, but had no success against the wolves. The Mandans told us, that they had gone, some days before, to hunt buffaloes, and had driven a herd of them towards the mountains, where there is a good opportunity to use the bow and arrows; they had, therefore, pursued the animals rapidly, but, on reaching them, they found but a very few buffaloes, the others, as they affirmed, having sunk into the ground: they had, doubtless, taken refuge in the nearest ravines. They assigned, as the cause of this sudden disappearance of the buffaloes, that their party was headed by a man who, in the preceding year, had caused five Assiniboins, who had come to them as messengers of peace, to be killed, and that, on account of this unjust act, he was now always unsuccessful in hunting.
The mercury remained now a little above or below zero, but at noon the sun had much power, and the reflection from the snow was very dazzling, which induced our hunters to make for themselves wooden snow spectacles, in the manner of the Esquimaux. The dumb Mandans had been successful in hunting, and brought several horse-loads of meat, which we bought of them. In the afternoon, when the temperature was 8° or 9°, I heard an Indian child crying at the door of our room; it had touched a piece of iron with its tongue, and the skin immediately came off.
At daybreak, on the 27th, in the morning, the mercury was at 26°, Fahrenheit, below zero, or 59° below freezing point; and at 8 o'clock, when the sun shone brightly, at 11° below zero, with a west wind. During the night, the horses had broken a window in Mr. Kipp's room, so that we had a very cold breakfast there. In our apartments everything fluid was frozen, and the quilts on the beds were covered with hoar frost. We had now some fresh meat, but our stock of sugar was at an end, and we had to sweeten our coffee with treacle. We were visited by the three {445} deaf and dumb Mandans, whose fourth brother, Berock-Itainu, whom we have before mentioned, is not so afflicted: there is, likewise, a deaf and dumb child in the village. Kiasax, the Blackfoot, who had accompanied us to Fort Union, visited us to-day for the first time, and we showed him the portraits of his countrymen, with which he was much pleased. The Indians were busy in conveying many things to the summer village, though the prairies were covered with snow; and numerous horses were seeking a scanty subsistence by scraping it away with their hoofs to get at the dry grass.
On the 27th of February, Mr. Kipp had pieces of ice hewn on the river to fill his ice cellar. A high west wind increased the cold, but the snow melted away because the thermometer was at 38° at noon. We saw the Indian boys pursue and catch the snow-buntings, of which there were large flocks in the neighbourhood of the villages; and the prairie wolves now prowled about in couples: in the evening there was a heavy fall of snow. The Indians removed to their village: all their horses, even the foals, were loaded: they likewise cut blocks of ice from the river, which the women carried home on their backs, in leather baskets, in order to melt them to obtain water. The Indian children amused themselves with ascending the heaps of snow, and gliding down on a board, or a piece of the back-bone of a buffalo, with some of the ribs attached to it. Mato-Topé paid us a visit in a very strange costume; his head-dress was much more suitable for an old woman than for a warrior. His head was bound round with a strip of wolf's skin, the long hairs of which stood on end, and which hung down behind. Some feathers, standing upright, were placed among the hair, which, except at the tip, were stripped, and painted red. This chief, indeed, had on a different dress almost every time he came to see us. Sometimes he wore a blue uniform, with red facings, which he had obtained from the merchants. Mr. Bodmer took the portrait of a handsome Manitari partisan to-day.[43] He was not pleased that we intended to keep his portrait, as he was going on a military expedition, and said that Mr. Bodmer ought, at least, to give him a copy of the drawing. This being refused, he drew a portrait of the artist, and his performance showed that he possessed some talent for the art.
