Extermination of the Mandans. 433 



thrown beneath the bluffs, and created an intolerable 

 stench, which added to its fatality. Men shot each other 

 when they found they were attacked : one man killed his 

 wife and children, and then loaded his gun and placing 

 the muzzle in his mouth, touched the trigger with his toe 

 and blew out his own brains. One young chief made his 

 friends dig a grave for him, and putting on his war-robes, 

 he tottered out to it, singing his death-song, and jumping 

 in, cut his body nearly in two with a knife, and was bu- 

 ried there ; and others committed suicide after they were 

 attacked, rather than die of the loathsome disease. The 

 annals of pestilence do not furnish another such example 

 of horrors, or where the mortality was so great in propor- 

 tion to the population : of the once powerful tribe of Man- 

 dans only twenty-seven persons remained, and one hun- 

 dred and fifty thousand persons perished, and the details 

 are too horrible to relate. Added to this, the few whites 

 were alarmed lest the Indians should massacre them as 

 the cause of the evil. One influential chief attempted to 

 instigate the Indians to kill all the whites, but he was him- 

 self seized and died before his plans were matured ; but 

 in his last moments he confessed his wickedness, and ex- 

 pressed sorrow for it, and begged that his body might be 

 laid before the gate of the fort until it was buried, with 

 the superstitious belief that if this were done the white 

 man would always think of him and forgive his meditated 



The Journal is taken up until the end of July with 

 narratives of almost daily excursions in various directions 

 in search of all kinds of game. Many anecdotes are re- 

 lated of the Indians, their mode of life, habits, and pecu- 

 liarities, most of which have been described by other 

 writers, and hardly merit repeating here. Audubon 

 found this region so rich in novelties of the kinds he had 

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