Notes on Memories of a Bear Hunter 



20 feet high. The bastions were at the southwest and 

 northwest corners, and were square houses 24 feet 

 to the side and 30 feet high. They were built of 

 stone in two stories, the lower pierced for cannon, 

 while the upper had a balcony. Across the square 

 from the entrance stood the house of the bourgeois. 

 Around the square were the houses for the employees, 

 the storehouses, workshops, stables, a powder maga- 

 zine and a reception room for the Indians. In the 

 midst of the square was a flagstaff, and clustered 

 about this were the lodges of some of the employees. 

 Cannon directed toward the entrance of the fort stood 

 near the flagstaff. 



Fort Union was visited by Maximilian, Catlin and 

 Audubon, the latter in 1843. He gives in his journal 

 Audubon and His Journals, Vol. II. , p. 180 an 

 elaborate description of the fort. Among the old- 

 time bourgeois of this post were Mackenzie, James 

 Kipp and Alexander Culbertson. Joseph Kipp, a well- 

 known resident of Northwestern Montana, was at 

 Fort Union as a boy for many years. His father was 

 James Kipp and his mother a Mandan woman. 



11. Assiniboine Indians. The Assiniboines, or 

 "stone boilers" as they used to be called, are the 

 northernmost tribe of the Sioux, or Dakota. The 

 name by which they are called comes from two Chip- 

 pewa words, u sin'i or a sin' i, and a pwaw'a, he 

 cooks with or by stones. The reference is obviously 

 to the boiling of food by the use of hot stones, a 

 practice which was, of course, common over much 

 of the continent, and in which the Assiniboines were 



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