History of the Indians, of North and South America

by Samuel G. Goodrich

Bordering on the Esquimaux on the west, and also near the Chippewas, are the Knistenaux, or Cree Indians, who inhabit a wide space of country. They are a well formed race, and their women are the handsomest of the Indian females. They are said to be hospitable, generous, and mild; not very careful of speaking the truth, but otherwise honest, so that they are permitted to go about the trading posts without restraint. They have carried on long and bloody wars with the Blackfeet. These are more powerful in frame, as well as more numerous; and though the Knistenaux warriors have been much reduced, they have often proved themselves, by their superior agility, a full match for their warlike foes. They are probably a portion of the Chippewas, whom they are said much to resemble both in appearance and language.

The Assinniboins, or Stone Indians, though their appearance is prepossessing, are represented as great thieves, stealing whatever they can lay their hands on, especially horses. They are at perpetual war with the Slave Indians, who live further west, and whom they resemble. They are desperate and daring. The Assinniboins are supposed to have belonged originally to the Sioux, as they are very much like them both in their features and manners.

The Chippewayans, being the same as the Chippewas in the United States, are divided into many tribes. They differ from the Crees as to hospitality, for they never give or receive with a good grace. Their disputes are generally settled by wrestling, and the victor of the match may carry off the wife of the vanquished as his prize.

The powerful nation of the Sioux, or Dahcotahs, occupy in part the region west of the Mississippi, near the Falls of St. Anthony, though the main body of them are found on the Upper Missouri. These are the same Indians whom Carver calls the Naudowessies, and have always been great warriors. They are divided into numerous bands, each called after the name of its chief, as the Black Dog’s band, the Red Wing’s band, &c. They have ever been at war with the Chippewas, and are the mortal foes of the Osages, whom they have greatly reduced, and who hold them in great dread. They occupy a wide extent of country, and the main object of their contention with the Chippewas, for two hundred years, is stated to have been the territory from Rum River to the Rivière de Corbeau, both parties claiming it as their own. They have conquered and destroyed vast numbers of their red brethren, and have swept the whole region extending from the banks of the Mississippi to the mouth of the Great Platte, together with the plains that lie to the north, between the Mississippi and the Black Hills. They form six distinct tribes, comprising about 28,000 souls, subsisting chiefly on buffalo’s meat and the wild fruits of the forest. They also use the native rice, of which they gather many thousand bushels. A revolted band of this nation, called the Osinpoilles, said to consist of 8,000 persons, live near the Rocky Mountains.

Catlin divides the Sioux nation into the Mississippi Sioux and the Missouri Sioux. He says that they are separated into forty-two bands, or families, each having a chief; these acknowledge a head chief, to whom they are subordinate.

The Mississippi branch, being near to the white settlements, are somewhat advanced in civilization, yet form but an imperfect sample of the nobler warriors who live on the banks of the Missouri, and roam over the plains between that river and the Rocky Mountains. At the time Catlin visited them, the head chief of the Sioux was Hawanjetah, greatly renowned for his prowess in war and the chase. Of him we are furnished with the following story.

Hawanjetah had, in some way, been the accidental cause of the death of his only son, a very fine youth; and so great was the anguish of his mind, at times, that he became frantic and insane. In one of these moods he mounted his favorite war-horse, with his bow and arrows in his hand, and dashed off at full speed upon the prairies, repeating the most solemn oath, “that he would slay the first living thing that fell in his way, be it man or beast, friend or foe.” No one dared to follow him, and after he had been absent an hour or two, his horse came back to the village with two arrows in his body, and covered with blood! Fears of the most serious kind were now entertained for the fate of the chief, and a party of warriors immediately mounted their horses, and retraced the animal’s tracks to the scene of the tragedy, where they found the body of their chief horribly mangled and gored by a buffalo bull, whose carcase was stretched by his side.

A close examination of the ground was then made by the Indians, who ascertained by the tracks, that their unfortunate chief, under his unlucky resolve, had met a buffalo bull, in the season when the animal is stubborn, and unwilling to run from any one, and had incensed the creature by shooting a number of arrows into him, which thus brought him into furious combat. The chief had then dismounted, and, turning his horse loose, shot a couple of arrows into his body, which sent him home at full speed. He had then thrown away his bow and quiver, encountering the infuriated buffalo with his knife alone,—the desperate battle resulting in the death of both. Many of the bones of the chief were broken, as he was gored and stamped to death; and his huge antagonist had laid his body by the side of him, weltering in blood from a hundred wounds, made by the chief’s long and two-edged knife.

The Sacs, or Sauks, and Foxes, called Renards by the French, are said to be among the most warlike of these northern savages. “No Indian tribe, except the Sioux, has shown such daring intrepidity and such implacable hatred towards other tribes. Their enmity, when once excited, was never known to be appeased till the arrow or tomahawk had for ever prostrated their foes. For centuries, the prairies of Illinois and Iowa were the theatre of their exterminating prowess; and to them is to be attributed the almost entire destruction of the Missouris, the Illinois, Cahokias, Kaskaskias, and Peorias. They were, however, steady and sincere in their friendship to the whites, and many is the honest settler on the borders of their old dominion, who mentions, with the warmest feelings, the respectful treatment he has received from them, while he cut the logs for his cabin, and ploughed his potato-patch on that lonely and unprotected frontier.”