OF THE HUMAN FAMILY. 185 



Tenth. The grandchildren of my brothers and sisters, and the grandchildren of 

 my collateral brothers and sisters, are my grandchildren. 



The relationship which subsisted between the children of a brother and sister I 

 was unable to ascertain. There can be no doubt whatever of the identity of the 

 Mandan form with those previously presented, although its details are incomplete. 



5. Minnitarees, and Upsarokas or Crows. These nations are immediate sub- 

 divisions of the same people. When they first appeared on the Upper Missouri 

 they were, according to the Mandan tradition, agricultural and Village Indians. 

 They were found by Lewis and Clarke living in Villages on Knife Kiver, near their 

 present town. These explorers furnish the following account 'of the original 

 separation from each other. " The Mandans say that this people came out of the 

 water to the east, and settled near them in their former establishments in nine 

 villages ; that they were very numerous, and fixed themselves in one village on the 

 south side of the Missouri. A quarrel about a buffalo divided the nation, of which 

 two bands went into the plains, and were known by the name of Crow and Paunch 

 Indians, and the rest removed to their present establishment." 1 On the contrary, 

 the Minnitarees now clain to be autochthones, a very common conceit among 

 Indian nations, although the name by which they still distinguish themselves as a 

 nation, E-nat'-za, signifying " people who came from afar," expressly contradicts 

 the assertion. This claim, however, may be received as some evidence of a long 

 continued occupation of this particular area. Indian nations usually retain a tradi- 

 tion of their last principal migration, and when that has faded from remembrance 

 the aiitochthonic claim is often advanced. If we adopt the Mandan tradition, as 

 to the first appearance of the Minnitarees upon the Upper Missouri, they have re- 

 mained during the intervening period Village Indians, and residents upon, and near 

 this river ; but the Crows changed their mode of life from the village to the camp, 

 and from an agricultural basis of subsistence, to the products of the chase. They 

 advanced northward by routes now unknown, until a part of them reached the 

 south branch of the Siskatchewun River, more than fifteen hundred miles north of 

 the present Minnitaree area. Their range was between the Siskatchewun and the 

 Missouri. One of the tribes of the Crows resided along the Bear's Paw Mountain, in 

 what is now the Blackfoot Country, near the base of the Rocky Mountain chain. 

 The name Slup-tet' -za, which this tribe still bears, signifying " Bear's PaAV Moun- 

 tain," 2 commemorates the fact. The Crows have a distinct and well-preserved 

 tradition, which was communicated to the author by Robert Meldrum (the highest 

 authority in the language and domestic history of this nation), that while they 

 resided around this mountain, the Shoshonee or Snake Indians were in possession 

 of the present Crow Country upon the Yellowstone River ; and the Comanches, now 

 of Western Texas, then occupied the present Shoshonee area west of the Moun- 



1 Lewis and Clarke's Travels, &c., p. 96. 



2 This beautiful mountain range rises out of the plains about fifty miles east of the Falls of the 

 Missouri, and stretches from near the Missouri to Milk River. Its highest peaks are about twenty- 

 five hundred feet high. Although quite near the foot of the Rocky Mountains, it is entirely 

 detached, and forms a conspicuous and striking object in the landscape of the prairie. 



24 February, 1870. 



