WESTERN TERRITORY CONTINUED.
Conclusion of Lewis and Clarke's Voyage from St. Louis to the Source of the Missouri.
As the winter was now fast approaching, the commanders of the expedition considered it requisite to look out for some convenient place, where they might pass those months, during which the river would be frozen and unnavigable. Accordingly, on the 2d of November, they fixed upon a place, not far distant from the Indian villages. They cut down a considerable quantity of timber for the formation of huts; and constructed tolerably comfortable habitations. Food could here be procured in such abundance, that, in the course of two days, a Mandan Indian killed as many as two hundred goats.
In the night of the 5th they were awaked by the man on guard, who called them to witness a peculiarly beautiful appearance of the aurora borealis, or northern lights. Along the sky, towards the north, a large space was occupied by a light of brilliant white colour, which rose from the horizon, and extended itself to nearly twenty degrees above it. After glittering for some time, its colours were occasionally overcast and obscured; but again it would burst out with renewed beauty. The uniform colour was pale; but its shapes were various and fantastic. At times the sky was lined with light-coloured streaks, rising perpendicularly from the horizon, and gradually expanding into a body of light, in which could be seen the trace of floating columns, sometimes advancing, sometimes retreating, and shaping into an infinite variety of forms.
Before the middle of November a store-house was completed, in which the contents of the boats were laid up for the winter. On the 13th, ice began to float down the river for the first time; and, on the ensuing day, the ground was covered with snow. In some traps which had been set, twenty beavers were caught. On the 16th the men moved into the huts, although they were not finished. Three days after this the hunters brought in a supply of thirty-two deer, eleven elks, and five buffaloes, all of which were hung up to be smoked, for future subsistence.
The huts were ranged in two rows, each row containing four rooms, fourteen feet square, and seven feet high. The place in which they were erected was called Fort Mandan, and was a point of low ground, on the north side of the Missouri, covered with tall and heavy cotton-wood. The computed distance from the mouth of the Missouri was sixteen hundred miles.
In the vicinity of this place were five villages of three distinct nations: Mandans, Ahanaways, and Minnetarees. Not many years ago the Mandans were a very numerous race, occupying, in the whole, eighteen villages; but their numbers had been so much reduced, by the small-pox and by their wars with the Sioux, that they were compelled to emigrate in a body, and unite themselves with the Ricara nation; and they now occupy only two villages, on opposite sides of the Missouri, and about three miles asunder. Each of these contains forty or fifty lodges, built in the same manner as those of the Ricaras. The whole force of the Ahanaways is not, at present, more than fifty men. Their residence is on an elevated plain, near the mouth of the Knife river. On the south side of the same river, and about half a mile distant from this people, is a village of the Minnetarees; and there are four other villages of these Indians at a little distance.
The religion of the Mandans consists in the belief that one great Spirit presides over their destinies; but they also believe that various beings, some imaginary and some existing in the form of animals, have the power of interceding for them with the great spirit. To these they pay their devotion. They believe in a future state; and that, after death, they shall go to the original seats of their forefathers, which they suppose to be underground, immediately beneath a spot on the banks of the Missouri, where they formerly had nine villages.
On the 7th of December, the Missouri was frozen over, and the ice was an inch and half in thickness. The cold was so intense, that the air was filled with icy particles resembling a fog; and the snow was several inches deep. Notwithstanding this, one of the commanders, accompanied by some of the men, went out almost every day to hunt. On the tenth, Captain Clarke and his hunters, after having killed nine buffaloes, were obliged to spend a wretched night on the snow: having no other covering than a small blanket and the hides of the buffaloes they had killed. The next day the wind blew from the north; and the ice in the atmosphere was so thick, as to render the weather hazy, and to give the appearance of two suns reflecting each other. On the seventeenth, the mercury in the thermometer fell to seventy-four degrees below the freezing point. The fort was completed on the day before Christmas.
The Indians, inured to the severity of the climate, are able to support the rigours of the season, in a way which Captains Lewis and Clarke had hitherto considered impossible. Many parts of their bodies were exposed; and one of the Indians, in particular, although his dress was very thin, was known to have passed the night on the snow, without a fire; and yet he did not suffer the slightest inconvenience.