130 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 77 
some twenty feet above the doors of their wigwams, are displayed 
in a pleasant day, the scalps of warriors, preserved as trophies; and 
thus proudly exposed as evidence of their warlike deeds. In other 
parts are raised on poles the warriors’ pure and whitened shields and 
quivers, with medicine-bags attached; and here and there a sacrifice 
of red cloth, or other costly stuff, offered up to the Great Spirit, over 
the door of some benignant chief, in humble gratitude for the bless- 
ings which he is enjoying. Such is a part of the strange medley that 
is before and around me; and amidst them .. . can be seen in 
distance, the green and boundless, treeless, bushless prairie; and on 
it, and contiguous to the piquet which encloses the village, a hun- 
dred scaffolds on which their ‘ dead live,’ as they term it.” Such was 
the appearance of the great Mandan town in the year 1832, and this 
description would probably have applied to many of the ruined vil- 
lages which stood on the banks of the Missouri farther down the 
river, which were occupied during past generations by the ancestors 
of those whom Catlin met and whose portraits have been preserved. 
Maximilian, accompanied by the artist Karl Bodmer, left St. Louis 
April 10, 1833, on board the steamboat Yellow Stone, bound for the 
upper Missouri. Arriving at Fort Pierre they boarded the Assini- 
boin. The Yellow Stone being loaded with “7,000 buffalo skins and 
other furs,” was to return to St. Louis. Starting from Fort Pierre 
June 5, they arrived at Fort Clark, among the Mandan, just two 
weeks later. Maximilian wrote on June 18: “ At half-past seven we 
passed a roundish island covered with willows, and reached then the 
wood on the western bank, in which the winter dwellings of part of 
the Mandan Indian are situated; and saw, at a distance, the largest 
village of this tribe, Mih-Tutta-Hang-Kush, in the vicinity of which 
the whole prairie was covered with riders and pedestrians. As we 
drew nearer the huts of that village, Fort Clarke, lying before it, 
relieved by the background of the blue prairie hills, came in sight, 
with the gay American banner waving from the flag-staff ... The 
Assiniboin soon lay to before the fort, against the gently sloping 
shore, where above 600 Indians were waiting for us.” (Maximilian, 
(1), p. 171.) They departed from Fort Clark the following day 
and on June 24, “the seventy-fifth day since our departure from St. 
Louis,” arrived at Fort Union, near the mouth of the Yellowstone. 
Returning to Fort Clark November 8, they remained throughout the 
winter, departing April 18, 1834. 
During the long winter months Maximilian learned much of the 
manners and ways of life of the Mandan, and his records are, in 
many respects, to be preferred to those of Catlin. To quote his 
description of the Mandan towns: “Their villages are assemblages 
of clay huts, of greater or less extent, placed close to each other, 
