Part 18

How fortunate it was that Catlin and Maximilian chose to spend much time among the Mandan during the years 1832, 1833, and 1834. A few years later, in the spring of 1837, the dreaded smallpox swept away the greater part of this most interesting nation, and "when the disease had abated, and when the remnant of this once powerful nation had recovered sufficiently to remove the decaying bodies from their cabins, the total number of grown men was twenty-three, of women forty, and of young persons sixty or seventy. These were all that were left of the eighteen hundred souls that composed the nation prior to the advent of that terrific disease, and even those that recovered were so disfigured as scarcely to be recognized." (Hayden, (1), p. 433.) Soon those who survived deserted their old village near Fort Clark and removed a few miles above, and the town was, about this time, occupied by the Arikara. It is interesting to know that the small remnant of the Mandan continued to follow their own peculiar customs and to maintain their tribal unity although so reduced in numbers. It will not be necessary in the present sketch to trace the later history of the tribe.

In recent years the State Historical Society of North Dakota has caused surveys to be made of the more important village sites in that State. In addition to the plans of the sites, showing the position of the earth lodges, they have been fortunate in obtaining drawings of the Mandan and Hidatsa villages, made by a Mandan living on the Fort Berthold Reservation. In writing of the picture and plan of the "most important historical site of the Mandan tribe in the state, the one visited and described by Lewis and Clark, Catlin, and Maximilian," Libby said: "The Indian chart and the map of the village as it appears to-day are here shown. It is seen that the two representations are not essentially unlike. The grouping of the houses about a common center, at one side of which is the holy tepee, is the predominating characteristic of each." The Indian drawing, although crude, shows some details omitted by Catlin in his many sketches; but the map (fig. 10) is of the greatest interest. It shows the site near Fort Clark as it appeared about the year 1908, and to quote from the description: "In the center of the tepees, on the space devoted by the old Mandans to the 'big canoe' and cedar post of the 'elder man,' stands now a large tepee (shown in dotted outline) which was placed there by the Arikara who occupied the village after the small-pox scourge of 1837 had killed or driven away the original inhabitants." The structures surrounding the open space were occupied by the principal men of the village, and the names as given by Libby were secured by him from "Bad Gun, Rushing War Eagle, son of the Ma-ta-to-pe or Four Bears, whose portrait Catlin painted." In the list of names "Tepee No. 1 was the holy tepee and was also used by Lance Shoulder," and "No. 2 was occupied by Four Bears." The list includes fifteen names. At the time the survey was made the entire ditch could not be traced, but its general course could be followed, thus indicating the approximate boundary of the town, "beyond which only a few tepees are located." (Libby, (1), pp. 498-499.)

When it is realized how little is known regarding the arrangement of the many ancient villages which once stood in the country east of the Mississippi, villages which in their time were probably as large and important as those of the Mandan of the last century, it is not possible to overestimate the value of the work of the Historical Society in causing to be made an accurate survey of the sites and in securing descriptions of the villages from some who remember them. A generation later this would not have been possible.

HIDATSA GROUP.

Two tribes are regarded as constituting this group: The Hidatsa proper, known to the earlier writers as the Minnetarees, and to others as the Gros Ventres of the Missouri; and the Crows. The Hidatsa and the Crows were, until a few generations ago, one people, but trouble developed and the latter moved farther up the Missouri to the Rocky Mountains, and there they were discovered by the early explorers of the region.

The Amahami may have been a distinct tribe, and as such were recognized by Lewis and Clark, but according to their own traditions they, together with the Hidatsa and Crows, once formed a single tribe. Their language differs only slightly from that of the Hidatsa. During the early years of the last century their one village stood at the mouth of Knife River. Already greatly reduced in numbers, they suffered during the epidemic of 1837, and later the majority of those who had survived became more closely associated with the Hidatsa.

HIDATSA.

The Hidatsa, also known as the Minnetarees and designated by some writers the Gros Ventres of the Missouri, a name which must not be confused with Gros Ventres of the Prairie often applied to the Atsina, lived when first known to Europeans near the junction of the Knife and Missouri Rivers, in the eastern part of the present Mercer County, North Dakota. Some are of the belief that it was the Hidatsa and not the Mandan whom the French, under La Verendrye, visited during the autumn and winter of 1738, but in the present sketch the Mandan are accepted as undoubtedly being the tribe at whose villages the French remained.

The Hidatsa villages as seen by Catlin and Maximilian during the years 1832, 1833, and 1834 had probably changed little since the winter of 1804-05, when Lewis and Clark occupied Fort Mandan, their winter quarters, some 8 miles below the mouth of Knife River. Describing the villages, Catlin said the principal one stood on the bank of Knife River and consisted of 40 or 50 earth-covered lodges, each from 40 to 50 feet in diameter, and this town being on an elevated bank overlooked the other two which were on lower ground "and almost lost amidst their numerous corn fields and other profuse vegetation which cover the earth with their luxuriant growth.

