This Animal We Esteem
A Great Delicacy, Particularly The Tail, Which, When Boiled,
Resembles In Flavor The Fresh Tongues And
Sounds of the codfish,
and is generally so large as to afford a plentiful meal for two men.
One of
The hunters, in passing near an old Indian camp,
found several yards of scarlet cloth suspended on the bough of a tree,
as a sacrifice to the deity, by the Assiniboins; the custom of making
these offerings being common among that people, as, indeed, among all
the Indians on the Missouri. The air was sharp this evening;
the water froze on the oars as we rowed."
The Assiniboin custom of sacrificing to their deity, or "great medicine,"
the article which they most value themselves, is not by any means peculiar
to that tribe, nor to the Indian race.
An unusual number of porcupines were seen along here, and these creatures
were so free from wildness that they fed on, undisturbed, while the explorers
walked around and among them. The captains named a bold and beautiful stream,
which here entered the Missouri from the north, - Porcupine River; but modern
geography calls the water-course Poplar River; at the mouth of the river,
in Montana, is now the Poplar River Indian Agency and military post.
The waters of this stream, the explorers found, were clear and transparent, -
an exception to all the streams, which, discharging into the Missouri,
give it its name of the Big Muddy. The journal adds: -
"A quarter of a mile beyond this river a creek falls in on
the south, to which, on account of its distance from the mouth
of the Missouri, we gave the name of Two-thousand-mile creek.
It is a bold stream with a bed thirty yards wide.
At three and one-half miles above Porcupine River, we reached
some high timber on the north, and camped just above an old
channel of the river, which is now dry. We saw vast quantities
of buffalo, elk, deer, - principally of the long-tailed kind, -
antelope, beaver, geese, ducks, brant, and some swan.
The porcupines too are numerous, and so careless and clumsy
that we can approach very near without disturbing them, as they
are feeding on the young willows. Toward evening we also found
for the first time the nest of a goose among some driftwood,
all that we had hitherto seen being on the top of a broken
tree on the forks, invariably from fifteen to twenty or more
feet in height."
"Next day," May 4, says the journal, "we passed some old Indian hunting-camps,
one of which consisted of two large lodges, fortified with a circular
fence twenty or thirty feet in diameter, made of timber laid horizontally,
the beams overlying each other to the height of five feet, and covered
with the trunks and limbs of trees that have drifted down the river.
The lodges themselves are formed by three or more strong sticks
about the size of a man's leg or arm and twelve feet long, which are
attached at the top by a withe of small willows, and spread out so as
to form at the base a circle of ten to fourteen feet in diameter.
Against these are placed pieces of driftwood and fallen timber,
usually in three ranges, one on the other; the interstices are covered
with leaves, bark, and straw, so as to form a conical figure about
ten feet high, with a small aperture in one side for the door.
It is, however, at best a very imperfect shelter against the inclemencies
of the seasons."
Wolves were very abundant along the route of the explorers, the most
numerous species being the common kind, now known as the coyote
(pronounced kyote), and named by science the canis latrans.
These animals are cowardly and sly creatures, of an intermediate size
between the fox and dog, very delicately formed, fleet and active.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 38 of 201
Words from 20106 to 20760
of 110166
