volume xxv.--ED.

[321] See Plate 81, figure 16, in the accompanying atlas, our volume xxv.--ED.

[322] Though all their arrows appear, at first sight, to be perfectly alike, there is a great difference in the manner in which they are made. Of all the tribes of the Missouri the Mandans are said to make the neatest and most solid arrows. The iron heads are thick and solid, the feathers glued on, and the part just below the head, and the lower end, are wound round with very even, extremely thin sinews of animals. They all have, in their whole length, a spiral line, either carved or painted red, which is to represent the lightning. The Manitaries make the iron heads thinner, and not so well. They do not glue on the feathers, but only tie them on at both ends, like the Brazilians. The Assiniboins frequently have very thin and indifferent heads to their arrows, made of iron-plate. Mr. Say (Major Long's Expedition) says, that the arrow-wood (_viburnum_) is used for their arrows by the Indians on the Lower Missouri and the neighbouring prairies. I conjecture that this shrub is the alistier (_Cratægus torminalis_) of the Upper Missouri, which is sometimes used for bows, but very seldom for arrows.--MAXIMILIAN.

[323] See p. 355 for illustration of stone club, with handle.--ED.

[324] See portrait of Mato-Topé, Plate 47, in the accompanying atlas, our volume xxv.--ED.

[325] _Ibid._, Plate 81, figure 4.--ED.

[326] See p. 355 for illustration of a knotted wooden club.--ED.

[327] See p. 105 for illustration of a Grosventre dagger.--ED.

[328] Concerning Mato-Topé see our volume xxii, p. 345, note 318. For this incident see our volume xv, p. 97. Kakoakis was Le Borgne, for whom see our volume v, p. 162, note 98.--ED.

[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.