The Ogallalla, The Brules, And Other Western Bands Of The Dakota, Are
Thorough Savages, Unchanged By Any Contact With Civilization.
Not
one of them can speak a European tongue, or has ever visited an
American settlement.
Until within a year or two, when the emigrants
began to pass through their country on the way to Oregon, they had
seen no whites except the handful employed about the Fur Company's
posts. They esteemed them a wise people, inferior only to
themselves, living in leather lodges, like their own, and subsisting
on buffalo. But when the swarm of MENEASKA, with their oxen and
wagons, began to invade them, their astonishment was unbounded. They
could scarcely believe that the earth contained such a multitude of
white men. Their wonder is now giving way to indignation; and the
result, unless vigilantly guarded against, may be lamentable in the
extreme.
But to glance at the interior of a lodge. Shaw and I used often to
visit them. Indeed, we spent most of our evenings in the Indian
village; Shaw's assumption of the medical character giving us a fair
pretext. As a sample of the rest I will describe one of these
visits. The sun had just set, and the horses were driven into the
corral. The Prairie Cock, a noted beau, came in at the gate with a
bevy of young girls, with whom he began to dance in the area, leading
them round and round in a circle, while he jerked up from his chest a
succession of monotonous sounds, to which they kept time in a rueful
chant.
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