This Man Had Been Very Serviceable To Us,
And His Wife Was Particularly Useful Among The Shoshonees:
Indeed, She Had Borne With A Patience Truly Admirable The Fatigues
Of So Long A Route, Encumbered With The Charge Of An Infant,
Who Was Then Only Nineteen Months Old.
We therefore paid him
his wages, amounting to five hundred dollars and thirty-three cents,
including the price of
A horse and a lodge purchased of him,
and soon afterward dropped down to the village of Big White,
attended on shore by all the Indian chiefs, who had come to take
leave of him.
"We found him surrounded by his friends, who sat in a circle smoking,
while the women were crying. He immediately sent his wife and son,
with their baggage, on board, accompanied by the interpreter
and his wife, and two children; and then, after distributing
among his friends some powder and ball which we had given him,
and smoking a pipe, he went with us to the river side.
The whole village crowded about us, and many of the people wept
aloud at the departure of their chief."
Once more embarked, the party soon reached Fort Mandan,
where they had wintered in 1804. They found very little of their
old stronghold left except a few pickets and one of the houses.
The rest had been destroyed by an accidental fire.
Eighteen miles below, they camped near an old Ricara village,
and next day, as they were about to resume their voyage,
a brother of Big White, whose camp was farther inland,
came running down to the beach to bid Big White farewell.
The parting of the two brothers was very affectionate, and the elder
gave the younger a pair of leggings as a farewell present.
The Indian chief was satisfied with his treatment by the whites,
and interested himself to tell them traditions of localities
which they passed. August 20 they were below the mouth
of Cannon-ball River, and were in the country occupied
and claimed by the Sioux. Here, if anywhere, they must be
prepared for attacks from hostile Indians. At this point,
the journal sets forth this interesting observation: -
"Since we passed in 1804, a very obvious change has taken place
in the current and appearance of the Missouri. In places where at
that time there were sandbars, the current of the river now passes,
and the former channel of the river is in turn a bank of sand.
Sandbars then naked are now covered with willows several feet high;
the entrance of some of the creeks and rivers has changed in consequence
of the quantity of mud thrown into them; and in some of the bottoms
are layers of mud eight inches in depth."
The streams that flow into the Missouri and Mississippi from the westward
are notoriously fickle and changeable. Within a very few years,
some of them have changed their course so that farms are divided
into two parts, or are nearly wiped out by the wandering streams.
In at least one instance, artful men have tried to steal part of a State
by changing the boundary line along the bed of the river, making the stream
flow many miles across a tract around which it formerly meandered.
On this boundary line between the Sioux and their upper neighbors, the party
met a band of Cheyennes and another of Ricaras, or Arikaras.
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