MALiiKvj DAKOTA WINTER COUNTS, 1824-1826. 113 



White-Cow-Killer calls it "Old-corn-plenty winter." 



Mato Sapa's chart gives the human figure with a military cap, beard, 

 and goatee. 



1824-'2o — No. I. All the horses of Little-Swan's father are killed by 

 Indians through spite. 



No. II. Swan, chief of the Two Kettle tribe, had all of his horses 

 killed. Device, a horse pierced by a lance, blood flowing from the 

 wound. 



No. III. Swan, a Minueconjou Indian, had twenty horses killed by a 

 jealous Indian. 



Mato Sapa says : Swan, a Minneconjou chief, lost twenty horses killed 

 by a jealous Indian. 



Major Bush says the same. 



1S2.">-'2G. — No. I. River overflows Ihe Indian camp ; several drowned. 

 The-Flame, the recorder of this count, born. In the original drawing 

 the five objects above the line are obviously human heads. 



No. II. There was a remarkable flood in the Missouri River, and a 

 number of Indians were drowned. With some exercise of fancy, the 

 symbol may suggest heads appearing above a line of water, or it may 

 simply be the severed heads, several times used, to denote Indians other 

 than Dakotas, with the uniting black line of death. 



No. III. Thirty lodges of Dakota Indians drowned by a sudden rise 

 of the Missouri Eiver about Swan Lake Creek, which is in Horsehead 

 Bottom, 15 miles below Fort Rice. The five heads are more clearly 

 drawn than in No. II. 



Battiste Good says: " Many- Yanktonais-drowned winter;" adding: 

 The river bottom on a bend of the Missouri River where they were 

 encamped was suddenly submerged, when the ice broke and many 

 women and children were drowned. This device is 

 presented in Figure 43. £ ?^£j 



All the winter counts refer to this flood. 



1826-'27.— No. I. All of the Iudiaus who ate of a 

 buffalo killed on a hunt died of it, a peculiar sub- fig. 43.— River freshet,. 

 stance issuing from the mouth. 



No. II. "An Indian died of the dropsy." So Basil Clement was un- 

 derstood, but it is not clear why this circumstance should have been 

 noted, unless the appearance of the disease was so unusual in 182G as 

 to excite remark. Baron de La Hontan, a good authority concerning 

 the Northwestern Indians before they had been greatly affected by in- 

 tercourse with whites, although showing a tendency to imitate another 

 baron — Munchausen — as to his personal adventures, in his Nouveaux 

 Voyages dans l'Amerique Septentrionale specially mentions dropsy 

 as one of the diseases unknown to them. Carver also states that this 

 malady was extremely rare. Whether or not the dropsy was very un- 

 common, the swelling in this special case might have been so enormous 

 4 eth 8 



