91 



they are generally well disposed towards the whites, but have as yet 

 seen little of them in their country since 1830, when the trappers 

 were so numerous. They were then much dreaded by these adven- 

 turers. The Crows are fine warriors ; have plenty of horses, mainly 

 derived from traffic with the Flatheads. They live generally in skin 

 lodges, and number about 600 lodges, or 4,800 souls. 



Minnetarres, or Gros Ventres. This is a small band of the Crow 

 nation, living in a village of dirt lodges, surrounded by a rude stock- 

 ade, near Fort Berthold. They raise corn, beans, pumpkins, &c. 

 They number now about 800 souls, but, from a variety of causes, are 

 diminishing. 



The Arricarees, or Rees, aire a branch of the Pawnee nation, from 

 which they have become separated by the migration of the Dakotas, 

 and by these latter they are both known by the same name, Fedanis. 



The Rees live in a village near Fort Clark, in a manner exactly 

 similar to the Gros Ventres, and number about 840 souls. Formerly 

 they were numerous and powerful, and occupied a large village at the 

 mouth of Grand river. This was destroyed during the expedition 

 under Colonel Leavenworth, sent there in 1825 or 1826 to chastise 

 them for the attack on the trading party of General Ashley. The 

 remains of dirt lodge villages all along the Missouri attest how 

 numerous the Indians of this tribe must have been before the invasion 

 of their lands by the Dakotas. 



The Madans live in a village, six miles above Fort Clark, in the 

 same manner as the Gros Ventres. They seem to be the last remnant 

 of a distinct tribe from any of those around them. They have, 

 through the agency of the small pox, rapidly diminished since they 

 were visited by Lewis and Clarke, and now number about 250 souls. 

 They live in constant dread of the diseases which white men have 

 been at times introducing among them, and the main and oft repeated 

 request which they made to the Indian agent when I was there in 

 July, 1856, was that he would keep sick white men away. When I 

 returned there in September, and saw them again a victim of that 

 scourge, the small pox, brought among them that year by the steam- 

 boat of the rival company to the American Fur Company, and saw 

 the despair depicted on every countenance, it made me feel heart sick 

 to think what wrongs these poor savages have sufi'ered from the 

 cupidity of my own race. The authors of this calamity, which visited 

 all the tribes in this region, are fully exposed in the report of the 

 Indian agent. Colonel Vaughan, in 1856-'57. 



Bear's Rib, the Unkpapa, gave me the following list of persons 

 that died of this disease, from this cause, in 1856 and 1857, that he 

 had heard of, though the disease was still at its work of death in some 

 parts of the Crow country : 



PersoBS. 



Rees 166 



Hohes 1,500 



Big Head's baud of Ihanhtonwans , 30 



Sihasapas 136 



1,832 



