142 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 77 
On June 19, 1833, Maximilian, aboard the steamboat Assiniboin, 
left Fort Clark bound for Fort Union at the mouth of the Yellow- 
stone. Soon after passing the Mandan village of Ruhptare, so Maxi- 
milian wrote: “We saw before us the fine broad mirror of the 
river, and, at a distance on the southern bank, the red mass of the 
clay huts of the lower village of the Manitaries, which we reached 
in half an hour. The Missouri is joined by the Knife River, on 
which the three villages of the Manitaries are built. The largest, 
which is the furthest from the Missouri, is called Elah-Sa (the vil- 
lage of the great willows); the middle one, Awatichay (the little 
village), where Charbonneau, the interpreter, lives; and the third, 
Awachawi (le village des souliers), which is the smallest, consisting 
of only eighteen huts, situated at the mouth of Knife River. . . 
The south bank of the river was now animated by a crowd of In- 
dians, both on foot and on horseback; they were the Manitaries, 
who had flocked from their villages to see the steamer and to wel- 
come us. The appearance of this vessel of the Company, which 
comes up, once in two years, to the Yellow Stone River, is an event 
of the greatest importance to the Indians . . . The sight of the red- 
brown crowd collected on the river side, for even their buffalo skins 
were mostly of this colour, was, in the highest degree, striking. We 
already saw above a hundred of them, with many dogs, some of 
which drew sledges, and others, wooden boards fastened to their 
backs, and the ends trailing on the ground, to which the baggage 
was attached with leather straps.” (Maximilian, (1), pp. 178-179.) 
As told in the preceding section, Maximilian returned from Fort 
Union to Fort Clark, where, with the artist Bodmer, he spent the 
long winter. While near the Mandan towns he made several visits 
to the Hidatsa villages a few miles above, and learned much of the 
manners and ways of life of the people. He again spoke of the three 
villages on the banks of Knife River, “two on the left bank, and 
the third, which is much the largest, on the right bank.” He con- 
tinued: “At present the Manitaries live constantly in their villages, 
and do not roam about as they formerly did, when, like the Pawnees 
and other nations, they went in pursuit of the herds of buffaloes as 
soon as their fields were sown, returned in the autumn for the har- 
vest, after which they again went into the prairie. In these wander- 
ings they made use of leather tents, some of which are still standing 
by the side of their permanent dwellings” (p. 395). He then de- 
scribed the dress and general appearance of the people and con- 
tinued: “The Manitari villages are similarly arranged as those of 
the Mandans, except that they have no ark placed in the central 
space, and the figure of Ochkih-Hadda is not there. In the princi- 
pal village, however, is the figure of a woman placed on a long pole, 
doubtless representing the grandmother, who presented them with 
