The Indians.
DI TAPI'O?
BY REV. C. L. HALL.
We reached the Missouri at dark. A heavy gale tossed the water and whirled the sand. Can any one hear across the water, or are we to spend the October night in the timber? The Lord had provided for His work. A dark figure appeared on the bluff against the fading light. "Di tapi'o?" is the call across (Who are you?). "Ho-washte" (I am Good Voice) is the reply. The figure, like the man of Macedonia; the reply, "a voice crying in the wilderness." The man was Good Bird. He had come out, expecting his wife, and found us.
The wind had sunk the flat-boat, and our horse had to wait in the brush till morning. I cared for him, while the carpenter and Good Bird crossed. Two other Indians came for me. The wind lulled and the dark flood flowed silently. Their leaky skiff was plugged with mud. One rowed, the other watched in the shadows for the landing. I bailed with a tin can. The current swung us in, and we lugged our tools and provisions and bedding up a sand slide, and slept in the "Independence Station" log house.
We had made several visits during the summer. Once the whole family stayed a week. We won the affections of Mrs. Pedi'tska-Kadi'shta (Little Crow), so that she paddled Mrs. Hall over in her hide "bull-boat," on our return, for twenty-five cents.
Then our trained nurse left her hospital room and visiting work at Fort Berthold and kept up the routine, and also treated about twenty patients among these Mandans.
This time we had come to finish the house for winter, before the lady missionary's return from her vacation. Four women plastered outside with a mixture of mud and dry grass. This is woman's part of house-building here, I was laborer and cook and preacher for three days, and then left the carpenter plastering inside.
The Mandans are friendly, but much behind our Rees at Fort Berthold. Dead bodies in rough boxes lie on the ground on a knoll not far from our house, and near by is an old-style earth lodge.