DENSMoRR] MANDAN AND HIDATSA MUSIC 11 
took lessons on the instrument, but did not progress far enough to be 
a proficient player. The flutes were made of box elder wood about 
1 inch in diameter, not split, but having the pith scooped out. A 
notched flint was used for this purpose, the work being done first 
from one end, then from the other end of the stick. The length was 
“ from the inside of a man’s elbow to the end of his middle finger.” 
The instrument had seven holes that were “ placed a convenient dis- 
tance apart.”».A somewhat similar instrument used by the Utes is 
described and illustrated in Bull. 75, Bur. Amer. Ethn., page 28. 
DEALINGS WITH THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT 
The Mandan have always been friendly toward the white race, 
but in 1825 a treaty of peace was made because of “acts of hostility 
committed by some restless men of the Mandan Tribe.” The chiefs 
and warriors gave satisfactory explanations of these acts and the 
_ treaty was consummated on July 30 of that year.* The Mandan 
participated with other tribes in the treaty of Fort Laramie in 1851, 
one paragraph of this treaty defining the boundaries of the “ Gros 
Ventre, Mandan, and Arrickaras Nations.” By an Executive order 
of April 12, 1870, a reservation was set aside for these tribes, which 
included more land than had been given them by the Fort Laramie 
treaty, the reservation including parts of North Dakota and Mon- 
tana.27_ A portion of this, however, was ceded to the Government 
in 1880 and additional land given them.** The boundaries of the 
Fort Berthold Reservation were finally established by an act of Con- 
gress of March 3, 1891, the reservation being entirely within the 
present State of North Dakota. This act provided for the allotment 
of lands in severalty to these tribes.*® 
In 1864 P. J. De Smet, S. J., visited Fort Berthold on behalf of 
the Government and held councils with the “ Ricarees, the Mandans, 
and Idatzas, or Gros Ventres,” all of whom he reported to be “in 
the best of dispositions toward the whites.” *° It appears that Mahlon 
Wilkinson was placed in charge soon after De Smet’s visit, for in 
1868 Mr. Wilkinson made his fourth annual report as United States 
agent for the Fort Berthold Indians. In this report he commends 
their loyalty in resisting “all overtures from the hostile Sioux 
looking to a confederation.”*! For several years the development 
of agriculture was difficult, as war parties of Sioux and of Canadian 
2 Kappler, Laws and Treaties, vol. 11, p. 171. 
6 Tbid., p. 441. 
27 Royce, Indian Land Cessions in the United States, p. 852. 
3 Tbid., p. 900. 
2 Tbid., p. 942. 
30 Bx. Doc. No. 1, 38th Congress, 2d session, p. 422, Washington; 1864. 
31 Report Secretary of the Interior for 1867, pt. 11, Ind. Affs., p. 236. 
