OF THE HUMAN FAMILY. 



183 



When the INIinnitarces reached the Upper Missouri they found the Mandans, 

 as the traditions of the latter affirm, in the possession of the country ; and tiiey 

 were allowed to talie up their residence apart, but near them, on the river as a 

 friendly people. Although the Mandan tradition asserts that the Minnitarees 

 " came out of the water to the east," it seems highly probable that they were 

 originally from the region of the Gulf of Mexico, and that they are one of the 

 connecting links between the Choctas and Creeks, and the Dakota nations. 

 There is somo evidence in their respective systems of relationship tending to the 

 same conclusion. On the other hand, the Mandans were not intrusive, but estab- 

 lished on the north of their nearest congeners, the Dakota and Missouri nations. 

 They had been forced in later years by the hostility of the Dakotas further up thd. 

 river, as the remains of their old villages, still to be seen, as well as their own 

 accounts attest. The Mandans now call themselves Me-too' -ta-Mk, " South Vil- 

 lages," which implies their displacement from a more southern location. They 

 could have learned neither agriculture nor house building from the Dakotas, as 

 the latter knew nothing of cultivation, or of house architecture ; nor yet of the 