On the evening of the 28th of February, Picotte sent up the letter-bag from St. Louis, and I had the pleasure of receiving despatches from Germany, with very agreeable intelligence. This post was forwarded, on the 2nd of March, to Fort Union, by two of the engagés in dog-sledges. Bodmer drew the portrait of an old Manitari, whose proper name was Birohka (the robe with the beautiful hair), but the Mandans called him "Long Nose," on account of the prominence of that feature. He wore a cap of white buffalo skin, and an ample brown robe painted with wreaths of feathers; before he would suffer his portrait to be taken, he demanded a black silk neckerchief as a recompense, which was given him.[44] As all the Indians had now removed to their summer village,{446} Mr. Kipp took the usual complement of soldiers into the fort, four of whom served as a guard against the importunities of the women and children; they were Mato-Topé, Dipauch, Berock-Itainu, and another whose name I do not know. The first never smoked his pipe in another person's room, if anybody stirred from his place or looked at him. We had some interesting conversations with several sensible and inquiring Indians, especially with the soldiers of the fort.
On the morning of the 5th of March, the mercury being at 29°, we had a very severe snow storm from the north, which continued till near ten o'clock. On the following day, Mato-Topé introduced to us a tall, robust Arikkara, named Pachtuwa-Chta, who lived peaceably among the Mandans. He was a handsome man, but not to be depended upon, and was said to have killed many white men.[45] Another tall man of the same nation frequently visited us, generally observing that he was not like Pachtuwa, as he had never killed a white man. Mato-Topé, after repeated solicitations, prevailed on Mr. Bodmer to paint for him a white-headed eagle, holding in his claws a bloody scalp, to which he, doubtless, attached some superstitious notion, but I could not see exactly what it might be. Mato-Topé gave me very accurate information respecting his own language, and that of the neighbouring Indian nations, and took great pleasure in communicating to me some words of the Mandan and Arikkara languages, the latter of which he spoke fluently.
On the 7th of March, the band of the Meniss-Ochata (dog band), from Ruhptare, danced in the medicine lodge at Mih-Tutta-Hang-Kush. Mr. Bodmer went to see the dance, and met Mato-Topé, who, however, puffed up by his high dignity as a dog, would not notice him. Sih-Chida, who also belonged to this band, went into the lodge, where he discharged his gun. In the afternoon the band approached the fort, and we heard the sound of their war pipes at the gates. A crowd of spectators accompanied the seven or eight and twenty dogs, who were all dressed in their handsomest clothes. Some of them wore beautiful robes, or shirts of bighorn leather; others had shirts of red cloth; and some blue and red uniforms. Others, again, had the upper part of their body naked, with their martial deeds painted on the skin with reddish-brown colour. The four principal dogs wore an immense cap hanging down upon the shoulders, composed of raven's or magpie's feathers, finished at the tips with small white down feathers. In the middle of this mass of feathers, the outspread tail of a wild turkey, or of a war eagle, was fixed. These four principal dogs wore round their neck a long slip of red cloth, which hung down over the shoulders, and, reaching the calf of the leg, was tied in a knot in the middle of the back. These are the true dogs, who, when a piece of meat is thrown into the fire, are bound immediately to snatch it out and devour it raw.[46] Two other men wore similar colossal caps of yellow owl's feathers, with dark transverse stripes, and the rest had on their heads a thick tuft of raven's, magpie's, or owl's feathers, which is the badge of the band. All of them had the {447} long war pipe suspended from their necks. In their left hand they carried their weapons—a gun, bow and arrows, or war club; and in their right hand the schischikué peculiar to their band. It is a stick adorned with blue and white glass beads, with buffalo or other hoofs suspended to it, the point ornamented with an eagle's feather, and the handle with slips of leather embroidered with beads.[47]
The warriors formed a circle round a large drum, which was beaten by five ill-dressed men, who were seated on the ground. Besides these, there were two men, each beating a small drum like a tambourine. The dogs accompanied the rapid and violent beat of the drum by the whistle of their war pipes, in short, monotonous notes, and then suddenly began to dance. They dropped their robes on the ground, some dancing within the circle, with their bodies bent forward and leaping up and down with both feet placed close together. The other Indians danced without any order, with their faces turned to the outer circle, generally crowded together; while the war pipe, drum, and schischikué made a frightful din.