INDIANS OF EED KIVER OF THE NORTH. 369 



Springs, aud west of tlio road that passes ov^er the ridge. x\t tliat place 

 there is au outcrop of the millcy white variety, an iutermediate stratum of 

 the celebrated Arkansas novaculite. There the hill-side for about one 

 hundred yards in length was literally covered by thin chippiugs of that 

 mineral. Dr. Sibley and Dr. Dunbar, who explored the Arkansas, 

 Washita, and Eed Elvers during Mr. Jefferson's administration, men- 

 tioned in their report that they had discovered a place where Indian 

 implements had been made. I have not seen the report for many years, 

 and cannot say whether this is the locality alluded to by them, but think 

 it is, for they were at the Hot Springs, and there is not another mineral 

 in the State so well adapted as the novaculite to this purpose. This is 

 the only place in the Southwest that 1 have seen which affords any evi- 

 dence of the fiibrication of implements used by a people whose history 

 is unknown. At Santa Fe, in 1858, a gentleman showed me several 

 arrow-points that had been formed out of the obsidian found in that 

 country, and a few days afterward, in the village of Casa Colorado, 

 I gathered up a small quantity of that mineral in thin flakes that had 

 obviously been chipped off in fashioning arrow-heads. By careful atten- 

 tion to the mineral characteristics of those ancient implements, espe- 

 cially when composed of as rare minerals as the novaculite and obsidian, 

 we may be able to trace the migrations of the people who used them. 



The report of Dr. Sibley, no doubt, can be found in the congressional 

 documents of the period or in the reprint of them by Messrs. Gales and 

 Seaton. It contains information that would be appreciated by i)ersdns 

 engaged in ethnological or philological researches. Among other things 

 it states that two tribes of Indians, the Natchez and Ten saws, if my 

 memory is correct, were at war, that one party was disastrously defeated, 

 and escaped over the Mississippi into Louisiana. On making a halt, the 

 first thing they did was to throw up a mound. This is the only record 

 that I have seen of a mound being constructed within traditional 

 history. 



ETHNOLOGY OF THE INDIANS OF THE VALIEY OF THE RED RIVER OF THE 



NORTH. 



By Dr. W. IT. Gardner, 



Assistant Surgeon United States Armi/. 



The earliest explorers of Minnesota found the Dakotas occupying all 

 this country they now roam over or have only latelj' ceded their title to. 

 In prehistoric times what race dwelt here cannot be told ; the burial 

 mounds and crumbling skeletons, the "refuse heaps" and fragments of 

 rude pottery, point to some branch of the "mound builders," but whether 

 Nahoas, Toltecs, or Aztecs, will probably never be known. 



About Big Stone Lake, Lake Traverse, and the west bank of the Eed 

 Eiver of the North and the country adjacent, for many years past, the 

 24 S 



