The Mountain Sheep 175 



widely, and were occupying a handsome domain 

 when we met them. 



" Among other things we procured two horns 

 of the animal . . . known to the Mandans by 

 the name of ahsahta . . . winding like those 

 of a ram." 



This, so far as I know, is the first word of the 

 mountain sheep recorded by an American. Thus 

 wrote Lewis on December the twenty-second, 

 1804, being then in winter camp with the Mandan 

 Indians, not many miles up the river from where 

 to-day the Northern Pacific's bridge joins Bis- 

 marck to Mandan. We find him again, on the 

 twenty-fifth of the May following, when he has 

 proceeded up the Missouri a little beyond the 

 Musselshell, writing, " In the course of the day 

 we also saw several herds of the big-horned 

 animals among the steep cliffs on the north, and 

 killed several of them ; " as to which one of his 

 fellow explorers correctly comments in his own 

 record, " But they very little resemble sheep, 

 except in the head, horns, and feet." It is not 

 worth while to quote a later reference made when 

 the party was near the Dearborn River, north, 

 sixty miles or so, of where now stands the town 

 of Helena. 