"The scenery along the banks of this little river, from village to village, is quite peculiar and curious; rendered extremely so by the continual wild and garrulous groups of men, women, and children, who are wending their way along its winding shores, or dashing and plunging through its blue waves, enjoying the luxury of swimming, of which both sexes seem to be passionately fond. Others are paddling about in their tub-like canoes, made of the skins of buffaloes." (Catlin, (1), I, p. 186.) Among the great collection of Catlin's paintings belonging to the United States National Museum, in Washington, is one of the large village. The original painting is reproduced in plate 43. A drawing of the same was shown as plate 70 in Catlin's work cited above. The work is crude but interesting historically, and conveys some idea of the appearance of the town, although in this, as in other paintings by the same artist, the earth lodges are very poorly drawn, failing to show the projection which served as the entrance and having the roofs too rounded and dome-shaped. Bodmer's sketches are far superior.

On June 19, 1833, Maximilian, aboard the steamboat _Assiniboin_, left Fort Clark bound for Fort Union at the mouth of the Yellowstone. Soon after passing the Mandan village of Ruhptare, so Maximilian wrote: "We saw before us the fine broad mirror of the river, and, at a distance on the southern bank, the red mass of the clay huts of the lower village of the Manitaries, which we reached in half an hour. The Missouri is joined by the Knife River, on which the three villages of the Manitaries are built. The largest, which is the furthest from the Missouri, is called Elah-Sa (the village of the great willows); the middle one, Awatichay (the little village), where Charbonneau, the interpreter, lives; and the third, Awachawi (le village des souliers), which is the smallest, consisting of only eighteen huts, situated at the mouth of Knife River.... The south bank of the river was now animated by a crowd of Indians, both on foot and on horseback; they were the Manitaries, who had flocked from their villages to see the steamer and to welcome us. The appearance of this vessel of the Company, which comes up, once in two years, to the Yellow Stone River, is an event of the greatest importance to the Indians.... The sight of the red brown crowd collected on the river side, for even their buffalo skins were mostly of this colour, was, in the highest degree, striking. We already saw above a hundred of them, with many dogs, some of which drew sledges, and others, wooden boards fastened to their backs, and the ends trailing on the ground, to which the baggage was attached with leather straps." (Maximilian, (1), pp. 178-179.)

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 77 PLATE 44

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 77 PLATE 45

As told in the preceding section, Maximilian returned from Fort Union to Fort Clark, where, with the artist Bodmer, he spent the long winter. While near the Mandan towns he made several visits to the Hidatsa villages a few miles above, and learned much of the manners and ways of life of the people. He again spoke of the three villages on the banks of Knife River, "two on the left bank, and the third, which is much the largest, on the right bank." He continued: "At present the Manitaries live constantly in their villages, and do not roam about as they formerly did, when, like the Pawnees and other nations, they went in pursuit of the herds of buffaloes as soon as their fields were sown, returned in the autumn for the harvest, after which they again went into the prairie. In these wanderings they made use of leather tents, some of which are still standing by the side of their permanent dwellings" (p. 395). He then described the dress and general appearance of the people and continued: "The Manitari villages are similarly arranged as those of the Mandans, except that they have no ark placed in the central space, and the figure of Ochkih-Hadda is not there. In the principal village, however, is the figure of a woman placed on a long pole, doubtless representing the grandmother, who presented them with the pots, of which I shall speak more hereafter. A bundle of brushwood is hung on this pole, to which are attached the leathern dress and leggins of a woman. The head is made of wormwood, and has a cap with feathers. The interior of their huts is arranged as among the Mandans: like them the Manitaries go, in winter, into the forests on both banks of the Missouri, where they find fuel, and, at the same time, protection against the inclement weather. Their winter villages are in the thickest of the forest, and the huts are built near to each other, promiscuously, and without any attempt at order or regularity. They have about 250 or 300 horses in their three villages, and a considerable number of dogs" (pp. 396-397). Bodmer's picture of the "Winter Village of the Minatarres," made during the winter of 1833, is probably the most accurate drawing of an earth-lodge village in existence. It was given as plate xxvi by Maximilian, which is here reproduced as plate 44, _b_. A pencil sketch which may be considered as the original sketch made by Bodmer, and from which the finished picture was made, is now in the E. E. Ayer collection preserved in the Newberry Library. Unfortunately the drawing is unfinished but is very interesting historically. It is shown in plate 44, _a_.

