BUSHNELL] VILLAGES WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI 167 
down to and far below their villages. Now they are obliged to travel 
out from ten to twenty days to reach them. The buffalo are rapidly 
diminishing and will in time become extinct. 
“When they leave their villages to hunt the buffalo, they take 
every man and beast with them, and the place of their habitations is 
as desolate and solitary during their absence as any other spot on 
the prairie. When the time of departure arrives all the furniture 
and provisions they wish to carry with them are packed on the horses. 
The residue of their scant furniture and provisions are concealed in 
the earth till their return. As each family gets ready they fall into 
the train, which frequently extends some miles.” (Dunbar, (1), pp. 
329-330.) The narrative continues and relates many of the manner- 
isms of the people, and tells of their peculiar traits. And it is diffi- 
cult to realize the great distance traveled during the hunting trips 
away from the permanent earth-lodge villages. Dunbar accompanied 
them on several of their hunts and wrote (op. cit., p. 331) : “ The first 
hunting tour I performed with them they traveled, from the time they 
left their village till they returned to it again in the spring, about 
400 miles. During the first summer hunt I was with them they trav- 
eled 700 miles before returning to their village. During my second 
winter hunt they traveled 900 miles, second summer hunt 800 miles.” 
The moving about over the vast rolling prairies of the people of 
an entire village, while on their distant hunts, covering many hun- 
dreds of miles, and carrying with them practically all of their be- 
longings, with innumerable dogs and horses, stopping now to kill 
the buffalo and again pushing on in quest of more, constituted one 
of the most interesting and characteristic phases of primitive life on 
the prairies. But within a few decades all has changed, and now 
many towns and villages occupy the region once traversed by the 
roving bands. 
ARIKARA. 
When or where the Arikara separated from their kindred tribe, 
the Pawnee, may never be determined, but during the years which 
followed the separation they continued moying northward, leaving 
ruined villages to-mark the line of their migration. Sixty years ago 
it was said: “That they migrated upward, along the Missouri, from 
their friends below is established by the remains of their dirt villages, 
which are yet seen along that river, though at this time mostly over- 
grown with grass. At what time they separated from the parent 
stock is not now correctly known, though some of their locations 
appear to have been of very ancient date, at least previous to the 
commencement of.the fur trade on the Upper Missouri. At the time 
when the old French and Spanish traders began their dealings with 
71934 °—22—_12 ‘ 
