- Meetings Of Relations And Friends.-Indian
Sensibility.- Meeting Of A Wounded Warrior And His Mother.-
Festivities And Lamentations.
A TRADE now commenced with the Arickaras under the regulation and
supervision of their two chieftains.
Lisa sent a part of his
goods to the lodge of the left-handed dignitary, and Mr. Hunt
established his mart in the lodge of the Big Man. The village
soon presented the appearance of a busy fair; and as horses were
in demand, the purlieus and the adjacent plain were like the
vicinity of a Tartar encampment; horses were put through all
their paces, and horsemen were careering about with that
dexterity and grace for which the Arickaras are noted. As soon as
a horse was purchased, his tail was cropped, a sure mode of
distinguishing him from the horses of the tribe; for the Indians
disdain to practice this absurd, barbarous, and indecent
mutilation, invented by some mean and vulgar mind, insensible to
the merit and perfections of the animal. On the contrary, the
Indian horses are suffered to remain in every respect the superb
and beautiful animals which nature formed them.
The wealth of an Indian of the far west consists principally in
his horses, of which each chief and warrior possesses a great
number, so that the plains about an Indian village or encampment
are covered with them. These form objects of traffic, or objects
of depredation, and in this way pass from tribe to tribe over
great tracts of country. The horses owned by the Arickaras are,
for the most part, of the wild stock of the prairies; some,
however, had been obtained from the Poncas, Pawnees, and other
tribes to the southwest, who had stolen them from the Spaniards
in the course of horse-stealing expeditions into Mexican
territories.
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