Maximilian then referred briefly to the creation myth of the people with whom he was then resting. The entire surface was once covered with water. There were two beings: one a man who lived in the far Rocky Mountains who made all; the other was the old woman called grandmother by the members of the tribe. "She gave the Manitaries a couple of pots, which they still preserve as a sacred treasure," and "When their fields are threatened with a great drought they are to celebrate a medicine feast with the old grandmother's pots, in order to beg for rain: this is, properly, the destination of the pots. The medicine men are still paid, on such occasions, to sing for four days together in the huts, while the pots remain filled with water." Such were the superstitious beliefs of these strange people.

November 26, 1833, Maximilian, Bodmer, and several others went from Fort Clark to the winter village to attend "a great medicine feast among the Manitaries." They passed the two Mandan towns and during the journey saw a large stone, "undoubtedly one of those isolated blocks of granite which are scattered over the whole prairie, and which the Indians, from some superstitious notion, paint with vermilion, and surround with little sticks, or rods, to which were attached some feathers." The little party had seen much of interest on the way, and it was late in the day when they arrived at the village, "the large huts of which were built so close to each other that it was sometimes difficult to pass between them." Herds of buffalo having been reported in the vicinity of the village, a party of Indians had decided to start after them the following day, and planned "to implore the blessings of heaven upon their undertaking by a great medicine feast." This appears to have been a ceremony arranged by the women of the village. The structure in which the dance took place was not one of the earth-covered lodges of the town, but a rather temporary shelter of unusual shape. As described by Maximilian: "Between the huts, in the centre of the village, an elliptical space, forty paces or more in length, was enclosed in a fence, ten or twelve feet high, consisting of reeds and willow twigs inclining inwards. (See the woodcut.) [Fig. 11.] An entrance was left at _a_; _b_ represents the fence; _d_ are the four fires, burning in the medicine lodge, which were kept up the whole time. At _e_ the elder and principal men had taken their seats; to the right sat the old chief, Lachpitzi-Sihrisch (the yellow bear); some parts of his face were painted red, and a bandage of yellow skin encircled his head. Places were assigned to us on the right hand of the yellow bear. At _f_, close to the fence, the spectators, especially the women, were seated: the men walked about, some of them handsomely dressed, others quite simply; children were seated round the fires, which they kept alive by throwing twigs of willow trees into them." Here follows a description of the ceremony, and it is related how six elderly men who had been chosen by the younger ones to represent buffalo bulls, entered the inclosure. They came from the hut opposite and when they were within, and after certain formalities, were seated at _c_. The ceremony was attended by smoking, the pipes were "brought first to the old men and the visitors; they presented the mouth-piece of the pipe to us in succession, going from right to left: we each took a few whiffs, uttered, as before, a wish or prayer, and passed the pipe to our next neighbours.... The six buffalo bulls, meantime, sitting behind the fire, sang, and rattled the medicine sticks, while one of them constantly beat the badger skin. After a while they all stood up, bent forward, and danced; that is, they leaped as high as they could with both their feet together, continuing to sing and rattle their sticks, one of them beating time on the badger. Their song was invariably the same, consisting of loud, broken notes and exclamations. When they had danced for some time, they resumed their seats.

"The whole was extremely interesting. The great number of red men, in a variety of costumes, the singing, dancing, beating the drum, &c., while the lofty trees of the forest, illumed by the fires, spread their branches against the dark sky, formed a _tout ensemble_ so striking and original, that I regretted the impracticability of taking a sketch of it on the spot."

Two days after the dance, on November 28, 1833, Maximilian visited the chief Yellow Bear in his lodge. The interior presents an interesting appearance: "The beds, consisting of square leathern cases, were placed along the sides of the spacious hut, and the inmates sat round the fire variously occupied. The Yellow Bear, wearing only his breech-cloth, sat upon a bench made of willow boughs, covered with skins, and was painting a new buffalo robe with figures in vermillion and black, having his colours standing by him, ready mixed, in old potsherds. In lieu of a pencil he was using the more inartificial substitute of a sharp-pointed piece of wood. The robe was ornamented with the symbols of valuable presents which he had made, and which had gained the Yellow Bear much reputation, and made him a man of distinction." (Maximilian, (1), pp. 419-423.)

Among the historic village sites which have been studied and surveyed by the State Historical Society of North Dakota, as mentioned in the preceding sketch of the Mandan, was that "of the largest Hidatsa village on Knife river." The map made for the society is here reproduced in figure 12. This, to quote Libby, "shows the present appearance of the ... largest Hidatsa village site, located just north of the mouth of Knife river. From the position and direction of the doorways, it is seen that these villages show no such large grouping as is characteristic of the Mandan village...." It was observed that the circles marking the positions of the earth lodges were much deeper in the Hidatsa villages than in the two Mandan sites. In the former the extreme depth below the "highest part of the rim was often three feet and very commonly over two feet," but on the Mandan sites the depressions were quite shallow. And "in many cases it was observed that in and near the Hidatsa villages were mounds of debris of varying heights, while nothing of the kind was seen on or near Mandan sites." (Libby, (1), p. 500.) Noting these characteristic features of the two groups of villages, or rather of the villages of the two tribes, should reduce the difficulty of identifying other ancient sites in the upper Missouri Valley.

The several quotations already made refer to the earth-covered lodges of the Hidatsa, but the same people also made use of the typical skin tipi, although less often mentioned by the early writers. They probably resembled the structures used by the Crow. On November 8, 1833, when Maximilian was returning to Fort Clark from the mouth of the Yellowstone, he wrote: "At twelve o'clock we were opposite the first Manitari summer village, and saw, on the other side, many Indians.... The invitations to land became more vociferous and numerous." Going ashore "we were immediately conducted, by a distinguished man, Ita-Widahki-Hisha (the red shield), to his tent, which stood apart on the prairie, on the summit of the bank. The white leather tent was new, spacious, and handsomely ornamented with tufts of hair of various colours, and at each side of the entrance, finished with a stripe and rosettes of dyed porcupine quills, very neatly executed. It had been well warmed by a good fire, a most refreshing sight to us. We took our seats around it, with the numerous family, the brother and uncle of the chief, young men, women, and children. The chief had rather a long beard, like the Punca chief, Shudegacheh, and his right breast was tattooed with black stripes.... A large dish of boiled maize and beans was immediately set before us; it was very tender and well dressed, and three of us eat out of the dish with spoons made of the horn of buffalo, or bighorn; after which the red Dacota pipe went round." (Maximilian; (1), p. 316.) This must have been a beautiful example of the buffalo-skin tipi, new and white, decorated with quillwork and tufts of hair.

Continuing down the Missouri to Fort Clark they passed women in their "round leather boats," and saw others, "proceeding towards the river, with their boats hanging on their heads and down their backs."

An example of a "bull-boat" and paddle is shown in plate 35, _b_. It was collected among the Hidatsa and is now preserved in the collection of the National Museum. It is a specimen of great interest and rarity, though once so extensively used by the tribes of the Missouri Valley. Several boats of this sort are shown by Bodmer in his picture of the Mandan village (pl. 39), and Kurz likewise left many drawings of these peculiar craft (pl. 45, _c_).

In addition to the several forms of structures already mentioned, the Hidatsa evidently erected a very secure temporary lodge when away from their villages on hunting trips. On November 7, 1833, when descending the Missouri, and just before arriving at Fort Clark, Maximilian wrote: "Our breakfast was prepared at nine o'clock, when we lay to on the north bank, in a narrow strip of forest, where we found some old Indian hunting lodges, built, in a conical form, of dry timber. They had, doubtless, been left by the Manitaries, who had come thus far on their hunting excursions. The lower part of the huts, or lodges, was covered with the bark of trees; the entrance was square, and bones were scattered in all directions. We proceeded with a bleak, high wind, saw the singular clay tops of the hills, and, in the forest, the stages made of poles, where the Indian hunters dry the flesh of the animals they have taken in the chase. About twelve o'clock we came to the spot where some stakes indicated the former site of a Mandan village.... We are now in the centre of the territory of the Manitaries." (Maximilian, (1), pp. 314-315.) Probably the danger of attack by their enemies made necessary the erection of these comparatively secure shelters.

About the year 1845 many Hidatsa removed from the vicinity of Knife River and reared a new village not far from Fort Berthold, some 60 miles up the Missouri from old Fort Clark. They were joined from time to time by other members of their tribe, and also by many of the remaining Mandan. In 1862 the Arikara became the third tribe to settle near Fort Berthold. But in 1850 the Arikara continued to occupy the old Mandan town just below Fort Clark, the large village of earth lodges so often visited and mentioned by the explorers and traders during the early years of the last century. It is quite evident the new settlement of the Hidatsa did not differ in appearance from the old Mandan town, the later home of the Arikara, and on June 13, 1850, Culbertson wrote from Fort Berthold: "The village, with its mud lodges, differs nothing in looks from the Ree village described yesterday, except in one particular, that is, the inhabitants are now engaged in surrounding it with pickets. The logs are well prepared and are all up except on the west side; a bastion with loop holes is placed in the middle of each side. This picket is of course to protect the inmates against enemies by whom they are frequently attacked." (Culbertson, (1), pp. 118-119.) This is a most interesting reference. Could this palisade have been the one to which Matthews alluded as having stood until 1865? The manner of constructing the palisade, with "a bastion ... in the middle of each side," will tend to recall the similar arrangement as indicated on the drawing of the ancient Mahican village about two centuries before. (Bushnell, (1), p. 26.)